Smart Power Doing Smart Things in Africa

As we've covered here and on Midrats through the years, the economic and demographic challenges of sub-Saharan Africa will be - and in many ways already is - one of the primary drivers of national security concerns as we approach mid-century.

Though this so far has failed to break through to the general discussion, where it counts evidence shows that many long-term focused professionals see it.

Of our friends, France sees it most clearly, and we are next in line. On the surface it may seem like wanting to help African nations join the 21st Century's promise - and in many areas it is - but the primary concern is to promote stability and growth to blunt the irresistible desire to migrate north to Europe and all the instability that has already brought with it.

European and North American nations will not be the ones that keep Africa from anarchy and collapse in the face of - what on paper at least - seem like unmanageable challenges, it will be the Africans themselves.

As African GenX and younger leaders start to get hold of levers of power, much of the stale and failed post-colonial, Marxist infused taint that infected so many of the late 20th Century leaders will fade even more. With that, modern ideas and relationships can develop.

That is what the West hopes. Of course, China and Russia are pushing in to Africa as well. Their drivers are more from the last century; power and resource extraction.

It isn't hidden, and it appears that the locals see it.

Good read in the Washington Examiner by Abraham Mahshie,

Forty-two African military chiefs joined U.S. Army officials in Ethiopia for the African Land Forces Summit that ended Friday, underscoring what generals say is the United States's edge over China and Russia in the war of influence playing out on the African continent.

“Partnerships are key to security and stability in Africa,” U.S. Africa Command chief Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, told military leaders at the event’s closing ceremony in Addis Ababa, underscoring that the terrorism fight in East Africa requires partnerships.
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...according to AFRICOM leaders, the U.S. has a head start countering adversary influence on the continent and helping African nations put down terrorist groups trying to gain a foothold in ungoverned spaces of East Africa.
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When U.S. and partner nations bring their expertise to the table to meet face-to-face, he (U.S. Army Africa commander Maj. Gen. Roger Cloutier) explained, they build relationships and develop solutions together.

They also show America’s presence on the continent is about more than economics.

China has wooed African nations with an estimated $5 billion per year, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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Cloutier said the influence of American efforts on the continent is working, telling journalists a story about a recent meeting with a ground commander in Africa who highlighted relations with Russia.

“The senior ground commander said to me, ‘You know what? We've had a longstanding relationship with the Russians,’” he said. "'We know what capability the United States military has. We know what you stand for, and we want to become closer partners with you.'"

Yes, skepticism is in order ... as it always is with such PAO cleared statements, and yes, African military senior leaders do not have the best track record - but this is important.

This effort must continue, European nations should continue to support France's efforts in the Sahel, as should we, even with setbacks and frustrations that always come with operations in Africa.

As long as we do it right and on African terms and timetables, we can mitigate what is coming this century.

Sir John, You Should Have Copywrited That Nuke COA

Either we are playing a clunky game of "build a little of something to entice the Russians to come to the negotiating table" or we are doing some highly questionable thinking about nuclear war.

If the later, then there is so much wrong here, I'm not sure where to start.

Russia fires a nuclear weapon at a U.S. installation overseas. The U.S. retaliates in kind. How does it all play out?

U.S. Strategic Command simulated that scenario for Defense Secretary Mark Esper during a visit this week to Offutt Air Force Base, Neb. The exercise is part of the Pentagon’s routine slate of wargames and other events that it uses to consider its steps if nuclear war erupts, and comes as the U.S. is pursuing so-called “tactical” nuclear weapons to counter similar assets in Russia’s stockpile.

Of all the possible uses of nuclear weapons that I can ponder, sure this is one of them, but it stands somewhere down around #45 in all likelihood.

Why did they pick this one? What it lacks in probability, it makes up for with illogic.

Does anyone really see the most pressing thing SECDEF needs to ponder when it comes to nuclear weapons something as stupid as the Russians dropping one - 1 - nuke on ... where exactly?

They are not going to drop (1) nuke on a place where we have nukes stored, as anyone with 5-minutes to think about it would know that would trigger a massive "use it or lose it" response.

Where, exactly, would the Russians send (1) nuke as a signaling device?

A google search will tell you which bases we have nukes at in Europe with a NATO stamp on them. Take those off your list. 

We also know they won't nuke the UK - they have their own nuclear weapons and attack there doubles the response-risk to the Russians.

Naples? That packed coastal town next to an active volcano? No.

Sigonella? Sure, nuking the side of another active volcano sounds like winner. No.

The heart of Bavaria? Really? Anyone review fallout patterns recently?

There is no such thing in the 21st Century as a "tactical" nuke. You don't nuke densely populated modern nations just once and expect it to end there. You will lose control of everything within 36-hrs.

Do we really have our best and brightest in the loop here?

A recent Slate article noted that, in a different scenario, Obama-era National Security Council members looked at how the U.S. might react if Russia invaded a Baltic state and fired a low-yield nuke at NATO troops or at a base in Germany.

“The principals decided we had to respond with nuclear weapons, to maintain credibility among our allies and adversaries,” according to Slate. “They decided to fire a few nuclear weapons at the former Soviet republic of Belarus, even though, in the game, it had no involvement in the Russian attacks—and then they ended the game, without playing the next few steps.”

I appears not. I hope they actually stopped the game because they realized their wargame is being played by idiots.

Belarus? Really? It isn't even Russia. Besides that, all they did was steal a plot twist from General Sir John Hackett's, 1982 novel, The Third World War: The Untold Story.

I'm sorry, but that is frankly bullsh1t, a waste of time, talent, & intellect.

Unless ... this is just a ploy to bluff the Russians to come to the negotiating table.

“We have no intention to field a new low-yield system in Europe,” the defense official added. “Our response to the Russian violation [of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty] is a conventional response. We’ll respond with conventional cruise missiles and conventional ballistic missiles of the range that’s captured by the INF Treaty, but we have no intention to make it nuclear-capable, nor have we actually spoken to the allies about basing it on their territory at this time.”

DOD is developing other nuclear weapons to counter foreign stockpiles as well, including ground- and sea-launched cruise missiles. The INF Treaty banned deployment of ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles, nuclear or conventional, built to strike targets between 500 and 5,500 kilometers away. The U.S. left the treaty last August in protest that Russia was flouting the pact.

Esper told reporters Feb. 19 he believes the Russians should count both strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons under a renegotiated version of the New START Treaty, which dictates stockpile sizes and expires next year.

Let's hope that is the case. If so, then it is a clunckingly transparent one ... and will probably work.

Maybe if we were not being clever, we may stumble in to an opportunity.

Finally, I'm going to bring one of my hobby horses out of the bunker. Feast on this pic;

We have a Navy Admiral wearing camo utilities in a bunker in Nebraska while SECDEF is visiting while wearing a tie.

Your boss in your guest and you make him look overdressed.

Rude.

I'm sorry, this habit - you see it in DC every day - is insulting and narcissistically unprofessional. On top of that ... you are a Navy Admiral. If you wanted to be a ground guy, you are a few decades too late in making that call. This isn't COSPLAY for the wannabe, this is the US Navy. Dress the part or go home.

That is the minor point, but I will tell you this; not matching the attire of a guest of honor, and especially if that guest is your boss, is the height of rudeness. 

Manners matter.

Russia's 2020, with Dr. Dmirty Gorenburg - on Midrats

As Russia's navy starts to transition away from the last of her legacy ships, to her approaching endgame in Syria, join us for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern to investigate the latest developments with Russia's national security posture, including the domestic power politics and relationships with its near abroad that influences the same.

Our guest returning again to Midrats will be Dr. Dmirty Gorenburg.

Dmitry Gorenburg is an expert on security issues in the former Soviet Union, Russian military reform, Russian foreign policy, and ethnic politics and identity. His recent research topics include decision-making processes in the senior Russian leadership, Russian naval strategy in the Pacific and the Black Sea, and Russian maritime defense doctrine.

Gorenburg is author of "Nationalism for the Masses: Minority Ethnic Mobilization in the Russian Federation" (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and has been published in journals such as World Politics and Post-Soviet Affairs. In addition to his role at CNA, he currently serves as editor of Problems of Post-Communism and is an Associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. From 2009 to 2016, he edited the journal Russian Politics and Law.

Gorenburg previously served as Executive Director of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). He received a B.A. in international relations from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. He blogs on issues related to the Russian military at Russian Military Reform. He is a native Russian speaker.

You can listen to the show at this link or below, but remember, if you don't already, subscribe to the podcast at Spreaker or any of the other podcast aggregators.

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Fullbore Friday

The last few months of a brutal war in the Pacific, one that showed little mercy for military or civilians.

Another detail of this war in both the Pacific and European theaters, camps.

The camps.

...and the story of the raid on the Los Baños internment camp;

...2,146 civilian internees — most of them American men, women and children — held captive since the Japanese invaded the Philippines more that three years earlier.

In 1944, with the war going badly for the Japanese, the guards at Los Baños had turned more brutal; prisoners were being starved on orders of the vicious, Western-hating camp commander who had promised the prisoners: “Before I’m done, you’ll be eating dirt.” Those caught escaping — even those returning with food for the starving — were shot. With medical supplies scarce, prisoners were dying of diseases like malaria, dysentery and tuberculosis. Then, in February 1945, the Japanese began digging deep trenches near the prisoners’ barracks. Many in camp feared preparations were being made for mass executions and burials.

Then there was an idea;

H-hour was also changed from 8 a.m. to 7 a.m. once the escapees reported that every morning at 6:45 a.m., the enemy garrison of some 200 soldiers assembled in a large field unarmed and wearing only loincloths for 30 minutes of ritualistic calisthenics. Only a handful of guards were on duty during the morning exercises.

The coordinated strike on the camp by 170 U.S. paratroopers and 75 Filipino guerrillas would use the element of surprise to overwhelm the few guards that remained at their posts. The challenge for the liberators was not only to keep the civilians safe during the assault but also to move them quickly — many were too weak to walk any distance — before a 10,000-man Japanese infantry division lurking nearby could arrive with reinforcements. Planners believed the enemy army could reach the prison camp in as little as three hours. Casualties in the raid were anticipated to be as high as 30 per cent.

A plan to load the prisoners into trucks and move them by armed convoy to U.S. lines was shelved when a reconnaissance flight found that the enemy had blown up bridges along the route to slow the U.S. advance into southern Luzon. There was only one way out: across the largest lake in the Philippines — 25-mile long Laguna de Bay — via amphibious tractors known as amtracs.

The 11th Airborne in a little known raid from a little known unit.

They whole story is almost too extreme to be true, but it is.

Read it all.

To the 11th Airborne and our Philippine allies; fullbore.

If you want more on the story, there's even a book on it, Bruce Henderson's, Rescue at Los Banos: The Most Daring Prison Camp Raid of World War II.

Spartans, Warriors, & Gladiators, Lend me Your Ears

There is a growing issue with American martial iconography, and it matters.

In all our military services, the last few decades have seen the adoption of the trappings of the military state of Sparta; the tribal raiders of stone age American Indians, the most morally corrupt of Nazi Germany’s fighting units, fictional vigilantes, and even man-slaughtering blood sports.

Why, and why does it matter?

It matters because it speaks to and reinforces our national character; are we a republic or empire?

What are we looking for that we reach to these symbols? What is missing from our own lexicon of iconography? If we constantly reach for the icons of empire, autocratic militarism, and the trappings of mercenaries, what does it say about who we are?

Icons, idols, ideals, and cultural references are important. They define a people, and by their use, can over time alter the character of institutions and nations.

We are a young nation, but we have a rich civil, cultural and military history to draw on; a history more than worthy of reference in a martial sense; minutemen, patriots, rangers, etc. It is all there, and yet, it does not seem to be enough.

As a people, we can often signify what we aspire to be via the symbols we wish to be known by.

What, by design, are Americans and the fighting force that defends us? 

At birth, we were designed to be, and for most of our history aspired to be, a mercantile republic resting on a foundation of individual liberty and an engaged civil society. A society always struggling to improve itself and to grow to meet the high standards it aspired to meet. 

We were a republic with a military as needed, to be drawn from the people to defend the people. Even as we rapidly expanded as the inevitable momentum of a growing, hungry industrial age people will against a shrinking, stone age people, we were never overly militarized. Our founding documents discouraged it, but when war called, we rose to the call against enemies foreign and domestic, and then quickly returned home to pre-war norms.

We were knocked off our habit when the Cold War would not let us demobilize after WWII and by default, we became a global empire with client states relying on our sword and shield to protect their commerce, with them serving as auxiliaries.

Generations of American leaders, festooned with the trappings of imperial power and bureaucratic bloat that all empires develop, knew no other world - and were too vested in it to want it to change.

As the government grew imperial in its habits, how could its military not feel the same pull?

We had about a decade without a justification for empire after the fall of the Soviet Union until September 2001. A lot changed at that decisive point in our history, in more ways than perhaps we fully appreciate.

We now have a military sprinkled with devotees of spartans, warriors, warfighters, and gladiators; we find ourselves in the third decade of the 21st Century adopting not just foreign iconography, but words that to previous generations would not have been seen in a positive context for our republic’s military.

Let’s just look at a few words that seem to fit the zeitgeist; warrior, warfighter and gladiator.

From dictionary.com, take a look at their change in usage. Something happened after 2001;

This goes well beyond the occasional pirate iconography that dates back to WWII, this is something else.

We should think about the words we are using, the icons we put in front of us, the references we think reflect how we see ourselves.

To pull from an exchange earlier today about the use of “gladiator” to describe senior NCO’s, why would we want to use that term to describe our military?

Gladiators were mostly slaves, former slaves or condemned prisoners who existed only to maim, kill or be killed for the economic benefit & entertainment of a detached public who derived pleasure from witnessing violence and bloodshed of and by other people.

Should senior leaders see themselves as slaves, suffering under oppression and serving a system that sees them as less than human?

Even worse, we’ve seen an easy slide in to using Spartacus in a positive connotation. Do we see as an example for our senior leaders to look towards insurrection to the political system they serve as a response to grievances they have?

Is it mal-education around history? I don’t think that can explain things when all of human knowledge is but a click away.

Is it a lack of knowledge and respect of our own traditions? Perhaps.

Is it a search for some martial characteristic we desire and feel is missing in ourselves?

Is it trying to find something that is more relatable to how they see ourselves?

If the later, how did the military of a free people decided that they were aligned not with the citizen soldier that gave them a free republic, but with the shock troops of a slavery-fueled monarchy, the Waffen SS, tribalistic raiders, vigilantes, mercenaries & slaves who fight for little but money or survival?

Or could it just look cool, the meaning be damned?

Hedging Billions to Keep Shareholders Happy

Where does the business side of the military industrial complex seen the Navy money going over the next decade?

If you were to diversify, where would you go?

I have one datapoint over at USNIBlog.

Come by and give it a read.

The Terrible 20's Surface Force Gets its Just Reward

There are very few people left who will not agree that the problems we have in our surface force in 2020 are the direct result of the ill-fated Age of Transformationalism and the Tiffany Fleet it begat from LCS, DDG-1000, LPD-17, CG(X), and FORD.

LPD-17 was made functional with a lot of extra money and Sailor sweat, though still a gilded pony for plow work. LCS may follow the same path, ditto Ford. The rest speaks for themselves.

We've covered it all here the last decade and a half, so we shouldn't have to cover it all again. New folks can click the tabs to get a flavor if they so wish.

Well, like all ages, the Age of Transformationalism had its leader who set the tone and direction.

That leader was Vern Clark, Admiral, USN (Ret.).

My critique isn't personal, it is strictly business.

Though he meant well and is a great patriot, objective history tells the story. He has yet to accept responsibility for the primary and secondary effects of his decisions. If he has, please send a link, but he has not from what I have read.

I'm not sure there was a period where more money was wasted on bad programs and CONOPS. As we start to wade in to the Terrible 20s, so many of the weak spots in our surface force especially, can be traced to Clark's tenure as CNO.

So, what do we have now?

Retired Adm. Vern Clark, a former CNO and the new chairman of the Surface Navy Association board of directors. Defense Media Activity
Retired Adm. Vern Clark will assume the position of chairman of the board of directors of the Surface Navy Association (SNA) this week at the association’s annual banquet on Jan. 16.

Clark was approved by the board on Jan. 13 at the association’s annual board of directors meeting.
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He became the 27th chief of naval Operations in 2000 and retired in 2005. He serves on boards or as a trustee of corporations, organizations and universities.

What message does this send? What does it portend?

I'll let you work that out in comments.