Robbing Peter To Pay Paul

Michael Cessna January 12, 2024

It would seem that 2024 is off with a bang, if the Reader will forgive the pun.

Beginning on October 7^th of 2023, of course, Hamas launched its suicidal Don Quixote war with Israel, showing that the debased savagery of the Islamic State is alive and well. Shortly after, on October 13^th, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abey Ahmed announced what can only be termed a policy of “lebensraum” for Ethiopia, demanding free access to the Red Sea. And, as if on cue, the Houthi rebels in Yemen began attacking any unarmed commercial vessels they could draw a bead on in the nautical chokepoint of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, controlling the southern access point to the Red Sea.

Now, as the second week of January 2024 closes, Iran has entered the fray, seizing the oil tanker St. Nikolas off the coast of Oman, in the Arabian Sea, significantly widening the security problem – and potential naval combat area. Iran’s explanation for the seizure is a flimsy claim to Iranian ownership, a claim even flimsier than the excuse of the Houthi’s for attacking ships in the Red Sea.

Obviously, as we reported last week, all of this military action has begun to significantly impact world commerce, as increasing numbers of shipping lines abandon the critical Red Sea route, opting for the much longer transit around the Cape of Good Hope.

The question for most Readers is, obviously, “Where is the US Navy in all of this?” Good question.

The United States Navy is, unquestionably, the most powerful navy the world has ever seen. Disputing that statement is, frankly, ludicrous. The United States currently operates more aircraft carriers for fixed-wing operations than the rest of the world, combined…and this is before the various US Marine Corps aviation squadrons are added to its figures. It operates some seventy-six Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, regarded as the most capable destroyer class ever designed. Likewise, the US Navy maintains amphibious and supply forces that no other nation can match, giving it a truly global reach. It is not an exaggeration to say that a US Navy carrier battle group can deploy more firepower to a region than can be mustered by most nations’ entire militaries.

So – handling the Houthi’s, or even Iran, should present no great trouble for the United States, right?

Well…it’s complicated.

While the United States does, indeed, have a vast and capable military, like the armed forces of Great Britain before it, it has a major problem. It is not really a question of how good your weapons are; the greatest warship ever designed is completely useless if it isn’t where you need it to be, when you need it to be there.

The US military, and specifically the US Navy, cannot be everywhere at once. Aside from the chronic, military-wide problems with both recruiting and retention of personnel, the political leadership of the United States has, for the preceding forty years or so, almost uniformly failed to make even reasonably good choices in economic, military, social and foreign policy decisions. These failed policies have led to critically short numbers of personnel in almost all of the armed services, which translates into too few forces being available to deal with multiple threats. Indeed, while the US Navy, as of 2019, had some four hundred and eighty ships in commission, it could only deploy about two hundred and ninety.

What does this mean in the modern day, of January 2024?

As US and Western industry still struggles to supply the war in Ukraine, that situation is now worse, as the limited supply of ammunition is further divided to support Israel in its war against Hamas. Added to this, is the double threat from Iran and it’s Houthi proxies, a threat that is already damaging world commerce.

And then – there is Communist China…more on that, later.

Many people fail to grasp the impact of world shipping. Like it or not, everything you rely on is tied into global commerce in some way. Even if nothing you directly interact with physically transits the Red Sea, the major delays created will affect the prices of the everyday item you pay for. Likewise, the rising interest and insurance rates caused by the fighting will impact the Reader in a very real way, as those industries have to spread out the damage.

And then – there is Communist China.

A week ago, Communist leader Xi Jinping launched a purge of the upper echelons of the Communist state’s military leadership. While a relatively common practice among Communist states, it remains to be seen if Xi will go to the extent of other Communist dictators.

The end result of actions like this, is universally bad for the capabilities of a nation’s military forces, overall, as it significantly hampers military initiative, in favor of rigid obedience to political dogma – translation: Scare your military enough, and they will be too busy avoiding being shot by your political officers to fight your actual enemies.

However, there are many forms of warfare, and Communist China has learned that throwing money at a problem can make that problem either go away, or at least not bother it…and undermining an enemy while doing so is icing on the cake.

The bottom line? The West is failing. It is failing partially from it’s own success, but mostly from too many decades of throwing pasta at walls to see what sticks. The desire for profit beyond the dreams of avarice has led to a simultaneous weakening of Western industry, and to “good enough” levels of technological and industrial capacity leaking out to nations and groups who hate the West.

In a word: they hate you. It’s not so much that they hate you, personally – but they hate the society you grew up in, and are more than happy – and capable – of burning the world to the ground to spite you.

As of this writing, there are two hundred and ninety-seven days to the 2024 election. One way or another, you need a plan for what happens when we get there.

Assuming, of course, that we get there.

*The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To*

The Lion Stirs – The Murky War Upsetting World Commerce

Michael Cessna January 5, 2024

In the week before Christmas of 2023, there are several large-scale wars going on, with several more potential wars in the making: Russia-Ukraine; Israel-Hamas/Hezbollah; the ongoing offensive of pro-democracy rebels closing in on the fascist junta in Myanmar/Burma; the never-ending battles across the African Sahel region, and the potential Venezuelan invasion of Guyana.

But, lurking in the background is another potential conflict, one that may be impacting and aiding the neo-con agenda: Ethiopia vs. Eritrea.

Ethiopia is unique in history, as the only African state that was never colonized by any European power. Although conquered and occupied by Italy in the years immediately preceding World War 2, that occupation was short-lived, as the country was fully liberated from Italian rule by 1943.

A truly ancient state, Ethiopia maintained its status as an imperial monarchy until 1974, with the Communist revolution that placed a brutal Marxist-Leninist government in charge of the country. This government would, in turn, be deposed in another revolution in 1989, as part of the wave of Communist states around the world that collapsed as the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact imploded, leaving Communist “economies” to wither on the vine.

In the aftermath of the Derg’s collapse, Ethiopia was left unable to stop a popular referendum in one of its most critical provinces – Eritrea – that resulted in that state becoming independent in 1993. While this may seem like a random “factoid”, it is actually of enormous significance.

Eritrea – long part of Ethiopia – occupies the coast of the Red Sea, and as such, was Ethiopia’s only access to world commerce…and after a series of wars in the 1990’s and early-2000’s, Eritrea has effectively blocked Ethiopia from using its Red Sea ports. With a population of over one hundred and seven million, Ethiopia ranks 13^th in the top fifteen nations in the world by population – and is the only one of those states that is completely landlocked.

This translates to Ethiopia being forced to pay exorbitant, even “extortionate”, fees to export its goods to market through its only access to the Red Sea, via the Port of Djibouti, which handles an estimated 95% of Ethiopia’s foreign commerce.

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, takes this issue seriously…seriously enough, that he made statements on the 13^th of October of 2023, that explicitly underlined Ethiopia’s ‘right to access’ to the Red Sea. Understandably, this rattled every other nation in the “Horn of Africa”, all of whom are vastly outnumbered in both population and military capacity by Ethiopia.

These remarks came less than two weeks after the Hamas terror attacks on Israel that commenced on October 7^th. As a result, the wider world – obviously – paid little the comments little attention. But then, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen chose to insert themselves into that conflict on the side of Hamas, on October 19^th…clearly a coincidence, surely.

And then, on January 1^st, Ahmed dropped another bombshell, announcing that Ethiopia had inked a deal with the breakaway Somali province of Somaliland to use their port of Berbera to access the Gulf of Aden – well outside the current shooting gallery – reputedly in exchange of recognition of the breakaway state. This has obviously infuriated Somalia, which has never relinquished its claim to the province, despite the region being de facto independent since 1991 and the region’s independence being ratified in a referendum in 2001.

Now, in the first week of 2024, the Houthi missile attacks and piracy have attracted the attention of major powers around the world, many of whom have joined “Operation Prosperity Guardian”, in an attempt to guarantee safe passage through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait…albeit too late for world shipping giant Maersk, who announced on January 5^th that they were ordering all of their vessels not already in the Red Sea to divert around southern Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, to avoid the fighting. While this, alone, will cause serious disruptions to global trade, many more cargo carrier lines are virtually certain to not take the risk and divert their vessels, for the same reason as Maersk. This could easily lead to a reprise of the shipping disruptions that happened at the height of the COVID pandemic.

As a result, there are increasingly serious calls within Washington circles to attack Iran directly, as they are the Houthi’s major source of money and weapons. This would be a Godsend to neo-con chickenhawks desperate to finally get the United States into their long-desired war with Iran…

…Which brings us back to Ethiopia’s moves on its future access to the Red Sea.

Ethiopia has three options: they can a) maintain the status quo, with limited access to world shipping solely through Djibouti’s port; b) conclude their deal to access breakaway Somaliland’s ports; or – c) invade at least part of Eritrea, to capture at least that nation’s port of Assab.

Obviously, the status quo is not working for Ethiopia; if it were, there would have been no need for the deal with Somaliland. Djibouti’s port is increasingly limited in capacity, and has little physical room to expand operations, which will soon severely stunt Ethiopia’s economic output…Conversely, the deal with Somaliland risks war with Somalia, as recognition of Somaliland’s independence would almost certainly gut Somalia’s hopes at stabilizing their nation, which was only reunified in 2012. Somalia would have to launch a military campaign to invade the territory to bring it to heel, presenting Ethiopia with the option of going to war with Somalia in support of a breakaway province, something Ethiopia would be loath to encourage, considering recent history.

As well, invading Eritrea to capture Assab carries significant risks on its own, because – all other things being equal in the absence of the current conflict in the Bab-el-Mandeb – Ethiopia could well face a UN-led coalition of military powers “riding to the rescue” of what has been described as the “North Korea of Africa”.

None of these seem like viable solutions, on their own…Unless the world is focused on a different series of conflicts that would combine to divert attention away from Ethiopia “readjusting” the local map, and allowing Addis Ababa to present the world with a fait accompli in the aftermath of the Houthi’s inevitable neutralization, as well as the likelihood of a massive US-Iran war…

…While the foregoing may sound like the implication of a dastardly plot on Ethiopia’s part, it is not…well, mostly “not.” But, the timeline of Ethiopia’s rhetoric regarding its right-to-access to the Red Sea is certainly suspicious, and indicates some level of foreknowledge of events beginning ion October of 2023, and having active plans and options ready to go.

There are plenty of players in this global chess tournament, and too many “leaders” in the West – and elsewhere – are arrogantly blind to the knives in the dark, thinking that “bit players” cannot harm them.

…Rather like Britain, France and the United States from the 1950’s to the 1980’s.

Word to the wise.

Iran Escalates Red Sea Tensions

Michael Cessna January 1, 2024

The Islamic state of Iran has significantly escalated tensions in the Red Sea, by deploying the warship Alborz to the crucial Bab el-Mandeb Strait a day after US Navy helicopters drove off Iranian-backed Houthi pirates of Yemen following their attempted seizure of the Singapore-registered container ship Maersk Hangzhou, sinking several Houthi boats and killing an estimated ten pirates, on December 30, according to CENTCOM.

This also comes some 10 days after the Liberian-flagged tanker MV Chem Pluto was struck by a suspected Iranian drone while at sea, en-route from Saudi Arabia to India on December 23rd.

The Alborz, an Alvand-class frigate, was originally bought by the Imperial Iranian Navy in 1971.

The move by Iran raises the distinct possibility of hostile action between the Iranian vessel and the various, dozen-or-so warships of Operation Prosperity Guardian, assembled in late-December to counter repeated missile and boarding attacks on international shipping, claiming to be countering the Israeli response to the unprovoked attack on its civilians that began on October 7 by the Hamas terrorists operating in the Gaza Strip.

The Freedomist will continue to monitor the situation as it develops.

Updated at 5:50pm CST, with information and links to the attack on MV Chem Pluto.

Spies Like Us…?

Michael Cessna December 16, 2023

With all of the wild and crazy war and near-war news flying from all quarters in the last weeks of 2023, it’s hard to keep up…frustrating, in fact. So, this week, we will look at a historical “What if?” that might be real:

What if a uniquely American intelligence agency exists – an intelligence agency that has no public name, no financing from public funds, and does not report to Congress? An intelligence agency that has existed since the beginning of the United States as an independent nation, which has directly impacted the policies of the United States government?

Now, that sounds like a really cool idea for a modern spy thriller…but such a thing isn’t really possible, right?

Part 1 – A Hell of a Thing

Nations and nation-states need a wide variety of things in order to function; a lot of things. But one thing a state has always needed, down through history, is an intelligence service of some kind. A state planning on existing for any length of time has an absolute need to find out what the group in the next valley, or on the other side of the river are up to, lest they get paid an unexpected visit from said group[s]. It doesn’t matter whether said agency is an old police officer that is a crony of the local dictator, managing the Secret Police, or an agency with global reach, like the American Central Intelligence Agency – a state will deploy spies to at least try to stay ahead of the state’s enemies, real or imagined.

To paraphrase the words of others, I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying that’s the way things are.

At the same time, such agencies – regardless of time and technology – need resources beyond mere creativity in its personnel. Spy services need money – or the equivalent in disposable goods – in vast amounts. Over the last one thousand or so years, that usually means cash, initially in the form of gold and silver coins. The United States was no different when it gained its independence from Great Britain.

However, the government of the nascent United States had a fundamental problem: it had no money for something as expensive as a spy agency. Certainly, the rebel colonies used spies all through the Revolution, with some of them becoming very good, indeed. But, after the adoption of the current Constitution in 1789, the United States government could barely bring in enough money to keep it running, much less maintain a spy service. Because the only times the government could really borrow money was during wartime, the government was publicly forced to hire private detective agencies to perform basic intelligence and Executive protection duties, until the founding of the US Secret Service in 1865, following the assassination of President Lincoln. In fact, in the 30 years after 1870, there were years where the US government was unable to pay Army regiments deployed against Native American tribes west of the Mississippi River. This situation would not really change until the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 made large-scale government borrowing during peacetime possible.

But these facts did not remove the need for a foreign intelligence service. So – how did the United States survive against foreign threats without the funds to run a spy agency?

The answer, simply put is – it didn’t.

Part 2 – Wine Glass Diplomacy and the Black Hole Method

I want to be crystal clear about what follows: I have no “smoking gun” documents, and no “whistleblower” testimony. What follows is an exercise in critical thinking and deductive reasoning.

Also, because it needs to be said here in the 21st Century, I am in good health and am not depressed in any way.

There is a form of investigation known as the “Black Hole Method.” When you suspect that a thing is going on, but has been effectively concealed, how do you puzzle out what is going on? When looking for a black hole in space, one doesn’t look for the black hole itself, because it is indistinguishable from empty space, since not even light can escape from a black hole. Instead, one looks for the effects of the black hole on surrounding space.

When George Washington, the first President of the United States after the adoption of the Constitution, needed a spy agency, there was one person he would have fully trusted to create it: Benjamin Tallmadge. Tallmadge, who had started the Revolution as an officer in the Continental Army’s 2nd Continental Light Dragoons, had functioned as Washington’s main spymaster (as spy chiefs were referred to in those days), running the Culper Spy Ring operating against the British High Command in occupied New York City.

*Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge. Portrait by Ralph Earl (1751-1801), circa 1790. Public Domain.*

After the war, Tallmadge settled in Lichfield, Connecticut, and was appointed as the local postmaster (which was a far more prominent position, then) in 1792, and established himself in an importing business. He would later resign that post in 1801, to become a Representative in Connecticut’s “at-large” Congressional district. While serving in Congress, he would become the first President of the Phoenix Branch Bank, a position he held from 1814 to 1826.

While there is no evidence that the following speculation on events actually happened, given the nature of how things were done at the time, the United States’ government’s spy problem may well have been solved.

Sometime after Washington’s election as President (possibly very shortly after), Washington could have summoned Tallmadge to the temporary US capital in New York City, in a highly unofficial capacity. Over a quiet and private dinner, possibly attended by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of War Henry Knox (both of whom were well-verse in spying), and possibly Vice President John Adams, Tallmadge would have been sounded out for recommendations on how to solve the spy problem.

Tallmadge, knowing full well of the contributions by wealthy businessmen such as Robert Morris, among several others, could have proposed an idea to have those men fund a spy agency, one which would be able to use US diplomatic and military resources when necessary. In trade, the businessmen who signed on to such a scheme would receive the intelligence collected and sent back to the government as soon as it could be copied; the information, obviously, would not be passed on to any other businessmen.

*Financier Robert Morris. Painting by Charles Willson Pealecirca 1782. Public Domain.*

If such a scheme were set up – a scheme that was created with neither public funds nor the knowledge of Congress – every person taking part would have had a vested interest in keeping such a thing quiet, because of the clear level of corruption and nepotism involved.

An important factor would have been that such an agency was not necessarily aimed at internal surveillance, within the United States; that really would not have offered much to the financiers, and would have easily led to infighting, and the exposure of the scheme, which would seriously damage American businesses overseas.

Assuming that something like this occurred, what would the effects have been, and can we find potential evidence of such?

Part 3 – Ghosts In The Machine

Aside from some notably high-quality research, very little “official” information has come to light…suspiciously little, in fact. However, there are hints at operations of such an agency. As record keeping became more efficient of the years, cracks in security appeared – and perhaps the most important crack was named William Donovan.

While not well known today, Major General William J. Donovan, born in Buffalo, NY in 1883, and eventually attended Columbia Law University, where he was classmate of future President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He would marry Ruth Rumsey (1891-1977) in 1914. By 1916, Donovan was an officer in a New York troop of cavalry, serving in the Pancho Villa Expedition in Mexico. But in World War 1, Donovan stood out as the commander of the legendary “Fighting 69th” Infantry, during which he would be awarded with the Medal of Honor…all of which are easily sourced data points.

*Lt. Col. William J. Donovan , 165th Reg. Inf. (formerly 69th Regt. Inf. N.Y.N.G.), US Army 42nd Division, 1918. US Army photo. Public Domain.*

However, an odd passage appears in Donovan’s autobiography, referring to him “abandoning” his wife in Asia, to ‘run off Siberia to play spy’ (pgs. 32-34), in the immediate aftermath of World War 1. Now, Russian Siberia at this time was a wild and brutal battlefield, one where people were frequently rounded up and executed on a whim by all of the warring factions. James Bond aside, no one “plays” at being a spy in the real world, at least not for very long. This begs the question: Why would this sort of information be revealed? Even long after Donovan’s death in 1959, this is not information that would be advisable to release to the public. The answer seems to lie in Donovan’s wife, Ruth. A member of New York high society, she was very unhappy at his intelligence work. It could have been feared that she might reveal Donovan’s intelligence work in a fit of pique, and “removing the problem” would have been very problematic…

…But, ‘problematic’ for whom?

Donovan would go on to head up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) for his college classmate, the now-President Roosevelt, during World War 2, quickly building a large, capable and world-spanning intelligence agency. That, in and of itself, is a questionable situation: assistance from the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) aside, there are serious holes in this story, even allowing for wartime secrecy.

On the other hand, a hidden group – one that had spent well over a century, at that point, running operations – would certainly explain how a brand new secret intelligence branch could suddenly “spin up.”

Part 4 – Today

So, where does this leave us, in the 21st Century?

There has been a series of seemingly bizarre situations in the last few years that indicate that either the US intelligence community is flat-out lying to Congress, or that they simply do not have the answers that they should.

Among these are the recent hearings on the so-called “UFO/UAP” question, something the Freedomist has covered in the past. It is entirely possible that the reason behind Congress being unable to ‘shake loose’ any meaningful information from either the armed forces or the various intelligence agencies is simply because they do not possess the information…because another group, a group that Congress has no means of contacting, much less subpoenaing, is dealing with the subject, and has no interest in informing Congress or the American People of what is going on…

…But that is something for a whole other article.

Norwegian Tanker ‘Strinda’ Struck By Houthi Missile

Michael Cessna December 12, 2023

RED SEA, 12.12.2023, 1100hrs CST – The Japanese-owned, Norwegian-flagged general oil and chemical tanker MK STRINDA was struck by a missile fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen, while transiting the Bab el Mandeb strait, late on the 11th. the ship reported damage and a fire, but reported no casualties.

The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Mason responded to the tanker’s distress call, and is rendering assistance as of press time. The Mason, along with other US Navy warships, have engaged Houthi missiles and drones fire at Israel as part of the Houthi’s

This is the latest in the escalating piratical activities of the Iran-backed terror group in recent weeks, including their helicopter assault to seize of the M/V Galaxy Leader and their attempted seizure of the M/V Central Park.

The Houthi group is a religious sect that is the main party in a civil war that has raged since 2014. Although the hard-line Shi’a Muslim group is reported to be receiving assistance from many corners, no state has recognized them as a legitimate state. They were, and remain, a group of bandits, pirates and terrorists.

The Freedomist will continue to monitor the situation.

The Tyranny of Maps and Running Out of Other Peoples’ Money

Michael Cessna December 9, 2023

Part 1 – What Does That Smudge Actually Say, Again?

Maps are funny things. As an old saying goes,

“When in doubt, look at a map – it will always tell you something. It may not be anything you don’t already know, but it will tell you something…”

As with most old sayings, though, this particular one is very nuanced in its meaning.

Maps, in a military or geopolitical sense, are usually a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional sphere. Modern computer systems can approximate an accurate 3-D picture of terrain, but those developments are relatively new. For thousands of years, the few maps that existed were very crude, verging into the abstract. Beginning only in the late 18th Century, did maps begin to add more accurate details and consistent distance scales.

Maps, then – as we understand the term – are a surprisingly recent phenomenon. But OH! The power and magic they convey! Depending on your point of view – and your immediate needs – maps can become works of holy writ, exuding an illusion of absolute truth. This is especially important when talking about borders, and where you intend to defend them. And, if you can find an old map whose details you can…“selectively interpret”…those maps can feed visions of military glory…

…Or offer desperate and failing governments a lifeline to motivate (they hope) a depressed and reactionary population.

This was the story in 1982, when the military junta of Argentina, led by General Leopoldo Galtieri, realized that national economies cannot be managed like a military budget, especially when their “security policy” was like some weird nightmare, left over from World War 2. What to do? Galtieri & Co. thought they found an answer in old maps.

There had been an old dispute with the United Kingdom over a group of islands two hundred odd miles east of Argentina, well into the Atlantic Ocean: the Falkland Islands.

The uninhabited, barren and windswept islands had been sort-of settled first by Spain…then England…then Spain again…the Argentina again, until the English returned and made their claim permanent by deporting the few Argentinean colonists back to the mainland, and establishing a colony devoted to sheep herding, maintaining a station for whaling ships, and later, a coaling station for the Royal Navy.

For about one hundred and fifty years, Argentina repeatedly tried to get England into talks to return the islands to them; England was never really interested in talking about anything of the kind, but were too polite to simply tell Argentina to go pound sand – the islands were England’s; English people had settled on the islands and actually developed them; and they had formed a part of England’s military strategies for decades. It just wasn’t going to happen.

But then…Britain’s colonial empire eroded into nothingness, replaced by a loose economic sphere of former colonies, that England didn’t really bother trying to control too closely. Empires, you see, are extremely expensive to create and maintain, and after the hellscapes of World Wars 1 and 2, the people of England more or less lost all interest in spending literal blood and treasure to maintain decisive control over colonies with unhappy and unruly populations, which produced – overall – very little to justify their expense. On top of this, eliminating the ability of people to elevate themselves into higher positions on the social standing tree meant that conquest was just another job that was hard, dangerous, and offered little to show for the effort.

To Galtieri and his junta, this seemed like a great time to “revisit the ownership” of the Falklands – after all, England’s main military and economic focuses were on Europe and the Mediterranean. Surely, they wouldn’t mind be relieved of the burden of paying for less than settlers at the literal opposite end of the earth.

This is the sort of “logic” that desperately unpopular and extremely unworldly people engage in, using the post-operative mantra, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!”

Britain, it turned out, was done with giving away things. And, with the after-image of the Iranian Hostage Crisis in the very recent past, it was not about to give ‘hostile actors’ around the world the notion that the few remaining British territories were up for grabs.

The result – the Falklands War – was a dramatic reminder that even the remnants of empires can be extraordinarily dangerous to provoke. Now, if the Reader thinks that the Falklands War served as a teaching tool to petty dictators to not trust old maps, you would be sadly mistaken.

Cut to the last weeks of 2023.

Part 2 – Other People’s Money

The Communist dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, has finally recognized that the policies begun by his predecessor, Hugo Chavez – policies that Maduro enthusiastically expanded on – have resulted – to borrow the immortal words of Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister who determined that Britain would, indeed, fight for the Falklands – in Maduro “running out of other people’s money.”

Venezuela, which should be a ridiculously wealthy nation due to its vast oil reserves, has had its economy and business sectors so badly managed by the Chavez-Maduro regime, that the country is now one of the poorest nations on the planet. And this comes far ahead of any sanctions placed on the country by the United States or anyone else.

Because of the failing economy he is actively trying to destroy, Maduro has decided to revive an old map dispute on his eastern border. You see, Venezuela’s eastern neighbor – Guyana – is a former colony of Britain, about the size of Idaho, but with only half the population. In 1966, just prior to granting Guyana independence, Britain (speaking for Guyana) and Venezuela both agreed to arbitrate the border dispute in the International Court of Justice (ICA). Neither country really pulled out the stops to press negotiations, however, because there was no real need; like many such disputes, this one just laid around, gathering dust.

But now, the winds are blowing in different directions.

Maduro – like most totalitarian dictators – relies on the illusion of “the democratic process” to stay in power. In this case, no election since the ascension of Chavez has been “legitimate” – it’s an open secret, but as long as Maduro stayed within his own borders, no one outside of Venezuela – including successive Presidential administrations in the United States – really cared.

In 2015, however, oil was discovered off the coast of Guyana – in the area off the shore of the disputed region. And, in September of 2023, Guyana issued drilling licenses to various oil companies, including ExxonMobil (which had several oil facilities in Venezuela nationalized many years ago).

*Map of Guyana Essequiba. The area lined in orange constitutes the area claimed by Venezuela. Credit: Karl Musser. CCA/3.0.*

And in November of 2023, Maduro suddenly announced that his government would hold a referendum among the Venezuelan people, to see if they would mind their government annexing the disputed region, and telling the international courts to shove off. Surprising absolutely no one outside of the denizens of upscale café’s in Hollywood and New York – and, of course, Starbucks’ outlets – Venezuelans “voted overwhelmingly”, as in 95% of voters, that yes, their country should absolutely invade and dismember a neighbor that they have never fought a war with.

Now, it would wrong to assume that this situation is about oil, per se. Oil is a component in this situation, but it is actually not that far into Maduro’s wheelhouse. Maduro’s real problem is that he is up for reelection in 2024, and Venezuelans – like Argentineans before them – are getting fed up with the charade…and Maduro’s real fear is that Venezuelans may just “go all Romanian” on him.

That’s not a bingo card entry anyone wants.

Like Galtieri before him, Maduro is hoping that starting a war will make him popular enough at home to easily retain power – that’s known as “not changing horses in midstream.” The problem? Guyana, while it does not have a very large military, is not an island…Guyana and Venezuela share a border in the disputed region with a third nation: Brazil.

Brazil is a massive and powerful nation within the region. Even given the ludicrous and destructive policies of its current ruling party, the Brazilian economy is a powerhouse, regionally. As well, its armed forces are nothing to mess with; the Brazilian military – at all levels – seriously outclasses that of Venezuela. Maduro’s outlandishly comical “referendum” is so divorced from reality, not even a hardened Socialist leader like Lula da Silva can let such an idea go.

This is shaping into a potential three-way war, which could include a rarity, for the modern day: and actual naval battle. This is due to the geography of the region, with puts a large amount of the disputed region within range of naval forces’ fire support capabilities on the Caribbean coast, to say nothing of the extensive network of rivers that form the best highways in the interior.

In any shooting war, Venezuelan forces will be at a serious disadvantage if Brazil enters the fray.

This does, however, beg the question: What about the United States?

In the United States, the administration of Joe Biden is giving typically half-hearted and limp-wristed lip service to tell the kids in the south to calm down. The Swamp – or, if you prefer, “Sodom on the Potomac” – is far more concerned with events in Ukraine, Israel, and potentially in the Bab al-Mandeb, at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, to worry about a minor territorial squabble in South America. Functionally, refusing to take decisive action on its proverbial doorstep would be a foreign policy disaster on a scale with Jimmy Carter’s inability to deal with the Iranian hostage crisis.

…So – is there a “wild card” in this mess? Yes, there is: ExxonMobil.

Big Oil is not dead. Far from it. Venezuela long ago parted company with ExxonMobil and other foreign oil producers. And now, from ExxonMobil’s view, Maduro is trying to muscle in on their turf, yet again.

But ExxonMobil is “just a corporation,” right? What could they possibly do? Twenty years ago, that answer would have been simple: suck it up, count your losses, and find somewhere else…But that was twenty years ago, and a lot has happened since then.

There is absolutely nothing stopping ExxonMobil – especially in concert with other corporations – from fielding its own armed forces…including naval and air forces…to insert themselves into a potential Venezuela-Guyana war, if the potential returns are worth the risks. Guyana’s estimated 11 billion barrels (at the low end) is a pretty big incentive.

This last scenario would be no more than an interesting action-adventure story, if the players in Washington, DC, were not so incompetent and self-absorbed.

Happy voting.

Tropic Thunder: Echoes of Past Wars

Michael Cessna December 1, 2023

Part 1 – In Your Face

In mid-November, the South American nation of Guyana appealed for help to both the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, which just handed down a sternly worded finding on 12/1/2023 on the matter. Guyana, which shares its western border with Venezuela, became justifiably alarmed after Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s government scheduled a public referendum for December 3, 2023, “asking” the Venezuelan people if they would be okay with annexing the Essequibo region from Guyana – which comprises some two-thirds of Guyana.

So – what’s going on, and why should you care? In reverse order, the reasons you need to care about this are simple.

First, unlike the current wars in Ukraine and Israel, this is on the proverbial doorstep of the United States. Second, is that seemingly tired old problem: oil. Third, the very fact that this has even come up, is yet one more pointed demonstration of the abject and total failures of both the Biden administration, and the neo-con RINO’s desperately clinging to power inside the GOP, best described by GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy as “Dick Cheney in three inch heels”.

Venezuela and Guyana form part of the northern coast of South America. Any war in South America is of preeminent importance to the United States, because of the potential to spill onto the United States’ doorstep, in addition to all the other problems spilling over a border that the Biden administration apparently believes not to exist. A Venezuelan attempt to “flex” for imperialist territorial expansion would – and threatens to do so – lead to a much wider war, as Brazil’s territorial integrity is also threatened by Maduro’s actions.

The question is, why? The answer is simple: oil.

Venezuela has been tied into the global petroleum extraction network since the early 1900’s; indeed, the country was the world’s third largest producer of crude oil in 1940, and was the tenth largest producer in 2008. However, beginning in the mid-1970’s, a series of terrible decisions by successive governments nationalized the country’s oil industries. This resulted in the companies whose plants were confiscated politely refusing to continue to perform maintenance and upkeep on the systems…that should not have come as a surprise to anyone, but apparently did. And, as the oil infrastructure fell apart, Venezuela was unable to attract another other foreign companies to invest in their national oil fields, which – again – should have surprised no one.

As a result, the spiraling failures of Maduro’s increasingly socialism-driven economy and government has created a growing and increasingly desperate need to revive the country’s only remaining viable export industry, in his case, by bringing in Iranian technicians to try and get the nation’s oil industry back on its feet…If that sounds like a disturbing idea – Iranians flooding into a country within easy striking distance of the United States – that’s because it is.

So, how does this relate to Guyana?

In 2008, as Venezuela doubled down on excluding foreign companies from its oil industry, ExxonMobil (one of the companies forced out by Venezuela) began exploring the offshore region of Guyana, on the hunch that since the two countries were physical neighbors, there should have been a high likelihood that Guyana should possess exploitable reserves…and, in 2015, Esso (a subsidiary of ExxonMobil) hit paydirt, discovering the first of several rich offshore oil fields off Guyana’s Caribbean coastline. After a series of negotiations, on 19 September of 2023, Guyana authorized several oil companies – including ExxonMobil – to begin drilling in their offshore fields.

An increasingly desperate Maduro, seeing the continuing disaster of his party’s long-discredited Socialist policies, chose this moment to revive an old territorial dispute that Venezuela had chosen not to pursue, which laid a Venezuelan claim to some two-thirds of Guyanese territory…that part, or course, that contains most of the new oil fields.

For those readers of “a certain age”, if this sounds a little like 1981-1982 in the South Atlantic, you are not alone. Forty-odd years ago, another South American dictator sniffed rumors of oil in an area his country had long-claimed, and – with tensions mounting at home over disastrous economic policies and midnight death squads everywhere – Argentinean junta leader General Leopoldo Galtieri decided that the United Kingdom would not fight over the Falkland Islands, if not too much blood was spilled invading them. Turns out, he was very wrong.

Maduro’s “popular” referendum is a clear attempt to justify an invasion, one that is sickeningly lopsided, as the Guyanese military is barely 3% the size of Venezuela’s armed Forces…the ringer being, of course, being Brazil, whose armed forces outmatch Venezuela’s by at least double, if not triple…The possible consequences of a desperate Socialist country sparking a regional war that could disrupt not just oil production but commercial shipping in the Caribbean, in general, are something every American needs to be worried about.

But then, there is the last question: Why does Maduro think that he can get away with Saddam Hussein-levels of bad decisions? In a word – Joe Biden and the Democrat-Neo-Con alliance, which desires a weak United States, one that they think that they can rally to their side like FDR did in 1941.

That they cannot do so, because of the actions they have taken in public – not even bothering to hide it – have so soured their potential recruiting bases, that they cannot meet their manpower needs without reviving the Draft…which even their supporters in the deluded Left are stating a flat, hard-no to.

If this sounds pessimistic – it is. Expect shortages, if Maduro thinks his calculus is correct…which it might be, unlike Saddam’s.

Part 2 – Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

But, on the other side of the world, another “Rumble in the Jungle” is brewing: Myanmar/Burma’s ruling military clique, the so-called “Tatmadaw”, is collapsing. In this, the only real question is if the radical Socialist junta will go down like the collapse of the Somoza regime of Nicaragua in 1979, and the following multi-sided civil war (encouraged, being fair to history, by the United States) or if it will go the way of Yugoslavia – violent and bloody, but mercifully short, in comparison.

Beginning in late October of 2023, a coalition of formerly rival ethnic/tribal groups in Myanmar united in a virtually unheard of alliance, to launch a massive, coordinated offensive across the country, swiftly overrunning several regime military bases along the Myanmar/Communist China border, and forcing the surrender of several military units in their entirety. This is causing a collapse in morale, both among troops and in their families, who are now being forced to pull security for their deployed husband’s military bases. In fact, the junta has begun mobilizing civil servants and local police as second-line military forces, to try and stem the tsunami of military defeat.

*Map of Operation 1027, as of 7 November 2023. Credit: Clyde H. Mapping. CCA/4.0*

Obviously, the Freedomist has been remarking on this situation for some time, mostly in the context of the 3-D printing revolution. The facts are that the world was content – again – to allow a brutal, dictatorial regime to make a mockery of civilized society, because the profit margin is so high.

For Communist China, however, Myanmar is far from a laughing matter. The ruling junta, the “Tatmadaw”, is a vital component in the CCP’s “Belt & Road Initiative”, and if their allies in the junta go the way of Somoza or Yugoslavia, their entire plan is in jeopardy. What Communist China chooses to do about this is anyone’s guess.

Part 3 – Where Do We Go From Here?

Functionally, the moves by Maduro’s Venezuela are far more important to the United States in the immediate short-term. The hopeful collapse of the Myanmar regime, while definitely of regional importance in the Indian Ocean region, is mostly of academic interest for the US. While that may sound harsh and uncaring, it is not. It is simply the recognition of global realities.

The United States – for good or ill – is committed to the support of both Israel and Ukraine. And, as it and its European allies have discovered, neo-con fever dreams mixed with deranged, far-Left utopian word-salad does not equate to valid battle calculus, even in the short term.

The world is racing towards a cliff, and the leaders of the nations most capable of preventing that from happening are too concerned with pet delusions to even start getting a handle on the problem.

2024 is looking pretty grim, at present.

You should take action to protect yourselves, and those you are responsible for, now.

Washington and London certainly aren’t.

Weather War: From Banned Witchery To Military Operations

Michael Cessna November 17, 2023

War is hard. That is an oft-repeated phrase, but it is nonetheless true. People are trying to do violence to you, and to those around you…and frequently, it doesn’t matter if you are wearing a uniform or carrying a weapon or not. There are loud and scary noises, a lot of dirt, mud and bugs (among other unpleasant things), and people screaming in fear. And then, it starts raining…or hailing…or snowing. These things combine to make your life infinitely more miserable and terrifying than it already is.

But – the above are personal things. What about the wider context?

Last week, we discussed the effects of volcanic eruptions on logistics, the field of supplying armed forces. Here, we will look at the wider effects of weather on military operations.

Wars and the battles they are composed of are directly impacted by the weather. Armies, air forces and navies are all at the mercy of the weather. While unexpected “snow days” for civilians may mean an inconvenience in getting to work, and while a levee being breached by heavy rain can be a disaster that destroys towns and homes, for armed forces these events can be catastrophic when they happen unexpectedly. Weather forecasting is so vital to military forces, that multiple manuals are now devoted to it.

Militaries have known this for centuries. But, is in only in roughly the last two hundred years that militaries began to seriously monitor weather conditions across the wider “operational region” versus simply the local battlefield. Indeed, until 1950, meteorologists were not permitted to so much as say the word “tornado”, much less try to predict them before they formed, as this was essentially “career suicide”.

The US Army would not form a weather forecasting service until 1870, with the US Navy joining the program in 1873. The British were no better, not founding a meteorological office until 1854. This very late development was due to the belief dating from at least the Middle Ages that attempting to forecast the weather in any way was a form of witchcraft.

This frequently hamstrung military operations, sometimes in catastrophic ways; Napoleon and Hitler come to mind immediately.

In the context of combat operations, rain is bad, because most land operations are prosecuted off of prepared roads; “cross-country” is the word of the day. Heavy rains will turn normally solid fields into mud pits, quagmires that will swallow vehicles and troops. This is especially true when levees and dams are deliberately destroyed, aside from the sheer destruction inflicted on civilians, and the infrastructure to support them, in the combat area. This us, in fact, the accusation leveled at Russia in June of 2023, when the Kakhovka Dam in the Kherson Oblast of Ukraine was breached and flooded the area.

*Settlements on the left bank of Dnieper River are underwater after the Kakhovka Dam was breached on 6th June, 2023. CCA/4.0 International. Photo credit: Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.*

For air forces, severe weather simply grounds flights. But, those force’s airfields are not immune from damage. Clark Air Base, long a center of US military operations in the Far East, was functionally destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991.

*Remains of Clark Air Force Base, Luzon, Republic of the Philippines, January 1991, following the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. The U.S. National Archives. Public Domain.*

And neither are naval forces immune. The US Navy maintains a policy of sortieing its ships and aircraft away from port areas threatened by large storms, lest they be wrecked by the storm’s surge and wind effects. And with good reason – although dangerous, getting ships out of port as quickly as possible is usually the safest option…but not always.

In 1944, during WW2 combat operations in the Pacific, the US Navy’s Task Force 38 was struck by a massive typhoon that nudged the scale as a Force Five hurricane on the modern scale, similar to Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew. The storm actually sank three destroyers, damaged nine more warships and killed nearly eight hundred sailors.

*The U.S. Navy light aircraft carrier USS Langley (CVL-27) rolling heavily during Typhoon Cobra, 18 December 1944. US Navy photo. Public Domain.*

And, as both Napoleon and Hitler discovered, snow is a terrible force, occasionally freezing troops to death on vast scales. Snow is like rain, but worse. Some forces can thrive in snowy and icy environments, but most people – and troops – cannot.

*An injured soldier from the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in central Alaska during Exercise Timberline, 1963. Photo Credit: US Army photo by Sp4 Kenneth Puckett. Public Domain.*

And weather is not limited to hurricanes, ice, or rain. In 2003, as US and Coalition forces advanced north towards Baghdad, they were struck by a massive sandstorm that forced the advancing columns to halt, because visibility was reduced to zero.

A convoy of U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV) in Northern Iraq, during a sandstorm during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. Photo Credit: LCpl Andrew P. Roufs, USMC. Public Domain.

Planning military operations on a board game is easy. Doing it in real life is seriously hard work. It is only “witchcraft” to the mentally dense.

To quote the great Chinese general, Sun Tzu:

“Before doing battle, one calculates in the temple and will win, because many calculations were made; before doing battle, one calculates in the temple but will lose, because few calculations were made.”

Be Careful Of Your Sources

Michael Cessna November 10, 2023

In the last week or so, many people have been sharing images of what they feel are alarming amounts of military air traffic culled from various online tracking websites, purporting to show a “highly unusual” increase in air traffic throughout the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean (a.k.a., “The Levant”).

For those who are exploring a new landscape on the internet, such as aircraft and ship tracking websites, these images can, in fact, look incredible. Most of the online maps are indeed very cluttered, to such an extent that many computers have a hard time keeping up with the running updates, unless a user “drills down” to a very narrow region.

And to be fair, given the recent events within the region, with terrorist massacres in Israel, leading to brutal counterattacks by Israel, and the hysterical responses from throughout not just the region, but the threat of this new “Yom Kippur War” expanding to include most of the region – something that the few sane leaders of the world ‘body politic’ is desperate to prevent – is certainly making many people terrified of anything new and strange, that is presented with either incomplete, or flat-out wrong context, deliberately or otherwise.

The short answer to the “unusual increase” in aircraft activity in the Middle East is that it is a giant “nothingburger.” The long answer is far more mundane…but not so the reason behind it.

The fact is that Israel has severely neglected its defenses, both internal and external, for at least twenty years. Externally, Israel fell into the complacency trap of “Victory Disease” (the laziness and complacency resulting from too many victories), in that it felt that its “Iron Dome” missile defense system was mostly unbeatable, while its more conventional forces could easily handle anything that “Iron Dome” could not.

Internally, this dangerous complacency was compounded by Israel’s disastrous moves, beginning in 2012, to restrict the ability of Israeli citizens not on military or police duty, to owning or possessing military style firearms.

And on October 7, 2023, Israel and its citizens were given a stark wake up call as to why you should never beat your swords into plowshares before the right time.

As a result, Israel suddenly found itself in a desperate, grueling and bloody war against an implacable and bloodthirsty enemy at one end of its country, while facing another potential – and much more dangerous – foe to their north. While this is certainly not an unusual circumstance for Israel, Israel the state, as well as Israeli citizens, now finds itself being rudely forced to reorient its mental perspective on reality.

All-out war, as should be clear to anyone who has read an article on the Russo-Ukrainian War in the last almost two years, consumes people, ammunition, vehicles and supplies at a ferocious rate. While the scale and pace of the war in Israel may not currently be at the same overall scale as what is happening in Ukraine, when adjusted for scale, Israel is not much better off than Ukrainians.

In answer, the United States – long Israel’s only truly reliable ally – has doubled down on US support to Israel in the current conflict, complete with sending two complete carrier battle groups to the region, potentially committing US forces to direct combat in the conflict.

And fears of a widening of the conflict have already been realized, as the USS Carney, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, has shot down multiple missiles launched by Houthi insurgents from their base areas in Yemen.

Obviously, no matter the Reader’s feelings – one way or another – about the current conflict, the United States has to supply Israel with weapons, ammunition and much else, exactly as it has for Ukraine. Normally, such supplies are sent by ship, and then by rail or road. The reason is simple: it is vastly more efficient than air transport.

Sometimes, however, speed is essential. Relatively small and light supplies, like ammunition and medical supplies, can be rushed to a conflict zone relatively quickly, as these are always the most critical supplies that would be needed early on in a conflict. In the case of any sudden uptick of military air traffic, however, there is currently another factor:

Volcanoes.

In 2010, a series of volcanic eruptions from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland in April of that year completely shut down all air traffic in Europe outside of Spain and a tiny portion of France. That was, obviously, a very annoying situation for many travelers, as it up-ended flights throughout the world.

Now, however, another Icelandic volcano threatens to erupt: the Blue Lagoon thermal spa, long a popular tourist destination, is threatening to erupt.

Military planners, already struggling to juggle the delivery of supplies to multiple active and potential combat areas, now have no choice but add the potential of a natural disaster shutting down European airspace for an unknown period. The only real option is to start drawing supplies from existing bases in the region, and sending those to Israel…by air.

At the same time, however, those supply bases will need to be restocked, and fast, given the potential for regional escalation. This problem can be solved via a surge in sending war materials and equipment to those bases via conventional shipping…that seems to be happening.

The Ready Reserve Force ship MV Cape Orlando is currently underway from Tacoma, WA, crossing the Pacific Ocean. The Cape Orlando, originally berthed in Oakland, was actually boarded by pro-Palestinian protesters on November 4th, delaying its departure for Tacoma. (The protestors were not charged.)

While the MV Orlando is certainly the most public of the ships potentially carrying supplies to the combat area, it is also certainly not the only one.

What is happening is clear: a giant “shell game” is underway, with supplies being shuffled as quickly as possible, to cover as many holes as have been left open by shockingly poor military policies by the West and its allies over the preceding c.30 years…But such circumstances cannot endure forever.

*Sun Tzu, Author of Art of War. Photo: Gary Todd, 2008. Public Domain.*

Because, as the Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote some 2,500 years ago, if you try to defend every point equally, every point will be weak.

No, They’re Not Drafting People…Yet

Michael Cessna November 3, 2023

A funny thing happened on the first of November of 2023. A few hundred (ultimately, up to eight hundred) Non-Commissioned Officers in the active duty US Army were stunned when they received orders, via email, to report – within a week – to a school none of them were expecting to attend: the Army’s recruiting school at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

This order, coming with no warning, is up-ending hundreds of enlisted families as there is little time to reorder the lives of married NCO’s. Compounding the problem, none of the soldiers ordered to the school knows where they will be assigned, leading to extreme uncertainty on where their new posting will be, as active duty recruiters are spread out across the country. This is guaranteed to strain relationships to the breaking point, compounding an already high divorce rate within the service.

As we reported previously, the harsh realities of the third decade of the 21st Century have caused not only the US Congress, but also the Defense Department, to begin discussing an idea that would have been unthinkable just ten years ago: the reinstatement of conscription, i.e., the Draft – and not simply the draft of the old days, which was male-only, but a draft which would almost certainly apply equally to women.

Needless to say, the sudden nature of the Army’s move has added fuel to the strident denunciations of the very idea by “Gen-Z” and their “Millennial” parents…And the Army’s move on the 1st of November is elevating the hysteria.

For the troops, it’s not so much that the recruiting school itself is overly difficult. It is the fact that most recruiters only volunteer for the duty reluctantly, as their usual alternative is a tour as a drill instructor, something that many NCO’s dread. This is because there has always been a stigma to the duty, dating from at least the official end of the draft in 1973, in that failing to meet assigned quotas of recruits can seriously damage the continuing career prospects of the recruiter. Recruiters are usually long serving NCO’s, with ten to twelve years in the service when they enter the recruiting school; this means that they have seriously committed to the idea of twenty to twenty-five years of service, in order to retire with a reasonable pension. That continued career, however, could be seriously damaged by a failed tour as a recruiter.

The reality, despite Gen-Z’s hysteria, is that the Army’s move has come – officially – as an unexpected result of recruiters and possible recruiter candidates leaving the service at an unexpectedly high rate. Functionally, sending an emergency draft of NCO’s to school to become recruiters – whether they want to be or not – is not a preparation for a reinstatement of conscription.

As we discussed previously, the military’s recruiting woes, where all of the military services except the Marine Corps and the Space Force, are missing their recruiting targets, are made worse when taking into account the comparatively small size of the Marine Corps and Space Force in contrast to the other services. The effects of badly managed “forever wars” and conflicts for over twenty years, coupled to other astoundingly bad decisions, have left the majority of the US population severely disinclined to support enlistment in general.

Obviously, the resulting falling recruitment numbers have left the US military, as a whole, in a dangerous situation, as mounting threats – from Ukraine and Israel, to Iran and China – equate to the likelihood that the United States may well find itself in a very large war – or two…or three – sooner than later. And, after spending some twenty years laser focused (albeit with a very smudged lens) on fighting insurgencies, the armed forces got a stark wake-up call from the Russo-Ukrainian War on casualty rates in large scale combat, to the point that the Army is desperately trying to relearn the flawed strategies of the 1970’s and 80’s, all while missing the mark in spectacularly catastrophic ways, that would be funny, if their effects were negligible…which they are not.

*105th Medical Battalion Aid Station (30th Inf Div), Mortain, France, August 1944. US Army Photo.*

Having stated the above, while the Army’s sudden orders are not a herald of a return to conscription in and of themselves, there is are a pair of outlying possibilities, that it could signal a middle ground” move, neutralizing a flawed medical screening system that has slashed the number of recruits by upwards of 25%. The return of medical waivers for volunteers for minor conditions dating from as long as a decade prior, would be seen as a solid move to increase recruit intakes. Of course, such a move would also open the way to waive medical issues for potential draftees.

Secondly, this move could signal actual preparation for renewed conscription laws, where recruiters could be assigned secondary duties to process a new wave of draftees. As we implied previously, a reintroduction of a Draft for Gen-Z and/or some Millennial’s would almost certainly spark a wave of draft dodging and draft riots on a scale that would make those of the Civil War era pale in comparison.

*An illustration in The Illustrated London News depicting armed rioters clashing with Union Army soldiers in New York City, July 1863. The Illustrated London News, 1863. Public Domain.*

And, of course, a third possibility is hanging in the air, namely, the idea of offering bounties and legal amnesty via recruitment to those “military age males” currently flooding across the southern border of the United States…

…However, considering how armed forces frequently act in their countries origin, this may well be more of a curse than a benefit.

Military