Why We Need a Secretary of Defense Who Belongs to the National Guard

President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense has an unusual background.  Instead of the usual wealthy corporate CEO, Pete Hegseth is a major in the Army National Guard.  As such, he has acquired combat experience in Fourth Generation wars, wars we lost.  He seems to care about that, perhaps to the point of questioning both why and how we fight such wars.

That would be valuable in a Secretary of Defense.  But the fact that he serves in the National Guard is important for reasons that lie closer to home.  The first is that in a world where Fourth Generation wars are becoming the norm, our most important armed service is the National Guard.  No longer does it exist to support the active duty Army in a major land war on the far side of the world, because we are unlikely to fight such wars.  Rather, in the face of Fourth Generation war, the active duty forces, and not just the Army, exist to support the National Guard – and the Coast Guard, which protects our maritime frontiers.

At present, we are being invaded by a variety of Fourth Generation entities, most of them coming to America as migrants and refugees.  Those entities include cartels and gangs, people hired by foreign governments or corporations that provide mercenaries, believers in alien religions, ideologies, or “causes,” etc.  They are joined by 4GW forces generated on our own soil, people who give their primary loyalty not to America but to something else, something they are willing to fight for.

This is the real threat we face, and it lands directly in the lap of our police and National Guard.  In some places, the local police are already overwhelmed, to the point where they need state troopers or National Guardsmen to help them maintain some level of public safety.  The state arose to provide order, safety of people and property, and when it can no longer do that it loses its legitimacy.  The National Guard is a more important prop for the state’s legitimacy than are any of the active duty armed forces.  It is unlikely we will be calling in F-35s to bomb our own cities or armored divisions to flatten them, a la Gaza.

The second reason our country needs a Secretary of Defense from the National Guard is that with climate change, domestic disasters are becoming more frequent and more devastating.  If the purpose of our armed forces is to keep Americans safe in their homes, the National Guard offers more than can the active duty forces.  The Guard is better trained and equipped for such missions, and the reason most Guardsmen enlisted was and is to help their neighbors.  In turn, members of the National Guard are not seen as threats the way some Americans might regard the deployment of active duty forces designed for combat.  It’s the National Guardsmen who pluck us from the roofs of our flooded houses, not black helicopters.

And because almost all Americans see Guardsmen as people who come to help them in time of need, they strengthen the legitimacy of the state where units with heavy weapons may undermine it.

In 2022, I published a short book, Reforging Excalibur, that outlines how we should change our grand strategy and our armed services to face a world of Fourth Generation war.  It discusses the services in their order of importance, and the National Guard comes first, with the Coast Guard second.  To most Secretaries of Defense, the National Guard is an also-ran that gets little of his attention.  That will not be true of Pete Hegseth.  Call or write your Senators and let them know you want him to be confirmed.  Your own safety depends on it.

A Road Map for Elon

In 2022, I published a small book, Reforging Excalibur: Creating a Sustainable and Relevant Defense for 21st-Century America.  It received no notice, which did not surprise me.  Its recommendations had no chance of being enacted so long as the Establishment was in power.  But on January 20, 2025, the United States will get its first anti-Establishment administration in living memory.  My little book offers Elon Musk exactly the roadmap he needs in reducing the size and cost of our vast defense bureaucracy.

Reforging Excalibur is divided, like Gaul into three parts: Where we are, where we need to go, and how to get there.  Where we are is facing a world where our national strategy is obsolete.  It still views our main threats as coming from other states in yet another round of Great Power competition.  The real 21st century threat is state collapse with a resulting spread of stateless disorder and Fourth Generation warfare that thrives in disorder.  Instead of seeing Russia and China as Great Power enemies, we should be seeking an alliance of both with ourselves in defense of the internal state system.  That includes shifting the axis of conflict from east-west to north-south.  

The other strategic threat we face is our own rising budget deficits and national debt.  If we are to do what President Trump and Elon Musk seem to want to do, namely balance the federal budget, we have to cut spending.  The good news my book offers is that a military designed against Fourth Generation, non-state threats can cost a great deal less than what is currently required to maintain four very well financed clubs for World War II reenactors.

Reforging Excalibur seeks to reduce the defense budget to about $100 billion for non-nuclear forces.  That’s a cut of about $750 billion annually, a number that would help Elon meet his goal of two to three trillion dollars in savings.  Moreover, we would end up with armed forces more effective against the real enemy, stateless disorder, than those we have now.  Our current forces are one-trick ponies, and the one trick is putting firepower on targets.  In Fourth Generation war, that almost guarantees you lose.  

What do our reformed armed forces look like?  Geography dictates that we must be a naval power, and our remodelled Navy would still be able to control waters that are important to us.  But we would no longer buy vastly expensive surface warships that, for the most part, cannot take even one hit and keep fighting.  The proliferation of anti-ship missiles and drones means “the emptiness of the battlefield” that evolved in land warfare by the end of 1914 now applies to the sea as well.  The good news is that, by building new surface ships on large merchant ship hulls and using the surplus tonnage for protection, we can create warships that both can take hits and keep fighting and are a great deal cheaper to construct.  In peacetime, most would be in merchant service with crews made up of Navy reservists, which would also revitalize our almost-vanished merchant marine.

As to the other services, most Air Force missions and aircraft would be taken over by the Air National Guard, which can do them cheaper and usually better.  Because our geography dictates our land forces must be sea-mobile, the Marine Corps would be larger than the Army.  Recognizing that the most important mission in a world where conflict is north-south and immigration is the most dangerous form of invasion, the National Guard would become our most important service, with the Coast Guard second.

The Establishment would say such large changes are impossible.  But Reforging Excalibur offers an anti-Establishment administration what it needs: a more effective national defense at a greatly reduced cost.  I think Elon will recognize that as a bargain.

President Trump makes a Brilliant Choice for SecDef

Even before his inauguration, President Trump is demonstrating in his choices of personnel that his second term will be genuinely anti-establishment.  Given that we lose most of our wars, no choice is more important than that for Secretary of Defense.  By choosing Pete Hegseth, a combat experienced Army National Guard major, instead of the usual corporate multi-millionaire who will change nothing, President Trump has set in motion a renewed process of military reform.  

I was one of the people at the core of the military reform movement of the late 1970s and early ‘80s.  In the end, that movement failed because we were armed with ideas and the defenders of business-as-usual were armed with endless money.  Guess which wins in Washington.

But a president can overcome the defense industry’s billions, and with the choice of Pete Hegseth, President Trump has signaled he will personally back military reform.  How so?  Because Pete Hegseth has written a book on why we should not have women in combat units, and getting them out is the military reform that must come first.  Having women in combat units is so damaging that no other reforms can get us off our conveyor belt of lost wars until that is tackled.

The question of women in combat is not simply one of will women fight.  Some will, some won’t.  But that won’t matter because the men around them will drop the mission to protect and evacuate the women.  This is just human nature.  It is something real men do.

Worse, the willingness of the men to fight will already have been undermined by the presence of women.  Every study ever done of why men fight in combat has concluded it is not for king and country but for their buddies, the other men in their unit.  Under the stress of training and then war, they have become a band of brothers where no man wants to let his comrades down.  If the unit includes women, that cohesion never forms because the men regard each other not as brothers but as competitors for the favors of the women.  Absent unit cohesion, not only won’t women fight, neither will the men.

With their usual disregard of human nature, the left thinks it can put young men and young women, hormones raging, working side by side and just post regulations saying no impure thoughts, and they won’t behave like rabbits.  A few years ago I was on an amphib where I knew the skipper.  He had a large number of women officers.  I asked him what the fraternization rate was (female officers having sex with enlisted men, strictly forbidden by the rules).  After making sure no one could overhear us, he replied, “100% of course.  I’ve had male sailors in knife fights over the women officers.”  At that point, he no longer had a warship.

The problems don’t stop there.  With the suffocating blanket of cultural Marxism now laid over our armed forces, the men must constantly be afraid of the women.  If they displease a woman in any way, say by giving her an order she does not like, she can and often does charge him with sexual harassment.  He is then pitched out of his chain of command and into a commissar system where all the judges are cultural Marxists and he is presumed guilty until proven innocent.  The kind of men who want to fight will not hoin an entity where they must be afraid of women or, if suckered into joining, they won’t stay.  Take a look at the services’ current recruiting and retention numbers and the proof is evident.

Getting the women out of combat units and, later, out of all deployable units must be the first reform because without it, our units simply won’t fight.  Many other reforms are needed too, including redesigning our personnel system so it does not constantly undermine unit cohesion, revising our training so it flows from the fact that the modern battlefield requires a thinking private who takes initiative, and, in officer education, replacing rote processes with teaching how to think militarily, to look at a military situation and quickly know what to do to obtain a decisive result.  But the ur-reform must be getting the women out, because if we fail to do that, the other reforms will be irrelevant.  

Call your Senator and let him know you want him or her to vote to confirm Pete Hegseth.

Some Advice for the Democrats.

It may surprise some readers to know that of my thirteen years as U.S. Senate staff, I worked ten for a Democrat, Senator Gary Hart of Colorado.  There was no subterfuge involved; he knew I was a conservative when he hired me.  At one point, I was working part-time for Senator Hart and part-time for the great behind-the-scenes conservative organizer Paul Weyrich at his Free Congress Foundation, where I later ended up.  The Washington Post found out and went running to Senator Hart, saying, “Do you know he is also working with Paul Weyrich?”  Hart replied, “Yes I know that.”  The Post then scooted to Paul Weyrich and tattled, “Do you know he is also working with Gary Hart?”  Paul said, “Yes I know that.”  At that point the Post’s head exploded.

I believe our country needs two viable parties.  I know which one to vote for; I both voted for and contributed to President Trump in all of his elections.  I did so not just because he is a Republican, but because he is anti-establishment.  Only an anti-establishment President can bring about the changes we need in so many different fields.  Why?  Because if you are a member of the establishment and suggest more than a turn of five degrees rudder in anything, you instantly cease to be a member of the establishment.  

This is where my advice to the Democrats begins.  Unless you want to fade into political irrelevance, you must drop the establishment’s ideology of cultural Marxism.  Usually known as woke or political correctness, cultural Marxism condemns most Americans as inherently evil.  If you are a man, white, straight, a non or anti-feminist woman, Christian, or proud of Western culture, you are defined as an “oppressor,” regardless of what you do as an individual.  You are supposed to spend your life groveling in endless apologies to the oppressed.  Since most voters are thereby defined as evil, they are not likely to agree by voting Democratic.  Nor will all blacks, immigrants, and some other elements of the cultural Marxists’ coalition because they do not see themselves as losers and they do not like their real achievements to be attributed to DEI – didn’t earn it.  How do Democrats expect to win elections with the remnant of cultural Marxism’s collection of losers?

This advice applies to Republicans as well.  Establishment Republicans usually do not believe in cultural Marxism but they are afraid to challenge it because doing so risks their establishment status and benefits, which are many.  That is why President Trump was nominated three times: he does challenge it, frequently and bluntly.  He has guts, and establishment Republicans don’t.  Voters understand that and vote for the candidate with courage.

During Senator Gary Hart’s 1984 Presidential campaign, I sat down with him and explained that the people rallying to the New Right and the Religious Right (both of which Paul Weyrich created) were not on the attack against liberals.  They saw themselves waging a desperate defensive struggle to preserve their traditional Western Christian way of life against a federal government that sought to destroy everything they believed in.  Senator Hart agreed that those American’s concerns had to be addressed.  Had he won the Democratic Presidential nomination, he intended to give a speech saying “Attention must be paid” to the heartland voters, who had already become “Reagan Democrats” and are now the core of the Republican base.  As in many other areas, including defense policy and grand strategy, a Hart presidency would have sent the Democratic Party in a very different direction.

But now it is in the hole it dug for itself, as the party of cultural Marxism.  It can continue to dig until it ends up, appropriately, in Red China, and as a permanent minority, or it can climb out, leaving the cultural Marxists behind and building its new outhouses over the hole.  The country needs new Democratic leaders with guts to say cultural Marxism is crap.

Why President Trump is not a Fascist

My old and highly esteemed friend Marine Corps General and former White House chief of staff John Kelly recently wrote in the New York Times that President Trump “prefers the dictator approach to government” and fits “the general definition of a fascist, for sure.”  While John Kelly is an immensely knowledgeable scholar of the art of war, well-read in military history and theory, he is less familiar with political theory.  If we understand what fascism was, and who created its current usage, we will see that the term in no way fits President Trump.

At their core, fascism and its cousin National Socialism were the most radical political theories of the 20th century.  They sought to eliminate the whole Judeo-Christian element in Western culture and return to the values of pre-Christian antiquity, where power was the highest good.  To that end, they transformed will from an instrumental virtue into a substantive virtue: any exercise of will, the stronger and more counter-factual the better, was good regardless of what was willed.  This view was so faulty that it led to fascism’s destruction, through such acts of will as Mussolini’s entry into World War II (against the advice of his foreign minister and military), Hitler’s invasion of Russia and even more his totally unnecessary declaration of war on the United States (also against the advice of his General Staff).  

The means fascism sought to achieve its goal was the creation of totalitarian states.  As Mussolini put it, “Everything for the state, nothing against the state, nothing outside the state.”  Now in fact, Mussolini didn’t achieve that; as Hitler said of him, “He wants to be a dictator, but he’s too nice a guy.”  He did give Italy the best government it’s had since Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman Emperor, and the best it’s likely to have in the future.

But can we really think President Trump fits within these definitions of fascism?  That’s absurd.  He has no desire to destroy Judeo-Christian culture; on the contrary, he defends it from the cultural Marxists who explicitly do intend its destruction.  Can anyone argue he wants a totalitarian America where nothing exists outside the state?  He is a champion of federalism, as we see on the abortion issue, and federalism is the antidote to the all-powerful federal government the left has created.  As to the “dictator” bit, what the Fuhrer said applies:  he’s just too nice a guy.

So how come President Trump and others on the right, including myself, get called fascists?  The answer is that the Frankfurt School, the people who created the cultural Marxism we know as woke or political correctness, labeled anyone who opposed their Marxism a fascist.  This is the core of Theodore Adorno’s influential (and as social research fraudulent) book The Authoritarian Personality.  Adorno, with Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, were the Frankfurt School’s most important thinkers, and today their work is the basis for the cultural Marxism we see on so many college campuses and throughout the political, media, and entertainment elites.  But it’s bunk.  Most of the Americans who oppose cultural Marxism have no desire to return to the values of the ancient world.  Quite the opposite, as most are Christians.

I’ve known John Kelly since he was a major, and he is not a cultural Marxist.  That means he’s a fascist too, by the cultural Marxist.  So am I, so are you, and so are your dog and cat.  Words in the mouths of ideologues lose all their meaning.

If the cultural Marxists are enabled to continue using the power of the state to shove their evil ideology down American’s throats, the public’s response could be a genuine American fascism.  But I am pretty confident President Trump’s second term will see cultural Marxism driven back into the dark corners of academia where it belongs.  If anyone’s interested, I know some ways to do that.

Walking the Plank

Around this time in every Presidential election year, those of us who write about politics have to walk the plank, i.e., we have to offer our predictions as to the election’s outcome.  We may end up sinking in the ocean of wrong predictions, but that risk is one we have to take.  So here goes:

I predict President Trump will win and win big.  He will win not only in the Electoral College but in the popular vote as well.  In doing so, he will carry almost all the swing states and some states considered solidly blue, i.e. safe for the Democrats.  The Republican Party will take both the House, by an increased margin, and the Senate.  The Democratic Party will suffer a general wipeout, one sever enough that the party starts to question its marriage to cultural Marxism.

What are my reasons for offering so rosy a picture?  For the Presidential race, one of the oldest rules of politics: you can’t beat something with nothing.  Kamala Harris is nothing.  She stands for nothing, she has done nothing (not even running for office in a competitive rave), she can’t talk without a teleprompter.  She is a cardboard cutout, spouting memorized lines like Chatty Kathy, a product of an army of image-makers, fact-twisters, and spin doctors.  President Trump, in contrast, is the most real man in politics.  The image of him pumping his fist and shouting “Fight!” after being show is indelible.

A second reason is a survey result that has received far less attention than it merits.  Polls show that more Americans now self-identify as Republicans than as Democrats.  This is the first time we have seen such a result in decades.  It is meaningful for the Presidential contest, but it means even more for the Senatorial and House races.  There, people know less about the candidates as individuals and so are more inclined to vote on a party basis.  The shift is large enough to give the Republicans both the Senate and the House.

Third, the long-time basis of Democratic victories, overwhelming votes from blacks and Hispanics, is crumbling.  The main reason is that blacks and Hispanics did very well economically under President Trump.  Incomes rose more at lower levels than at middle and upper levels.  In contrast, those incomes have fallen under President Biden (when adjusted for inflation).  Blacks and Hispanics are not fools.  They know which side their bread is buttered on. 

Fourth, the October 14 Wall Street Journal reported that “Trump leads Harris among swing-state voters, 50% to 39%, on who is best able to handle Russia’s war in Ukraine and has a wider advantage, 48% to 33%, on who is better suited to handle the Israel-Hamas war.”  While foreign policy issues usually play little or no role in elections, this year may be an exception.  Voters are sick of overseas wars where we have no real interests at stake but which kill and maim our young people and pour billions or trillions of dollars away for nothing.  They will continue to be bombarded with alarming headlines, especially from the Levant, between now and election day.  President Trump is the peace candidate, while Harris is owned by the Blob, the foreign policy establishment that demands America rule the world.  Most Americans want a republic, not an empire.

Last but most important is the elephant in the room: the Democratic Party is completely captive to cultural Marxism.  Popularly known as “woke” or “political Correctness,” cultural Marxism denounces as inherently evil white people, men and non-feminist women, straights, Christians, and members of the middle class, Marxism’s loathed bourgeoisie.  A large majority of voters fit in at least one of those categories.  They are tired of being told they are horrible people who must spend their days groveling before cultural Marxism’s victim groups.  They know that, in the privacy of the election booth, they can reject cultural Marxism by voting Republican.  And they will.

This brings us full circle and in doing so answers the question of why most polls show a tie rather than a Republican sweep.  Voters fear openly defying cultural Marxism and being labeled a racist or sexist or bigot.  So Trump voters don’t answer the polls.  That leaves them undercounted and the polls misleading.

And so I’ve walked the plank.  We’ll see on election day whether I sink or swim.

Mideast War, Sitrep

As of this writing (October 6, 2024), Israel has not yet retaliated from Iran’s missile strike.  That will bring about another change in the situation.  But this sitrep can still note elements of the situation that the mainstream news is missing. 

That news has Israel prevailing on all fronts: Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.  Israel itself is giddy with triumphalism.  I think this is overly optimistic.

In Gaze, Israeli Prime Minister “Bibi” Netanyahu is no closer to achieving his stated war aims, the complete destruction of Hamas as a political and military entity.  The problem is that those goals simply cannot be attained, as the IDF’s official spokesman publicly said.  Half of Gaza’s population is under the age of fourteen, and all of the males in that category dream of nothing but joining Hamas and fighting Israel.

While Netanyahu’s war aims are unattainable, they have at least been stated.  He has not even been able to do that with regard to describing some end-state in Gaza after the current round of fighting stops.  He doesn’t want the PLO to run it.  Egypt won’t.  A permanent occupation by the IDF will create an endless guerrilla war with a steady dribble of Israeli casualties.  Moving Israeli settlements back in will just make Jews easier targets than they are now.  The only outcome that constitutes an Israeli victory in Gaza is the removal of the entire population followed by annexation.  The obstacle to that is that Netanyahu’s coalition wants to drive all non-Jews from the West Bank and the only place to put the Arabs displaced from Gaza is in the West Bank.  So if he seeks that solution his government collapses.  And Bibi can always be relied on to put his personal career ahead of the interests of his country.

Moving north, Israel has dealt some heavy tactical blows to Hamas.  But those successes do not get Netanyahu any closer to his strategic objective (again defined by his political needs) of letting the 60,000 Israelis displaced from their homes by Hezbollah’s rocket fire safely go back.  Here, on the strategic level, Hezbollah has a much easier challenge than does Israel.  All the former has to do is fire enough rockets each day, which could be as few as half-a-dozen, to leave displaced Israelis afraid to go home.  Israel has the much tougher task of turning off all the rocket fire.

That difficult strategic challenge means Israel has to invade Lebanon on the ground, which it is now doing.  That switches the battleground from the air, where Israel can do whatever it wants, to the ground, where Hezbollah is much stronger.  Israel finds itself fighting the tar baby in the briar patch.  Israel says it only wants to go a short distance into Lebanon, but it is in war’s nature to expand.

Finally, Israel is now in a direct quai-war with Iran.  From the Iranian side there is a desire to keep the war symbolic.  When Israel does something to which Iran must respond or look weak, Iran only does enough to check the block.  Those 180 ballistic missiles hit almost nothing.

The question is whether Israel sees the missile attack from Iran as enabling it to reply in more than a symbolic way.  Two obvious targets are Iran’s nuclear facilities and its oil-exporting docks.  But the former are very well protected and if Israel cripples Iran’s oil exports, Iran can knock out the oil terminals in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, taking virtually all Persian Gulf oil off the world market.  That could send American gas prices soaring right before an election, an election Iran does not want Mr. Trump to win.

As the situation unfolds the most important thing to keep in mind is that the main driver of events, Prime Minister Netanyahu, will continue to put himself first.  What he needs most is wars in Lebanon and with Iran big enough to take Israeli voters’ eyes off the failure of his war in Gaza, failure he made inevitable by adopting unattainable war aims.  Everything that happens will be a product of Netanyahu’s calculation of his political requirements, what he needs to stay in power.  If you make that your touchstone, everything that happens will make sense.  

Drones and Naval Warfare

As we have seen in Ukraine, drones currently work powerfully in favor of the defense.  The reason is simple: the attacker has to move while for the most part, the defender can remain in fortified positions (although his counterattack forces must still move).  This is nothing new; despite the claims of the airpower lobby, air attack has not been very successful against stationary ground forces.  In NATO’s war with Serbia over Kosovo, vast amounts of the most modern airports bombarded Serbian forces in Kosovo for weeks on end.  NATO claimed to have destroyed over a hundred Serbian tanks; the actual number, revealed when the Serbs withdrew, was thirteen.  The Serbian tanks were dug in and did not have to move.

But how do drones affect naval warfare?  The only way to dig ships in is to build a navy of submarines.  If we look at surface shops, their vulnerability is such that, like the armies of 1914 in the West, we will find on the sea “the emptiness of the battlefield.”  The French, Germans, and British were all taken by surprise by this phenomenon.  But after suffering monumental casualties in the opening months of the war, they all realized they had to dig in.  By Christmas, you usually did not see a single soldier, because if anyone showed himself, he died.

The experience of the Russian navy in the Black Sea appears to have been similar.  It has been driven off the sea and even out of Crimean ports by a Ukrainian combination of anti-ship missiles and drones.  Its remaining ships, after heavy losses including the fleet flagship, are hiding in port in the easternmost Black Sea waters.  In terms of warships, we see the emptiness of the battlefield (some commercial shipping is still moving).  Ukrainian warships have played no role in this successful campaign of sea denial.

We see something similar in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen.  A tribe, not a state, the Houthis, has used a similar mix of drones and anti-ship missiles to cripple commercial shipping through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.  The U.S. Navy has tried to shut them down and failed.  So far, only merchant ships have been hit, but U.S. warships have repeatedly come under attack.  If they remain in those waters, at some point the Houthis will get lucky and we will have a warship sunk or damaged along with human losses.

The implications for Fourth Generation war of a win at sea by tribes over the world's most powerful navy are very interesting, but that is a topic for another day.

The problem, quite simply, is that is difficult to hide a ship floating on an ocean.  The smaller the warship and the more island-strewn the waters, the easier it is for a ship to hide, and Scandinavian navies are built around that fact.  But the U.S. Navy only wants big ships, and its skippers are terrified of operating in coastal waters where the cover is best because if they touch ground they are relieved of command, an absurd policy that can and should be changed.

Where does the emptiness of the naval battlefield leave the future of ship design and the composition of fleets?  Obviously, it tilts the latter toward submarines.  The submarine, not the aircraft carrier, has been the capital ship since the first true submarine, the German type XXI, went off its first war patrol in April of 1945.  The proliferation of drones over the naval battlefield just reinforces that fact.

But to use the sea, not just control it, we will still need surface ships.  Not the fragile cruisers, destroyers, and frigates that make up the bulk of most navies, but ships that can take hits and keep on fighting.  We have seen, in the tanker wars of the 1980s in the Persian Gulf and also at present in the Black Sea, that big merchant ships can take hits.  In the tanker wars, the tankers ended up escorting our frigates because they could take hits and the warships couldn't.  Future surface warships should be merchant ship hulls and propulsion plants protected against drones and missiles (which usually have shaped-charge warheads) by water armoire, with modular sensors and weapons.  The latter, if hit can quickly be replaced, and if the bulk of the hull is filled with something fireproof that floats, the ship can take hits and continue with its mission.  Our assumption must be that against enemies with drones and anti-ship missiles, we will take hits.

Despite watching the Russian Black Sea fleet get driven into port by Ukrainian drones and anti-ship missiles, the U.S. Navy is unlikely to adjust its force structure or ship designs to accommodate the new reality.  Once the coming debt and financial crisis hits, budgetary realities may force it to do so.  

The Debate: A real Person Vs. a Cardboard Cutout.

Who won the debate between President Trump and Kamala Harris?  If the debate had been held as part of a college debating contest, the answer would have been Harris.  But that is not the situation here.  To evaluate this debate correctly, we need to put it in the right context.  That context was an opportunity for tens of millions of Americans to get their first look at Kamala Harris.

What did they see?  The same sort of smarty-pants girl everyone hated in fifth grade.  Yes, she could answer the teachers questions, but her smug, smirking body language, her contempt for President Trump and his supporters and her Stepford Wife mechanical perfection were huge turn offs.  People complain that Mr. Trump does not act Presidential, but compared to Harris’s endless mugging for the camera he was a reincarnation of George Washington.  The debate left most viewers with a new understanding of how she became the Democratic Party’s candidate: she is and always has been a DEI hire.

As for President Trump’s performance, he was what he always is, namely someone who says whatever comes into his head at the moment.  Fortunately, his instinct-driven words are usually right.  Especially important here were his warnings about our policy of escalation in Ukraine, where we appear likely to take another step up the ladder by allowing strikes with U.S. and NATO-provided missiles into Russia itself.  As Mr, Trump said, we are moving toward a nuclear World War III.

As other commentators have noted, Mr. Trump failed to take the offensive when he should have, reminding the audience over and over that a vote for Harris is a vote for four more years of the Biden Administration, but with cultural Marxism on steroids.  He could have pounded her on issues such as forcing all Americans to buy electric cars, saying American troops are not fighting anywhere in the world (Syria, Iraq, and off the coast of Yemen are apparently on another planet – and where was the moderators’ fact checking on that one?, as well as her plans to condition children in cultural Marxism in all schools, as her running mate, Governor Waltz, just did in Minnesota.

But these criticisms are all overwhelmed by the most powerful impression viewers took away from the debate.  That impression is that President Trump is a real person while Kamala Harris is a cardboard cut-out.

Tens of millions of Americans like President Trump because he is real.  The fact that he says whatever comes into his head makes him real.  That is more important than what he says.

In contrast, Harris was a cardboard cutout of a past peron, a cutout created, shaped, instructed, and propped up by an army of highly paid consultants, image polishers, and programmers.  Everyone saw that she was as programmed as Chatty Kathy, the doll with a ring in its back that, if you pull it, makes the doll talk.  She had been drilled endlessly in the likely questions and had memorized all the answers.  The viewers who wanted to see this new person came away empty.  As with Oakland, California, there is no there there.  

An old political rule is, you can’t beat something with nothing.  President Trump is real, Kamala Harris is not.  So who won the debate?  President Trump, in a landslide.

Free Speech or “Re-education Camps?”

One of the most important issues to be decided in November’s election is whether we will remain a country with freedom of thought and expression or be subject to the dictates of cultural Marxism, with any dissent severely punished.

If that seems extreme, it’s already happening.  England now holds about 1000 political prisoners in its jails, most of them for saying or writing something deemed “Politically Incorrect.”  In one case, a man was arrested for criticizing Islam.  In court, he showed that he was merely quoting from the Koran.  The judge, saying that “Truth is no defense,” sent him to prison.  This in the land where our liberties originated!  The situation is similar in France, Canada, and other countries we are told are “free.”

It’s also happening here, in many universities and corporations.  If someone dares to suggest, for example, that men and women are inherently different and their traditional social roles reflect their inherent differences, they are given a choice between expulsion or firing or taking “sensitivity training,” which demands the mouth the lies cultural Marxism demands.  They must condemn their own race, sex, culture, and sometimes religious belief.  If they dissent, they fail the course and are terminated.

This is what the cultural Marxists – and both Kamala Harris and Governor Walz are fervent cultural Marxists – seek to do in the country as a whole.  Anyone who defies their ideology is to be arrested, tried, and sent to a “re-education camp” where they will only be released after they have been brainwashed in the tenets of cultural Marxism.

All ideologies have totalitarian aspirations, with the possible exception of libertarianism.  If the Democrats win the Presidency and both Houses of Congress and then pack the Supreme Court, they will be able to take giant steps in that direction.  All they nee is for a packed court to rule that “hate speech” is not protected by the Constitution, and many of us will face arrest.  Why?  Because cultural Marxism defines hate speech as any dissent from cultural Marxism.

President Trump, in contrast, is a defender of freedom of thought and expression.  In the last year of his first term, he initiated a federal rule that no university not adopting a strong, University of Chicago-like policy of freedom of thought and expression could receive any federal funds, including research grants.  By including the latter, his rule would change the political balance on every campus, because with their research money at stake the hard science faculty members would go to the faculty meetings they avoid and vote for such a policy.  Unfortunately, President Trump’s new rule had not completed the (long) federal rule-making process before he left office, and I’m sure the Biden administration killed it on day one.  But I think it likely he would revive it in a second term.

At the same time, conservative investors have been successfully pressuring corporations they invest in to drop so-called ESG policies, which are pure cultural Marxism.  If they are not including “eliminating sensitivity training” in their demands, they should be.  Corporations may rightly require certain decorum among their employees, in the form of normal politeness.  But that is not the same thing as allowing some employees to denounce others as “racists,” “sexists” or “homophobes” while demanding those so charged apologize rather than defend themselves.

If cultural Marxism can kill freedom of speech, it will have taken a giant step towards turning America into a totalitarian, ideological country.  Keep that in mind in the voting booth in November, whether you are a conservative or not. 

Kursk and the Importance of Operational Reserves

For those of  us familiar with the eastern front in World War II, seeing Kursk in the news is deja vu all over again.  Then, the battle was not just operational but strategic significance since it destroyed the reserve of German armored vehicles General Heinz Guderian had created with great effort.  Germany never managed to build up such a reserve again.

The question with regard to today’s Ukrainian offensive toward Kursk is whether it and Russia’s potential response are of operational or just tactical significance.  The Ukrainian invasion of Russia itself at first appeared to be nothing more than a raid.  It has since expanded and, according to the August 23 Wall Street Journal, has evolved into an attempt to encircle about 3000 Russian soldiers.  By World War II standards that is a trivial number, but with today’s smaller armies it is not entirely so, although the troops in question seem to be mostly poorly trained and equipped conscripts.  Still, on its own such a Kesselschlacht is unlikely to be of operational significance.

Ukraine’s operational objective appears to be drawing higher-quality Russian units away from the eastern Donbas, where they are slowly advancing, to deal with the Ukrainian invasion.  That does not seem to be occurring, so far at least.  

What are the operational opportunities facing both parties?  As I have written before, an operational move that could win the war for Ukraine would be to drive into Russian, as it has now done, then turn south and advance between the Russian front line in the Donbas and the Russian border.  The Russian army manning the Donbas front would likely disintegrate in a full scale rout.

The Russian operational opportunity is to cut off and encircle the Ukrainian forces in Russia.  To do so, it would have to drive two strong armored forces into Ukraine, perhaps with the Ukrainian city of Sumy as their meeting point.  A shallower encirclement is unlikely to be successful.  The August 23 WSJ wrote,

In Kursk, Ukraine is stretching the breadth of its incursion rather than seeking a deeper advance that would be easier to cut off, said Mick Ryan, a military strategist and retired major general in the Australian Army.

Both of the options depend on having large operational reserves of mobile forces.  Here is the lesson for the U.S. military: reserves are often a war winner.  Both the Army and the Marine Corps tend to disregard the importance of reserves.  Units held in reserve are to a certain extent shamed, as if they are not good enough to be put into the front lines.  This is a false and dangerous attitude.  Especially at the operational level, the side with the last large reserve often wins because when it commits that reserve, the enemy has nothing left with which to counter it.  France 1940 provides one of many historical examples: after the German thrust to the Channel, Churchill flew to France to meet with the French general staff.  He asked the French Chief of Staff, (I think Weygand at that point) “Where is the operational reserve?” The French commander replied, “There is none.” Churchill later wrote, “At that point I knew we had lost.”

I do not know whether either Russia or Ukraine has sufficient operational reserves to make the latter’s thrust into Russia or Russia’s response operational significant.  I do know that is the key question. 

There is one other potentially war-winning opportunity facing Ukraine.  Russia has a long history of failed wars resulting in coup attempts or revolutions.  If Ukraine has sufficient operational reserves to drive between the Russian lines in the Donbas and the Russian border, the Russian defeat might be so great as to create political turmoil inside Russia.  

In terms of America’s interests, that would not be a good thing.  If Putin goes, he is likely to be replaced with someone harder, not softer.  Worse, the Russian Federation could itself come apart, creating a stateless region with thousands of nuclear weapons and delivery systems that can reach the United States.  That would be the worst possible outcome from our perspective.  Let us hope somebody in Washington can grasp this and act accordingly.

How to Make America Great Again

President Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” may mean more to someone my age than it does to young people.  Why?  Because I grew up in an America that was great, America in the 1950s.  The 1950s was our last normal decade.  Almost everyone, rich or poor, white or black, lived by standard middle class values.  The country was safe, problems in school were running in the halls and talking in class, and entertainment meant “Father Knows Best” and “Leave it to Beaver.”  “Gay” meant “happy” and blacks were “colored people” who were known for wonderful service not shooting each other.  That America’s proudest achievement was a vast, blue-collar middle class.  A guy with or often without a high school degree could get an industrial job that paid enough so he could get married, have kids and give his family a middle-class life on one income.  

Making America great again means re-creating that country.  But if that is our goal, we will fail.  America in the 1950s was the afterglow of an earlier America, America in the Victorian period.  The people we must turn to and learn from are our ancestors from the second half of the 19th century.  They succeeded in doing what we have to do again, namely turn a very rough country into one where almost everything worked well, as well at least as is humanly possible.  

When Queen Victoria came to the throne in the 1830s, England and America both faced massive social problems.  Perhaps the most challenging was rampant alcoholism.  Americans lived on bacon and whiskey, largely because those two products could be made cheaply by rural people and sold at high prices in cities.  England lived under the curse of “gin lane.”  Until gin became popular in the 18th century, poor people couldn’t afford to get drunk very often.  When gin lane opened, the shop signs read, “Drunk for hapence, dead-drunk for a penny.”  That the lower class could afford, and did, massively.

At the same time, industrialization was driving people off farms and into cities, where whole families went into the mills: the long childhood we still enjoy was a Victorian creation (previously, childhood ended at about age 8).  Abortion was rampant, as were infanticide, theft, wife-beating, and murder.  Few lower-class people went to church, and both the lower and upper classes had a value system based on instant gratification.

The Victorians changed all that.  They did not do so through government but through vast popular movements, of which the temperance movement was perhaps the most prominent but by no means the only one.  These movements were largely created, led, and manned by women.  Victorian women were not chained to the stove, but because those in the middle and upper classes did not work for money they had time to create and lead these movements.  And what they did worked: the incidence of social problems steadily declined through the Victorian age.  Since the 1960s, they have steadily increased.  That should tell us something.

The greatest social historian of the Victorian era was the late Gertrude Himmelfarb, with whom I had the pleasure of talking more than once.  She did not hesitate to contrast the Victorians’ successes with our failures.  Her books offer the guides we need in order to repeat our Victorian ancestors achievements, once again turning a rough society with mounting social problems into, well, another great America.  I call the movement we need in order to make America great again Retro Culture, and I have published a small book with that title in hope of sparking such a movement.

“Make America Great Again” is a fine slogan, but if we are actually to do that, we need to do more than re-elect President Trump.  No government can alone reverse our country’s decline.  We must all join together in a popular movement, Retroculture, the goal of which is to repeat our Victorian ancestors’ successes by learning from them.  The knowledge of what works is there.  Our task is to revive and apply it.

Drones

War’s latest thing is drones.  Some see them as heralding a revolution in warfare.  I see them as a problem different in quantity rather than quality, although I am mindful of the old Russian saying that quantity has a quality all its own.

What drones are bringing to battlefields is a great enlargement in the number of aircraft engaged in ground support.  Because of the cost of modern combat airplanes, if ground forces find themselves under air attack, they can be confident it will be over quickly.  Usually, it means just one enemy fighter-bomber overhead; with attack helicopters, the number may be greater, but if they want to stay alive, helicopters do not fly over enemy lines.  They shoot from well behind their own.

In contrast, ground forces may find themselves operating under constant air attack by drones.  This may be new to them, especially to American ground forces, but history has seen it before.  In World War I, an area of the Western front where a major offensive was underway might see many aircraft, friendly and enemy, overhead much of the time.  The Germans formed whole squadrons of purpose-designed ground support aircraft such as the Halberstadt CL II whose mission was trench-strafing.  The Allies undertook that mission too, with ordinary fighter aircraft, which cost them a lot of fighter pilots.  In the early years of World War II, British and French forces facing the German Schwerpunkt suffered relentless Stuka attacks.  At Normandy, allied fighter-bombers were so numerous the movement of German mobile reserves was greatly slowed.

My point is that drones do not face us with a novel problem.  That said, they do offer a serious challenge to every ground force’s air defense.  So what’s the answer?

The first answer builds on the old Marine Corps saying, “Every Marine is a rifleman.”  We now need every Marine or soldier to also be an anti-drone gunner.  The lightweight drones that present the greatest number of threats (because they’re cheap) are vulnerable to rifle fire.  And most troops enjoy shooting at things in the air.

In the longer run, every army needs some sort of “sky cleansing” device, Raid that kills every bug in the room.  Possibilities range from aerosols to small barrage balloons to directed energy weapons.  Whatever the technology, these anti-drone defense’s most important characteristics must be that they do not have to be aimed at individual drones.  They sanitize, for a time, a broad area.

The proliferation of drones over the land battlefield (I will talk about their implications for naval warfare in a future column) faces the United States with some unique problems.  First, because our Army and Marine Corps stress always being on the offensive (contrary to Clausewitz’s advice), we have to be up and moving, which makes us much easier for drones to target.  At least at this stage of their development, drones favor the defensive.

Our second unique problem is that the enormous R&D and procurement bureaucracy through which we buy military equipment, always from a cartel of just a few big companies (because only they can navigate the endless, arcane procurement regulations), makes it impossible for DOD to quickly acquire anything or to obtain systems that are cheap, simple, and needed in large quantity.  To put the latter requirement in perspective, Ukraine is working to build 1,000,000 per year.  They can do that.  We cannot.

Finally, the way the U.S. Army and Marine Corps are likely to employ drones is to further centralization of decision making.  Our vast headquarters will delight in controlling every movement of every soldier or Marine, each of whom can be watched individually through drone feeds.  The pace of our OODA Loop, already slow, will get slower.  Paralysis by too much information will become more common.  Commanders will become managers instead of leaders, as too many are already.  Reconnaissance drones are the dream of every Second Generation armed service.

The drone problem is serious but it is not novel.  History points to some answers, technology to others.  To the degree drones favor our enemies, it will be largely because of our own systemic weaknesses.

Two More Wins for 4GW

Before diving into the subject of this week’s column I have a small announcement to make.  Following last week’s Presidential debate, a number of TR’s readers (the exact number must remain classified) told me I should run.  Never wishing to disappoint, I am therefore now announcing my candidacy for President of the United States.  I am running on the Monarchist ticket, mine is a write-in campaign, and my sole campaign promise is that if I am elected, you will never again have to suffer through anybody’s campaign.  No I will not become king; I am not born to a royal house.  Rather, I will serve as regent, preparing the way for an Austrian Habsburg to assume the American throne.  They are accustomed to ruling (and ruling quite well) over ramshackle, polyglot, decaying empires, so they are a natural fit for what America has become.  And the Habsburgs always have an archduke to spare.

Now to the fire swelling all around us as Washington fiddles.  Fourth Generation, non-state forces are in the process of winning two wars, one highly important but no surprise, the other of small importance but a shocker.

The first is Hamas vs. Israel.  In a front-page story, the June 12 Wall Street Journal quoted Hamas’s commander in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar as saying, “We have the Israelis right where we want them.”  Unfortunately, he’s right.

Militarily, Israel has physically destroyed Gaza and plunged its population into misery, but it has failed and will continue to fail in gaining its stated strategic objectives of destroying Hamas as both a military and political entity.  Why has it failed?  Because it set objectives even the IDF, one of the world’s best conventional armies, could not attain.

Having failed at John Boyd’s physical level of war, it is now failing at the mental level because the Israeli government cannot come up with an end-state.  What happens in Gaza when most of the shooting stops?  Israel cannot accept a Hamas government, the Palestine Authority is useless and also unacceptable to Israel, and no Arab state or local grouping can accept anything Israel wants.  So mentally, it’s a deadlock.

On the moral level, not only has Israel made itself into an international pariah, it is coming apart internally.  The latter is the war’s most important outcome to date.  To grasp it, we have to drop back to the IDF’s founding.  It was modeled on the Wehrmacht.  Why?  Because Jews read books, and study correctly convinced them the Prussian/German Army was the best in the world for almost 80 years, 1866-1945.  They maintained the culture of that Prussian/German Army up through the 1967 war; after that, as their R&D and procurement department grew, it was gradually displaced by the managerial/bureaucratic culture of most current state militaries.  But one thing the IDF retained from the Wehrmacht was that it needed to win quickly; the longer the war, the more likely its defeat.  In Gaza, Israel finds itself bogged down in a long war – again, one in which the Israeli government cannot define an attainable war aim, which is the only war out of the bog.

So the moral strain is dissolving the bonds of Israeli society.  Because Israel’s is a mobilization army, keeping large numbers of men in uniform inflicts severe economic damage, up to 30% of GDP so far by some estimates.  The manpower shortage can be mitigated by something Israel’s Supreme Court has just ordered: drafting ultra-Orthodox men.  The exemption from Israel’s universal draft because they are studying Torah is no longer acceptable to secular Israelis who must now serve in a long war.  But the ultra-Orthodox turn violent when they don’t get what they want.  In their losing arguments before the Supreme Court, the Netanyahu government’s lawyers said drafting the ultra-Orthodox would tear Israeli society apart.  Indeed.

Now add in a Prime Minister who puts his career before his country, a coalition where he needs the votes of ultra-Orthodox parties to stay in power, and the strong hostages’ movement taking to the streets.  Hamas bungled its initial attack of October 7 on the moral level by killing and raping instead of just taking hostages, but at this point Natanyahu has made such a colossal mess of the war that, regrettably, Yahya Sinwar is right.  He has the Israelis right where he wants them.

The other win by 4GW forces, in this case a tribe, the Houthis, is of far less importance but a real jaw-dropper in kind: a 4GW entity is defeating the U.S. Navy at sea.  Let me repeat that: a tribe is defeating the U.S. Navy at sea.

Wow.  I did not expect that.  How is this happening?  Because, just as we have seen in the Black Sea, the rule that established itself in land warfare by the end of 1914 now applies at sea as well: anything that can be seen will be killed.

The basic story is simple.  The Houthis, who are Shiites backed by Shiite Iran, have been fighting a civil war in Yemen for years against a Sunni faction backed by the Gulf States.  On land, it’s largely a stalemate, but the Houthis, who developed land-attack rockets to shoot at the Saudis who were bombing them, now have anti-ship missiles and drones too.  They have used them in a sea denial role in the Red Sea by attacking merchant ships.  Their stated purpose is to help the Palestinians in Gaza, which they do by cutting Egypt’s Suez Canal earnings to almost nothing (Egypt has long worked with Israel to keep the Palestinians in Gaza).

The U.S. Navy, backed by several others, went into the Red Sea to open it back up – and failed.  As usual, we bomb, and as usual, the bombing does not accomplish our objectives.  Now we are putting U.S. Navy destroyers in the region shoot the Houthis’ missiles down, but that hasn’t worked either, because the Houthis still his merchant ships (thankfully, so far, none of our warships, though not for lack of trying).  They don’t have to hit many to send marine insurance rates so high the Suez Canal route is unusable.  So a tribe’s sea-denial is beating our efforts at sea control.  And every state military in the world continues to ignore Fourth Generation war.

There is Only One Election Issue: Cultural Marxism

Both in the United States and in Europe, one election issue stands so tall it puts all others in the shade.  Will voters continue to allow the elites to force cultural Marxism down everyone’s throats, or will they rebel and vote for President Trump in America and parties such as National Rally in France and Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Germany?  On that question hangs the fate of western civilization.

What is cultural Marxism?  It is Marxism translated from economic and cultural terms.  This intellectually difficult translation was done by a think-tank established in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1923, commonly known as the Frankfurt School.  The Frankfurt School left Germany in 1933 and was re-established in New York City in 1934 with the support of Columbia University.  On American soil, it shifted its focus from trying to destroy traditional, western, Judeo-Christian culture in Germany to doing so in the country that had given it refuge.

The Frankfurt School attempted from the outset to conceal its real nature and objectives – the destruction of western culture, the Christian religion and, added by Herbert Marcuse in the 1950s and ‘60s, the white race.  Today, it does so by calling itself “multiculturalism,” “Political Correctness” or “woke.”  But the fact is, its Marxism, albeit a different Marxism from that of the old Soviet Union.  (A good introduction to the Frankfurt School and its creation of cultural Marxism is a video documentary, “History of Political Correctness,” available on Youtube.)

Cultural Marxism is now universal among western elites.  You cannot be a member of the elite here or in Europe if you dissent from it.  Only non-elite political leaders such as President Trump here or Marine le Pen in France dare defy it, which is why all the establishment political parties and factions oppose Mr. Trump, National Rally and AfD.  The elites will not hesitate to abolish democracy in the name of democracy to protect cultural Marxism; all the other German political parties want to outlaw Afd, despite its being the second-most popular party in the country.

Cultural Marxism is the man behind the curtain in most of the other political issues the U.S. and Europe face.  Immigration is one: cultural Marxists know masses of immigrants from other cultures, religions, and races are a powerful weapon in their battle to destroy western, Christian culture.  That is why the elites have united behind a policy of open borders.  BEI (“Didn’t Earn It”) is another product of cultural Marxism.  It deprives white males of positions they have earned to give them to favored “victim” groups such as (feminist only) women, blacks, gays etc.  (All Marxism divides humanity into  two groups, “oppressors” (bad) and “victims” (good).) Public school curricula that teach pupils to hate their country and its history, their race, and their parents (“Critical Race Theory”) is pure Frankfurt School, a subset of the Institute’s broader Critical Theory (the theory is to bring down every traditional institution by endless , punitive criticism).

The good news here is that ordinary voters, here and in Europe, are beginning to understand that all of the assaults on their beliefs, their culture and their way of life have a common origin in cultural Marxism.  Whereas the mainstream parties offer those voters no choice, because they’ve all embraced cultural Marxism either out of belief or out of moral cowardice (e.g. the Conservative Party in U.K. and the CDU in Germany), new parties now offer a way to vote cultural Marxism out.

It does no good to pull a weed unless you also get the root.  The once-Christian west has a chance, later this year, to do exactly that by killing the Marxist ideology that is driving our moral and cultural decline.  All it takes is going to the voting booth and pulling the right lever.

Playing With Nuclear Fire

Russia and NATO are now on the escalatory ladder in Ukraine, and NATO, not Russia, is driving both parties upward.  The latest escalation is a decision by the United States and, stupidly, Germany, to allow Ukraine to fire American and German made missiles into Russia itself.  Currently, the permission applies only to the northern front in the vicinity of Kharkiv, but you can count on that limitation being lifted in another step upward on the ladder - a ladder that reaches all the way to nuclear war.

The excuse is that Russia is attempting to take the city of Kharkiv, which lies only about twelve miles from the Russian border.  Russia would no doubt be happy to acquire Kharkiv, but that does not appear to be the objective in its current operation.  Its purpose is to create a buffer zone between Russia and Ukraine.  The reason it needs one is that Ukraine-backed Russian exile forces have attacked Russia along that border.  Action begets reaction.  

That is not what is driving both Russia and NATO up the ladder toward the employment of nuclear weapons – something the Russians have warned they will do if pressed to hard.  The driver is that NATO has adopted an unattainable strategic objective, namely that Ukraine gets back all its Russian occupied land, including Crimea.  Unless either the Russian army or the Russian home front collapses, that will not happen.  At present, neither of those events seems likely, although authoritarian states such as Russia are brittle and can break with little warning.  

Absent those events, Ukraine is trapped in a war of attrition she is bound to lose.  She is already running out of manpower, despite which the Ukrainian government had great difficulty getting a lowering of the conscription age from twenty-seven to twenty-five through parliament (most other countries conscript at age eighteen).  Western ammunition production cannot meet the needs of a long war, while Russia’s can.  Ukraine’s attempt to generate a war of maneuver in the summer of 2023 failed, largely because her operational plan lacked Shwerpunkt.  From what little information I’ve been able to get, Western-built tanks did not survive on the offensive any better than did their Russian counterparts, mainly because of top-attack anti-tank munitions.  Awnings like those now seen on Israeli Merkava tanks in Gaza can help, but so far Ukraine does not appear to employ them.

This leaves NATO facing defeat, which is any outcome where Ukraine does not recover all her territory.  Panic is beginning to set in.  French President Macron has raised publicly the possibility of sending French and potentially other NATO troops to Ukraine.  Germany has said no, but as we just saw in Berlin’s collapse on restricting German  weapons to Ukrainian territory, the traffic-light coalition is always yellow.  The matter is likely to be decided in Washington.  If Trump wins, realism returns and a compromise peace is likely.  But if Biden wins, the Blob will not be able to accept even a partial NATO defeat, which means the climb up the escalation ladder will continue.  Have people forgotten what nuclear weapons can do?

Setting an unattainable strategic objective usually leads to escalation to total war, nuclear or not.  Netanyahu has done the same thing in the war in Gaza; despite the best efforts of the IDF, Israel is not able to destroy Hamas as either a military or a political power center inside Gaza.  Again, panic is setting in, with Netanyahu likely to open another front against Hezbollah to distract attention from his failure in Gaza.  Panic takes many forms, but escalation is included in most of them.

NATO made a strategic blunder at the outset.  Will it accept it cannot meet its strategic objective and be satisfied with something less, or will it dig its own grave deeper?  If war halfway around the world or beyond Europe’s eastern border ends with a nuclear exchange, Macron and others who pushed for escalation will end their days hearing the words, “a la lanterne!”

President Trump Still needs an Agenda

With the first of President Trump’s show trials over, he is now, as he said, a political prisoner.  Does anyone really believe he would have faced any of the four legal processes launched against him if he were a liberal Democrat?  We need only compare his treatment for retaining classified documents with that accorded to President Biden, or the kid-glove treatment Biden has received for making himself millions of dollars, to see the blatant double standard.

At least in America’s heartland, everyone perceives the unfairness of it all.  Even people who do not like Mr. Trump as an individual are planning to vote for him in protest of his treatment.  But martyrdom alone is not enough to win in November.  Mr. Trump also needs an agenda that speaks to the needs of the ordinary people.

I outlined one agenda item that does just that in an earlier column.  Instead of forcing young people and their families to choose between going deeply into debt to get a college degree or crippling their prospects for employment by forgoing one, a new Trump administration could require any school district that receives federal funding to offer some extra courses in high school which, if taken and passed, would give the graduate a high school diploma and a B.A. at the same time.  A B. S. would still require going to college, because careers such as engineering require hard knowledge and skills.  But most universities’ social sciences and humanities departments now offer little more than brainwashing in cultural Marxism, so a student bypassing them would actually be better off, as well as richer, or at least less poor.  And a vast financial Burden would be removed from the backs of their families.

Higher education is one great expense for middle class Americans.  Another is the enormous cost of new automobiles.  The average cost of a new car is now around $45,000.  How many people can afford that?  Car loans now sometimes last longer than the car itself.  A President who could offer Americans reasonably priced new cars would be immensely popular.

There is a way President Trump could do exactly that in a new term.  How?  By making the federally mandated safety equipment in cars, such as airbags, optional.  That equipment adds many thousands of dollars to a car’s price.  Manufacturers should be required to offer it, but the buyer should be able to decide for himself whether he wants to pay for it or not.  The safety Nazis would howl, but who are they to tell the rest of us what to buy?  In a free country people make such decisions for themselves.  

Another way to lower the price of a new car is to back off the excessive fuel efficiency requirements the federal government now lays on manufacturers.  The environmentalists have no concept of the law of diminishing returns, so even the slightest gain is in their eyes worth whatever it costs.  Then again, most of them have buckets of money, and they seldom think about people who don’t.  But if President Trump’s new agenda offered a way to reduce the cost of new automobiles by, say, one third, the whole middle class would rally to him.

These are just two ideas for Mr. Trump’s 2024 agenda.  I’m sure others can come up with more, all directed at making life less expensive yet also better for middle class Americans.  My point is that he must offer such an agenda, not just campaign on the unfairness with which he is being treated.  The latter will motivate his supporters to turn out and vote, but only the former will bring neutrals over to his side.  His campaign needs both emotion and reason, not just the former.

Sitzkrieg?

Several People have inquired why I have not written a column for TR in some time.  Let me assure them I am in good health and face no lack of material as our world speeds towards destruction.  The reason I have not written is that the TR website is being wholly revised and much improved.  That work should be done soon, and once it is I will fire more barrages at my usual target, folly.  I think readers will find the revisions to the website worth the wait.  

Meanwhile, the two wars the United States is involved in, those in Ukraine and in the Gaza strip, seem caught in strategic Sitzkrieg.  In the former, Russia grinds slowly forward in a war of attrition Ukraine is doomed to lose.  In Gaza, Israel digs itself ever-deeper into the Fourth Generation war trap in which a state defeats itself.  But this seeming strategic stability is deceptive.  Below the surface lurk factors that portend upheavals.

In Ukraine, NATO must soon face the fact that Kiev is losing and will continue to lose unless it can create a war of maneuver.  It had its chance to do that in the summer of 2023 and blew it at the operational level by duplicating Operation Barbarossa; it launched three divergent thrusts, which is to say there was no Schwerpunkt.  No Schwerpunkt means no decisive result, which is what Ukraine got.

Kiev’s defeat need not shatter world peace.  But NATO’s response to defeat in Ukraine may do so.  Panic is already showing its head in Paris, where French President Macron is suggesting NATO might send in troops to fight Russia directly.  Berlin says no, but the traffic-light coalition government is weak and can be pushed around.  London is in a belligerent mood and Warsaw is always eager to launch a cavalry charge against Russian tanks.  The decisive voice will be Washington’s.  That is not good news, because the Dead Inca has no idea what he’s doing and his advisors will be terrified of the charge of “losing Ukraine” in an election year.  Can NATO just swallow hard and say, “We lost?”  If not, the alternative is escalation in a war against nuclear power.

In Gaza, Israel has destroyed itself at the moral level of war, which is what states usually do against non-state opponents.  Martin van Creveld’s “power of weakness” is triumphing again.  Hamas will emerge from the war physically diminished but not destroyed, while most of the world sees it as “the good guys” because the massacres on October 7 have been overshadowed by Israel’s destruction of Gaza.  Hamas will rebuild quickly, and not only in Gaza.  Recruits and money will flow to it in a veritable Niagara.

The threat of a wider war lies to Israel’s north, not its south.  While Hezbollah’s operations have been restrained, they have nonetheless driven 80,000 Israelis from their homes, along with tens of thousands of Lebanese who have fled Israeli airstrikes.  The latter don’t matter strategically, but the former do because Netanyahu needs their votes.  As always, he will put himself above his country’s interests.  That suggests he is likely to launch a ground invasion of Lebanon, which Hezbollah apparently is anticipating and ready for.  Hezbollah is much stronger than Hamas, and recent events suggest Iran will also be forced to get involved directly. 

If Israel is able to degrade Hamas but not destroy it while an Israeli invasion of Lebanon does not go well (it didn’t last time) and Iran is sending presents to Tel Aviv, what does a panicky Netanyahu do?  Don’t rule out his pushing the nuclear button.  That might destroy Iran’s nuclear program, and maybe southern Lebanon as well.  But it would leave Israel a pariah in a world where all bets are off.

The current strategic stability is an illusion.  Wars move in fits and starts, and Sitzkrieg tends to be followed by wild swings and dramatic breakthroughs.  The fact that gold has risen about $500 an ounce in a few months says I am not the only one seeing danger ahead.

The Big Picture

It is natural for wars to draw observers into ever-more detailed studies of their events and potential lessons from them.  But the result can be an instinct for the capillaries that leaves war’s larger issues neglected.  I think that is happening now with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.  If we stand back away from the details and look at the big picture from an American perspective, what do we see?

We see this country taking potentially fatal risks that Washington seems unaware of.  The U.S. is indirectly involved in two wars, those in Ukraine and Gaza.  In both cases, one of the players has nuclear weapons, Russia in Ukraine and Israel in Gaza.  At the same time, we are directly involved in two possible wars, a renewed war in Korea and a direct confrontation with China over Taiwan.  Again, two of the potential participants are nuclear powers, North Korea and China.  In effect, the U.S. is playing two games of Russian roulette and daring other countries to join us in two additional games.  What is the chance that in one of those four games our luck doesn’t hold and we blow our brains out?  Higher than anyone in the Blob, our foreign policy establishment, seems to realize.

To put this in perspective, imagine what will happen if a single nuclear weapon is used in any conflict.  The world economy is already balanced on a knife edge.  Everybody knows a world-wide debt and financial crisis is coming.  The use in war of just one nuclear bomb could easily trigger that event.  Credit would dry up overnight, international trade would cease and the domestic economies of many countries would plunge into deep depressions.  Such a world economic crisis would in turn bring political chaos in its wake.  Establishment parties and politicians would be swept away (not entirely a bad thing) and states themselves would collapse, creating new stateless regions with all the dysfunction and disorder that implies.  Fourth Generation war would spread like Canadian wildfires.

Why does this country face four conflicts or potential conflicts involving nuclear powers?  A big part of the answer is the hubris and insularity of the Blob.  But it also brings to mind an observation John Boyd often made.  He said Washington is home to ten thousand analysts and no synthesizers.  We spend billions of dollars to gain information on the micro level but virtually nothing to look at the macro picture.  At present, that macro picture should frighten us into reducing commitments abroad, especially those that could push us into a nuclear exchange.  But the only prominent political voice urging that course is President Trump.  As usual, in the valley of the blind the one-eyed man is hated.  

Prudence, that highest of conservative political virtues, counsels us to draw back while we still can.  Once Communism fell in Europe, there was only one reason for NATO to continue, namely bringing Russia into what would have become a northern hemisphere alliance.  Russian President Putin said in his interview with Tucker Carlson that Russia had asked about joining but was rebuffed.  Now, we should tell Europe that it is fully capable of defending itself and we’re going home.  In the war over Gaza, we should tell Netanyahu that if he uses nuclear weapons (Iran is the obvious potential target) we will cut off all support for Israel.  With regard to Taiwan, we should attempt to make a deal with China where that island rejoins mainland China but no PLA or National Police are stationed there so Taiwan’s domestic liberties are maintained.  And President Trump, once re-elected, should attempt to restore the relations we had with North Korea after his first summit with Kim Jong-un (the neocon John Bolton sabotaged the second summit).  That would logically lead to a peace treaty with North Korea and a withdrawal of American troops from the South.

Together, these steps would lead to a more secure America, more secure because it would have fewer foreign commitments that could lead to war with a nuclear power (or, the case of Israel, tied to a nuclear power).  If that leads to mass unemployment within the Blob, well, isn’t that a shame.

His Majesty's Birthday

As regular readers know, every year I telephone my reporting senior, Kaiser Wilhelm II, on his birthday, January 27, to offer my best wishes.  Such readers also know that His Majesty likes to surprise me.  Well, he did.  When I got out of bed the morning of the 23rd, I found out why: a naval Zeppelin, L-70, was hovering about twenty feet above my chimney.  Luckily, there were no sparks.  

I knew that meant I was on my way to Berlin.  I grabbed my seabag and went outside, where the airship had lowered its observation car for me to board.  I was quickly on my way, enjoying every minute of the smooth and silent air travel only an airship, not an airplane, can offer.

We landed at the Potsdam Zeppelinhafen the morning of the 26th, where a Fahnenjunker Kleinschmidt was waiting for me with an extra horse.  “They’re at the toy fort,” he told me as we cantered off.  “They?” I inquired.  Grinning, the Herr Fahnenjunker said, “you are about to meet some old friends.”

The toy fort is on the grounds of the Neues Palais, His Majesty’s preferred residence.  “Toy” is something of a misnomer.  It was a place for young Hohenzollern princes to play, but it was extensive and realistic enough so experiments with new battlefield tactics and techniques were carried out there.  As I rode up it was clear something along those lines was being conducted.

Dismounting, I saluted His Majesty, offering my felicitations for the morrow, and lit up in delight as I surveyed the rest of the party.  Bismarck was there, to whom I bowed very deeply, along with Moltke and, from a later time than ours, Field Marshal von Manstein.  And two old friends indeed, Max Hoffman and Hermann Balck.  I hadn’t seen Balck since we had dinner in the 1970s, and Max I knew only in spirit, but I also knew that with them present we would rock and roll.

“So, does this stranger have the password?,” His Majesty inquired, grinning.  “Gott strafe England,” I replied.  “That always works,” Max said.  “And with you here, so does 'Wurst und Moselwein’, nicht wahr?”, I threw back.  “Immer,” said His Majesty. “But we also have some serious business to transact.  The problem before us is, how can Ukraine win its war with Russia.  Field Marshal von Manstein was about to present his analytics.”

I again saluted the Field Marshal, who began with the failure of the Ukrainian summer counter-offensive.  “In effect, the Ukrainian operation plan was Barbarossa writ small.  It had no Schwerpunkt.  The Ukrainians launched three simultaneous, non-mutually-supporting thrusts.  They led with armor, which, as we learned the hard way, always costs heavily in destroyed tanks.  By the way, their tanks, including the German Leopards, proved no more survivable than their Russian equivalents.  They then tried to lead with infantry, which, with infiltration tactics, could have worked, but it did not.  I’m not sure why.”

“I suspect their heavy losses in infantry left them without the high-quality troops attack divisions require,” His Majesty observed.  “It is difficult to do infiltration tactics with Landsturm.  But the question is not why their summer offensive failed, but whether we can come up with an operational plan that will work.  Any Ideas?”

Max spoke up.  “They need to break through at one end of the Russian lines, north or south, then roll up between the Russian front and the Russian border.  That will either bag or reduce to a rabble the whole Russian force in the east.  Having done that, they should offer to negotiate.  Russia has to get something still, certainly Crimea, but Ukraine would keep the Don basin with its industry.”

“They can’t break through,” Black observed.  “They have to do an end run.”

“How?” Moltke asked, as always a man of few words.

Now Manstein showed his stuff.  “Ukraine should mass its forces in the north, as if to break through there.  Then, it launches into Belarus with the whole force.  The Schwerpunkt should drive north, then east, end-running the Russian northern line and driving down between the Russian forces and the border, just as Herr General Hoffman suggests.  But that’s not all.  Two other thrusts, both small in size, should be detached from the main force.  One should drive at Minsk, broadcasting the message that its only target is Lukashenko and asking Belarussian forces to come over.  That will pose not just an operational but a strategic threat to Russia just as she needs her operational reserves inside Ukraine.  The second Nebenpunkt should be a special operation to sieve the missiles with nuclear warheads Russia has positioned in Belarus.  If Ukraine grabs those, Russia loses the ace up her sleeve, the threat to go nuclear.  Russia will face one operational and two strategic disasters, without sufficient forces to deal with more than one, and become paralyzed by the choice.”

We stood around somewhat stunned.  For a while, no one said anything.  Then Bismark spoke.  “Brilliant operational art, Herr Feldmarschall".  You deserve the oak leaves.  But what none of you idiots have considered is the strategic picture!”

The Kaiser rolled his eyes.  “Now I know why my grandfather said, ‘Sometimes it is a hard thing, being Kaiser under Bismarck.” But please, Otto, enlighten us.”

“Why is Germany allied with Ukraine when Russia is far more important to us?  Yes, we need the grain of Ukraine.  But Russia offers vastly more: grain, oil and gas, strategic position, a large if low quality army, a decent navy and air force, the list is endless,” Bismarck went on.  “I have no love for the “Laws of History,” but there does seem to be a general rule that when Germany and Russia are allied, both do well, and when they are opposed, both do badly.  Is there really any need to discuss what the outcomes of the World Wars would have been if Russia had joined the Central Powers in a new Dreikaiserbund or the Axis?  Max?  Moltke?  Anybody?

“There would have been no Second World War, or probably First, in that case,” the Kaiser said.  “Peace is what I wanted, and peace is what Germany and Europe would have had.  Anyway, it has grown late, and we face a big party tomorrow in the Grotto – both Nicky and my friend Franz Ferdinand are coming, as are you, my American friend – and I promised Max more sausages and Mosel wine than even he can eat and drink.  Between now and then, we all have things to ponder, especially what you, dear Otto, have told us.  We Germans always want to subordinate the strategic to the operational, then wonder why it all blows up in our face.  Hopefully, someday we will learn not to do that.  May that day come soon.”