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.”

Attention, Marines: The NEW Maneuver Warfare Handbook is Now Available

In 1985, I published the Maneuver Warfare Handbook.  It is still in print almost forty years later and it has been translated into more than ten other languages, most recently in Russian and Ukrainian.  I now have the pleasure of announcing, not its replacement, but a supplement: The New Maneuver Warfare Handbook.

Why a new book when the old one is still useful?  Because in the years since 1985 we have learned a few things – enough that a new book is necessary.  Again, the new book does not replace the old, but augments it.  To “get” maneuver warfare in all you need to read both books (the older one first).

Like the old book, the new book is addressed directly to the Marines.  But the new book talks directly to the Army as well, especially to its Special Operations Forces.  The forward is written by an Army general, Jim Dubik, who I have known since he was a major.  And following the core of the book are appendices that speak to the Army, several written by LTG Dubik.

As in the original book, the new one has a section devoted to looking at key maneuver warfare concepts in some detail.  This section parallels Marine Colonel Mike Wyly’s tactical problems in the earlier book.  Addressed once again to small unit leaders, the concepts studied are Surfaces and Gaps, Mission Tactics, the Main Effort or Schwerpunkt, the Objective, and the Reserve.  The discussions include tactical exercises.  

The new book goes beyond the old in several respects.  I added a discussion of maneuver warfare culture, without which an armed service can talk about maneuver warfare but it can’t do it.  An army or Marine Corps that can do it is focused outward, on the situation, the enemy, and the result the situation requires, not inward on rules, processes, procedures, even orders.  The reader can decide for himself where the U.S. armed services stand today in this respect.

The new book also devotes more space to training, not only to what is trained but how it is trained.  The memorize / spit back / brain dump method is useless.  Here, the new book offers a discussion by retired Army Major Don Vandergriff, who has written by far the best material on how to train under the heading of Outcomes Based Learning.  One key to OBL is that procedures and techniques are taught in a tactical context, not in a stand-alone manner.

A target of this new material is all U.S. Special Operations Forces.  Why?  Because for the most part, they do the fighting.  The bulk of our armed services are seldom if ever employed.  While Washington pretends to focus on war with Russia or China, in reality nuclear-armed countries do not fight conventional wars with each other.  The real fighting is with non-state entities such as Hamas, al Qaeda and the Shabab.  That fighting is done by our SOF.  The new Handbook will be useful to them.

A final point:  the new book is a lot less expensive than the old one.  So get it, read it, and apply it to your own situation.  America needs to start winning.

Israel Falls into the 4GW Trap

As of this writing, Israeli forces have penetrated Gaza city and are on their way to taking northern Gaza.  Tactically, they are succeeding, as state forces usually do against 4GW opponents.  In the process, they are losing at the moral level, also as state forces usually do.  The result promises to be that, at the strategic level, Israel will defeat itself.  That is the 4GW trap.

Martin van Creveld calls this the power of weakness.  Physically, Hamas is far weaker than Israel.  It has no fighter jets, no tanks, and little artillery beyond mortars and bottle rockets.  Israel has all of these things and it is using them freely.  This turns Hamas into David and Israel into Goliath.  

Van Creveld illustrates the 4GW trap with a parable.  If a child is behaving horribly in public, an adult can get away with giving him one good wack.  But if the adult tries to administer a prolonged beating to the child, onlookers are soon horrified.  They intervene, the police are called, and the man is arrested.  He has committed a crime.

The horror generated by Hamas’s brutal massacre on October 7 gave Israel the initial moral advantage.  But the news cycle moves on.  Now, what the world is seeing day after day is Palestinian civilians, including women and children, blown apart by Israeli bombing, dragged lifeless from buildings Israel has collapsed, deprived of food, water, and medicine, with no safe place to flee to and winter soon coming on.  Israel has become the adult beating up a helpless child.

At present, Israel seems to be saying, so what?  What are you going to do about it?  No Arab state will fight Israel because it cannot win; Israel has nuclear weapons.  Hezbollah is so far staying out, in part because Hamas is Sunni and Hezbolla is Shiite and also because it has a lot to lose; its vast rocket force is a “fleet in being” that protects it only so long as it is not used.  Iran is fighting through its proxies, which is both safer and more effective because it cannot do more on its own than strike Israel with some V-2s.

The moral level of war operates more slowly, but also more powerfully.  Israel is alienating not just governments but ordinary people all over the world.  Israel is a state that can only survive with external support.  It needs money from overseas, weapons from other countries, and markets for its products.  If external support stops, it is just a matter of time before Israel goes under.  That is the ultimate defeat at the strategic level.

The moral level also intersects the operational level.  With extensive American help, Israel has been fundamentally changing its relations to its Arab neighbors.  It has ententes with Jordan, Egypt, the UAE, and Morocco.  It was on the cusp of a similar arrangement with Saudi Arabia.  The development of normal relations with these countries gives Israel new markets, new allies (discreetly) against Iran and also against Islamic 4GW entities, and legitimacy in the eyes of the world.  Now, the moral defeat Israel is inflicting on itself in Gaza puts all these relationships in danger.  Those countries’ governments face pressure that grows daily as their populations get angrier with Israel.  At some point, their own legitimacy will be at stake.  Either they will have to return to a policy of hostility toward Israel or risk overthrow.  Either outcome defeats Israel at the operational level, thus feeding her destruction through isolation at the strategic level.

The strategy for Israel I outlined in my last column was designed specifically to avoid moral defeat.  So long as Israel refuses to take the moral level of war into account, regardless of what is happening on or under the ground in Gaza, Hamas is winning.

A Strategy for Israel

Shortly after World War I, a British officer said, “Thank God that’s over.  Now we can get back to real soldiering.”  That expresses the U.S. armed forces’ attitude towards Fourth Generation war, war waged by entities other than the states, following our withdrawal from Afghanistan.  Hamas’s deadly raid on Israel, the worst defeat Israel has suffered since the early days of the 1973 war, has put 4GW back front-and-center, whether state armed forces like it or not.

As I write this, Israel has painted itself into a strategic corner.  Part of the reason is that Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s premier, set a strategic goal very difficult to attain, namely the complete destruction of Hamas.  That would appear to require an Israeli invasion of Gaza, a fight Hamas is prepared for, will welcome, and will result in high Israeli as well as Gaza civilian casualties.

Another cause of Israel’s strategic predicament is inherent in Fourth Generation war: the moral balance is tilting in favor of the people currently under attack, i.e., those who live in Gaza.

Hamas’s initial raid on Israel was a typical action by a 4GW entity.  It bore no resemblance to an invasion by a state army.  Rather, it looked very much like an Indian raid on an American frontier settlement.  The savages massacred a lot of people, took others hostage, set buildings on fire, then either died fighting or ran for home, hostages in tow.  One of my ancestors, Hannah Dustin, was taken in just such a raid on the Massachusett’s frontier in the 1690s.  Not only did she escape her captors, she killed several Indians in the process.  We saw similar heroic actions by civilians in some of the kibbutzim Hamas overran.

That original massacre gave Israel the moral high ground.  But as is usual in 4GW, as the fighting drags on and Israel pits its high-tech, well-equipped armed forces against low-tech, comparatively poorly equipped Hamas fighters, and the bombing kills more and mo4re Gaza civilians, the moral balance is shifting against Israel.  Soon, the international pressure on Israel to agree to a cease-fire will become overwhelming. 

Meanwhile, the Israeli economy has ceased to function because so many reservists have been mobilized.  Those mobilized soldiers now sit around as Isael’s government tries to come up with a strategy to use them.

Since Israel wants a strategy, let me propose one, a strategy that allows Israel to avoid defeat on the moral level and does not require an invasion of Gaza:

First, Israel re-imposes a complete blockade on Gaze.  Nothing comes in, not food, not water, not medicine, nothing

Second, Israel simultaneously establishes a humanitarian corridor out of Gaza through which anyone can leave.  As they do so, fighting-age males, let’s say males between the ages of 14 and 50, are separated from the women, children, old people, etc.  The latter go to the West Bank, where Israel allows other Arab and Moslem states to provide the PLO with plenty of money to take care of them.  The fighting age males go to POW camps set up in the Negev, where they remain until Israel’s war with Hamas ends.

Third, after all the Gazans who want out have gotten out, Israel wipes out Hamas.  It starts by attacking from the sea, establishing beachheads, then pumping sweater into Hamas’s tunnels under Gaza.  At the same time, it works from the north to south, destroying every structure standing in Gaza, artillery and bombing, not by sending Israeli soldiers into a fight on the ground.  In the end, everything in Gaza is flattened, the same way the Romans flattened Jerusalem, with not a stone left standing on stone.  Israel keeps the blockade on for however long it takes to starve out remaining Hamas fighters.  The remains of Gaza are then bulldozed into the sea.

Israel then announces it will release the fighting-age males held in Negev to any country that will take them, in whatever number they want, from one to all of them.  This puts the moral onus for their continuing captivity on other Arab and Moslem countries rather than on Israel.

What about the hostages of Hamas?  As in past hostage situations, Israel, working through third parties such as Qatar, will offer Palestinian prisoners it holds in trade for the hostages’ safe return.  If Hamas starts executing hostages, it will defeat itself on the moral level of war – war’s most powerful level.

Netanyahu’s coalition partners will oppose such a strategy because they want to drive all Arabs out of the West Bank, not bring more Arabs into it.  But if Netanyahu has a political future after the intelligence failure that left the back door open to Hamas, it will be based on a credible claim might be politically powerful enough that he would no longer require his current coalition partners.

For Israel, the time to adopt and execute a strategy is running out.  The continued bombing of Gaza and resulting civilian casualties are turning the moral balance against Israel.  As the Italian statesman Cavour said, you can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.

Three Ways to Counter Cultural Marxism

Since the 1960s cultural Marxism, aka “Political Correctness” or “wokeism,” has been on the offensive, trying to destroy every aspect of our traditional, Judeo-Christian, Western culture.  Conservatives have largely responded with a passive defense, which merely slows, not stops, the cultural Marxists.  If we want to win, we have to strike back.  Here are three ways to do so:

• Allow high school students to graduate with two diplomas, one for high school and the other a B.A.  Since most college humanities and social sciences departments offer little beyond conditioning in cultural Marxism, the students would lose nothing by not actually attending those courses.  To receive their B.A. along with their high school diploma, they would have to take a few extra courses in high school.  But they would no longer have to shell out $100,000 plus to get a degree without which they cannot get a decent job.

This would be an enormously popular program because it would save young people from needing loans  to pay for college, loans that burden them in some cases for decades.  At the same time, it would destroy the cultural Marxists’ base in the universities.

Some school districts are already offering an Associates Degree that comes along with a high school diploma, again for taking some extra courses.  This would merely extend that to include a B.A.  A B.S. would still require attending college, because in science and math students actually learn things in college.  Few of the professors who teach in those departments are cultural Marxists, and the few who are would either have to keep their ideology out of the classroom or find no students signing up for their courses.

• Require all colleges and universities that receive federal funds, including research funding, to adopt a strong statement guaranteeing their students freedom of thought and expression.  The University of Chicago’s statement should serve as a model, perhaps with the addition of a clause defining “diversity” as including diversity of viewpoints, which the cultural Marxists’ definition does not.  With their research funds at stake, all faculty from the hard science departments would come to the faculty meetings they usually avoid and vote the required statement in.

President Trump announced this proposal in his last year in office and started its trek through the federal rulemaking process.  I am sure Mr. Biden killed it on his first day in office, but if Mr. Trump wins in 2024, it should come back.  Again, this would be a direct hit on the cultural Marxists’ control of the universities.  The only way they can peddle their bilge is by threatening students and other faculty who dissent from it.

• Add “political beliefs” to the list of forbidden discriminations in federal civil rights law.  As in the universities, the cultural Marxists who run companies – and there are many, often in senior positions – can only cram their ideology down their employees’ throats by threatening the jobs and careers of anyone who dissents.  This would put an end to that.  The legislation would allow entities that openly label themselves as political to be exempt.  But how many companies making, say, light beer, would want to label themselves as political?

I am sure others can come up with ideas beyond these, ideas that would enable conservatives to take the offensive against cultural Marxism.  What conservatives need is leaders with guts to do that.

Breakthrough or Break-In?

The papers are full of reports that the Ukrainians have broken through on their southern front, opening the way for an armored offensive on the operational level.  Such an offensive could seek either to destroy the Russian army by getting between it and the Russian border, or go for a terrain objective such as the coast of the Sea of Azov.  From a maneuver warfare perspective the former is preferable, although I think the latter is more likely.  Aiming for the Sea of Azov is much easier logistically; rolling out behind the whole Russian army leaves Ukraine’s logistics train following in trace with whatever Russian units hold together on its left flank.

However, I question the reports of a Ukrainian breakthrough.  Much more likely is a break-in.  In other words, Ukrainian forces have succeeded in entering the Russian defensive lines – a break-in – but they still face more Russian lines ahead of them.  While that is a step toward opening the door to an operational offensive, it does not do so of itself.

Ukraine learned the hard way a lesson the Germans learned early in World War II: don’t try to make a breakthrough by charging headlong with tanks.  Neither Germany then nor Ukraine now could afford the tank losses, and the effort usually fails anyway.  Use infantry to make the breakthrough and then send in your armored units to turn a tactical success into an operational victory.  I think it likely the Ukrainians are employing the infantry infiltration tactics developed by the German Army in World War I; they still work against an enemy who employs a static, linear defense.

As I noted in previous columns, the Russians’ cordon defense is inherently weak.  It is likely to fail unless it is supported by a strong tactical and operational reserve, with the latter made up of the defender’s best armored units.  I do not know what the Russian Army has left to make up those reserves, but the outcome on the ground depends largely on the answer.

Meanwhile, on the strategic level both the U.S. and NATO are sleepwalking.  There is no apparent effort to address the central threat to the western powers, namely a nuclear war.  If Russia is defeated on the ground, she has no choice but to go nuclear; she cannot afford to lose this war.  If Putin refuses to escalate (the correct decision), he will be replaced by someone who will.  From this perspective, every Ukrainian victory moves us closer to the worst possible outcome, nuclear weapons landing on American and/or European cities.  That in turn can lead to a state collapse in Russia, Europe, and the U.S.

What the West needs most right now is an effort to end the fighting and begin talking with Moscow about peace terms.  That initiative will not come from the Blob, the Washington foreign policy establishment, where any departure from neo-con/neo-lib groupthink is a career ender.  The only potential sources in NATO for a push to end the war are France and Germany.  As usual, Germany’s worst enemy is her own foreign office, which is terrified of crossing Washington.  The French rather enjoy doing that, so Paris is the only hope.  God save us.

The Eastern Front

No one familiar with the war in the east 1941-45 can fail to see parallels between events then and now.  The similarities are obvious.  Ukraine is smaller than Russia, its army is smaller, and it has less, although better equipment.  The Ukrainian army seems to be following the German way of war, maneuver warfare, or at least trying to.  It does appear to have developed the culture maneuver warfare requires, where results are more important than methods, decision-making is decentralized, initiative is desired more than obedience and it all rests on self rather than imposed discipline.  I find it interesting that a Slavic army seems able to do this; could the Russian army do the same?

At present it certainly cannot.  By 1944, perhaps 1943, the Red Army was equal to the Germans on the operational level.  It was never so on the tactical level, where the culture was strictly top-down.  Today, the Russians seem to have lost their ability on the operational level without improving on the tactical level.  I recall a conversation I had in the 1970s with John Ericson, the author of Road to Stalingrad and Road to Berlin.  He said to me, “Do you want to understand today’s Russian army?  Ask yourself what it was like under Tsar Nicholas I.”

All this would seem to leave Ukraine with good odds of victory.  But as we move from the board situation to specifics, the balance changes.  Having largely failed on the offensive, the Russian army has gone over to the defensive.  Clausewitz argues that the defensive is stronger than the offensive.  More, we know from military history that armies which are ineffective ont he offensive often fight much better on the defensive.  That was true of the Russians facing Army Group South in 1941, and may be true again today.  The Russians appear to have adopted a cordon defense, which is inherently weak, but they have built it in depth.  Much will depend on whether they have strong, mobile operational reserves that can counter-attack and encircle Ukrainian forces that break through; the dissolution of the Wagner Group may have hurt the Russians badly in this respect.

From the Ukrainian perspective, they face one problem that greatly hampered the Wehrmacht and another the Germans did not face.  The first is that they have a hodgepodge of equipment drawn from anywhere and everywhere, or produced in an endless variety of models, each with different parts.  The result is a logistics nightmare.  That in turn feeds into Ukraine’s second problem, one not facing the Wehrmacht: insufficient operational depth.

As I have said before, for Ukraine to win it needs to turn the conflict from a war of attrition to a war of maneuver.  But that requires deep thrusts that encircle masses of Russians.  They don’t have the operational depth to do that because they cannot cross the border into Russia itself.  So they face a Russian defense that has operational depth without that depth being available to the attacker.

I can see only one way around this: break through the Russian defenses at one end and then turn parallel to them in their rear and drive to their other end.  This would be classic German Durchbruch und Aufrollen at the operational level.  With major Ukrainian forces in their rear, the Russian linear defenses might collapse in a rout. 

But here is where Ukraine’s dog’s breakfast of equipment becomes a serious problem.  Through the Aufrollen aspect of the campaign, Ukraine’s supply line would be slow and vulnerable.  It would also have to carry ammunition and spare parts for a wide variety of tanks, air defense units, artillery, etc., meaning it would be enormous.  If Russia’s cordon defense collapses, the Ukrainian supply line could be shortened.  But if it doesn’t, Ukraine’s army could be trapped behind enemy lines without ammunition and spare parts.  That would mean the end of Ukraine.

The Russian Damn Cracks

The Prigozhin putsch was a crack in the Russian dam, the dam being the Russian state.  So far, the dam is holding.  But behind it are the swirling, dirty currents of Fourth Generation war, in the form of all the non-state loyalties and entities that will flood over Europe and Asia if the dam falls.

The proximate cause of Wagner Group’s march on Moscow was an ultimatum to submit to the Russian state.  The June 26 Wall Street Journal reported that:

A key trigger was the June 10 defense ministry order that all volunteer detachments would have to sign contracts with the government by July 1, a move to bring Wagner under formal military control.  Prigozhin refused.

This alone shows how the authority of the Russian state has been undermined.  But the WSJ reported further that:

Prigozhin made his move after state support that once flowed to Wagner was diverted to a new private mercenary group established by state-owned companies such as Gazprom.

So now we see the Russian state is so weak that it must turn, not to the state’s armed forces, but to other mercenary units as alternatives to Wagner.

Then, when major elements of the Wagner group advanced on Moscow, covering about 500 miles with only 100 left between them and the Kremlin, they met almost no opposition from any state security forces.  Neither the police nor the Russian army intervened.  They were met with only a few attacks from the air, to which they responded by shooting down some helicopters and a jet, killing 13 Russian airmen.  And for that, President Putin was constrained to grant them amnesty from prosecution.

President Putin’s popularity within Russia is based on his restoration and maintenance of a strong state after the chaos of the Yeltsin years.  The Prigozhin putsch and the state’s weak response to it have undermined his reputation as a guarantor of order.  The June 26 New York Times quoted Sergei Markov, a Russian political expert and advisor, as saying,

What he (Putin) always took pride in is the solidity of Russian statehood and political stability.  That’s what they loved him for.  And it turns out that it doesn’t exist.

The blob and its NATO counterpart can’t wait for President Putin to fall.  But who or what will replace him?  He has no anointed successor waiting in the wings.  Nor does Russia have a political process that is clear, clean and widely accepted by which to find a new leader.  It is quite possible that if the man who has run Russia for almost a quarter-century falls from power, the succession process will bring chaos.  That, in turn, runs a risk of the RUssian state itself failing.  

I cannot emphasize enough how disastrous a failure of the Russian state would be.  We would face nuclear weapons and delivery systems that can reach America in the hands of, well, who?  The answer is anyone who can grab them.  It is not difficult to imagine a criminal enterprise getting hold of ICBMs, lobbing one minus its warhead at American soil, then telling us to hand over all the gold in Ft. Knox or they would take out one American city every week until we complied.  As a gang, they would have no return address.  The U.S. has no reliable missile defense, despite spending more than 100 billion dollars trying to build one, a scandal for which some people in the Pentagon and in the defense industry should go to jail.

To head off the catastrophe of Russia falling into the sort of stateless chaos we see in Syria or Libya, the U.S. and NATO need to act now to support the RUssian state.  What Russia needs most is a golden bridge over which it can retreat from its botched war in Ukraine.  That means Russia has to get something out of it, at least international recognition that Crimea is Russian and probably also the Donetsk and Luhansk regions held by pro-Russian statelets before February of last year.  Stupidly, Washington has said it will not accept any peace terms rejected by Kiev, which itself cannot agree to the loss of any territory.  This faces Russia with two unpalatable choices, continuation of the war or a humiliating peace.  The last time Russia faced this choice, in 1917, the result was civil war and a Bolshevik takeover.

After the war ends, we need to do what should have been done in 1990 after Communism fell in Russia, namely reintegrate Russia into the Concert of Powers.  This is what Metternich did with France after 1815, and it gave Europe a century of relative peace.  It is late in the game to do this with Russia, but perhaps it is not too late.  Henry Kissinger is the right man for the job, and at just 100 years old, I think he would say yes if asked.  No one knows better than he the price state collapse, like that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, can bring.

When Black Swans Mate

As almost everybody knows, a black swan is a new term for an unexpected event that has major consequences.  Like avian black swans, such events are rare.  But when they hit, panic, overreaction, and demands for safety at any price tend to follow.  Think of Wall Street in October of 1929.  

A number of potential black swans have been circling over the last year or so.  One landed: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The consequences of that black swan are still unrolling, but they already include recession in Europe, large refugee flows (refugees from Ukraine are people we should welcome in large numbers), a rising risk of nuclear war, and, if Russia loses, a possible break-up of the Russian Federation and the spread of Fourth Generation war in the vast region between Ukraine and Vladivostok.

But what if black swans mate?  In Ukraine, imagine the consequences if Russia employs nuclear weapons.  What would happen to world markets?  The West has been doing its best to destroy Russia’s economy, without much success.  But Russia could return the favor, with interest, by popping some nukes.  As the possibility of nuclear war, always present in the background since 1950, suddenly became real, it is not hard to imagine a rush for safety in markets of all kinds that would leave only gold and dollars standing, and maybe only gold.

Imagine that happens, and the world’s eyes all turn to the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington.  A story in the June 8 Wall Street Journal illustrates the touching faith in the Fed that was once reserved for pieces of the True Cross.  The article, “Big Influx of T-Bills Threatens Volatility” by Eric Wallerstein, discusses potential market effects from a deluge of Treasury bills soon to be dumped on the market following the raising of the Federal debt limit.  The article states, “But even if banks pull back from short-term funding markets, history suggests Fed officials would quickly extinguish any fires. . . ‘It’s that unintended, unexamined, event that causes a clogging up of the financial plumbing,’ said Joseph Brusuelas, principal and chief economist at RSM US.  ‘That doesn’t mean the doomsayers are right – if a hiccup occurs, the Fed will step in.’

Just a few years ago, when inflation had been low and steady for a decade, the Fed could indeed step in and pump out more liquidity.  But now inflation is running, not at the Fed’s desired 2%, but between 4% and 5%.  If the Fed increases liquidity, it will also increase the rate of inflation.  Imagine the effect on, well, everything if the United States faced even a realistic possibility of hyper-inflation.  That is exactly what can happen when black swans mate, in this case the two birds labeled “worthless dollars” and “nuclear war.”

The Chinese economy is already dealing with at least a gray swan in the form of a collapse in its property market.  Add in the black swan of an attack on Taiwan that fails, coupled with an American distant blockade of raw materials to China.  China’s greatest historic weakness is its own centrifugal tendencies.  Would several catastrophic policy failures by the Chinese Communist Party lead to another break-up of the Chinese state and the rise of new warlords, some with nuclear weapons?

The consequences of black swans mating are potentially so dire that each Great Powers’ leaders, those of the U.S, Russia, and China, should have a joint policy of stability at any price.  Regrettably, at present all three are pursuing adventures at any price.  Those adventures are decoys for black swans, drawing them to land and make themselves at home in ways that suggest mating season is at hand.  Their progeny will be ugly.

The View from Olympus: Ukraine's "Big Push:" Tactical or Operational?

Ukraine and its allies have been prepping the propaganda battlefield for months about Kiev’s big spring offensive, or counter-offensive if you prefer.  The ghosts of Kursk have been gathering over the scene, warning about attacks which are predictable and made where the Russians have been able to prepare extensive defensive positions.  This time, will the Leopard tank be what the Tiger Elephant was last time?

That is a small question which leads to a big question: will Ukraine’s offensive be of operational or just tactical significance?  The U. S. military has but a small understanding of the operational level of war, which comes between the tactical and strategic levels and connects the two.  In essence, it is deciding what to do tactically in order to strike as powerfully as possible at an enemy strategic “hinge,” something on which the enemy depends and which, if destroyed, collapses him.

The advice Ukraine seems to be getting from the U.S. military reflects the latter’s failure to grasp the operational level.  Most American recommendations suggest terrain objectives, either in the east toward Donbas or south to break the Russian-occupied corridor connecting the Donbas with Crimea.  But even a successful Ukrainian offensive in these places would mean little strategically.  Attacking toward the Donbas would just take back more Ukrainian land, which Russia could retake again later; shoving contests of this sort reflect attrition warfare, not maneuver warfare.  Attacking south towards the Sea of Azov would seem more promising operationally, but this is an illusion.  Even if Ukraine can break the Russian-held corridor and keep it broken, it will be at most a strategic inconvenience for Russia.  Why?  Because Crimea can easily be supplied by water.  In today’s world, people forget that transportation by water is the most efficient and least expensive way to move goods of any sort.  A Ukrainian offensive to cut Russia’s land links with Crimea would only have strategic effect if Ukraine controlled the Black Sea, which it does not and cannot.

What if we look at Ukraine’s situation from a German, not an American, perspective?  The German way of war focused on the operational level.  Ukraine has a strong German heritage in its approach to war, reflecting the facts that Germany and Austria-Hungary gave Ukraine its independence during World War I and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fought alongside Germans to defend their country and people from Stalin in World War II.  As best I can tell at this remove, Ukraine’s army has been fighting German-style maneuver warfare at the tactical level, which is one reason for its surprising successes.

From the German perspective (Kaiserheer and Wehrmacht, not Bundesheer), Russia has a critical strategic hinge Ukraine can attack.  What is it?  The Wagner Group and some allied Russian mercenary forces.  The performance of the Russian Army has been so poor that only these mercenaries have offensive capability.  With a handful of exceptions, Russian Army units seem to be fortress troops, Stellungsdivisionen who can only be expected to fight when defending, not attacking (and sometimes they cannot do that).  So a suitable operational goal for the coming Ukrainian offensive would be destruction of the Wagner Group.  That could be strategically decisive.

Furthermore, it looks to me as if the Wagner Group is wearing a large “kick me” sign on its back.  How so?  By deploying most of its forces in an effort to encircle Bakhmut.  All Ukraine’s spring offensive has to do is encircle the encirclers.  Moreover, because Wagner is attacking, not defending, it is unlikely to have built extensive defensive fortifications.  It appears to be a ripe plum, ready to be picked off.

Ukraine may already grasp this, which may be why it has been so focused on defending Bakhmut.  The city itself has little strategic significance.  But if Bakhmut is grabbing Wagner Group’s nose so Ukraine’s offensive can kick its tail, then Ukraine’s losses in Bakhmut would be worth it.

This is of course all conjecture.  But if Ukraine’s spring offensive is operational it its objective, then its long range prospects, never good, at least get better.  If it squanders its newly-built forces for mere tactical gains, that will tell us to move as quickly as possible towards a negotiated peace before Ukraine’s position deteriorates further.  So, Kiev, who are you going to listen to, Milley or Manstein?

The Marine Corps Snipes Itself

Over the years I’ve accumulated a large collection of plaques given to me by various military units and schools I have visited.  All but one reside in the attic.  The exception, which has pride of place in the imperial Library, was presented to me by the Marine Corps’ Scout/Sniper School.  Why is it special to me?  Because they didn’t buy it, they made it. 

That typified the Scout/Sniper School and program.  Run entirely by Staff NCOs, it trained Marines to a far higher standard than do other Marine schools for infantry.  That’s not just my opinion.  In Afghanistan the Taliban called the Scout/Snipers, “The Marines who are well trained.”  Those Marines were the closest thing the Corps had to a true light or Jaeger infantry.

Headquarters, Marine Corps just killed the school, the program, and the MOs.

The rationale is that the Scout/Snipers will be replaced with “scouts” who will mostly be drone operators.  Once again, the Corps is being led into quicksand by the foxfire of “hi-tech,” copying our other armed services instead of offering an alternative to them.

This decision is bad on several levels.  First,while drones offer the great advantage of being able to see over the next hill, they do not replace human eyes on the situation at eye level.  The view from above and the view on the ground are different and can show different things.  A scout on the ground can also employ more senses than his eyes; ears and noses can also reveal activities the enemy is trying to conceal.  Example: if a year from now a Russian scout smells jet fuel, he can know his unit is facing Ukrainian M1 Abrams tanks.

Supposedly, the new school to be established for training scouts, mostly in how to operate drones, will also train them in ground scouting.  If that is the case, why did the Corps not just refocus the existing and very effective Scout/Sniper School on less sniping and more scouting?  Because it will be starting from square one, the new scouting school will take a long time to reach the level of the old Scout/Sniper School, if it ever does.  No armed service has so many effective schools that it can afford to disband one with little thought or care.  But that’s what HQMC has done.  In effect, the Marine Corps has sniped itself. 

The immediate driver here, I suspect, is that DOD has drone fever, which means money for any new program that features drones.  Again, drones offer some important advantages.  But those advantages are in degree, not in kind.  Since aerial scouting developed in World War I – I’m proud to say the first case of aerial control of gunfire was by the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Navy – manned aircraft have given ground commanders that all-important look over the next hill.  Radio contact between the plane and the ground commander can make that information immediate.  If all you have for air recon is F-35s, then yes, you need drones.  But if your recon aircraft is something between a World War L “C” type and an OV-10, then drones are less necessary and you can get the advantage of human eyes on the situation rather than just cameras.  Drones currently have the important advantage of being cheaper, but just as with manned aircraft, their price and complexity will increase because that will justify higher budgets.

There may be something else going on here.  Headquarters, Marine Corps has been stuffing women into every nook and cranny, including places like the infantry where they will be large net disadvantages.  The only type of war women can fight is hi-tech, push-button war.  While the number of women who could graduate from the Scout/Sniper School would have been small, women can operate drones as well as men.  Is the womanizing of the Marine Corps bringing yet another distortion?

In any case, the Scout/Sniper School is gone, and with it the creation of Marines who are well trained.  When the enemy gives one of your own units or commanders a compliment, you can safely believe it is true.

This column is dedicated to Marine Scout/Sniper Ron Danielowski, a friend who died at age 54 from a massive heart attack.  In everything he did in life, he always hit the mark.

News Flash: Pointy-haired Boss Kills Dilbert

Last week, my favorite comic strip, Dilbert, disappeared from my morning paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  In its place was simply a gray box.  Had the Plain Dealer dealt plainly, it would have stamped “Censored” on the box.  Instead, it offered a joke better than those in the banned strip, saying the censorship was not an example of “cancel culture.”  Big Brother himself could not have told a bigger lie.

Other newspapers across the country joined in the auto-da-fe.  Showing the totalitarian impulse behind cultural Marxism, the ideology that demands “Political Correctness” in all things, the cancellations had nothing to do with the strip itself.  Rather, the slaughter was justified by saying the strip’s author, Scott Adams, had said something “racist.”

Here it is useful to remember that words have meaning.  The meaning of words such as “racist” and “sexist,” according to the people who created them, is that the thing itself, in this case race, is a “construct.”  A construct is a castle in the air, something with no basis in reality.  The building blocks of reality, in contrast, are facts.  That makes facts the opposite of a construct, which in turn means that something cannot be both a construct and a fact.  So to test whether a statement is “racist” or “sexist,” we need only ask whether it is factual or not.

I have not seen the whole of Scott Adams’ remarks.  But most of the howling about them seems to focus on two elements.  According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Adams, commenting on a recent Rasmussen Poll that found a small majority of blacks agreed with the statement “It’s OK to be white, said, 

If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people . . . that’s a hate group. . . I don’t want to have anything to do with them.  And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. . . because there is no fixing this.

In sum, the two elements Mr. Adams is in trouble for are that half of all blacks constitute a “hate group” and whites should avoid blacks.

So what are the facts?  I have not seen the Rasmussen Poll, but it is a respected polling firm.  No news account has disputed Mr. Adam’s claim that a small majority of blacks said whites are OK.  But Mr. Scott infers that the poll means a large minority of blacks are hostile to whites as whites.  Is that valid?

Clearly, a non-trivial percentage of American blacks are hostile to whites simply because they are white.  This is largely a product of cultural Marxism, which keeps telling blacks that all their problems are the fault of whites.  This both feeds black hostility to whites and tells blacks that they cannot help themselves; improving their situation must be done by whites.  The antidote to this is best found in the writings of Booker T. Washington, who argued, contrary to cultural Marxism (itself a product of whites), that blacks can and should depend on their own efforts to rise.  In sum, Mr. Adams’ assertion that a large minority of blacks are hostile to whites as whites is true to some extent, but the poll does not reliably define the size of the minority.

But are these blacks a “hate group?”  Here,Mr. Adams is using the word “group” differently from its usual definition.  In the phrase “hate group,” “group” normally means an organization.  There are certainly black organizations that are hostile to whites and therefore qualify as hate groups, just as those organizations have white counterparts.  But Mr. Adams does seem to be stretching the word “group” beyond its usual meaning, which makes his assertion open to question.

Finally, what about Mr. Adams’ advice to white to avoid blacks?  One powerful fact supports that advice, namely that the black rate of violent crime is twelve times the white rate.  Even though the majority of victims of black crime are also black, black violent crime is a real danger to whites, and everyone in his right mind seeks to avoid danger.  So the facts support Mr. Adams here.

But. . . as a conservative, I reject cultural Marxism’s demand that we see everyone as a member of one or another identity group.  I prefer to judge people as individuals, according to their works.  Black violent crime is almost all the product of young black males.  As the black mayor of Cleveland said recently, 90% of the gun violence in our city is a black male aged 19-29 shooting another black male of the same age group.  Do I avoid young black males?  Absolutely.  Guess what?  So do other blacks.

But I am happy to mix and socialize with older black people, including the black couple who come to my church and the family of black Jehovah’s Witnesses who live in my suburb (all Jehovah’s Witnesses are pacifists).  If I find myself in a crowd of blacks who are coming out of church, I am as comfortable as I am in a crowd of white church-goers.  In other words, I try to discriminate between good black people and possibly dangerous black people, just as I do with whites.  And my discrimination is based on facts.

The crime against facts and reason here is not committed by Scott Adams, even though some of his statements may stretch some facts.  The crime is the banning of my and most people's favorite comic strip, Dilbert, for statements that never appeared in the strip.  That crime is committed by the cultural Marxists and the moral cowards afraid to challenge them in editorial rooms across America.  Collectively, they are the pointy-haired boss who killed Dilbert.

Airships Triumphant!

Some years ago, I commanded Red in a Marine Corps war game at Quantico.  When I was asked what weapon systems I wanted, I requested Zeppelins, on the grounds that it is impossible to wage modern war without airships.  The Chinese just showed us why.

Like many other airship enthusiasts, I’ve always known these pesky heavier-than-air machines would have their day in the sun and then, like all Mayflies, expire.  They take enormous amounts of power merely to remain in the air, while airships fly with no power at all.  They expend energy to move, not to fly.  Their helium or hydrogen (Zeppelins filled with hydrogen were in fact very safe; even on the Hindenburg two-thirds of the passengers survived, and that was the only time a German passenger-carrying Zeppelin caught fire) can be used over and over.  In terms of air pollution, they emit a small fraction of what a heavier-than-air machine produces.  And they are economical; a pound of lift lighter-than-air costs one-tenth as much as a pound of lift from a heavier-than-air machine.

As the Chinese steerable balloon demonstrated, airships have inherent stealth characteristics; at least three other such balloons traversed the United States without our air defenses detecting them.  They have long loiter time, which makes Zeppelins ideal for anti-submarine work.  And if the engines quit, an airship does not crash.  Flying in an airplane is like taking a train where, if the engine fails, they come through and shoot all the passengers.

The quiet flight of our Chinese interloper makes another, broader point:  high-tech systems often have effective, cheap, low-tech counters.  Had the Chinese built something like the B-70 and flown it over America, we would have tracked it immediately.  The balloon came in over the radar.  In the war with Serbia over Kosovo, the Serbs deflected our home-on-radar missiles aimed at their air defenses by modifying microwave ovens and pointing the skyward.  Recently, some Marines told me the Corps needs a new Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) because ISIS is dropping 40mm anti-vehicle bombs from drones.  Drawing on the “skirts” German tanks had in late World War ll to defend against bazookas, I said “Put an awning up over it; chicken wire should work just fine.”  All we need to do is set off the fuse before the grenade hits the vehicle. 

My favorite low-tech beats hi-tech story comes from an exercise in the Mediterranean in the 1960s that pitted the U.S. Navy against the U.S. Air Force and the Spanish air force.  A report, which proved inaccurate, said the Air Force had spotted the Navy’s aircraft carrier, so our Air Force sent everything it had to attack it.  Too late, an accurate report came in; our Air Force has nothing left.  So we turned to the Spanish, who sent out a Ju-52 as a bomber.  Now the Ju-52 was a fine, tri-motored German World War ll transport.  But it had already become obsolete as a bomber before World War ll began.  Yet the bomber got the carrier, flying the whole length of the flight deck dropping flour bags to simulate bombs.  How did it get through the carrier’s air defenses?  A Ju-52s speed is about 60 mph, so our automated radar systems discounted it as a false target!

When we fight small states or 4th Generation, non-state forces, those enemies will know they cannot defeat us with vastly expensive hi-tech systems of their own.  But poverty stimulates creativity and imagination.  We will frequently find ourselves getting surprised by low-tech approaches that effectively counter our hi-tech systems.  Were we prudent, we would have a “skunk works” trying to identify such low-tech approaches before they block us.  That won’t happen, because it might endanger the money-flow to the hi-tech stuff if word got out that it is easy and cheap to counter.  So we will end up wasting not only money but lives.

Meanwhile, I’ll offer a challenge: an F-22, which shot down the Chinese balloon (making itself the most expensive anti-balloon gun in history), against an L 30 class Zeppelin of the Imperial German Navy.  Our Zeppelin’s mission is to bombard an American coastal city with bratwursts and Bienenstuck; the f-22’s job is to stop us.  No air-to-air refueling is permitted.  Our Zeppelin’s crew may regularly remind the f-22’s pilot that we are eating very, very well.  See you over, well, someplace, flyboy, in your jet propelled bathtub.  We’ll be floating along the breeze.

His Majesty's Birthday

As regular readers know, on January 27 of every year I telephone my reporting senior, Kaiser Wilhelm II, to congratulate him on his birthday. I always start with the number for the Neues Palais in Potsdam, but der Reisekaiser is often traveling and my call must set out in hot pursuit of him.  Such was the case again this year, when the first words I heard were, "Verspätet! Verspätet! How can the Imperial Train be later? Are Poles now running the Prussian State Railways?" The voice was Bismarck's. It was coming from a distance, but there was no problem hearing his words or his mood. 

"Who the hell is this?," said the voice, now directly into the telephone. "If its the head of Prussian Railways calling to apologize, you lost your job 25 minutes ago. 

"It is only Oberst i.G. Lind, Herr Foreign Minister, calling to wish His Majesty a happy birthday," I replied. "I take it his train is late into Friedrichsruh. today's Bundesbahn that would be the norm, but I share your puzzlement how such a thing could happen in your time." 

"Wait a minute, I think I hear an engine," said Bismarck. "I'll take your call with me out onto the platform.  Hey, Guderian, give me more wire on this thing. Yes, you, you're a communications officer, aren't you?"

General der Panzertruppe Heinz Guderian muttered something unprintable but he got the wire to play out, so I went with Bismarck out to meet the train. 

To my surprise, not only our Kaiser but Tsar Nicholas II of Russian and Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary off,the/train and from the engine, or so voices in the background suggested. It seemed our Willi enjoyed running steam locomotives and running them fast, so fast that he had caused the last car to jump the track, hence the delay. 

"The story of my life," I heard him mutter. 

"Hallo, is this our poor marooned General Staff Oberst, stuck in a crazy century in an insane country? "His Majesty asked. 

"It is, and happy birthday," I replied. “But it seems I've caught you at an awkward moment. 

"Not at all, " he replied. "I enjoy making Bismarck wait.  Reminds him who's boss, well, sort of. As my grandfather said, sometimes it's a hard thing, being Kaiser under Bismarck. Besides, my guests need to collect themselves.  It seems they’re not accustomed to riding the footplate at 150 kilometers.  Great fun!

"May I ask what's going on?" 

"You may. The situation in Russia in your time is serious, very serious. 

Bismarck has done what needs to be done, namely call a conference of the relevant Great Powers. It’s something the current German Foreign Minister seems unable to do, so we've jumped into the breach.  Remember, we've been through this before, and we see the players in your world making the same mistakes we made. We can't just sit by and watch. Anyway, I'm going to put you on hold until we three kings and Bismarck have washed up and are drinking some good Mosel wine around a table." 

Time in their world is fluid, so it was only a few minutes before I was on speakerphone and taking part in the meeting. The Tsar kicked it off. 

"Europe and America must both understand that Russia cannot lose this war. I say that in two senses. First, Russia is much stronger than Ukraine. The Russian Army has started the war badly, as it usually does. But it learns, and in a war of attrition it always prevails by sheer numbers.

Second, Russia will do anything it has to in order to win. A defeat by Ukraine could bring down the Russian state, what's left of it. Moscow will not let that happen again as I let it happen the first time.' 

Emperor Franz Josef chimed in. "Austria again finds itself representing Europe. How? By remaining neutral. It's bad enough that your Europe now has a war under way on its own soil. But the lesson of 1914 is if that happens, all diplomacy must focus on keeping it local. Had my own Foreign Ministry worked to keep it just between the Serbs and ourselves, the world order we represented, we three monarchs, would have lived." 

It was now our Kaiser's turn. "I knew that and I told my Foreign Minister, when Austria declared war on Serbia, to telegraph Vienna and tell Austria to take Belgrade and then stop. That telegram was not sent, and the situation ran away with us all. That is now happening in your world, which, like ours, will find itself  in a vast, destructive war no one wanted.

It was now up to Bismarck. As always, he saw the solution more clearly than anyone else and knew what to do. "Washington, Berlin and Moscow have made the same fundamental error the three Christian, conservative monarchies, Russia, Germany and Austria, made that brought them all down. They are operating inside an obsoløete paradigm. Then, each was focused on which ruling dynasty, Romanov, Hohenzollern or Hapsburg, would win this latest struggle. They did not see that they all faced a common foe they needed to unite against secular democracy.

So the winners in 1918 were Wilson and Lenin. Now, the winners will be the non-Western world as the West fights its last civil war." 

"So what does Berlin need to do in my time?" I asked, knowing Washington was a hopeless case. 

Bismarck replied, "Do what I did and call a conference of the Great Powers. Then come up with a solution the Great Powers can live with, and tell Ukraine what it's going to do. Stop letting the tail wag the dog. My proposal would be that Russia gets Crimea and the Donbass but has to buy them from Ukraine, while Ukraine gets Russian-held East Prussia and a heavy-haul railway connecting itself to the port of Königsberg, giving it two directions from which it can export its grain. But the key is to act now, before Germany is dragged into a final, fatal Western civil war that leaves nothing but ashes. 

And with that he rang off. My voice in today's Berlin is small, but Bismarck is right.  Berlin's role is not to be Washington's dachshund but, with Vienna, to represent Europe. Europe's most vital interest is peace in Europe. That means de-escalating the war in Ukraine, not fueling it further. Call a conference, decree a cease-fire, and work the Ukraine situation out around a table.

Does Germany want a third disastrous war?  I can say with certainty that its Kaiser does not.

The Greatest Danger

An article in the December 9, 2022 Wall Street Journal brought some rare good strategic news about the war in Ukraine.  It seems that a few of Ukraine’s allies understand that a complete Russian defeat could bring about the dissolution of the Russian state, and that this represents the worst possible outcome.

The Journal article, “Ukraine Minister Urges Bold Support from Western Allies,” reports that:

Ukraine’s foreign minister called on the country’s allies not to fear a possible breakup of the Russian state as a consequence of the war. . .

Though Kyiv’s Western allies are united over the goal of preventing a Ukrainian defeat, not all embrace the objective of a full-blown Ukrainian military victory. . . 

Some of these allies worry that such an outcome could destabilize the nuclear-armed Russian state, potentially leading to its fragmentation and wide-scale unrest, with unpredictable global consequences.

The Journal article does not identify the states that are expressing this concern, but hurrah for them.  They are daring to inject a note of realism into a policy world dominated by Washington’s neo-Wilsonianism, which has already led to the destruction of several states, including Iraq, Syria, and Libya.  These (undoubtedly European) governments expressing their concern about a potential Russian break-up seem to have grasped the central fact of the 21st century strategy, namely that a state collapse is a greater danger than state bad behavior.  Europe would be facing fewer problems today if Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya were all functioning states ruled by tyrants.

As I have written many times, state collapse is the greatest danger we face and it is spreading.  We may be witnessing it in Iran.  I too would be happy to see the fall of Iran’s Islamic theocracy and the return of the young Shah, who’s father it might be remembered, was overthrown because he tried to modernize his country.  But if the result of the ayatollah’s demise is a collapse of the Iranian state, which is a fairly fragile state because much of the population is non-Persian, then we are better off with the theocrats.

China, too, is facing unprecedented disorder, largely because of misgovernment by Xi Jinping.  He botched the coronavirus problem (which probably started in a military lab in Wuhan that was tasked with developing biological weapons), collapsed the Chinese real estate market which is where most middle-class Chinese stashed their savings, and then rewarded himself with an unconstitutional third term.  A more effective assault of the legitimacy of Communist Party rule is difficult to imagine.  But as Washington delights in China’s problems, it forgets that China’s history is one of internal disunion, civil wars, and prolonged periods of warring states.  Mix that with nuclear weapons and, as with Russia, it should be clear that stabilizing the Chinese state is a primary strategic objective.  Of course, all the Wilsonians do is bleat more pathetically about “democracy” and “human rights.”

That is unrealism Washington may pay for heavily.  If Russia or China break up into stateless regions, the world economy will tank the way it did in the 1930s, or worse.  America will not escape a second Great Depression.  If Washington’s folly results in nuclear weapons hitting American cities, the Blob (the foreign policy establishment) will find itself out of work if not hanging from lampposts.  

America is deeply riven over irreconcilable cultural differences, to the point where all that holds it together is a seeming prosperity – seeming because it is built on ever-increasing levels of private and public debt.  When the inevitable debt/financial crisis hits, that alone may endanger the American union.  Add a weakening or vanishing of states around the globe and the 21st century could end up a repeat of the 14th century.  

Let us hope those European states worrying about the potential break-up of the Russian Federation don’t lose their nerve.

Addendum:  The recent “coup attempt” in Germany will go down in history as the “Clown Putsch.”  Not only did the idiots behind it think a couple dozen men could overthrow the German state, they imagined they could put Prince Henry of Reuss on the Imperial German Throne.  Every legitimist, monarchist and Reichsburger knows that the throne belongs to the head of the House of Hohenzollern and no one else.  When Germany again becomes a monarchy, it will be through constitutional means and it will reflect a broad consensus among the German people that they want a Kaiser.

Trump in 2024? Yes, but. . .

. . . Not Donald.

I voted for President Trump in the 2016 Ohio primary, the general election that year and again in 2020.  I contributed to his campaign both times.  I think he was a successful President and would have been more successful had he not been repeatedly sabotaged by people in his own White House and in the broader Deep State.  Had he been re-elected in 2020, I doubt there would be a war in Ukraine today, among other benefits.

But it is time for Donald Trump to step aside and let other, younger men carry the torch.  It is true that time seemingly has no effect on him.  But the fact is, we now have an 80 year-old President, and voters will be leery of another, with some reason.  At age 75, I know neither my body nor my mind is in top form anymore.  Another five years won’t help.  The only respect in which I will grow from here on out is my waistline.

President Trump also faces some unpleasant political realities.  With the exception of my home state of Ohio, where J.D. Vance won, all the Senate candidates he endorsed were defeated.  Most of those races were winnable.  But Mr. Trump will not endorse any candidate who does not agree that the 2020 election was stolen.  

Was it?  It is impossible to know.  Once electronics enter into anything, security goes out the window.  The term “electronic security” is a contradiction in terms.  Now, in many states, the process of voting and vote-counting involves electronics.  So who knows what the actual votes were?  Electronic vote-rigging, like too many things electronic, is undetectable if it is done well.  And the Deep State can be counted on to do such things well.

President Trump’s policies are generally to his advantage.  Most Americans agree with him much of the time.  But there is no way around the fact that many voters, especially women, dislike him as an individual.  Women vote with their hearts, not their heads.  A majority of the electorate is now female.  Had the Founders ever envisioned such a situation, we would now be drinking to the health of our new monarch, King Charles III.  But we are stuck with it, and so is President Trump.

At the same time, his name remains magic to many Americans.  These are the “unpersons,” at least 74 million people, who the culturally Marxist Establishment has declared not to exist.  They are to have no voice.  Well, President Trump gave them a voice.  Their interests are never to be considered.  He represented their interests.  They are to be despised as “deplorables.”  President Trump was and still is happy to be labeled “deplorable” too.  He actually likes these mostly white, male or non-Feminist female, straight, usually Christian people, who live in “flyover land,” work hard for their livings, are kind to their friends and neighbors, and admire America’s history and culture.

So we have a conundrum: We need a Trump name on the ballot to bring these people to the polls (many do not otherwise vote), yet President Trump’s personal negatives are high enough to put another Democrat in the White House.  (If Biden runs again, it will be as a dead Inca.)  What do we do now?

In 2024, the Republican Party nominates Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida for President and Eric Trump, President Trump’s son, as Vice President.  

DeSantis won re-election by 20 points, carrying areas such as Miami-Dade that Republicans never carried.  His policies are largely those of President Trump, but without the personal negatives.  He is young and energetic.  He is not afraid to challenge cultural Marxism, aka “Wokeness.”  By running Eric Trump for Veep, the Trump name is on the ballot, President Trump can campaign heavily for the ticket and the Republican Party will once again be united.  If the Dems try to run against Eric Trump, all he need say is, “are you a carbon copy of your father.)

And so the circle will be squared.  Are Republicans smart enough to do it?  Or would they prefer to remain “beautiful losers?”

There's Only One Issue in this Election, and It Says "Vote Republican"

Yes, I know there are many issues at stake in next week’s elections: inflation, the economy, crime, securing the southern border, and so on.  But these all pale into insignificance in the face of one other issue, one that is not overtly on the ballot and has hardly even been mentioned.  What is it?  Preserving freedom of thought and expression.

By this point, most Americans have encountered the growing censorship gripping our once-free country, either personally or by hearing about the experiences of others.  On university campuses, in corporate offices, in almost all media, any “offensive” word or remark means the person who said or wrote it is in trouble.  What defines “”offensive?”  The ideology of cultural Marxism, Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms, largely by the Frankfurt School.  More commonly known as “wokeness” or “Political Correctness,” cultural Marxism dictates that anyone who defies its dictates must become an “unperson:'' fired from their job, expelled from their university, blackballed in their profession, unmentionable socially, hounded to the very gates of hell.  They are “thisists'' or “thatists,” in a game with words that seeks to make aspects of reality vanish by calling them names.  Everyone knows it’s all cant, but they also know they will pay a price if they don’t bow down and worship its great clay god.

So far,  in this country, you won’t be jailed for saying or writing something “Politically Incorrect.”  But have no illusion: that is what the Democrats intend.  Just look at most university campuses, where the slightest offending word means you are dragged before a kangaroo court, assumed guilty unless proven innocent and often sentenced to “re-education,” meaning learning to mouth the lies “wokeness” requires.  Refuse to learn your lesson and out you go without your degree (or a refund).

But a quick look above our northern border at our once-nice neighbor, Canada, shows another picture.  There, an “unwoke” remark can get you in serious legal trouble.  “Hate speech,” with “hate” defined as any defiance of cultural Marxism, can mean arrest, trial before a “revolutionary tribunal,” not a real court, where the members are all cultural Marxists in good standing, and possibly prison.  The same is true in a growing number of European countries, including, shamefully, England, the source of our own liberties.  Not only can the same thing happen here, making it happen is at the top of the Democrats’ agenda.

That is why it is vital Americans vote in this off-year election and vote straight Republican tickets.  Most oRepublican office-holders fear cultural Marxism and must be pushed into confronting it, but when the alternative is losing their base, they will usually wobble up and do it.  If Republicans take just one House of Congress, they can and will prevent the Democrats from enacting more laws against freedom of thought and expression.  If Republicans take both Houses, they can pass legislation designed to roll cultural Marxism back and restore those freedoms.  Yes, President Biden will veto it, but by doing so he will make the Democrats’ role as the protectors and enforcers of cultural Marxism painfully clear.

There is no shortage of ways legislation can restore freedom of thought and expression.  In the last year of his first term, President Trump proposed a federal rule denying all federal funding, including research grants, to any college or university that will not adopt and enforce a code of strong protections of those basic freedoms (look to the University of Chicago for a good example).  That would change the balance of power on campuses overnight, because the hard sciences profs, their funding at stake, would go to the faculty meetings and outvote the nut-cases from the liberal arts and social sciences departments.  I’m sure that proposed rule died a quick death when Biden came in, but Republican majorities in Congress could easily resurrect it as legislation.

Another powerful piece of legislation in defense of freedom of thought and expression would be to add “political views” to the list if discriminations prohibited in civil rights laws.  Wouldn’t it be fun to make Biden veto that one?  Companies could still ban, let’s say, all political t-shirts in the workplace, but they could not ban just those reflecting conservative beliefs.  No Nazi tees?  Ok, so long as no tees with Che or Marx or Mao on them.  No Hitler salutes?  Fine, so long as Marxist clenched-fist salutes got the same treatment.  Any favoritism would be grounds for a lawsuit.

What it comes down to is this: if you want to preserve (and restore) freedom of thought and expression, vote next week and vote Republican.  A vote for Republicans gives the finger to all the “wokeness,” the “white supremacy” crap, the “64 genders” nonsense, the demands that we all bow down to blacks, Feminists, Third World immigrants, gays, etc, the whole “woke crowd around the bar in Star Wars.  Don’t be fooled by the Democrats’ “protecting our democracy” red herring.  All “democracy” means is voting for Democrats.  Freedom of thought and expression are issues that impact every American every day.  Those are the freedoms our ancestors fought for, the freedom we are now losing, and the freedoms without which America is no longer our country.  We can fight with ballots now or bullets later.  Go vote.

Words That Lie

Words have many meanings, and knowing their meanings is indispensable in any search for truth.  More, some words have semi-secret, “coded” meanings, known only to the Illuminati of a cult.  And while all words can be used to tell the truth or to lie, some words are themselves lies (one example is “homophobia:” unreasoning fear and moral disapproval are two very different things).

If we are to know our enemy, which on traditionalright.com is cultural Marxism, we have to learn what the words it commonly uses mean.  Again, some of these words have both a common meaning, what they mean to you or me, and a coded meaning.  In political and spiritual warfare it is just as important to break the enemy’s code as it is in warfare with guns.

Let us start with one of the cultural Marxists’ favorite words, “hate.”  We all know what hate means.  But most of us do not know what it means in the mouth of cultural Marxists.  Again, to them, it has a coded meaning.  What is it?  Any defiance of cultural Marxism.  Now, the cultural Marxists are themselves champion haters.  They hate whites.  They hate males and non-Feminist females.  They hate Western culture and the Christian religion.  In the end, they simply hate God.  But in their lexicon, none of this counts as hate because it is coming from the left.  Only the right can hate.

Another word that lies is “divisive.”  Like “hate,” “divisive” means any rejection of cultural Marxism.  The lie embedded in the word is that most people are cultural Marxists, so any dissent represents division.  In fact, most people are not cultural Marxists and cultural Marxism itself fosters every division it can: sex, race, clase, etc., all with the goal of ripping society apart.  Unlike the old economic Marxists in Moscow, cultural Marxists offer no positive goal; they are about “negation,” which is to say they are nihilists.

A new word that lies is “violence.”  Everyone knows violence requires physical contact.  But in the cultural Marxists’ mouths, it means anything that disturbs or upsets cultural Marxists.  This word that lies is becoming common discourse on many university campuses.

Then we have the “ism” words: racism, sexism, classism, gourmetism (wanting your food to taste good), and so on.  The coded meaning in these words is that the things themselves, e.g., race and sec, are just “constructs,” castles in the air with no foundation in reality.  But we all know that’s can’t, to use Dr. Johnson’s favorite word.  There are real differences among race and among ethnic groups within races, taken as wholes.  Who can say with a straight face that there are no differences between, say, Swedes and Italians, or Russians and Irishmen?  How many people, looking for amusement on a Saturday evening, go to a Russian bar?  As to “sexism,” men and women are inherently different and their traditional roles reflect what we have learned over millennia about their inherent differences.  The endless stream of movies and shows in which lovely, petite young women beat up big men are fantasy.  And most men aren’t really keen on babies.

My answer when”thisist” or a “thatist” is that the name-calling is “ismism.”  “Ismism” is a magical, totemic belief that realities some people don’t like can be made to disappear by calling them names ending in “ism.”  Cultural Marxism is not unique in wanting to do away certain realities; all ideologies do that.  But none before it tried to abolish realities so fundamental, such as that there are two sexes, which are physically determined at birth.  One woman recently wrote that, when she was little, she told her mother she wanted to be a boy.  Her mother replied, “kiss your elbow.”  Go ahead, try it.  You can’t.

All this mendacity with words traces back to Frankfurt School member Herbert Marcuse’s essay on “liberating tolerance.”  Marcuse defined liberating tolerance as all movements and ideas coming from the right.  Today’s cultural Marxists are carrying that into language itself, giving words new definitions that add up to left good, right bad.  Conservatives need to see through what they are doing to words and expose it to all Americans.  Sunlight turns cultural Marxism, like other trolls, to stone.

Playing with Nuclear War

As of this writing (September 12), Ukraine's counter offensives appear to be succeeding.  The widely telegraphed offensive in the south is making some progress.  But it looks as if its primary role was deception, where it has already succeeded because Russia responded by drawing down its forces in eastern Ukraine, opening the door for the main Ukrainian counteroffensive.  That is moving forward at Blitzkrieg pace, to the point where Russian units are disintegrating.  All this is, of course, wonderful news for Ukraine and for anyone who wants to see David beat Goliath.

But interests must be matters of cold calculation, not warm emotions.  Foreign policy is more than consulting Sant’s list of who is naughty or nice.  Yes, the Russians have been beasts and their invasion of Ukraine has been criminal.  But Ukraine’s victories are not good news for America’s most vital interest.

What is that most vital interest?  Avoiding nuclear war.

Throughout the Cold War, everyone in Washington understood this.  Party did not matter, liberal or conservative was of no consequence.  The whole foreign and defense policy establishment knew we and the Soviets were walking on eggs.  The slightest mis-step could mean nuclear catastrophe.  We came close on occasion; the closest was probably during the Cuban missile crisis, when the skipper of a Soviet submarine was about to fire a nuclear torpedo at an American destroyer.  His politruk stopped him.  As the representative of the Party, he knew Moscow did not want nuclear war any more than Washington did.

But it seems all the adults in the room died and a bunch of drunk teenagers now have their fingers on the button.  Russia has hinted from the outset of its invasion of Ukraine that the nuclear option is available.  If the Russian army is beginning to disintegrate, I suspect that option is or soon will be on the table.

What would it mean?  My guess is one or more nuclear strikes in western Ukraine, aimed at the supply lines bringing in American and European weapons.  Initially, I don’t think they would attack NATO territory.  But the winds blow east to west in Europe, and the fallout could be considered a weapon on its own.

This is, of course, madness in Moscow.  President Putin regrets the break-up of the Soviet Union; some old Party hands should remind him that no Soviet leader would ever have started a nuclear war.  Had one moved to do so, he would immediately have been recognized as a Trotskyite and toppled.

Unfortunately, the situation in Washington is as bad or worse.  Some circles there are planning to respond with American nuclear strikes if Russia uses nukes in Ukraine.  But what could our targets be?  If we target Russian-held regions of Ukraine such as Donbas, we create the bizarre situation where Moscow and Washington are both nuking Ukraine.  The latter will find out what it was like to be Germany during the Thirty Years War, the place where everyone from Swedes to Spaniards fought it out.  Some German towns still have not recovered.

It does not stop there.  These same circles (hint: there’s a “neo” in their name) know this, plan to hit targets on Russian territory and are calmly discussing the fact that we might lose some east coast cities.  The U.S. military has reportedly been directed to develop contingency plans for such a situation.

Playing with nuclear war goes beyond folly.  It is insanity, plain and simple, straight out of Dr. Strangelove.

If there are any adults left in Moscow or Washington, they need to kick the teenagers out of the room, consider their interests rationally and sit down and talk.  Let us imagine the man we need, old Bismark, returns as the Ghost of Crises past (I think Turkish President Erdogan might serve as his avatar).  Here’s a draft agreement:

Russia has a legitimate interest in Ukraine, namely that it does not constitute a threat to Russia.  That means Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO, although it may join the EU.  If Ukraine succeeds in retaking Donbas, it returns to Ukraine, but as a special autonomous region with some degree of self-government and a general amnesty.  If Russia can hold it, it stays Russian.

Russia keeps Crimea, because it has historically been Russian.  Like the Donbas, the Russian corridor connecting Russia proper to Crimea stays with whoever holds it when the fighting stops.

In return for Russia getting Crimea, Ukraine gets East Prussia (now called the “Kaliningrad Oblast”) and a new, broad-gauge, heavy-haul railway connecting Konigsberg to Ukraine, giving Ukraine two seas through which it can export its agricultural products.

Finally, Russia joins an international consortium to rebuild Ukraine, with Russia allowed to concentrate its efforts in towns and cities where the population is heavily Russian.

In all this, there is one point Washington must keep in mind above all others: the United States has no vital interests at stake in Ukraine.  That is why it is insanity for us to be contemplating nuclear war.  For what?  How do we benefit?

The thought that, having avoided nuclear war with the Soviet Union for all those years, we are now planning for a nuclear war with a non-Communist Russia is beyond rational comprehension.