tR Live: Episode 13

The traditionalRIGHT staff and William S. Lind discuss the week's news every(-ish) Sunday night at 7:30 PM EST. Submit questions and comments to be read live via the chat or at send them here.

tR Live: Episode 12

The traditionalRIGHT staff and William S. Lind discuss the week's news every(-ish) Sunday night at 7:30 PM EST. Submit questions and comments to be read live via the chat or right here.

The View From Olympus: The Next Stupid Neocon War

Last week’s most important news event received remarkably little press.  According to the February 14 New York Times, shortly after landing in Poland for a major international conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed truth.  

No sooner had he landed that the prime minister’s Twitter account announced “an open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries, that are sitting down together with Israel in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran.”

In case anyone doubts that this was a case of committing truth, the Times reported that “An hour later, the Twitter posting was changed to ‘advance the common interest of combating Iran.’”

So Israel wants war with Iran, and so do several Arab states with loud voices in Washington, especially Saudi Arabia.  From an American perspective, the problem is that both the Israelis and the Saudis will want the United States to fight the war for them.

This promises to be the Iraq war all over again.  American neocons were major players then in devising a new strategy for the destruction of every Arab country that could be a threat to the Jewish state.  Iraq was first on the list.  But then, as now, America was supposed to do the fighting, take the casualties and pay the bill.  The neocons worked on a president who had little understanding of foreign policy (though Trump is a great deal brighter than W.) to do their bidding, and he fell for it.  The result was a disaster for America and the region (and, ironically, Israel).  We lost more than 5000 young Americans dead, tens of thousands wounded, trillions of dollars wasted, and the Iraqi state destroyed, to the benefit of Fourth Generation, non-state entities such as Al Qaeda and ISIS that are real threats to the U.S. and Israel, which Saddam’s Iraq was not.  We also destroyed the main regional power that was blocking Iran’s quest for regional dominance.

Now, we are supposed to make up for that blunder by going to war with Iran.  The result would likely be even worse.  Iran has three times Iraq’s population, is more competent militarily, and can cut off the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf, creating a major gas crisis here.  The Pentagon will think it can restrict the war to an air and sea contest, which we could easily win.  But the Iranians can strike back on land, going after American troops in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan and potentially ending up with thousands of American hostages.  At that point, what’s our next move?

There is also a good chance a defeated Iran would disintegrate as Iraq did, creating yet another happy hunting ground for 4GW entities.  Those entities, once again, would be far more threatening both to the region and to us than is Iran.  Indeed, it is hard to see how Iran is today such a threat to the U.S. that we must go to war.  Iran threatens Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, but a war among those countries would probably not suspend oil shipments from the Gulf for very long because they all need to export oil to keep their economies functioning.  Beyond that, how is Iran a threat to us?  Terrorist incidents in the U.S. and Europe have overwhelmingly been carried out by Sunnis, not Shiites, often Sunnis trained in madrassas funded by Saudis.

But there is a real danger to Israel here, and it does not come from Iran.  Heartland Americans are tired of wars where their kids get crippled or killed for reasons no one can explain.  The fact that the U.S. was manipulated by unregistered Israeli agents into the war in Iraq is not widely known, at least to the public.  But public reaction against a war with Iran would develop quickly and strongly.  Can Israel be certain the American people will not figure out that our troops are serving as Israel’s unpaid Hessians?  In the age of the internet, control of the mainstream media may no longer suffice to sweep the truth under the rug.  What happens if ordinary Americans in large number start pointing the finger at Israel as the cause of our latest disaster--and when they are correct to do so?

By attempting to repeat its “success” in pushing America into war with Iraq, using the same technique, Israel risks revealing the man behind the curtain.  Should the American public turn against Israel, to whom will Israel look for the external support without which it cannot survive?  It would not be the first time Israelis brought the temple down on their own heads.

Interested in what Fourth Generation war in America might look like? Read Thomas Hobbes’ new future history, Victoria.

Russia's National Character

Following the Trump administration’s announcement on February 1st of its intent to withdraw from the INF treaty in six months, Vladimir Putin has made it abundantly clear he will match an eye for eye. Speaking to Russian media on February 20, Putin claimed his country was prepared to initiate another Cuban missile crisis of 1962, this time with boomer submarine launched weapons. Any moves to station missiles closer to Russia would be met with similar deployments of Russian weapons in relation to the continental United States. 

As the Mueller investigation coasts to uneventful and wasteful end and the fog and misinformation shrouding the Russians slowly lifts, has the time come to soberly assess our relationship with our former Cold War adversary? In addition to election meddling and collusion, pundits and politicians consistently cite a litany of abuses ranging from targeted assassinations to human right’s abuses. Russia’s conduct over the last several years has clearly not been up to par with Western standards of democracy and open markets.

Diplomats, intelligence agencies, and the military provide varying degrees of explanations for Russia’s conduct, some simple, some complex. But one dimension of causation is left almost entirely unexplored: national character. 

Despite Winston Churchill’s framing of Russia as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”, examining Russia as a single actor on the world stage, possessing a unique personality akin to a singular human being, formed over many centuries, provides an intriguing and useful result and helps answer the question everyone should really be asking: What is the proper way to approach Russia today and is a better relationship possible?

On the surface national character seems straightforward and easily quantifiable. Each country’s culture is equated with a peculiar and unique form of dress, food, idiosyncrasies, and language. The average tourist can in just a few seconds conjure up visions of what it means to be German, Italian, or Spanish. 

But not only does national character exist in the physical realm, the most important aspect is in the mental and psyche. Each country could be said to have an averaged, singular national consciousness formed by wars, religion, geography, and shared history. 

Since the founding of the United States, America’s patriotic national character has been well documented. When Alexis De Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s he discovered something peculiar about the American people. Across multiple cities and geographic regions, De Tocqueville found that as soon as he moved his conversations into the realm of the American experiment in democracy our citizens would hijack the dialogue to make it abundantly clear that the United States was the most indispensable nation, the light of the world. And for the modern Americans who aren’t intimate with our country’s exceptionalism, two words will likely jar the memory: Freedom Fries.

Has a similar measurement been taken in Russia? Fortunately, it has. American reporter Hedrick Smith spent four years in the Soviet Union in the 1970s at the height of Soviet Communism. Totally immersing himself behind the Iron Curtain, he discovered something peculiar about the Russian people who Solzhenitsyn claimed were “living in Communist captivity.” Cataloging his findings in his book, The Russians, Smith cited the “Soviet obsession with overcoming historic Russian backwardness in relation to the West. Like the czars before them, Soviet leaders are driven by a burning sense of inferiority.” Smith claims, “it is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of this as a clue to Soviet relations with the West.” The Russians don’t want to be second best, they want “to be seen as the equals of their chief rivals.” (Smith’s italics)

How has this inferiority complex formed? In many ways it is due to war: pain retains. Focusing on the modern era alone highlights several examples. Following successfully absorbing Napoleon’s Grande Armee, the Russians were slow to change and on the eve of the Crimean War in 1853, her military was a poorly led and equipped peasant conscript army. As detailed in Orlando Figes’ excellent work, The Crimean War, the “ethos of the army was dominated by 18th century parade-ground culture of the tsarist court.” Following her thrashing by the modernized British and French militaries at a cost of 450,000 dead (for comparison the United States lost a similar number in World War 2), Russia again lost in 1905 to Imperial Japan, and finally her inflexible system came crashing down with another defeat in World War I, ushering in the Revolution. American empathy is difficult to come by, our only experience with physical invasion by a foreign military was brief stint of Redcoats raging in Washington during the War of 1812.

With the collapse of the USSR a new era opened for engagement with Russia. The administration of President George H.W. Bush wisely chose to give the bear its space. In exchange for German membership in NATO, promises were made to not move NATO’s eastern border “one inch closer” to Russia. This promise did not last long. In 1999 Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were added. And then in 2004 seven more countries, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Bulgaria were added. These decisions shifted the eastern border of NATO to 100 miles from St. Petersburg. During the Cold War it was 1,000 miles. Were these choices prudent given Russia’s inferiority complex? Her neighbors soon found out.

Despite vehement Russian and Western European objections, in 2008 Georgia and Ukraine were considered for NATO’s Membership Action Plan (MAP). The supercharged neoconservative Bush administration, eager to push the Freedom Agenda right up to the bear’s den, could not take no for an answer. Thinking the Americans had their backs, the Georgians under now imprisoned Saakashvili went up to the den and started poking. The bear had enough and swiped back, both in Georgia and then in Ukraine and Crimea in 2014. How would the United States feel if the President of Mexico invited Russian troops to drill in the Baja peninsula a few dozen miles from the Naval Base of San Diego?

Filtered through the Russian inferiority complex, recent Russian actions are more “clear”. In TAC-recommended The Limits of Partnership, Angela Stent examines post-Cold War US-Russian relations. In 2012 the Obama administration passed the Sergei Magnitsky Accountability and Rule of Law Act to address the questionable death of Mr. Magnitsky, a lawyer investigating embezzlement attributed to Russian law and tax enforcement officials. The bill created a visa ban list for individuals connected to his death and left open the possibility of adding more names of those deemed guilty of human rights abuses. 

The Russian reaction reportedly “surprised American officials.” The Duma passed the Dima Yakovlev Law, banning future adoptions of Russian children by Americans. Additionally, the “Kremlin announced that it had its own blacklist of U.S. officials guilty of violating human rights who could not enter Russia.” Was this list legitimate? Likely not, but through the prism of inferiority their retaliation doesn’t seem out of bounds. The Russians felt compelled to meet an eye for an eye, to be “seen as equal.”

This complex became abundantly clear in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis. Crimea had been culturally Russian since 1783 after Catherine the Great annexed the territory following a war with the Ottoman Turks. Only in 1954 did Nikita Khrushchev return the peninsula in an act of goodwill. Sevastopol remained on lease for the Russian Navy, being only one of two warm water ports (the other being Tartus in Syria), a clearly vital strategic interest. Following the election of Russian leaning Viktor Yanukovych in 2010, the lease on the port was extended from 2017 through 2042. However after Yanukovych fled in the February 2014 revolution, the rights to Sevastopol were in jeopardy and Russia had no other strategic option than to act. Launching a hybrid war of “little green men”, the Crimea was seized and a separatist conflict in Eastern Ukraine erupted. Following the downing of MH17, the United States enacted sanctions that “sharply restricted access for Russian state banks to Western capital markets, their biggest source of foreign lending.”

The Russian response to sanctions? They had to shoot back, even if it was into their own foot. They “banned food imports from all the countries that had joined the U.S.-EU sanctions.” As stores and restaurants became barren and dysfunctional, ordinary Russians sarcastically decided their new gourmet dish would be “oysters from Belarus.”

Running as an outsider, President Trump saw Russia as a possible ally and today should still be duly considered. Russia will strike back over every US attempt at encroachment or sanction. It is simply in their nature and cannot be wished away through intimidation or sanction. It is who they are. This is independent of the personal psychology of Vladimir Putin.

A better US position would be to demonstrate goodwill and move first with de-escalation of tensions in Ukraine and Syria and discuss concrete steps to find common ground in possible future security or economic cooperation. Give Russia something great to live up to and let them rise to meet it. Because as former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz have said, “isolating Russia is not a sustainable long-range policy.”

Can any Russian provocation be labeled a first move? It is hard to find one example in the last two decades. America First will never get off the ground with nuclear superpowers conveniently lined up as dragons to be slain.

The Unserious State of the Union

President Trump’s state of the Union speech to Congress was adequate as to both substance and delivery.  It included some important initiatives, such as a border barrier, ending pointless wars in Syria and Afghanistan, rebuilding  American manufacturing and improving relations with North Korea.  As the president might say, “All good”.

Of more interest, and concern, were the atmospherics within and surrounding his speech.  Both reflected a soft, sentimental, womanized culture of “feelings” that is a classic sign of decadence.  Indeed, both the president and his audience wallowed in sentiment to the point where the event simply lacked seriousness.

On the president’s part, his “celebration” of women entering the workforce and Congress was perfectly politically correct.  Unfortunately, he was elected in no small part because as a candidate he defied political correctness.  By bowing to it before Congress and the country he suggested he is now caving to the Establishment.  No doubt his remarks pleased feminists, but feminists will never vote for Donald Trump.

Had the president instead decided to be serious, he would have pointed out that when a nation’s women leave their proper sphere and try to take over the roles of men, that nation is on the downhill slide.  The problem is not merely that women firemen, women soldiers, and women pilots cannot do the men’s jobs they have assumed, at least when the going gets rough.  Far deadlier to the nation’s future is the fact that when women abandon their highly important traditional roles of rearing children, making good homes, and serving their communities in a wide variety of volunteer roles, those jobs go undone.  Men do not fill up the resulting vacuums.

Instead of fawning over the feminists, the president might have pointed out that most women who work do so because they have to, not because they want to.  They would rather be at home with their husbands and children.  For them to do that, their husbands need the good-paying jobs manufacturing creates.  That would tie helping the non- and anti-feminist women who are part of Trump’s base to his high tariff policies.  Just as America industrialized under tariff protection, so it will need tariff protection to rebuild its industry.

The culture of sentiment overflowed the president’s speech in another way, namely his repeated turning to “human interest” stories and the people behind them who stood to take their bows.  I’m sure they were all worthy of their applause.  But the whole business of dragging them into what should be a serious review of, well, the state of the Union, was trivializing.  Can Americans no longer hear and consider serious matters?  Is everything to be reduced to third-grade “show and tell”?  The answers, from Mr. Trump’s speech, seem to be “no” and “yes”.

The worrisome atmospherics were not restricted to President Trump.  Nancy’s Pelosi’s leers, grimaces, and paper shuffling were unsuited to what should be a high and serious event, a formal review of the state of our Union.  Worse were the camera pans of the audience, High Panjamdruns all, who collectively suggested a cross between bingo night at St. John Bosco and the Brezhnev Politburo.  The silly women in white--scarlet would have been a more appropriate color--acted as if they had been enjoying the champagne from an early hour.  Had the whole event been presented as a satire to itself, would it have been any different?

The harsh reality is that the state of the Union is not good.  The bonds that hold us in union are weakening.  As the Establishment takes ever more extreme actions to force cultural Marxism down everyone’s throat--just look at the farce in Virginia, where a bit of shoe polish from 35 years ago is supposed to drive a governor from office--the people who live in the Heartland are saying, “Why should we knuckle down to this nonsense?  If that’s all the elite can do, let’s let them row their own boat while we sail ours.”

If the Union is to endure, its people will have to recover an ability to be serious.  Serious problems demand masculine facts and reason, not feminine feelings.  Women have a vital role in our society, but pretending they are men is not one of them.  A Congress full of women will not be able to make decisions necessary to reverse our decay, restore a common purpose, and set us on a new collective course.  Designing, building, and sailing a ship of state is a job for a team of men, not a bridal shower.

Interested in what Fourth Generation war in America might look like? Read Thomas Hobbes’ new future history, Victoria.

The View From Olympus: Following the Classic Pattern

Great powers tend to follow a similar pattern of rise, a short time of dominance, overextension, and fall.  It is ever more clear that this country is following the classic pattern.  Our period of dominance ran roughly from 1945 to 1965; its end was marked by our defeat in Vietnam.  We are now in the latter stages of the phase of overextension.  Fall, I suspect, lies around the next corner.

The evidence is all around us.  The most dramatic is the Senate’s recent vote to oppose President Trump’s efforts to withdraw from Syria and Afghanistan, withdrawals that would reduce our overextension.  The legislation was drafted by the Republican Majority Leader, Senator McConnell, and received overwhelming Republican support.  But the vote (technically a vote to cut off debate but indicative of the line-up on the substance) of 68 to 23 showed many Democrats also voted for continuing our overextension.  When the fall comes, neither party will have clean hands.

I would like to be able to say President Trump grasps the root problem, but as the pernicious neo-con influence on him grows, he too is stoking the fires of overextension.  His withdrawal from the treaty with Russia that limited intermediate-range missiles is one example.  His action is in direct opposition to his promise as a candidate to improve relations with Russia.  Instead, he has ended up driving Russia and China into alignment against us, giving this country an entirely avoidable rising threat to its diminishing power.

Another case of pushing our overextension further is the mad notion of intervening militarily in Venezuela.  Not surprisingly, two neocons, National Security Advisor John Bolton and Senator Marco Rubio, have concocted this witches’ brew.  The neocons cannot grasp the rule, demonstrated in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, that if you break it, you own it.  I’m sure Bolton is assuring yet another Republican president that if we intervene we will be met with cheers and flowers.  Don’t count on it.  The Latins would rather govern themselves badly than be “helped” to better government by American troops.

Why are we, and so many other countries before us, incapable of recognizing their overextensions and reducing their commitments?  Three factors seem to be in play.  The first is money.  The Washington Establishment makes heaps of money from a “defense” budget sized to rule the world.  Whether as campaign contributions, jobs and contracts after they leave office, or payments to family members working as lobbyists, senior Washington figures, civilian and military, are experts in “cashing in”.  Many arrive in Washington poor, but few leave poor.  Our trillion-dollar “national security” trough is the biggest in the world and the pigs have their snouts in it up to their ears.

Another cause is the psychological benefits of playing the “big man”.  Senators, generals, admirals, and high administration officials all like to swagger around the world, propping up their often fragile egos by representing “the only hyperpower”, “the indispensable nation”, and the like.  Modesty does not become them, or they would not have spent a lifetime crawling up the Establishment ladder in the first place.  They take any reduction in America’s world role as a personal hit to their own prestige.

Thirdly, the Washington and broader military elites insulate themselves from reality and from failure.  What subordinate dares tell a general that we have lost our recent wars?  Who among Senate staffers wants to be the bearer of bad news to his boss?  Our elites spend a great deal of effort making sure they do not come face-to-face with reality. In that, they are successful, if not in much else.

And so, regardless of what party is in power, our overextension will continue and even grow, until it all comes down in a heap.  I think that reckoning is coming soon.  In the meantime, if President Trump decides not to run again, a perfect replacement is waiting in the wings, someone to whom our situation would be entirely familiar.  Does anyone happen to know the email address of the Count-Duke of Olivares?

Interested in what Fourth Generation war in America might look like? Read Thomas Hobbes’ new future history, Victoria.

tR Live: Episode 11

The traditionalRIGHT staff and William S. Lind discuss the week's news. Submit questions and comments to be read live via the chat or right here.

What the President Should Have Said

The failure of President Trump’s attempt to coerce the Democratic House of Representatives into funding the border wall was inevitable.  The Democrat’s strategy requires open borders.  That strategy, about which the Left has been quite open, is to swamp the votes of native-born Americans in a sea of immigrant votes.  The Democrats will not support measures that contradict their strategic requirements.

The president’s failure was turned into something of a rout by his attempt to couple the border wall to funding the government.  While the president’s base was not directly hurt by the shut-down, many of his supporters identified with the middle-class wage-earners who were not getting paid.  When those people began going off the job in order to get part-time work to pay the bills, the consequences, such as disruptions to air travel, forced the president to capitulate.  He was defeated, and his threat to shut down the government again in a few weeks would merely bring another defeat.

Here is where a curious characteristic of the Trump Administration again came to the fore.  All presidents suffer legislative defeats.  Previous president’s have had staffs that helped them minimize their failures by spinning them in creative ways.  As an old saying goes, politics is showbiz for ugly people.  Just as in Hollywood, the top people in Washington have had dozens of flacks, image-shapers, and spinmeisters who know how to put lipstick on a pig, wrap it in swaddling clothes and present it as Little Orphan Annie.

But President Trump does not.  He was left twisting slowly in the wind, by himself, able to call only on his own resources (which fortunately are considerable).  The result not only hurt him, it cost him an opportunity to hurt his enemies.

Let us imagine I had received a telegram from the White House, delivered by Western Union messenger riding a bicycle, requesting me to draft some remarks for the president for the occasion.  Here’s what I would have him say:

Once again, the Left-wingers who run the Democratic Party have refused to defend America and its citizens from invasion.  They demand that we leave our southern border open to anyone who wants to cross.  Millions of people have come here illegally across the border and the Democrats want millions more to do so.

The American people need to understand why the Democrats want open borders.  It is not because they want to be nice to little children.  The Democrats have a strategy for taking and keeping power in this country.  That strategy is to flood the country with immigrants whom they will register to vote, whether they are legal or illegal immigrants.  They expect those immigrants to vote Democratic so they can swamp the votes of native-born Americans in a sea of immigrant votes.  They plan to make every American a stranger in his own country.  They want to make foreigners the real rulers through a corrupted ballot box.

I know the Democrats in the House will not vote to fund the border defenses we need.  They are not going to vote to undermine their strategy for taking power.

Therefore, I will tomorrow meet with the Chairman and Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  I will give them a direct order to secure our southern border.  I will leave it up to them how best to do that.

I want to use our military to defend America and its citizens, not fight wars half-way across the world for reasons that are far from clear.  To those who may object to using the military, I ask you, what are our armed forces for if not to protect us from invasion?  Invasions by whole peoples are what brought down the Roman empire.  I will not allow such invasions to destroy us the same way.

I have not declared a national emergency because I do not need to do so and because I think it would set a bad precedent, a precedent other presidents could use in the future to harm this country rather than defend it.  As Commander-in-Chief I can give an order to the U.S. military without declaring an emergency, and that is what I will do.

The government shut-down made it clear the Democrats would rather deprive hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans of their paychecks than secure our southern border.  Now, we will pay those hard-working people and secure the border.  

I call that a win.

Interested in what Fourth Generation war in America might look like? Read Thomas Hobbes’ new future history, Victoria.

tR Live: Episode 10

The traditionalRIGHT staff and William S. Lind discuss the week's news. Submit questions and comments to be read live via the chat or right here.

His Majesty's Birthday, or, Look Who's Back

Having been to Hell and back last year with His Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II, my reporting senior, I was by no means certain what might result this year from my annual call to congratulate him on his birthday, January 27.  The British had again been fooling around with our transatlantic cables, so I decided to go “hi-tech”, using Telefunken’s new wireless telegraphy to Potsdam via the big sender at Nauen.  I was surprised when, seemingly not getting through, my telephone rang.  On the other end was His Majesty.

“You got through all right, never fear.  The Russians were supposed to jam our signals to and from Nauen, but we sent them a trainload of vodka and they’re still sleeping it off.  London is leaving our phone lines alone now, after we dropped ten tons of Leberkäse on them in a zeppelin raid.  I’ve heard they are shipping most of it to Scotland where the locals take it for fois gras, or so Dr. Johnson told me.”

“Dr. Johnson can always be relied on when it comes to the Scotts, Your Majesty,” I replied.  “And happy birthday.”

“Thank you, and it is a happy one, for reasons you will soon understand.  It looks as if I will soon be going home.”

That puzzled me.  I went to Doorn, in the Netherlands, this summer, to see where Kaiser Wilhelm lived in exile and where he is entombed.  I know his will specified that he is not to be returned to Germany until that country is again a monarchy.  Could that day be near at hand?

“You’ll see it all plain enough from L-70.  Look for us from your front yard three days hence,” His Majesty said.  “Be ready for some high-altitude flying.”

L-70 was one of our “height-climber” Zeppelins that could rise up to 26,000 feet.  I had heard it was not a pleasant experience, since they were neither pressurized nor heated.  As it happened, I had heard right.

It’s hard missing a Zeppelin hovering low over a Cleveland street, and three days later His Majesty welcomed me on board.  We dropped a couple tons of water ballast, set the elevators for climbing and rose with remarkable rapidity.  No English aeroplane could win a climbing contest with a Zeppelin.

Long before 26,000 feet I was gasping and puking.  The bottled oxygen reduced the former but increased the latter.  His Majesty gave me a hearty slap on the back and told me to buck up.  We hit 26,000 and kept rising.

“Good God, how high is this thing going?” I asked dejectedly.

“High enough to see the future,” His Majesty replied.  At that, I passed out.

When I came to, all was well again.  We were cruising about 500 feet above the beautiful German countryside.  Every town seemed to be staging some sort of political rally or civic event.  Change was in the air.

“What’s going on?” I asked the Kaiser.  

“Some very interesting politics,” he replied.  “Let me fill you in.  The rise of the Alternative fur Deutschland (AFD) party gave Germans a truly German party.  But the broader growth of what has been termed “populism” in Germany and elsewhere didn't stop there.  The AFD was a normal, respectable party.  But to its right soon arose something less respectable.  Calling itself the Nationale Deutsche Abiturlose Partei (NDAP), roughly the “National German Party for People Without Degrees,” this party hearkened back not to my Second Reich but to the Third.”

“The NDAP didn’t amount to much until it found a leader,” the Kaiser continued.  “He was an entertainer, a man of uncertain origins who called himself Adolf Hitler, looked like Hitler and seemingly never stepped out of his role.  Like the man he impersonated, he was a highly effective speaker and organizer and a man with a powerful, I would say unstoppable, will to power.”

“It’s a Look Who’s Back scenario!” I said excitedly.

“Yes, indeed, it was Er Ist Wieder Da.  And it had to be stopped.  As a Hohenzollern, the last thing I wanted was to see was Germany again led by an Austrian corporal, first as tragedy and then as farce.”

“So on the night before Christmas, I paid a visit to my descendent Georg Friedrich, the present head of the House of Hohenzollern and rightful King of Prussia and German Kaiser.”

“Did Mr. Dickens perhaps suggest this course?” I asked.

“I recalled it from when I had read Dickens,” His Majesty replied.  “But he was delighted.”

“Anyway, I told Georg Friedrich in no uncertain terms to get off his backside and stop this nonsense, as I would have stopped the Nazis if I had still been Kaiser.  You can thank Woodrow Wilson that I wasn’t.”

“The worst American President ever,” I added.  “He gave the world both Stalin and Hitler.”

“He did, but I wasn’t about to let it happen again.  I told Georg Friedrich to go talk to the AFD.  They needed to shore up their right flank and he was the man to do it.”

“Anyway, he took my advice as Mr. Scrooge took Marley’s and as a result the AFD made Georg Friedrich its leader and he won.  This time, the Left had the sense to back the legitimate ruler instead of leaving the door open for you know who.  In truth, Ebert never wanted me to go.”

“And now Germans have come to their senses and are today rallying and celebrating because the restoration of the monarchy is before the Reichstag and everyone except the NDAP is for it.  Which means I will finally be going home.  And Prussia is back on the map!”

“It seems I have much more to congratulate Your Majesty on this year than another birthday,” I offered.  “I hope this won’t mean we lose our connection.”

“Not at all, my friend, not at all,” the Kaiser assured me.  “I’ve already asked the Garde du Corps to admit you to its mess.”

Interested in what Fourth Generation war in America might look like? Read Thomas Hobbes’ new future history, Victoria.

Liberal Democracy is a Contradiction

The November 2 New York Times carried an article titled “What is Pulling Liberal Democracy Apart?”  The article itself was the usual drivel, but the title stuck with me.  The Establishment really does not understand why its definition of “liberal democracy” is failing. Yet the answer is obvious: “liberal” now contradicts “democracy”.

This was not always true.  When “liberal” retained its historic meaning as broad-minded, generous, and tolerant, desirous of a free market both in economics and in ideas, it was at least compatible with democracy, although there were tensions.  As a look at classical Athens quickly shows, democracy often went in distinctly illiberal directions.  Cleon was a product of democracy, just as much as Pericles, and it was not a monarch who ordered Socrates to drink the hemlock.  Nonetheless, in America and Britain, from the mid-19th century onward the old liberalism and democracy got along reasonably well.

Why is that no longer the case?  Why, in country after country, does the Left find democracy leading to governments (Trump, Orban, Putin) and measures (Brexit, keeping out migrants) liberals abhor?  Because the old liberalism is dead.  It died in the 1960s when the New Left took its arguments to the extreme, turned them against the old-line liberals and destroyed them morally by pointing out their contradictions.  I watched that happen at Dartmouth College in the late 1960s when I was a student there.  All the liberals who ran the college could do when the SDS threw their own arguments (always qualified, in the liberals’ minds, by common sense) back in their faces was to stammer and yield.

Herbert Marcuse provided the intellectual foundations of the New Left by feeding them the Frankfurt School’s cultural Marxism, carefully pureed into baby food.  Cultural Marxism became the ideology of the Boomer generation, and it remains today that generation’s definition of liberalism.  It is, in the old sense of the word, thoroughly illiberal: intolerant, ungenerous, narrow-minded, loathing free markets of all kinds, especially a free market in ideas.  Just look at any campus where cultural Marxism rules, which seems to be most of them.  Anyone who dares question feminism, “gay rights”, “equality” in any of its manifestations, is soon in serious trouble.  All must bow and scrape before the “general line of the Party”.

That “liberalism”, liberalism re-defined as cultural Marxism, is inherently contradictory to democracy.  Why?  Because normal people reject the swill.  Ordinary Whites don’t apologize for being White or regard themselves as “oppressors”.  Reasonable men and women recognize the sexes are not interchangeable.  While most people are willing to tolerate homosexuality, they reject a demand to approve of it, and they think discretion is the tribute vice of all sorts should pay to virtue.

The cultural Marxists have sought to deal with a widespread and growing democratic rejection of their ideology by subverting democracy.  They have done so by trying to keep any alternatives to themselves off the ballots.  For a long while, both here and in Europe, they succeeded.

But that trick has run its course.  People now see through “conservatism” such as that of too many Republicans here, the Conservative Party in Britain, the CDU in Germany and so on.  A “conservatism” that will not fight cultural Marxism, as those parties will not, is no conservatism at all.  So real conservative candidates and parties, candidates and parties that reject the whole Establishment and its ideology, are now getting on ballots and, where they do so, winning elections.  When ordinary people are not allowed a truly democratic choice, they vote against today’s liberalism and for their historic faith, culture, and race.  What a surprise!

And so the Left is now caught in a contradiction of its own making, a contradiction between its ideology of cultural Marxism, labelled “liberalism” or “progressivism”, and its promotion of democracy.  It can have one or the other, but not both.  At present, it cannot choose.  Eventually it will, and its choice will be to extinguish democracy and forbid people to vote for anything but more cultural Marxism.  If we get to that point it will mean war.

You can safely bet this was not the analysis the New York Times provided its readers on what is pulling liberal democracy apart.

Kirsten Gillibrand's #MeToo Origin Story

With the announcement of New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s 2020 Presidential bid, the field of candidates for the Democratic Party continues to expand in all directions. Senator Gillibrand, who served shortly from 2006 to 2008 in her state’s 20th Congressional district before ascending to the New York Senate seat left vacant by Hillary Clinton’s selection for Secretary of State in the Obama administration, will undoubtedly have her hands full against a star-studded cast vying for the chance to engage in mortal combat with President Trump in 2020.

Winning election in 2006 in traditionally center-Right upstate New York, Senator Gillibrand entered the political stage conforming to her constituents. As reported by TAC in 2009, her campaign came out against amnesty and illegal immigration, sounded off for fiscal restraint and responsibility, and even held the line on gun rights. Today, however, the same cannot be said of her initial political persuasions. Her race to wokeness has been nothing short of alarming, or depending on who you ask, inspiring. Consider a Tweet from December 4th that generated significant buzz, the Senator declaring “The future is: Female, Intersectional, Powered by our belief in one another. And we are just getting started.” 

While diving into her past political contradictions is a worthy project, one position she has held resolutely over the last decade has been with respect to sexual assault and the #MeToo movement. Beginning around summer 2017, the #MeToo movement rose quickly into the national spotlight, snaring high level figures in Hollywood like Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein, politicians like Al Franken, and even funnymen like Louis C.K. But unbeknownst to the average civilian, the #MeToo movement has been festering in the military for quite a few years, with military men of all ranks fighting like lions to save their names and careers, and Senator Gillibrand has been leading the charge since her first days as a Senator.

Her work began as a member of the Senate Armed Services committee, introducing the Military Justice improvement Act (S1752) in 2013 and then, after it failed to gain traction, again in 2014. What was the gist of these bills? After sorting through the mountains of data her office rolls out, and arcane language the military is now intimately familiar with like restricted and unrestricted reporting and retaliation, the Senator’s main point of contention was this: adjudication authority. From her 2014 Bases Report, the “military system allows a commander, who could be in the direct chain of command of the accused and have minimal legal or criminal behavior expertise, to decide whether or not to prosecute.” And from her bill, the “reform moves the decision over whether to prosecute serious crimes to independent, trained, professional military prosecutors.”

What is the logic behind these bills and is it a sound, accurate depiction of how the military justice system operates? As Senator Gillibrand notes, there is a large disconnect between accusations of sexual misconduct and one, those that go to a trial for prosecution, and two, convictions for those cases which have their day in court. For example, in the 2014 Bases Report, which analyzed 329 cases across four major military installations, “just 22% of the 329 cases went to trial. Of those, only about 10% of these 329 sexual assault suspects were convicted of a sexual assault crime.” Note the language of the report. Just 22%, only 10%. It’s almost as if the report is insinuating that to be accused of sexual misconduct implies guilt of sexual misconduct. Sound familiar? 

And digging further into the 2012 Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) report, there were a total of 26,000 estimated cases of Unwanted Sexual Contact (USC) across the Pentagon. This estimation was calculated by analyzing the results of the 2012 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Members (WGRA). USC can range from inappropriate touching all the way up to and including rape. Gillibrand’s Senate page highlights that this represents around 6% of the female force and 1.2% of the male force. Not wanting to blaspheme the #MeToo gospel mystery that only women are victims and only men are guilty, Gillibrand omitted what the Washington Times noted concerning the 2012 SAPRO report. With an active duty male force of 1.2 million men and 200,000 women, these stats translate to 14,000 men and 12,000 women being victims of USC. Also in the 2012 report, which consists of hundreds of pages of slides and pie charts, only 3,374 total reports were filed, 302 went to trial, and of those 238 were convicted of a crime. So Senator Gillibrand’s reasoning is if there are so many allegations but few reports and almost no convictions, surely something must be wrong with the military justice system, which must be altered. The goal is results, convictions, to hell with due process.

Gillibrand is correct that military judges are not the ones making the adjudication decision, a yea or nay, it rests with military commanders, whose occupational training focuses on something outside of law like infantry, logistics, or aviation. She claims that only military judges should decide, not those untrained in legal matters. In the Marines when a command is gathering information and evidence for a sexual misconduct case, the O-6 or Colonel level commander decides whether to adjudicate a case. The decision is made with the advice and counsel of Marine lawyers known as Judge Advocate Generals, or JAGs, who also review and examine the preliminary findings. Gillibrand is under the delusion that a Marine pilot or infantry officer, ignorant of criminal law, is single handedly reviewing and deciding the fate of thousands of sexual assault cases. This would indeed be troubling, but her summary of the issue is a gross misrepresentation of the truth. These commanders draw on the advice and recommendation of military lawyers who have reviewed the cases, and then they decide. Why is there such a disconnect between accusations and adjudication and conviction then? Well, as in any criminal case, evidence is required. Without witnesses, corroboration, a he-said-she-said case cannot expect to survive in court. As noted above, of the 302 cases in 2012 that did receive a trial, 238 were convicted of a crime, indicating that a strong majority of cases referred for prosecution were legally sound. 

Of all the blessings of English law bestowed upon our country by our Founding Fathers, surely one of the most sacred and underappreciated is the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. If you are accused of a crime--any crime--your character, your employment, your personal life, and your good name should be left completely intact until found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And well before the national soap opera of Kavanaugh v. Ford, countless other military men were starring in similar movies to defend their names. Men like Major Mark Thompson, an instructor at the Naval Academy, who in 2013 was found not guilty of sexual assault, guilty of five lesser offenses such as conduct unbecoming an officer and fraternization, only to have all the charges dropped at a subsequent military board of inquiry that was initially setup to discharge him from the service entirely. Or consider the case of Trent Cromartie, a West Point cadet who was charged with sexual assault of a fellow cadet, found not guilty, but then expelled anyway, his military career evaporating before his eyes. What about these men’s lives? Does anyone care for their situation?

Senator Gillibrand never misses the chance to voice her outrage at this “crisis”, and more recently she publicly flayed the Commandant of the Marine Corps over a nude photo sharing scandal that rocked the service. All allegations of USC should be taken seriously, because it is a serious matter. But should she and her fellow justice warriors really be surprised that allegations of USC are higher in the military compared to the civilian world? After all, in her book Off the Sidelines, she reminisces about her time in an all-girls high school, “as for boys, I was distracted enough just thinking about them.” Do readers really need reminded of the differences between the male and female sexes when it comes to hormones? The military recruits young, usually single, aggressive men to fight and win the country’s wars. If you think you can mix those men among a similar age group of women and expect saintly conduct you are naïve, especially when recruits are drawn from a culture that encourages sexual liberation. Or as General Mattis said in 2015, “when you mix arrows, and you mix affection for one another that could be manifested sexually, I don’t care where you go (in) history, you will not find where this has worked”. But then again, progressives usually aren’t fans of history, the hypothetical future is where they always look for answers.

The military has been watching the #MeToo movie for several years but with the crucifixion of Brett Kavanaugh, an inflection point has been reached. And now the boomerang is coming back. As Senator Gillibrand said during the Kavanaugh hearings in reference to Christine Blasely Ford, “I believe her.” That’s all well and good, one can believe in God, but belief isn’t evidence, and belief isn’t proof. And in English law, thank God, evidence and proof are required. The Presidential candidacy of Senator Gillibrand will be a public trial for the #MeToo movement, and hopefully the populace will bring the gavel down forcefully against this movement for the good names it has so shamelessly attacked and defamed in its race for “justice”.

Read Jeff Groom's satirical memoir about his time in the Marine Corps: American Cobra Pilot: A Marine Remembers a Dog and Pony Show.

The View From Olympus: Helping the Infantry

Although former Marine General James Mattis proved a disappointment as Secretary of Defense, he began one initiative that deserves to continue.  Called the Close Combat Lethality Task Force (CCLTF), this joint Army-Marine Corps program is aimed at improving the effectiveness and survivability of the men who do most of the dying in combat, the infantry. Such an effort is long overdue and deserves substantial funding, as Secretary Mattis intended.

However, as presently conceived the CCLTF has some problems. They begin with a misplaced focus on improving squad lethality.  Lethality and effectiveness are not the same thing. In maneuver warfare, including maneuver tactics at the small unit level, most of the enemy end up prisoners, not dead or wounded. Modern, i.e. Third Generation, tactics are not “close with and destroy”, much less “ bombard and attrit”. Rather, as demonstrated by the German infantry in 1918, they are tactics intended to “bypass and collapse”.  If you are constantly appearing in your enemy's rear and encircling him, he tends to give up.

From this perspective, I found it dismaying that none of the papers I have seen about the CCLTF have discussed the first requirement for helping our infantry, namely modernizing our infantry tactics and training. Modern tactics means at the very least adopting the “infiltration tactics” of the German infantry of 1918. Ideally, we should go beyond those tactics and adopt their more developed form, Jaeger or true light infantry tactics (what the U.S. Army and Marine Corps call “light infantry” lacks the Jaeger tactical repertoire and is really line infantry). Training must be in the new tactics, not the obsolete Second Generation tactics we now employ where the infantry's main task is to call in remote fires. 

That points to another problem in the CCLTF’s current approach: it places little emphasis on expanding opportunities for free-play training. While techniques and procedures can be taught in “canned” exercises, tactics can only be practiced in a free-play environment where the enemy can do whatever he wants to defeat you. At present, neither U.S. Army soldiers nor U.S. Marines get that much if any free-play training. Changing that should be one of the CCLTF’s highest priorities.

Rightly, the CCLTF is not emphasizing new equipment; better tactics and training are more important. But the CCLTF can and should sponsor an experiment with one piece of equipment most of our enemies have and our infantry does not, the RPG. I have asked combat-experienced Marine commanders at the tactical levels whether our infantry is at a disadvantage in Afghanistan because we lack the RPG, and most have said yes. If we look at Fourth Generation, non-state fighters around the world, we see many if not most carry an RPG.  It would not be difficult or expensive to design and run a test where we put an infantry squad or platoon through a series of problems, once with their current equipment and once with that equipment augmented with RPGs, one for each man (with reloads). If the RPGs make an important difference, they are inexpensive and widely available. We could equip our infantry with them in a very short time.

The CCLTF is also correct in emphasizing the need for changes in the personnel system so our infantry units can become and remain cohesive. Unit cohesion is the basis for why men fight: they fight for their buddies. But cohesion requires one thing the CCLTF dares not discuss (but I can): that infantry and other combat units be all-male. If women are present, the men will not cohere because they will view each other as rivals for the favors of the women. In combat, they will drop the mission to protect the women. This is human nature, and human nature is always more powerful than ideology, including feminist ideology. Combat is the ultimate “real world,” and in the real world all ideologies fail.

As important as Secretary Mattis’s CCLTF initiative is, the regrettable fact is that with his departure, the planned funding is likely to be cut or vanish entirely. If that happens, it may still be possible to help the infantry with a “bottom up” effort. Recently, some company-grade Marine officers and SNCOs has informed me about the Warfighting Society, a group within the Marine Corps modeled on Scharnhorst’s Militarische Gesellschaft. It would be both appropriate and useful if the Warfighting Society would do as Scharnhorst and his colleagues did and take on the problem of helping the infantry.  What the system cannot do without lots of money, thinking individuals can do.  Anyone wanting to participate can contact the Warfighting Society here. 

Interested in what Fourth Generation war in America might look like? Read Thomas Hobbes’ new future history, Victoria.

The View From Olympus: The Pentagon Declares Bankruptcy

According to the December 28 New York Times, the Pentagon has finally made its moral and intellectual bankruptcy official.  With regard to our failed war in Afghanistan, the Times reported that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., said that the Taliban “are not losing.”  The general is correct.  The Taliban are not losing because they have won.  All that remains is working out the details of their assumption of power and our departure.  To his credit, President Trump recognizes that reality.

But merely presiding over our defeat is apparently not enough for General Dunford.  In a truly breathtaking admission of strategic incompetence and intellectual bankruptcy, the general went on to say according to the Times,

“If someone has a better idea than we have right now, which is to support the Afghans and put pressure on the terrorist groups in the region, I'm certainly open to dialogue on that,” General Dunford said at a panel sponsored by The Washington Post earlier this month.

Wow. I doubt Moltke Jr. or even Keitel, whom the Fuehrer described as having the mind of a hotel doorman, sank that low.  Has General Dunford considered asking the chairwoman who cleans his office? Perhaps he could talk to his milkman or egg lady.  Certainly his driver should be consulted; after all he has some idea where he is going, which general Dunford, after sixteen years of war and several thousand American dead, admittedly does not.  In the long annals of military incompetence that's still one for the history books. Clio should award General Dunford the Golden Trash Can, First Class, with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds.

Let us imagine, for a moment, that we are a Prussian officer sent to advise General Dunford on how to turn a lost war around (That's what happens when you fart at the dinner table on board the Hohenzollern).  Taking the General’s statement quoted above as a description of his strategy, we see that “supporting the Afghans” has no meaning because it is a war of Afghans against Afghans.  As to “putting pressure on the terrorist groups”, “terrorists” simply means “the other side” and “pressure” means tactical pinpricks with no strategic impact.  It is seldom possible to reverse strategic failure at the tactical level, and kleckern, nicht klotzen is a prescription for failure at all levels of war.

So to begin we need to shift our focus to a strategic level. I suspect even General Dunford knows that the Taliban’s strategic center of gravity is its support by Pakistan. Take that away, and the Taliban is walking on air. How might that be done?  Recognize that so long as the current Afghan government is aligned with India, Pakistan has no choice but to support the Taliban.  Pakistan's threat is India, and Pakistan needs Afghanistan as an ally to offer it some strategic depth. Above all, it cannot have a hostile Afghanistan putting Pakistan in a two-front situation. So our first step is to give the current Afghan government a (secret, not public) ultimatum: cut all ties to India and become a loyal and subservient ally of Pakistan.  If they won't, our troops and money go home. The money, more than the troops, will concentrate their thinking.

When the Taliban sees this move and realizes the strategic threat it represents, offer them a peace that secures our limited objective while rewarding them.  Our objective going into Afghanistan was to deprive Al Qaeda of a base.  We have no quarrel with the Taliban per se.  So, we offer to recognize a Taliban-led Afghanistan as long as they do not invite back groups that seek to attack the American homeland.  Al Qaeda have worn out its welcome in Afghanistan before 9/11 and it now has more useful bases in other countries.  Plus, the Taliban is already fighting ISIS within Afghanistan. As part of a peace deal, we could offer to support the Taliban in that fight, not with troops but with the all-important ammunition in 4GW, money.

I doubt General Dunford will be willing to heed Prussian advice.  But if he's asking the whole world for input, he might recall that these services send their best and brightest young officers to serve the members of The Joint Chiefs of Staff.  As Chairman, he is well within his rights to say to those young officers, many who will have served in Afghanistan, what he said on the Post’s panel: if you've got better ideas than what we are now doing, please share them with me.  I suspect he would to get some useful feedback, perhaps along the lines I’ve outlined here.

Or he could just ask the chairwoman. Even she is likely to come up with something better than doing more of what has not worked in sixteen years.

Interested in what Fourth Generation war in America might look like? Read Thomas Hobbes’ new future history, Victoria.

tR Live: Episode 8

William S. Lind and the tR editors discuss the week’s news. Submit questions for the panel in the live chat or email here.

The Close Combat Lethality Task Force

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has created a “Close Combat Lethality Task Force” to fix problems with U.S. infantry forces.  The vast majority of these forces are found in the Army and Marine Corps.  Many of the task force’s ideas are encapsulated in a book by Major General Bob Scales, U.S. Army (Retired), called Scales on War.  In this book, General Scales calls for a comprehensive program to improve the lethality of U.S. infantry.  

The fundamental problem is that Scales has misunderstood the changes occurring in modern war.  Scales’ thoughts on past changes in war are muddled.  While he vaguely mentions changes in war as a result of societal changes, he provides a framework broken into “epochs”, each of which is defined by technological changes.  This leads naturally into a solution in which technology plays a central role.

Unfortunately, technology is neither the problem nor the answer.  If it were, the United States would not have difficulty defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan (as just one example).  War has changed and we are now facing Fourth Generation adversaries.  This change in war is based not on technology, but on who fights and what they fight for (as Martin Van Creveld has argued).  The truth is the U.S. military is poorly adapted to fighting Fourth Generation wars, where “lethality” can be disadvantageous.  Nowhere in Scales’ book does he demonstrate any understanding of this.

Scales also confuses tactics with strategy.  Scales believes American military ineffectiveness can be attributed to poorly trained infantry.  The solution is equally simple: provide massive resources to improve training and equipment and victory will be assured.  

This is a serious misunderstanding of what has gone wrong in U. S. military involvements since World War II.  American infantry can certainly benefit from better selection and training, but this will not cure the strategic disease which is crippling the U.S. military establishment.  One can have legions of the most effective and efficient killers the world has ever seen and still lose a war with poor strategy.

The United States has committed troops to poorly defined, poorly understood, and unwinnable conflicts yet demanded victory.  Senior military leaders who are little more than bureaucrats in uniform and lack either military sense or the ability to speak truth to power seem to do little more than nod when asked if the military can accomplish the mission.  The result in Vietnam was a disaster.  Although U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is still ongoing, after nearly 18 years and 16 years respectively, can anyone seriously believe victory is still possible?

In advocating improved infantry, Scales provides a tactical solution to an operational and strategic problem.  He does not understand that in war, results at a higher level trump those at a lower level.  Back in 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recognized that the United States could not kill or capture its way to victory in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Scales does not understand this.

Scales believes strategic victory can be won by stacking up tactical victories (and enemy bodies).  Unfortunately, war does not always work this way and this method has entirely failed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Whether the Close Combat Lethality Task Force ultimately achieves anything other than spending a lot of money remains to be seen.  What is beyond question is that even if the program is wildly successful and the effectiveness of American infantry increases dramatically, until we gain a better understanding of Fourth Generation war, increased body counts will not improve our military’s ability to win wars.  If General Scales is providing a roadmap for our military, we are likely going in the wrong direction.

The View From Olympus: Another Personnel Blunder

On policy matters, President Trump usually does well when he follows his instincts.  But that does not appear to be the case on personnel decisions.  His worst, to date, was choosing John Bolton as his National Security Advisor.  We are already paying for that decision in worsening relations with a number of other countries.

If, on the one hand, you are going to raise the risk of hostilities, on the other hand you should be improving the quality of your military leaders.  But in another poor personnel decision, President Trump has chosen Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).  The combination of Bolton and Milley would be like choosing Ribbentrop to run your foreign policy and Graziani to command your army in the resulting wars.

By the low standards we set for our senior military leaders, Milley is not especially awful.  His main sin, which he shares with his colleagues atop the other services, is doing nothing about the fact that the Army is a Second Generation military in a Fourth Generation war.

Actually, in a way, General Milley did do something about that: he made it official.  Not long ago, he ordered the U.S. Army to return to its World War II-era uniforms, the so-called “pinks and greens”.  As costumes, the old/new uniforms will be a great improvement.  The fact that they are costumes recognizes the reality that a Second Generation army is useless for a real war and exists only to stage public entertainments.  All our Second Generation services are like armored knights on horseback in the 16th century.  Their heavy plate armor has reached its highest stage of perfection, but real battlefields are filling up with low-born musketeers and the knights “fight” only in tournaments, where damsels swoon, someone is occasionally unhorsed and nothing is decided.

I am hopeful that General Milley will do as Chairman of the JCS what he has done as Army Chief of Staff and make the theatrical nature of the other services official too.  The Air Force will go back to biplanes that stage dogfights over NFL football games.  Ironically, that might also make it more combat effective in the air, at least in what really counts, supporting the man on the ground.  World War I ground-support aircraft such as the Halberstadt and Hannoveraner CL IIs are better suited by far to the close air support mission than are F-35s.  And Fokker D VIIs are usually ready to fly and fight, which means they can easily defeat F-22s stuck in their hangers by their enormous maintenance requirements. 

The Navy tried to make its irrelevance official in the 1980s by bringing back the battleships, which look very impressive.  That effort, however, failed, because it did not go back far enough.  Chairman Milley, I hope, will direct the Navy to start building some new Constitution-class frigates, which will not only put on splendid shows on Navy Day but will require real sailors to man them, which might in turn compel the Navy to find some.  The new Zumwalt-class destroyers already look like zombie versions of C.S.S. Virginia; why not build some real Monitors and Confederate ironclads and stage naval battles in the Reflecting Pool, as the Romans used to do in the Coliseum (which could be flooded)?  And bringing back airships like Akron and Macon will wow the public while doing what the Ford-class carriers cannot, namely launch and recover airplanes (both of those airships carried Sparrowhawk scout aircraft).

The Marine Corps should not be touched.  Its continued focus on making amphibious landings on heavily defended beaches had already rendered it son et lumiere.

Regrettably, these wonderful follow-ons to the pinks and greens require vision, and general Milley has none.  We can, however, probably count on him to try to push the new Physical Fitness Test he decreed for the Army down the other services’ throats, so they too can witness a mass exodus of their staff NCOs.  Staff NCOs are the backbone of any military in combat, but what does combat have to do with “armed services” full of women?  Our military theater has reversed the roles in kabuki: it has women playing men.

There is an old saying on Capitol Hill that the Air Force is deceptive, the Navy is dishonest, and the Army is dumb.  As Burke noted, stereotypes arise from observation.

Interested in what Fourth Generation war in America might look like? Read Thomas Hobbes’ new future history, Victoria.

tR Live: Episode 7

William S. Lind and the tR editors discuss the week’s news. Submit questions for the panel in the live chat or email here.

General McChrystal and General Lee

It is interesting that General Stan McChrystal recently admitted to getting rid of a portrait he had long cherished of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.  One would think that McChrystal would have some sympathy for Lee, considering both presided over failed wars.  There is a world of difference between these two men and McChrystal does not benefit from the comparison.

Since his dismissal by President Obama, McChrystal has become an author in an attempt to trade on his celebrity status and high rank.  He has done well, with several popular books to his name.  At a recent book signing, McChrystal admitted his best advice was for the U.S. to continue to “muddle through” in Afghanistan.

Think about this for a moment.  McChrystal held the top command in Afghanistan for a full year (2009–2010) during which he was unable to chart a course to success.  He has had 9 years since he left command to reflect on his experience and the direction of the war.  After all this time, the best he can come up with is to “muddle through”?

No response could better encapsulate the professional failure and moral bankruptcy of our senior military leaders.  For the last 17 years, general after general has told a succession of U.S. presidents, “We can succeed in Afghanistan.”  McChrystal was one of them.  Afraid to be the one tagged with presiding over a defeat, each general believes the U.S. should stay the course, blindly hoping for a change of fortune which is unlikely to occur.  Doubtless no one wishes to signal all the sacrifice in blood and treasure has ultimately proven futile.  Unfortunately, that is the reality.  

McChrystal was a proud graduate of U.S. military schools.  He was carefully groomed for high rank and selected for great responsibility.  And he failed miserably.

It’s ironic McChrystal has decided to publicize his decision to give away a picture of Robert E. Lee.  Lee faced different challenges during the Civil War than did McChrystal in Afghanistan.  Unlike McChrystal, Lee actually had a plan to win the war he fought.  It may not have worked, but at least Lee knew what he was doing.  McChrystal cannot make this claim.  If Lee were alive today, he would likely get rid of McChrystal’s picture – if he were foolish enough to have one in the first place.

The View From Olympus: Hurrah for the President!

Finally, President Trump is doing what he was elected to do, namely ending our involvement in wars halfway around the world in which we have no interests at stake.  President Trump was elected as a peace president.  He promised to bring the boys home.  His opponent, Hillary Clinton, was neo-lib/neo-con interventionist.  He won, she lost.

Mr. Trump won not because he is a liberal peacenik who appealed to the Left.  His constituency was and remains the Heartland Americans whose sons do the fighting and dying in these wars.  They do not understand why we are involved in the conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq and Syria, and neither do I.  They know why we went to Afghanistan after 9/11, but not why we are still fighting there seventeen years later.  Again, neither do I, although I understand that military incompetence at the senior levels has something to do with it.  The Washington Establishment has careers and budgets at stake, so of course it wants wars to continue.  That’s not much of an argument in the rest of the country.

The President’s decisions to get out of Syria and Afghanistan are not only wise but necessary.  In Syria, if we stay much longer, we will have to choose sides between the Kurds and the Turks.  Turkey is going to go after the Syrian Kurds militarily, whether we like it or not.  If we side with the Kurds we will find ourselves in the inconvenient situation of going to war with a member of NATO.  We will also lose, simply because of geography: the conflict would be on Turkey’s border with Syria, where our logistics lines can only support a small American force.  If we side with the Turks or try to remain neutral, we would lose our only local ally who can actually fight.  At that point our forces in Syria would be surrounded by lots of enemies with no one to help.  As President Trump would say, “Not good.”  So we need to get out, now. 

In Afghanistan, our position is deteriorating at an ever more rapid clip.  President Trump is trying to negotiate with the Taliban for the only possible outcome that is not a catastrophe, an orderly and safe exit of our forces.  The alternative is a sauve qui peut rout where our losses could be serious.  Just ask the Brits.

The Establishment is running in circles, screaming and shouting.  It’s fun to watch.  Their latest cause for panic is Secretary Jim Mattis’s resignation.  Frankly, there is little reason to regret his departure.

I know General Mattis only slightly.  We had one meeting when he commanded the “Marine Corps University” at Quantico.  (As Universities go, it has more in common with McDonald’s Hamburger U than with Harvard.) No actions resulted from that meeting.

Mattis is unquestionably well-read, and I had great hopes for him as SecDef.  But he proved to be no better than his less well-read predecessors.  He did nothing to reform either the services or the Pentagon itself.  He promoted the strategic idiocy of turning away from preparing for Fourth Generation wars, the wars of the future, and instead making Russia and China our enemies of choice.  Does he not know that both are nuclear powers?  Is he unaware of why both the U.S. and the Soviet Union avoided direct engagements with each other’s forces throughout the Cold War, namely that whichever side were losing would feel immense pressure to go nuclear?  The Pentagon likes such a “strategy” because “peer competitors” justify vast budgets and programs, but the Secretary of Defense is supposed to represent the real world.  Mattis failed to do so.

Secretary Mattis began one initiative that deserves to continue after his departure.  Called the “Close Combat Lethality Task Force” (CCLTF), its purpose is to provide more resources and better training for the men who do most of the dying, the infantry.  They get a pittance of the resources devoted to, for example, tac air.  The CCLTF aims to change that, and it would be a pity if it died because its sponsor was gone.  The current concept for the CCLTF has some weakness, which I will address in a future column.  But the need for it is real.

So hurrah for the president!  He is ending stupid wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, trying to mend fences with North Korea and wants a good relationship with Russia.  All those initiatives are very much in America’s interest.  Could that be why the Washington Establishment hates him so bitterly?

Interested in what Fourth Generation war in America might look like? Read Thomas Hobbes’ new future history, Victoria.