Land Forces in the Pacific Pivot, on Midrats

What is the role of ground forces as the conversation revolves around the Air Sea Battle Concept?

Is an emphasis on air and sea power driving balanced thinking and sending the right messages to our friends and competitors?

Building off his article in the May 2013 Armed Forces Journal, Back To Reality, Why Land Power Trumps in the National Rebalance Towards Asia, our guest today from 5-6pm Eastern for the full hour will be Major Robert Chamberlain, USA.

Maj. Chamberlain has served two tours in Iraq (2003-4 and 2007-8), studied refugees at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, and is currently finishing his dissertation in Political Science at Columbia. He teaches International Relations at the West Point and, of course, the views he is about to express are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Military Academy, the Army, or the Department of Defense.

Join us live if you can with the usual suspects in the chat room and offer up your questions for our guest, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio.

Listen to internet radio with Midrats on Blog Talk Radio

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UPDATE: Towards the end of the show, Major Chamberlain had three book recommendations that you might find of interest.

Dude, when is the US release date?

The plot is an original script written by Ilya Tilkin who studied museum archives and diaries of the participants in the Stalingrad Battle before she wrote and finished her script. Original meant there were no novelistic sources used for the entire picture’s play-script.

The movie’s story revolves around German troops trying to take down a Stalingrad (Current name is Volgograd) residential building that was doggedly held out by a band of few Russian soldiers with a sole surviving female resident.

The plot line is based on the legends surrounding the Pavlov’s House, so named as it was a fortified apartment edifice which Russian Sergeant Yakov Pavlov along with his platoon who occupied the building defended during the Battle of Stalingrad.

The Russians get it 10 OCT, but any story derived from the story of Pavlov's house needs a showing here.

Spock, Mr. T, and a not so little Dutch boy walk in to a planning group ...

The kids over at CIMSEC made the mistake of asking me a question. I made the mistake of answering.

Check it out and tell me if I need my meds checked.

Fullbore Friday

There is a lot more here than simply one man with a gun. This is one man with a gun who had a choice, but he also had a culture, a history, and training.

You run to the sound of the guns. You are the sheepdog. You have a job to do.

Ex Royal Marine with a handgun saved 100 lives as terrorists ran amok
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A former marine emerged as a hero of the Nairobi siege yesterday after he was credited with saving up to 100 lives.
The ex soldier was having coffee at the Westgate mall when it was attacked by Islamists on Saturday.
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The former soldier is said to have returned to the building on a dozen occasions, despite intense gunfire.
A friend in Nairobi said: ‘What he did was so heroic. He was having coffee with friends when it happened.
‘He went back in 12 times and saved 100 people. Imagine going back in when you knew what was going on inside.’

Sources said the soldier was in the Royal Marine and now lives in Kenyan. He cannot be named for security reasons.
The British military regularly train and operate out of Kenya, and have been involved in tracking UK citizens involved with hardline Islamists in Somalia and Yemen.
Former members work with both the UK and Kenyan governments and security firms across East Africa.

There is a side-story here that we won't know, and probably shouldn't. Kenya's gun laws are as crazy as the UK's, so not just anyone can carry a sidearm. He had an interesting job, and he knew all that would be over if he acted.

But he acted.

Marine; well done and fullbore.

"We're just moving up river, you said!"

MSC loses cool points in Jax starting tomorrow AM ....

The Mathews Bridge will be closed to traffic for at least four days due to structural damage from a ship under tow hitting the span.

Late Thursday afternoon, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office announced the bridge will be "closed indefinitely."

"This will be the most significant delay the city has seen in a long time," JSO Assistant Chief Leonard Propper said.

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UPDATE Yea, kind of the maritime version of 11'8".

So, how is the Obama Doctrine working out?

After reading David Sanger's bit over at NYT, the one thing that came to mind is that Obama needs to call and apologize to GWB.

Making decisions is hard when your not doing it in hindsight.

His speech Tuesday at the United Nations signaled how what some have called the Obama Doctrine is once again evolving.

In his first term, that doctrine was defined by Mr. Obama’s surprising comfort in using military force to confront direct threats to the United States. But he split with his predecessor George W. Bush in his deep reluctance to use American power in long, drawn-out conflicts where national interests were remote and allies were missing.

At the United Nations on Tuesday, Mr. Obama drove home the conclusion that he came to after his own party deserted him over a military response to the chemical weapons attack that killed more than 1,000 Syrians: The bigger risk for the world in coming years is not that the United States will try to build empires abroad, he argued, but that there will be a price to be paid in chaos and disorder if Americans elect to stay home.
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But his image around the world is radically different from what it once was. From South Asia to the Middle East, his presidency became known more for roughly 400 drone strikes against affiliates of Al Qaeda and cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear program, both of which he saw as direct threats. Despite his early overtures, diplomacy in the region stagnated.

Now, after a remarkable month that began with his planning and then aborting a Tomahawk missile strike against the military facilities of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Mr. Obama has recommitted himself, he told world leaders on Tuesday, to devoting the rest of his presidency to two high-risk diplomatic initiatives: finding a negotiated end to the Iran confrontation, and creating a separate state for the Palestinians that Israel can live with, without fear.
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There the stakes are far higher, for Mr. Obama and for his closest ally in the region, Israel, and he made it clear that he would not allow Iran to obtain a weapon on his watch. The question, after five years and several evolutions of the Obama Doctrine, is whether the Iranians believe him.

Presidents are allowed to evolve, but this team's Hamlet-like nature is growing a bit old.

I am very concerned about the penultimate paragraph quoted above. If the President is going to focus on Iran and the Palentinian-Israeli problem, then congrats - we are in the Carter Administration.

Those two problems will vex any President as, well, they are in a word; intractable.

The last paragraph of the quote is all his creation. He has destroyed his credibility with dithering and faux red lines. At this point, the only way to correct that problem is to do something the President isn't inclined by nature to do - and something the American public has no desire to undertake.

His best goal at this point is to under-promise and over-deliver in foreign policy and then see what happens. He really has lost his freedom of movement. Personal capital is about spent.

Best Advertisement for NROTC this Decade

I really hope that this was a case of being misunderstood. Seriously.

In the aftermath of the case, the academy has taken added steps to stop sexual assault. Capt. William Byrne, the commandant whose role is similar to that of a dean of students at a civilian college, told reporters last month about plans to make training to prevent sexual assault a part of the regular academic work day.

OK. Go to Annapolis and have sexual assault training as part of the academic work day. Every day? Every other day? Weekly?

OK high school girls and boys, how about this instead - if you have the option, just go NROTC. Take the scholarship, get a broader understand of the people you will serve, and enjoy being a young adult with a fully rounded college experience. You'll have better social skills in the end anyway.

Let's hope he was misquoted, otherwise SAPR training either jumped the shark, or Annapolis leadership is acting like the dogs from The Thing. Take your pick.