The Establishment's Worst Nightmare

In 2016, the Washington Establishment suffered what it thought was its worst nightmare when Donald Trump was elected President.  With the growing likelihood that Bernie Sanders will be this year’s Democratic candidate, that nightmare has been succeeded by one even worse: the possibility that the Establishment will be shut out of the Presidential race entirely. 

That would be a clear signal that the Establishment’s days are numbered and it is on its way to being replaced.  Remember that the Establishment’s most important goal has nothing to do with governing the country. Its highest objective is remaining the Establishment and enjoying the privileges that come with Establishment status: power, prestige, and great riches.

At the same time, their policy options are limited, limited to policies that do not work.  To become and remain a member of the Establishment, you must be a Globalist in economics, an internationalist in foreign policy, a loyal servant of Wall Street, a fan of lots of immigration (for cheap labor and cheap votes), and a soft, sentimental “multiculturalist” who gets very, very distressed at the thought that somewhere in the world, a child is crying.  Above all, you must never transgress the rules laid down by cultural Marxism. Even an accusation of “racism”, “sexism”, or “homophobia” endangers your Establishment status.

Since Establishment policies add up to poor governance, the only way the Establishment can keep its monopoly on power is to make sure voters have no choices but candidates who are Establishment stooges.  They call it a “two-party system”, but no matter which party wins, nothing really changes, because neither the Republican nor the Democratic Establishment wants change. Change could upset their apple carts.  Elections are just kabuki for the rubes out in flyover land so long as only Establishment candidates can get on the ballot. 

Donald Trump royally upset the Republican Establishment’s apple cart (or perhaps more accurately manure wagon) in 2016.  Now Bernie Sanders threatens to do the same to the Democratic Establishment’s Jim Jones Memorial Kool Aid stand. And the Democratic Establishment is in a panic.

The February 28 New York Times ran a front page story on the Dems' headless chicken act, “If Party is Bruised to Stop Sanders, So Be It, Key Democrats Say”.  After interviewing 93 Democratic superdelegates (some delegates are more equal than others), the Times wrote,

Dozens of interviews with Democratic Establishment leaders this week show that they are not just worried about Mr. Sanders’ candidacy, but also willing to risk intraparty damage to stop his nomination at the national convention in July if they get the chance. . .

“Bernie seems to have declared war on the Democratic Party--and it’s caused panic in the House ranks,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, a supporter of former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York.

What Bernie has declared war on is the Democratic Party Establishment.  That Establishment would rather see President Trump reelected than Sanders get the Democratic nomination.  If a candidate from the Democratic Establishment loses in November, they were at least still in the game and they maintained their monopoly.  If Sanders is nominated , they’re out, over and done--cooked.

As a conservative Trump supporter, I say, let’s hear it for Bernie--not because he would be the easiest Democrat for Trump to beat, but because of his nomination (and Trump’s, of course), the whole Establishment is shut out.  If populists from the Left and the Right take over and the Establishment no longer has a monopoly, not only does it lose power but all those other lovely things that power brings, especially prestige and endless bags of gold. No more bowing and scraping flunkies?  No more “campaign contributions”, i.e., legalized bribes? My god, how could a man (or woman) live?

I don’t know, but it would certainly be entertaining to find out.

The View From Olympus: A Chink in Our Armor

I have warned for decades that the future weapon of mass destruction is not the nuclear weapon but the genetically engineered plague.  The world now stands on the brink of its first experience with that new weapon.

Whether the coronavirus now racing from China across the globe was created by intention or accident is not yet known.  The Chinese government claims the latter, but that government is well known for concealing facts it finds inconvenient.  My information, which may not be accurate, is that it escaped from a Chinese biowarfare lab in Wuhan that was attempting to cross it with HIV to create an AIDS that would spread like the flu.  We now know how to treat AIDs, but the drugs are very expensive. If the objective were to inflict an economic catastrophe on another country, such a bioweapon would do the trick. So far, it does not appear that the version that got out--its escape would be typical Chinese sloppiness--has the cross; only the carrier escaped the lab.  If that proves true, we can all be thankful.

But either way, the coronavirus pandemic points to what is certain to come.  In genetic engineering, we have created a monster that very well may devour the whole human race.  When man seeks to play God, the results tend to be unhappy. New plagues will be generated both intentionally and unintentionally.  Unlike nuclear weapons, genetically engineered diseases do not require vast facilities that cost billions. They are knowledge-based, and the knowledge is already widespread.  That makes them ideal WMDs for non-state, Fourth Generation forces. WMDs in the hands of states are generally stabilizing. In the hands of non-state entities, the opposite is true. 

We would do so well to remember that the Medieval world, which, contrary to what kids are taught in school, was highly successful, was brought down by the plague, the Black Death.  When you lose a third, half, or even two-thirds of your population in six weeks, everything falls apart.

So what do we do about it?  We have to face the fact that in the face of new plagues, Globalism is suicide.  The only thing that works is quarantine. In the Middle Ages, some Italian towns saved themselves from the plague by a policy of immurement: any house where plague appeared was bricked up, with the people inside.

The equivalent for us now is to shut down all international travel.  No one may enter the United States without going through a period of quarantine.  The current wisdom is that a two-week quarantine is sufficient. That may change. With future genetically engineered plagues, the quarantine may have to be longer.  In Thomas Hobbes’ novel Victoria, entry into Europe requires a three-month quarantine on Heligoland Island.  Of course, anyone illegally attempting to enter the country and thereby avoiding quarantine must be shot dead.

In future cases, it may also be necessary to prohibit all imported goods.  It should not be too difficult to create plagues that are transmitted by things: by food imports, by cars or car parts, by anything that an American might end up handling.  The toxins would be designed, at least initially, to come through the skin. With genetic engineering, there is almost no limit on hideous characteristics a disease can be given.  Modernity, meet your Frankenstein.

The United States is fortunate to have, in Donald Trump, a President who is likely to act and close our borders if that proves necessary in the case of the coronavirus (if it isn’t already).  Can anyone imagine any of the Democrats doing that? They would show endless pictures of crying urchins, denouncing as heartless anyone who would deny them entry. The Democrats’ weakness could well do us all in.  Establishment Republicans would be no better as Wall Street howled that its profits depend on Globalism, on open borders for people and goods. If America once again made all it needed in American factories, ordinary Americans would benefit.  But establishment Republicans don’t care about them; Mr. Trump does.

This is the future, folks; not “one world”, but many moats and drawbridges.  Globalism is the chink in our armor, or perhaps going into a tournament without hauberk or cuirass.  We will either armor up or listen to the cry in our streets, “Bring out your dead.”

The View From Olympus: The Big One

A spectre is haunting the world, the spectre of a world-wide debt crisis.  Could the coronavirus epidemic in China be the trigger?

World debt levels, both public and private, have reached undreamed heights.  The United States is now running deficits of a trillion dollars a year. Other countries have higher deficits proportional to the size of their economies.  Private individuals here and elsewhere find they can only maintain a middle class standard of living by taking on ever more debt. Where does it end? In a debt crisis.

A debt crisis occurs when lenders get sufficiently scared of losing their principal that they refuse to lend, or at least to lend at affordable rates of interest.  Like all market dynamics, this is not a rational calculation. Markets are forever balanced on a knife edge between greed and fear. Under normal circumstances, greed wins and people continue to invest.  But when fear takes over, the plunge can come with remarkable speed. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was not exaggerating in 2008 when he said the United States was within 48 hours of not having an economy. If lending stops cold, so does everything else.

The question is not whether a world debt crisis is coming.  The question is where and when it starts. My bet has long been on China.  China has towering levels of debt, public and private. To keep its economy growing, China has built whole cities that have no inhabitants.  Municipal governments have made enormous loans to overbuild because they wanted the construction jobs. The overbuilding has gone on at the same time individual Chinese have overpaid for their residences.  The intersection of those two facts will mean a debt crisis in China. Given China’s large role in the world economy, a debt crisis in China will soon spread. 

We are already seeing evidence that the coronavirus epidemic is affecting lending.  An article in the February 5 New York Times, “Virus Threatens an Oil Industry That’s Already Ailing,” reported that:

Forty-two oil and gas companies filed for bankruptcy protection in North America last year; since oil prices plummeted in 2015, there have been 208 bankruptcy filings by producers, involving roughly $122 billion in aggregate debt. . .

“It’s a blow,” said Steven Pruett, chief executive of Elevation Resources, a Texas oil company (speaking of reduced Chinese demand for oil because of the virus). . . “Credit availability is already tight, and it’s going to get much tighter.”

A debt crisis is not merely a garden-variety recession.  Both governments and individuals must cut their spending not just to the level of their income, but below that level so they can begin paying back the debt.  Governments that have their own currency (unlike, say, Greece, which is on the Euro) usually decide to inflate their currency so they can pay back money worth less than that they borrowed.  But that scares lenders even more and it also wipes out the savings of ordinary people. Both private and government spending collapse simultaneously, creating a long-lasting depression. (Contrary to what you were taught in Economics 101, you can have a depression and inflation at the same time; look at Venezuela or Rhodesia.)

For America’s armed forces, what a debt crisis means is a vastly reduced defense budget--not $750 billion, but perhaps $75 billion, if we can afford that (in 2020 dollars).  The fact that almost all our defense spending goes to preparing for wars we are not going to fight, with Russia and China (nuclear powers do not fight each other, for good reason), means we could have more useful armed forces than we have now at such vastly lower costs.  I am currently writing a book on what such armed forces might look like.

So the question of first importance for most peoples on earth is whether the coronavirus could be the trigger for China’s coming debt crisis, and China’s for the rest of the world.  Because China still has a state-controlled economy, she has options in a debt crisis we do not have. But exercising those options risks starting an inflationary spiral, which would intensify the crisis of legitimacy the Chinese Communist Party is already facing over the coronavirus epidemic itself.  Thanks to having President Trump in office, the U.S. might take unilateral moves to keep the debt crisis offshore. But if this proves to be “the big one” and a debt crisis overwhelms China, the U.S. and everybody else, then the whole state system will face a legitimacy test. If it fails, God help us all.

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

The View From Olympus: Hiding Under the Bed

On a recent trip to Washington, I was scheduled to have a meeting on board the Marine Corps base at Quantico.  The base was effectively closed to people without a government ID. I have gone through the main gate at Quantico more times than I care to count, over almost 50 years.  No more, it seems.

I soon found the same was true for almost all military bases.  Why? It seems that after we killed the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, General Soleimani, someone up top panicked at the thought of Iranian retaliation.  Perhaps they suddenly remembered why states generally avoid war by assassination; it is a game at which two can play. In any case, CYA came quickly into gear and the bases were shut down tight.  It’s like kids who have been shooting berries with their slingshots at passing cars. Suddenly one car stops, shifts into reverse and comes roaring back. The kids all run home and hide under the bed.

We seem to have forgotten that our armed services are supposed to be fighting organizations.  Hiding under the bed may not be the optimal way to express martial prowess. The directive to close the bases may have come from above the service level; I certainly hope that is the case.  But regardless of its source, I think there is a better way to secure our military facilities, one based on fighting rather than fear.

If “terrorists” want to attack military bases on American soil, there are more likely ways to do that than driving through the main gate.  Base perimeters are often long, and not all of it can be guarded all the time. The most likely way a “terrorist” attack will come is from within: from members of the U.S. military whose primary allegiance lies elsewhere.  We have already had that happen, and I suspect we will see more of it. Perimeter defense helps not one bit against that threat.

What would help in every case would be a simple directive that all officers and staff NCOs are expected to be armed all the time when on base, whether they are in uniform or in civilian clothes.  The essence of effective response is speed, and no other measure would guarantee as fast a reaction. If a service--say, the Marine Corps?--wanted to go for even more speed, it could arm all its people all the time they are on base.  Nobody is bothered by the fact that cops carry guns. Should we not trust our servicemen as much as we do cops?

More, each service should issue an order that whether on base or not, whether armed or not, all servicemen (not women) should attack any aspiring mass shooter.  We have already seen cases where mass shootings were stopped because the nearest man attacked. I have written previously about the need for a universal male militia, where we ask every man in America to sign a pledge to do exactly that.  Who better to lead by example than our servicemen? Marines are already noted for stopping to help in traffic accidents or other situations where civilians are in danger or hurt. Why shouldn’t the Corps take the next step and enlist every Male Marine against 4GW on our own soil?

Why do I say men but not women?  Because, cultural Marxism to the contrary, men and women are inherently different and their traditional social roles reflect their inherent differences.  In war, women’s duty is to encourage their men to fight and get themselves out of the way. Otherwise the men will drop the mission to protect the women.  More, most women cannot do what physically needs to be done in this case. Despite what you see on television and in the movies, petite, lovely women do not beat up big men.  They get clocked, real fast. Pit a Mazda Miata against a Cadillac Escalade in a head-on and see what happens.

In the face of “terrorist” threats to their bases right here at home, our armed services need to fight, not hide under the bed.  If the trumpet sounds uncertain, who will follow?

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

The View From Olympus: His Majesty's Birthday

As the whole world knows, His Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was born on January 27, 1859.  It is both my duty and my pleasure to telephone him every year and congratulate him on his birthday.  He is, after all, my reporting senior as well as Germany’s last legitimate governor.

I tried to reach him first at the Neues Palais in Potsdam, followed by the old palace in Berlin, then Charlottenburg, and then the Adlon Hotel.  The latter proved the right guess. When he picked up the instrument, it was clear he was out of breath.

“Happy birthday, Your Majesty,” I opened.  “It sounds as if something has you running around.”

“As usual, it’s not something but someone, namely Bismarck,” His Majesty replied.  “He has me running all over town keeping every crowned head in Europe happy while he manipulates them all at his latest conference.  As my grandfather said, sometimes it is a hard thing, being Kaiser under Bismarck.”

“That sounds like Bismarck all right,” I ventured.  “But his goal is usually to keep the peace, and he was rather good at it.  If only he’d been there in 1914, the Christian West might not have committed suicide.”

“If only, indeed,” His Majesty said.  “As you know, I neither wanted war nor expected war that fateful summer, and once I realized all Europe was heading down that road, I did my utmost to stop it.  I ordered the pack of fools in my foreign office to telegraph Vienna and tell them to take Belgrade and then stop. But the telegram was never sent. The German foreign office without Bismarck has done the Fatherland more damage than the French and British put together.”

“Very true, Your Majesty,” I replied.  “May I ask the subject of Bismarck’s latest Congress of Berlin?”

“It’s the North American problem,” the Kaiser said.  “It’s the year 2120 here now, and the Powers have decided we have to intervene.  The question is who gets what. It’s not a reward, I promise you. It’s a damned bloody mess that will cost us all plenty to fix.”

“I regret to say that does not surprise me,”  I responded. “I assume the United States is gone, and what remains is essentially what Columbus found: tribes and tribal warfare.”

“Exactly,” His Majesty said.  “We have to civilize the place all over again.”  But it’s even worse than you expected.”

“I am hesitant to ask how,” I said with trepidation.

“Well, for one thing, there are no blacks and no Jews left.”

“Oh God, not another Holocaust,” I replied, shocked.

“No, fortunately, not that bad, but it was bad enough.  The one thing consistent among all the tribes is that blacks and Jews were given a choice: exile or sterilization.  Most chose the former. The blacks went to Africa, where they have actually done a great deal of good, for themselves and for the dark continent.  By African standards, American blacks were competent and efficient. They have brought order and economic development, including in German East Africa, where they were very welcome.  As you know, my army had black soldiers there, and they were among my very best. The Allies never beat them. And here in Imperial Germany, the Jews were also welcome, as they were in my time.  I had a number of close Jewish friends, such as Herr Ballin, head of the HAPAG shipping line, the largest in the world. I stayed at his home in Hamburg five or six times every year. He was so loyal to the monarchy that when it fell in November of 1918, he killed himself.”

“But Your Majesty, I cannot imagine such a thing happening in North America,” I said.  “Why, how--I don’t understand.”

“It was in some ways similar to what happened in Germany after your moronic President Wilson demanded an end to the German monarchy.  I would never have permitted a government policy of anti-Semitism. But the Weimar Republic was weak, and you know what happened after that.  Why and how did it happen? In five years, from 1914 to 1919, the German people underwent a terrible shock. In Germany in 1914, everything was going well and the future looked bright.  By 1919, there was no future, just death, poverty, and humiliation. The same thing happened in the United States early in the 21st century when world-wide debt crisis hit. There was no future any longer, just misery and dissolution.  Someone had to be blamed, and in your case it was the Jews and blacks.”

“But why them?” I asked.  “Why not the politicians who spent us into bankruptcy and the cultural Marxists who wrecked our society?”

“Well, the blacks were blamed because everyone saw them as ‘takers’, people who relied on welfare and who were always committing crimes.  In truth, the black crime rate in early 21st century America was twelve times the white race. Most of the victims were also black, and most blacks just wanted to lead normal lives.  But their 'leaders' needed to keep them 'victims' to maintain their own power. With the Jews, as in Germany, most American Jews were assimilated, patriotic citizens who paid their taxes and fought for their country.  But it was also true that the hard Left was disproportionately Jewish in both places. When a country falls apart in a short time, people are too angry to be fair or just. They want someone to blame, and they want to kill.  It was only because some courageous people on the Right fought it that North America did not see a twin Holocaust. At least the Jews and blacks could get out.”

“Your Majesty, is there any way for us to avoid this grim fate?” I asked, still in something of a state of shock.

“Yes, if people will get serious,” the Kaiser said.  “Donald Trump showed that someone from outside the Establishment could be elected President.  He was not himself the man to bring about fiscal sanity and cultural renewal. If you can find someone like him but more serious, more grounded intellectually and morally, I think your country might still have a chance.”

“But now I must go.  I’ve just been told that good King George III has agreed to take New England back, and martyred King Louis XVI said France will take the South.  His Most Catholic Majesty King Philip II has accepted the burden of the American West for Spain. The Inquisition will have fun in Las Vegas. Yes, yes, Otto I’m coming. . .”

And so Bismarck saved the day again.  What a pity he had to do so.

The View From Olympus: A Lesson in Strategy

As I wrote in my last column, our performance in the recent crisis with Iran followed the typical American pattern of sacrificing strategy to tactics.  It appears the Iranians, in contrast, are putting their strategic goals first and making sure their tactical actions, or (of equal importance) inactions, serve their strategic goals.

Iran’s goal is to get us out of the Middle East and Persian Gulf.  That should be our own goal as well, and President Trump has repeatedly said it is an objective he shares.  Regrettably, the Deep State is deeply invested in the region and wants us to remain. As usual in Washington, the Deep State prevails over a mere President, so we will only get out when we are thrown out.

Iran does not have the military power to throw us out, but there are other paths to this goal.  Iran seems to understand that, and its response to our killing of General Soleimani shows it knows how to play the game at the strategic level.  It did the bare minimum it had to do in direct, military response, in the form of some missile strikes on a couple of our bases in Iraq. The missile strikes caused little damage and no casualties, which appears to have been Iran’s intention.  It followed the missiles with an immediate message to Washington that Iran planned no further actions at this time. That, in turn, moved the world away from a war Iran did not want and probably could not win.

I think Iran sees that the best and safest way to get us out of its region is to start with Iraq, and to act politically rather than militarily.  It largely controls the Iraqi government, and through its allied Shiite militias it controls much of the ground in Iraq as well. The current Iraqi prime minister was put in office by Iran.  Not surprisingly, he drafted a new law telling Americans to withdraw from Iraq and quickly got it passed by Iraq’s parliament. Now, the Iranians are waiting for him to enforce it.

This has in turn led to a bizarre situation where our neocon Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has told the Iraqis we’re not going!  Excuse me? Under the treaty which governs our presence in Iraq we have to leave if the Iraqis tell us to. Moreover, we have about 5200 U.S. troops scattered in penny-packets doing training for the Iraqi army.  Are those troops expected to refuse to leave when Iraqi state armed forces and militias, who number in the hundreds of thousands, show up weapons in hand and say, “Guess what, you’re moving”? Only neocons live in a world so detached from reality.

Such a refusal would play right into Iran’s hands, in that it could then activate its most powerful option: ordering the Iraqi Shiite militias to take every American soldier they can grab as hostages.  At that point President Trump becomes President Carter all over again. If our forces fought, they would be fighting Iraqis, not Iranians. Again, the strategic winner would be Iran.

I doubt Iran’s response to the killing of General Soleimani is over and done.  All that is finished is Iran’s direct, military response. On the strategic level, Iran’s actions are likely to include forcing all U.S. troops out of Iraq and Syria, thus guaranteeing its line of communication with Hezbollah in Lebanon; further reducing our presence and importance in the Persian Gulf through a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia and its Gulf State allies; and using what leverage it has in Afghanistan to push us out of that place as well.  Its strategic goal of having the U.S. military exit the entire region is within reach, if it plays its cards carefully and continues to subordinate the tactical level to the strategic. It can count on us to help it along by subordinating the strategic level to the tactical, as we always do.

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

The British Election

The most interesting contrast to emerge from the recent British election is not the gap between the winning Conservatives and Labour, who lost badly.  It is the difference between the elections of 2017 and 2019.

In 2017, the hapless Mrs. May, then the Conservative Prime Minister, tried the same thing Boris Johnson did this year.  She called an election in order to get a solid majority in Parliament so she could make Brexit happen. Instead, the Conservatives lost seats, forcing them into a coalition government and making Brexit impossible.  Why did it turn out so differently just two years later? 

Mrs. May was an Establishment Conservative, similar to Establishment Republicans here.  Her policies were geared toward Globalism and the big businesses such as finance that benefit from Globalism.  She played nice at meetings of European leaders, duly parroted the shibboleths of cultural Marxism and had nothing to say to the traditional Labour voters in the north of England.

Boris Johnson, in contrast, is a populist, similar in many ways to President Trump.  He was able to appeal to traditional Tory and Labour voters alike. He promised to make decisions and act where Mrs. May had dithered.  He played the bull in the European Union’s china shop, taking pleasure in tossing and goring Eurocrats and Establishment European leaders alike.  He seemed to care little for Political Correctness, standing instead for “Britain First,” or even “England First,” a point not lost on the Scots (who are massively subsidized by the English).  Many English voters who had been Labourites on economic issues were swayed by the cultural message of “let’s keep England English.” As President Trump understands, at least in times of relative prosperity, culture trumps economics.

These factors were, I think, more important in shaping the election’s outcome than were Brexit or Jeremy Corbyn’s neo-Marxism.  They represent a broad political movement that is growing throughout the West. More and more Europeans and Americans are rejecting cultural Marxism and all its works, including mass immigration, loser worship and the pretense that race, ethnicity, and culture do not matter.  They are proud of their nation’s history, including in England's case running most of the world for several centuries and doing a rather good job of it, better, certainly, than those who came after them (King George would never have dreamed of taxing Americans as heavily as “their own” government taxes them now).

Establishment parties and politicians are going to have to adjust to the rise of a real Right or be sidelined.  In Europe, we see a combination of both. In Germany, the faux-conservative CDU is losing ground, as are the Social Democrats, and the real Right AFD is now the opposition in the Reichstag (as it will be called again when the AFD wins a majority.  In France, Monsieur Macron can only envy President Trump’s popularity ratings. Italians are again finding much to admire in the Duce.

What does it all add up to?  To the defeat of cultural Marxism, a.k.a. political correctness or “multiculturalism”.  Soon, throughout the West, majorities will be handing their governments to parties that reject the self-loathing cultural Marxism demands, the dismissal of proud nations’ history as just tales of “oppression”, the use of government power to put non-Whites and immigrants over native Whites, the flooding of orderly countries with agents of disorder.  The cultural Marxists have overreached and are on a ballistic course toward history’s wastebasket. As they perceive that course, they respond by becoming more demanding, more shrill and more absurd. People have seen the man behind the Left’s curtain, Karl Marx, now dressed in failed cultural policies instead of failed economic policies. Their reaction is, “Ptui.”

As the line from Cabaret goes, the future belongs to me.

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

The View From Olympus: Another Operational and Strategic Failure

Once again, the U.S. military has shown it has little grasp of operational art or strategy.  In revenge for a rocket attack on a joint U.S.-Iraqi base that killed one American contractor and wounded four American soldiers, the U.S. launched airstrikes on bases of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraqi Shiite militia which it blamed for the rocket attack.  The airstrikes in Syria and Iraq killed 24 members of the militia. Kataib Hezbollah denied its forces launched the rockets.

In other words, the U.S., which has about 5,200 soldiers based in Iraq, bombed Iraqi targets on Iraqi soil.  Like other Shiite militias in Iraq, Kataib Hezbollah is part of the Iraqi state’s armed forces, although the state’s control over them is limited.  We did not clear our action beforehand with the Iraqi government.

To put this in perspective, imagine an American soldier had been killed in a terrorist attack in Germany.  In response, the U.S. Air Force bombed targets in Germany, killing two dozen Germans.

The results in Iraq were predictable and they follow a distinctively American pattern.  Tactically, we did what a Second Generation military does: we put ordnance on target and the targets were destroyed.  Operationally, we failed, because Kataib Hezbollah and allied Shiite militias, far from being cowed (which was our operational goal), went on the offensive, assaulted the American embassy in Baghdad, and penetrated into the compound.  An understandably angry Iraqi government let them do it. The militiamen besieged the embassy for two days, withdrawing only when their leaders ordered them to do so. They had made their point: with 5,200 hostages, er, soldiers in Iraq, a corporal’s guard compared to the strength of the Shiite militias, we were the weaker and more vulnerable party.  Operationally, they won.

Strategically, our operation was even more of a botch.  Our opponent of the moment in the Persian Gulf is Iran. Iran had overplayed its hand in Iraq and had become the target of increasingly angry and quite large popular demonstrations.  Mobs burned the Iranian consulate in Basra. Nationalist anger at Iran was in the process of overcoming friendship with fellow Shiites.

By bombing Iraqi targets and killing Iraqi citizens on Iraqi soil, we pulled Iran’s increasingly hot chestnuts out of the fire.  The street protests against Iran stopped, replaced by protests against America. One could almost hear the (non-alcoholic) champagne corks popping in Tehran.

This, then, is the typical American pattern: let the tactical level drive the operational and strategic levels, lose at the higher level because we optimized for the lower, and not understand why or how we lost.  We cannot break out of this pattern because our armed forces have reduced war to putting firepower (preferable aerial) on targets, and, with the exception of a rare commander here or there, can do nothing else. They understand neither operational art nor strategy, so they cannot foresee the operational and strategic consequences of their tactical actions.  If those consequences are unfavorable, their only answer is to put more firepower on more targets. The result is cumulative strategic failure. We are unlikely to see anything else anytime soon.

Postscript:  The above column was written January 2, before I heard of the U.S. (what else) air attack that killed Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani, along with prominent Iraqis including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was deputy commander of the umbrella group over all Iraqi Shiite militias.  Again, we acted tactically--killing a “bad guy”--with little thought for operational or strategic consequences.

The most obvious Iranian countermove is to use the Iraqi Shiite militias to take as many Americans in Iraq as possible hostage.  Strategically, that would leave us without an effective response, and President Trump would be exactly where President Carter was when Iranian revolutionaries took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held the Americans there as hostages.  That was the end of Carter’s presidency, as this would be the end of Mr. Trump’s.

Operationally by responding through the Iraqi militias, Iran would generate a fight between Americans and Iraqis rather than between Americans and Iranians--a smart move that would leave any American response directed against Iran looking like aggression.  If we look at this situation through “the grid” (see the 4GW Handbook) we see, as usual, we win at the physical/tactical level while losing at the operational, strategic, mental, and moral levels.  As President Trump might say, “Not pretty.”

There is only one way the situation could turn out in our favor, and that is if the Iraqi government orders all U.S. forces to leave Iraq.  That would finally get us out of one or even two (Syria) endless, pointless Mideastern conflicts, which is what President Trump promised he would do in 2016.  At this point, anything that brings the boys home should be welcome, even if they arrive with their tails between their legs.

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

The End of Biden's Candidacy

Why is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delaying the transmittal of the articles of impeachment to the Senate?  Because she and other Democrats know a Senate trial of President Trump could mean the end of the Democrats’ strongest presidential candidate, Joe Biden’s, quest for the White House.

If Republican Senators show a bit of courage and a modicum of brains, they will turn Trump’s trial into a trial of Joe Biden.  Why?  Because if President Trump’s request to the President of Ukraine to investigate the Bidens were based on a genuinely corrupt relationship between Joe Biden, his son, and a Ukrainian gas company, then President Trump was only doing his duty in making the request.  It isn’t simply a matter of corruption in Ukraine; it would mean corruption in the Obama White House.  And corruption in the White House, in a recent presidential administration, is something the American people should know about, especially when the person at the head of the corruption ladder is now a candidate for president.

Was Vice-President Biden engaged in corruption?  The evidence is circumstantial but significant.  His son was made a member of the board of directors of a Ukrainian natural gas company at extraordinary rates of compensation, $50,000 a month or more, which is far higher than normal remuneration for a board membership.  He was given the position despite having no background in or, presumably, knowledge of the oil and gas industry.  Why would the company do that?  There is only one possible answer:  because they thought it would buy them access to the Obama administration, at a very high level.

Did it?  What we know is that when the chief prosecutor of Ukraine showed indications he might investigate the gas company for corruption, Vice-President Biden demanded the President of Ukraine fire the prosecutor.  More, he threatened to withhold U.S. aid for Ukraine until he did so.  How do we know that?  Because Biden later bragged about it in a session that was videotaped and we have the tape.  Moreover, unlike President Trump’s request to the current President of Ukraine to investigate Biden’s role, Biden’s demand was met and the prosecutor was fired.  It seems to me that prosecutor would make a good witness in President Trump’s trial by the Senate.  And the tape showing Biden bragging he got the prosecutor fired should certainly be shown, in a session open to the public and press.

Again, the evidence is circumstantial.  Biden himself may or may not have profited by the deal, though his son obviously did.  Joe Biden’s mind may be too pure for the thought of nepotism ever to have crossed it.  His son may have brought unrecognized qualities to the gas company’s board, say, a particular grace in ass-kissing (always useful in business).

But the possibility that all this may be brought into the very bright light of a trial of a sitting president by the Senate must have serious Democratic politicians such as Pelosi worried.  I suspect that if she needs encouragement to block it, Mr. Biden is providing it, frequently and loudly.  That is why she is demanding Senate Republicans agree with Democrats on a structure for the trial before she sends over the articles of impeachment (without which President Trump may not have been impeached; Constitutional law scholars are in disagreement on that point).  That structure will have to make a trial of Joe Biden in the court of public opinion impossible or the articles will not be sent.

There is no reason the Senate Republican leadership should agree to the Democrats’ demand.  Or is there?  It seems a few Republican Senators also had dealings with that Ukrainian gas company.  The Senate Majority Leader’s phone may be receiving calls almost as frantic as those Madam Pelosi is probably getting from the Biden campaign.

It is obviously in President Trump’s interest to turn his trial into a trial of Joe Biden.  It means the end of Biden’s candidacy and it justifies Mr. Trump’s request to the President of Ukraine.  The Democrats will have ended up destroying their own best bet to retake the White House instead of President Trump.

All it takes for this story to unfold is some brains and some guts on the part of the Senate Republican leadership.  If a couple Republican Senators get caught up in it too, well, they are not ones whose loss we should lament.  There are only two Republican Senators in that category, Rand Paul and Mike Lee.  Neither of them were getting money from Ukrainian gas enterprises.

The View From Olympus: The Pensacola Shootings

On December 6, a Saudi pilot trainee shot and killed three American sailors and wounded eight other people in a mass shooting at the Navy’s premier pilot training base in Pensacola, Florida.  That should no longer shock us. The spectacle of a Moslem killing innocent people in Europe or the U.S. has become, if not an everyday occurrence, one we see with depressing regularity. What is shocking, or should be, was the response, or lack thereof.  Why, on a military base, did people have to wait until sheriff’s deputies arrived to take out the shooter? If our military cannot defend itself, how can it hope to defend our country?

The reason was not a lack of courage on the part of our sailors.  One of those killed, Ensign Kaleb Watson, a recent Annapolis graduate, did what every man should do in an active shooter situation: he attacked the gunman, saving the lives of others in the process.  According to the December 9 New York Times, he had previously told his parents that if confronted with an active shooter, “I’m going in full force.”  He did exactly that. Airman Haithim, who also died, reportedly did the same.

But with all these military men around, why did no one just shoot the Moslem gunman?  Because, as the December 7 New York Times wrote, “Weapons are not allowed on the base other than for security personnel.”  In other words, we do not trust American sailors to carry guns.

The reason, I’m sure, is “safety”.  Well, war is dangerous. If you're looking for safety, join the Salvation Army.  A case might be made that letting the most junior servicemen carry weapons on base could result in some of them shooting themselves in the foot (remember, their generation can’t stop their thumbs from moving, even if said thumb is on safety).  But why is it not routine for staff NCOs and officers to carry pistols? A sidearm, whether sword or pistol (even swords would be better for confronting a gunman than bare hands) are traditionally a sign of an officer’s or staff NCO’s authority.  So, for the latter, is a spontoon, a short spear. And yes, the guns should be loaded. As a Marine friend of mine said recently, “An unloaded gun is just a stick.”

What has led to the bizarre situation where our military has disarmed itself?  The answer is to be found in two broad phenomena, both of which undermine our ability to fight.  Because of the “up-or-out” promotion system, officers soon discover that the way to get ahead is to avoid making decisions or taking action.  The higher you go in rank, the greater the desire to avoid responsibility. I might call it Verantwortungsfeindlichkeit, hostility to taking responsibility. 

“Joy in taking responsibility,” was the single most important quality sought in officers in the old German army.  By consistently rewarding our officers for the opposite, we end up with senior military “leaders” who are really just managers and whose first instinct in a crisis is to hide under the bed.  Who among them is likely to reverse current policy and let our officers and staff NCOs carry loaded weapons? Not one.

The second reason we have disarmed our military is the womanization of our armed services.  The feminist script is always the same. First, demand women be allowed to join what, for good reasons, has traditionally been men’s fields of endeavor.  Then, demand those places be made comfortable for women. Well, women are genetically programmed to have safety as their highest value. So now we have to have a safe military where women don’t see nasty things like guns.  I mean, good heavens, a woman might get hurt! That a military full of women arms itself with feather-dusters should not surprise us.

With the exception of the sailors who fought the gunman, the Naval Air Base Pensacola’s response to an active shooter was little different from what we would expect from a convent.  They waited for the cops to come and rescue them. And we expect a military like that to defeat 4GW fighters who from age five had to scrounge and scrap every day in a dump for their dinner?

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

The Left's Cognitive Dissonance

The November 20, 2019 New York Times ran two stories on its front page.  One was about a Hispanic woman who had won a seat on the Yakima, Washington city council.  The Times reported that Miss Gutierrez became:

Among the first Latino politicians ever elected in the Central Washington community of nearly 94,000 where the number of Latinos has doubled in just one generation, now making up almost half of the total population.

Lower down on the same page, in a story about a “racist manifesto” at Syracuse University, the Times said the manifesto “warned of ‘the great replacement,’ a right-wing conspiracy theory that predicts white genocide at the hands of minority groups.”

Apparently the Times does not read its own front page.  Or if it does, its thinking is so compartmentalized by ideology that it cannot see the contradiction between calling a replacement of whites by other races and ethnic groups a “conspiracy theory” on the same page where it reports exactly that in Yakima, Washington.  This is cognitive dissonance on a grand scale.

A few facts may be in order here.  History reports many cases where one people has replaced another.  The Germanii the Romans fought no longer exist. They were replaced by other peoples migrating from the east.  The Celts who made up the main population in Roman Gaul and Britain were driven back into remote enclaves by arriving Angles, Saxons, and Franks, although there was some intermarriage.   The Bible records how the Jews replaced other people in Palestine, as they are doing again in our own time (ask the Palestinians what they mean by the “right to return”.) In Burma, the Buddhists are driving out the Moslem Rohingya because the latter’s much higher birth rate means they will otherwise eventually drive out the Buddhists.  The Chinese government is flooding Xinjiang province with Han people to overwhelm the Uighurs, as India is probably going to do in Kashmir by moving masses of Hindus. Replacement is an old, old story, not a “conspiracy theory”.

More, when one people replaces another, everything changes.  Even if the newly arrived people do not kill all the people they replaced, it’s no longer their country.  What defines a country is less its borders, rivers, and resources than its culture. When the Franks took over Roman Gaul, Roman culture was replaced by, well, barbarism.  Living in second century Arles was different from living in sixth century Arles. Some Romanitas did survive, just enough so people remembered how much better life used to be under the Roman Empire.  Back then, plumbing still worked.

When American conservatives warn the masses of immigrants from cultures who come here and do not adopt traditional American culture, with its Anglo-Saxon roots, are dangerous invaders, their warnings are well-grounded in history.  And while Western culture is almost uniquely open to people from other races and ethnic groups--no one who is not born Han can become Chinese--culture and ethnicity can be different when dealing with large masses of people, numbering in the millions.  Individuals may acculturate perfectly, but because most people prefer to live among and socialize with people like themselves--segregation is built into human nature--large groups of ethnically distinct immigrants often do end up replacing natives and their culture.  That is what the Times unwittingly reported happening in the Yakima, Washington, a place traditionally known for its apples, not its tacos.

The “great replacement” is an old story that is happening again, especially in Europe, where native Europeans have low birthrates and Islamic immigrants have high birth rates.  What cultural Marxists call a “conspiracy theory” is a fact, one Islamic leaders talk about openly as central to their strategy for destroying the Christian West. In the cultural Marxists’ lexicon, “conspiracy theory” is the term for facts you do not like.

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

The View From Olympus: Spreading Disorder and 4GW

In the United States, the number of mass shootings continues to climb.  In Lebanon, Iraq, Hong Kong, and Chile, demonstrators fill the streets for weeks or months on end.  In France, that cradle of disorder, the yellow vests have gone quiet for now, but probably not for long.  What is going on? And what, if anything, does it have to do with Fourth Generation war?

To address the latter question, we need to remember that Fourth Generation war is rooted in a crisis of legitimacy of the state.  As people shift their primary loyalty away from the state to a wide variety of other things, the state loses its monopoly on war and on social organization.  And as those monopolies vanish, disorder spreads.

What we are seeing in spreading disorder is not Fourth Generation war itself.  But it is a failure of the state. As Martin van Creveld argues in The Rise and Decline of the State, the state arose for only one purpose: to establish and maintain order and safety of persons and property.  States that cannot do that lose their legitimacy.

Here is where we see an answer to our first question, what is going on?  In more and more places, states are failing to maintain order but remain as vehicles of the New Class, the Establishment.  The Establishment runs the state, not to provide security of persons and property for all, but for its own benefit. It uses its control of the state to give itself careers, money (lots of it), power, prestige, etc.  It then employs these to exempt itself from the consequences of state failure, i.e., it lives in gated communities, its kids go to private schools and its jobs don’t get shipped overseas.

One of the interesting characteristics of the new world disorder is that it is coming primarily from the middle class.  The yellow vests are a striking example. But the young people filling the streets of Baghdad and Hong Kong are also often of middle class background.  They are college students or recent college graduates. They are taking to the streets because around the world, the middle class is under ever growing pressure.  College degrees no longer bring good jobs. Pensions and paychecks no longer last to the end of the month. Maintaining even a vestige of a middle class standard of living requires going even deeper into debt.  The state arose to provide security, but it now yields growing insecurity for the middle class.

So far, the disorder appears to be directed against the Establishment that runs the state, not the state itself.  That is why it is not Fourth Generation war. If it proves possible to boot the Establishment out and replace it with governors who serve the middle class instead of themselves, the state is likely to remain.  However, if the Establishment is able to hold on to power despite its failure in governance, then at some point people are likely to start giving up on the state itself. At that point we will be looking at 4GW, and lots of it.

One of the few benefits of the circus that is the impeachment of President Trump is that it has compelled the Washington Establishment, America’s Deep State, to manifest itself.  The “witnesses” against the President (none of whom seem to have actually witnessed anything) are in highly paid, high prestige jobs. They have had distinguished careers, from the “right schools” on up.  They are all deeply committed to the Globalist world order. And they loathe the President because he is not one of them.

Should the Establishment succeed in driving President Trump from office, one way or another, the message to the people who voted for him will be simple: you don’t count and you never will.  At that point, many of those voters will begin to question the system itself, if they are not doing so already. And that system is the state.

In the end, states cannot remain both legitimate and a private hunting preserve of the New Class.  As Martin van Creveld said to me years ago in my Capitol Hill office, everyone can see it except the people in the capital cities.

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

The Anti-White Party

An outtake in an article in the November 14 New York Times about the Iowa caucuses caused me to do a double take: “Democrats question the status of a state that’s 90% white.”

Imagine that the Times had instead said, “Republicans question the status of a state that’s heavily black,” or “GOP questions the status of a state that’s largely Hispanic.”  The crises of outrage would reach to the heavens. Every Establishment organ would demand the Republicans pee all over themselves, grovel in the dust, and kiss the feet of so-called black and Hispanic “leaders”, most of whom are con artists.  But when the Democrats dismiss a state because it’s largely white? Not a murmur of protest arose from any quarter.

Along with a growing number of other white Americans, I find myself saying, “Wait a minute, whites built this country. We took a vast wilderness inhabited by a few million howling savages (who unlike their cousins in Mexico and Central America had built no civilizations) and turned it into what was, as recently as the 1950s, the best country on earth of all time.  The contribution of other races was mostly muscle, not brains. In that respect, they stand well back from the ox, mule, and horse. And now we are to stand mute as Democrats make us a despised minority in our own country? I don’t think so.”

The Democratic Party’s hostility toward whites is a product of the broader ideology that party has embraced, the ideology of cultural Marxism, which is commonly known as “political correctness” or “multiculturalism”.  Like Moscow’s old Marxism-Leninism, cultural Marxism says certain kinds of people are a priori good and others evil, regardless of what individuals do.  In Marxism-Leninism, workers and peasants are good while landlords, capitalists and members of the middle class, the bourgeoisie, are evil.  The latter are fit only to be “liquidated”, which Soviet Communism did on a scale that put Hitler to shame: not six million dead, but sixty million.  (Ever notice how people on the Left swoon at the sight of a swastika but find the hammer and sickle gently amusing?)

Cultural Marxism says whites are inherently evil “oppressors” who must constantly beg blacks, Indians, immigrants, etc. to forgive their “white privilege”.  The average white family living paycheck-to-paycheck doesn't see a lot of privilege in being white. In fact, it seems our “privilege” is to pay the bills, through our taxes, of non-whites who can’t or won’t pay their own.  If there is “injustice” here, it’s toward whites, who should be privileged in a country we made out of nothing. And by the way, when we ran the place, it worked pretty well. In the 1950s, the black inner city was safe.

It is now virtually impossible to be a Democrat and not embrace cultural Marxism.  That ideology condemns not only whites, but males, non-feminist women, straights, and Christians.  All are fit only to be--what? Liquidated, like Russia’s middle and upper classes? From what we see on university campuses where cultural Marxists hold power, it seems there are no limits on how far their hatred of whites will go.

What this all adds up to is that, for the 2020 elections, there is really only one issue.  The Democratic Party is anti-white, anti-male, anti-straight, and anti-Christian. Logically, that means no white, male, straight, or Christian should vote Democrat.  To do so would be to vote for their own persecution and eventual extinction in a country they created. If we really want to commit suicide, there are better ways to do it than by handing political power over to our enemies.

More and more white Americans are coming to understand this.  That’s why President Trump, if he runs in 2020, is likely to win in a landslide, regardless of who the Democrats nominate.  If you don’t think so, look at the racial breakdown among likely voters in the swing states.

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

The View From Olympus: Two Presidents, Both Wrong

The recent massacre in Mexico of nine American citizens, all women and children, by drug cartel gunmen elicited two very different reactions from the American and Mexican Presidents.  President Trump said, according to the November 9th Cleveland Plain Dealer,

The great new President of Mexico has made this a big issue, but the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army.  This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth.

In contrast, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said,

It hurts a lot.  But are we going to want to solve the problem in the same way?  Declaring war? That, in the case of our country, has been shown not to work.  That was a failure, that caused more violence. . . 

If we understand Fourth Generation war, we know both Presidents are wrong, although both show some insight into the situation.

President Trump is correct that the Mexican drug cartels are large and powerful.  But he underestimates the degree. Some of them are now more powerful than the Mexican state.  They have more money than the state, they have a much faster OODA Loop than the state’s forces, and, in classic 4GW fashion, they have penetrated the state’s forces to the point where they control many of them, in large part by paying higher “salaries” than the states.  If Mexico declares war on the cartels, it will lose.

President Lopez Obrador is right that warring with the cartels has been shown not to work.  But he does not appear to see any alternative but his famous line, “Hugs, not gunshots,” which has also been shown not to work, as the nine dead Americans testify.  So what is to be done?

Obviously, the best answer is to stop the cartels before they grow more powerful than the states.  But it is too late for that, in Mexico, in much of Central America, and around the world where many types of 4GW entities have become more powerful than their host states, e.g., Hezbollah in Lebanon.

For states that find themselves in that situation, 4GW theory suggests another approach: establish the rules of the game.  From the state’s perspective, gunmen from one cartel killing gunmen from a rival is not a big problem. As one Russian said to me in Moscow years ago when I asked about Chechnya, “Well, now Chechens are killing Chechens, so who cares?”

The problem is that sometimes civilians are killed, or kidnapped, or robbed, which reveals the hollowness of the state and undermines its legitimacy.  A President of Mexico or another country where non-state elements have become more powerful than the state might offer them a deal: if you avoid civilian casualties, we will stay out of the way of whatever is your top priority.  For drug cartels, that is making money by selling drugs.

While the state is not strong enough to wage war on and defeat the cartels, it can still raise or lower the cost of their doing business.  Like most businessmen, I suspect the cartels’ leaders want to lower costs. They might be open to a deal on those terms. Of course it is a worse solution from the state’s standpoint than destroying the cartels.  But it may be the best deal weak states can get.

If Mexico had a “rules of the game” agreement with at least the major cartels, an incident such as the massacre of nine American women and children would see the cartel whose gunmen did it execute those gunmen itself.

As always in 4GW, the war with drug cartels is at root a contest for legitimacy.  When civilians are killed in the war among cartels, both the state and the cartels suffer a blow to their legitimacy.  The state arose to bring order: safety of persons and property. States that cannot or will not do that lose their legitimacy.  In turn, smart 4GW entities such as Hezbollah know their legitimacy depends on providing safety and other services to the civilian sea in which they swim.  When they kill civilians, they hurt themselves.

Bismarck described politics as “the art of the possible”.  To preserve public peace and civilian safety in places where the state is weak, a deal with 4GW forces laying out the rules of the game may not be the best solution, but it may be the only possible solution.

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

A Rash Prediction

An old German saying warns that prediction is extremely difficult, especially when it involves the future.  But my track record so far has been pretty good, so here goes. I predict that Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee in 2020.

I don’t think this will happen because of impeachment.  The House will impeach the President, because the Democrats control the House.  But unless they come up with something far more serious than a few words in a telephone conversation, the Senate will not vote to convict.  Nor should they; this impeachment is partisan politics, nothing more. The Founders intended impeachment as a remedy only for the most dire cases, and this does not come close to qualifying.  Both Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton probably committed murder, and neither was removed from office by impeachment.

Could we see some other type of action by the Deep State to remove the President?  It’s possible, but they would need a legal fig leaf of some sort to cover up the coup, and it is difficult to see what that might be.

More likely is a crisis in the President’s health.  He is not a young man, his diet does not appear to be a healthy one, and the stress he faces every day as the Establishment howls for his head must be enormous.  Donald Trump is a fighter, and to some extent he relishes a fight. But when you find yourself undermined, spied on, and sabotaged by everyone around you--just how many people were listening in to that phone conversation?--it must be wearing, to say the least.  How long his frame can take it is an open question.

The most likely reason Mr. Trump will not be the Republican nominee is related to the health issue.  He will decide not to run because it just isn’t fun anymore.

The stress and strain from being under constant attack is part of that.  But there’s more. Mr. Trump is guided largely by his instincts. And for the most part, his instincts lead him in good directions.  He has avoided another war, despite the fervent desire of the neo-cons to push him into one (or two or three). He wants to get out of the wars we are in, though so far he cannot overcome the Establishment’s desire that we stay the course, presumably ‘till hell freezes over.  He has confronted China about its unfair trade practices, something previous Presidents should have done but were chicken. He recognizes that the main threat we face is excessive immigration, and is finally getting some results in his efforts to control our borders. 

But a man guided by his instincts is also impulsive.  President Trump has shown that is true of him. And I can easily see him making an impulsive decision, possibly quite late in the game, to say the hell with the whole mess that is Washington and not run.  He would need an assurance from the Republican nominee of a Presidential pardon, should he require one. That should not be difficult to obtain. In fact, it would be smart of the Democrats to offer the same, since he will most likely defeat whomever they nominate if he does run.  But they aren’t that smart. 

If my prediction proves correct, who should the Republicans nominate?  It must be someone who is anti-Establishment, because the real political division now is Establishment/anti-Establishment, much more than Democrat/Republican or even liberal/conservative.  Vice President Pence is conservative but Establishmentarian. He is also a wooden public speaker with no charisma or evident leadership potential. The Bob Dole nomination should be fresh enough in the Republican Party’s memory not to repeat that blunder.

My suggestion would be a Tucker Carlson/Tulsi Gabbard ticket.  Carlson is anti-Establishment, conservative (not neocon), and a major public figure.  Coming from outside Washington is a plus. Rep. Gabbard must know she will never get a Democratic Party nomination.  The ticket could present itself as bi-partisan, which would appeal to the millions of Americans sick of partisanship.  It would be an anti-war ticket, and also anti-Wall Street; Carlson recognizes that the concentration of wealth in the .1% is a populist issue.  It would offer everything President Trump does, without the Trumpian downsides. Most important, the voters who usually don’t vote but did come out to vote for Trump would do the same for Carlson. 

Such is my rash prediction.  If I’m wrong, it won’t be the first time.  But if I’m right, it won’t be the first time for that either, especially when everyone else predicted the opposite.

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

The View From Olympus: A Big Win for 4GW

A recent event in Culiacan, Mexico should have drawn a lot of attention but didn’t: a Fourth Generation entity, the Sinaloa Cartel, took on the Mexican state and beat it, not just strategically but tactically.  It did so by demonstrating a remarkably rapid OODA Loop, far faster than the state’s. This is a sign of things to come, not just in Mexico but in many places.

The most perceptive piece I have seen on these events was in the October 20 Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Gun battle involving El Chapo’s son highlights challenges to government” by Mary Beth Sheridan of the Washington Post.  It states,

What happened this past week was unprecedented.  When Mexican authorities tried to detain one of El Chapo’s sons, hundreds of gunmen with automatic weapons swept through the city, sealing off its exits, taking security officials hostage and battling authorities.

After several hours, the besieged government forces released Ovidio Guzman, who was wanted on U.S. federal drug-trafficking charges. . .

The offensive in Culiacan. . . exposed one of the country’s foremost problems: the government’s slipping control over parts of the territory.

There are an increasing number of areas “where you effectively have a state presence, but under negotiated terms with whoever runs the show locally,” said Falko Ernst, the senior Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group. . .

Thursday afternoon’s attack came on the heels of several incidents highlighting the ability of organized crime groups to challenge the government.  On Monday, gunmen ambushed a convoy of state police in the western state of Michoacan, killing 14. Last month, the Northeast Cartel ordered gas stations in the border city of Nuevo Laredo to deny service to police or military vehicles, leaving them desperate for fuel.

All this is happening not in the Hindu Kush but on our immediate southern border.  That alone should have drawn greater attention from a defense establishment fixated on non-threats from Russia and China.  But there is more here than meets the eye.

Normally, when states fight non-state forces in Fourth Generation war, the state loses strategically but wins tactically.  Here, non-state forces won tactically as well, and won big. They were at least as well equipped as the Mexican state forces.  But what was really impressive was their speed in the OODA Loop. Apparently caught by surprise by the state’s seizure of one of their leaders, they were able to respond massively within a few hours.  They took complete control of a city of about a million people, isolating and surrounding the unit that had captured Ovidio Guzman. The President of Mexico was forced to order his release.

The cartel’s ability to observe, orient, decide, and act much faster than the state is not a surprise.  Years ago, when John Boyd was still alive, a friend of mine who was a Marine officer was in Bolivia on a counter-drug mission.  I asked him how the Bolivian state’s OODA Loop compared with the traffickers. He said, "They go through it six times in the time it takes for us to go through it once."  When I told Boyd that, he said, "Then you’re not even in the game."

4GW forces' superior speed through the OODA Loop, in turn, has several causes.  They are fighting Second Generation militaries, where decision-making is centralized and therefore slow.  States are bureaucratic entities, and bureaucrats avoid making decisions and acting because it can endanger their careers.  The motivation of state forces is often poor because they have little loyalty to the corrupt and incompetent states they serve; mostly, to them its a job that offers a paycheck. In contrast, most 4GW forces have no bureaucracy, decentralize decision-making because they have to, and have fighters with genuine loyalty to what they represent.  Why? Money, plus what local women cited in the PD article explained:

 She acknowledged that the cartel members were part of the social fabric, sometimes more effective at resolving problems than authorities.  For example, if your car is stolen, it is more likely you would get it back by contacting cartel members through an acquaintance than by waiting for the police to crack the case, she said.

The drug cartels represent the future in many respects.  They do not seek to replace the state or openly capture it, which would make them vulnerable to other states; rather, they hide within its hollowed-out structures and are protected by its formal sovereignty.  They make lots of money while states go begging. They provide social services the state is supposed to offer but does not. Their highly-motivated forces with flat command structures have a faster OODA Loop than the state’s.  And locally, they often appear more legitimate than the state.

Again, all this is happening right next door.  Why can our national security establishment not read the words already written on the border wall we so desperately need?  Those words are, “Fourth Generation war.”

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

The View From Olympus: A 4GW Impeachment?

As I have said many times, Fourth Generation war is at root a contest for legitimacy.  On one side is the state. On the other is a vast array of alternate primary loyalties: religion, race, tribe, gang, and locality, among others.  Around the world, the contest is going poorly for the state as a growing number of people shift their primary loyalty to one of the many alternatives, for which they are willing to fight.

Washington does not perceive it, absorbed as it is in its own struggles for power and money, but the same contest is going on in this country.  So far, to our great benefit, it has remained on the peripheries. Urban police know they are confronting it in the form of ethnically-based gangs, which are illegal business enterprises that fight.  But the mass of the American people appear still loyal to the state.

The appearance is, I think, deceptive.  On both the Left and the Right, doubts about the legitimacy of the federal government are growing.  Mostly, the doubts are about the legitimacy of the current President, although polls show public perception of Congress is also strongly negative.  There is no question many on the Left regard President Trump as illegitimate. Should a hard-Left figure such as Warren win in 2020, the Right will doubt her legitimacy.  But considering the current President illegitimate is different from thinking the state itself has lost its legitimacy.

Impeachment could change that.  President Trump’s supporters regard his election as proof their voices can be heard, that their interests will be considered in Washington.  They know that to virtually all Democrats and some Republicans, they are “unpersons”. Why? Because they are White, male, or non-feminist female, straight, and mostly Christian.  They are also struggling economically, which means they are not contributors to politicians’ campaigns. The coastal elites dismiss them as rubes and hicks inhabiting “flyover land”.  The Democratic Party, which has embraced the ideology of cultural Marxism, considers them all inherently evil “oppressors” fit only to kiss the feet of blacks, immigrants, gays, feminists, etc.,  PC’s sainted “victims” groups.

Again, should a Warren win in 2020, President Trump’s supporters will not consider her (or him) a legitimate President.  But if the unholy alliance between Democrats and the Deep State succeeds in driving President Trump from office through impeachment or some other means, that will be a very different story.  At that point, the message to President Trump’s supporters will be, “Your votes don’t matter, because even if you elect a President, we will drive him from office and reduce you to a silent serfdom.  You and your views are entitled to no representation. You are and will remain ‘unpersons.’”

At that point, in the vast electoral sea that is red America, the legitimacy of the system itself, i.e., the state, will be brought into serious question.  And when that happens, the chance of Fourth Generation war here on a large scale will rise dramatically. When you tell people they cannot achieve representation through ballots, they start to think about doing it with bullets.

That electoral map, the one that shows the results of the 2016 election by county, has significant military meaning.  The blue votes are concentrated in cities, which cannot feed themselves. As Chairman Mao said, “Take the countryside and the cities will fall.”  Nor can they be supplied from the sea, because most of the people in the military are Trump supporters, which means the red side will get most of the ships and planes.  The military problem is really quite simple, and need involve virtually no shooting or destruction. You just put the cities under siege and wait for the starving people to come out.  It won’t take long.

The message to Washington is clear and direct: if President Trump is driven from office by anything other than a loss in the 2020 election (if he runs), the legitimacy of the state will be brought into question.  That is a dangerous business that politicians of both parties would be wise to avoid. After all, they will be the first people hanged from the nearest lamppost if widespread 4GW comes here. An impeachment that leads to the checkpoints going up all over rural America is a very bad idea.

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

The View From Olympus: A Comprehensive Settlement

President Trump’s decision to pull all U.S. troops out of Syria is wise and, in fact, long overdue.  There is no natural end-point for serving as a buffer between the Turks and the Kurds; their feud will go on forever.  We should never have gotten ourselves into it in the first place.

Similarly, the President was correct in refusing to attack Iran in response to the Houthis’ strike on Saudi oil facilities.  His refusal to pull the Saudis’ chestnuts out of the fire has led them to approach Iran about reducing mutual tensions, which is just the outcome we should desire.  As the New York Times reported on October 5, “Any reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran could have far-reaching consequences for conflicts across the region.”

President Trump understands that our involvement in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf should be minimized.  It brings us no benefits and carries the risk of high costs, i.e., more wars in which our interests are not really at stake.  What we need is a comprehensive settlement of all major disputes across the region. This is what Bismark sought and reached in the face of a number of European crises that could have brought on a general war.

So what might Bismarck do?  His approach was well illustrated by the Congress of Berlin.  His rule was, everyone gets something they want but nobody gets everything.  In the case of the Middle East, an outline of a comprehensive settlement might look something like this:

Iran gets most sanctions on the sale of oil lifted.  In return, Iran stops hostile acts aimed at Saudi Arabia, largely withdraws from Syria, where the Assad government (which Iran and Russia support) has won, and pushes the Houthis to accept a deal to end the fighting in Yemen.

The Saudis get an end to Iranian threats, an end to the war they have lost in Yemen, and the regional stability they crave.  In return, they cease exporting Salafism through their funding of extremist schools and organizations throughout the region, which is one of the main sources of upheaval.

Syria gets an end to its civil war, restoration of the Assad government and financial help in rebuilding.  Iraq receives a U.N. mission to help get the country working again, i.e., the electricity on, the water safe to drink, and jobs.  The Saudis pick up the tab for both, or most of it. The Gulf states get renewed cordial relations (including with Qatar), tranquility and a chance to make even more money.  Everyone agrees to ignore the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, which is what they are already doing.

The question is, how do we get all the parties to agree on a deal like this?  Again, what would Bismarck do? He would call a conference of the Powers. In his day, those were Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, France, and Britain.  Today, the Powers are the U.S., Russia, and China. They craft the terms of the deal, largely without reference to what the local parties want, beyond the rule that everybody gets something but nobody gets everything.  Then, they impose the settlement. Anyone who refuses it gets hit with massive trade and financial sanctions, enforced by all three Powers together. This is less brutal than it seems, because it allows the local politicians to blame the Powers for aspects of the deal their citizens do not like.  They can say, “Hey, don’t blame me. Who can stand up to the U.S., Russia, and China acting together?”

But, you may ask, what do the Powers themselves get out of it?  The U.S. gets to pull out of a region where, if we stay long enough, we are guaranteed to get into more wars we don’t want and can’t afford.  Russia gets de facto recognition as a major player in the region, including American acceptance of Russia resuming her 19th century role as protector of the region’s Christians (it is in that role Russia intervened in Syria).  China gets regional stability in an area she depends on for oil plus an OK from the U.S. and Russia to push her One Belt, One Road initiative there.

In the end, nobody is completely happy, but no one is so unhappy as to go to war.  Children sing, doves are released, bands play, and everyone goes home grumbling but at the same time relieved.  Chaos and Old Night have been pushed off, at least for a time. As a realist, Bismarck understood that was the most diplomacy can do.

So, Mr. President and Secretary Pompeo, it’s time to call a conference.  May I suggest it meets in Berlin?

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

The View From Olympus: President Trump, Iran, and the Indirect Approach

The neo-cons and neo-libs are jointly crying to the heavens that President Trump’s refusal to attack Iran shows weakness.  In their elementary school understanding of the world, unless we are the biggest bully on the playground, other bullies will come after us.  The fruits of their puerility include Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.

Fortunately, President Trump is wiser.  He understands that, as a maritime power (which our geography dictates we must be), we will accomplish our objectives better with an indirect approach.

The indirect approach is traditionally British, and the man who understood it best was the great maritime historian and theorist Sir Julian Corbett.  His book on the principles of maritime strategy, and his masterful history of Britain in the Seven Years’ War, both explain how it works. It works just the way President Trump has been applying it to Iran.

Through the economic and financial sanctions that the President has placed on Iran he has caused the ruling circles of that country to face real problems--especially since he has repeatedly offered to sit down and negotiate with them, which they have refused to do.  The combination has led the Iranians to have growing doubts about their country’s leadership. They suffer, their leaders can do nothing to relieve their sufferings, yet they won't agree to talks that might reduce or even eliminate the sanctions. This is exactly the kind of pressure the indirect approach excels at creating--and we haven’t had to fire a shot.

In World War I, this is what finally defeated Germany.  The British distant blockade that included (illegally) food caused mass hunger in Germany.  More Germans starved to death than in World War II. The German government was unable to improve the food situation, and eventually the people revolted and overthrew that government--tragically for the world, because the fall of the German monarchy opened the door to Hitler.  At the same time, because the British departed from maritime strategy and sent a large army to fight on the Continent, the war also brought the end of the British Empire, another disaster for the world.

It is of central importance that President Trump stick to the indirect approach and not get sucked in to taking less effective but more dramatic military action.  Some pinprick attacks on Iran by cruise missiles or aircraft will lead the Iranian people to rally around their government, which is the opposite of the result we are seeking and achieving through the sanctions.  I hope someone reminds the President of one of Machiavelli’s wiser sayings: never do an enemy a small injury.

The strategy of the indirect approach applies equally to China.  Should China grow so belligerent we must respond, perhaps by attacking an American ship or aircraft and thereby killing Americans (something the Iranians have so far been careful to avoid), instead of sending in the Marines to attempt to take some Chinese islands, we should apply a distant blockade.  A distant blockade, like that in the British used in World War I, would be beyond China’s reach--say, in the Indian Ocean. It would cut off China’s oil and food supplies, which would be a very large problem indeed for the leadership in Beijing. But as is the case with the sanctions on Iran, we would probably not have to fire a shot.

When President Trump responds to his critics who cry for war, he should continue to say what he has been saying: that his refusal to attack Iran is a policy of strength, not weakness.  That is exactly correct, because the sanctions exert real pressure on Tehran while some minor military attacks would work in their favor. This should be a no-brainer. Regrettably, as they have shown over and over, the neo-cons and neo-libs have no brains.

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

A Deep State Impeachment

President Trump’s impeachment has been inevitable ever since the Democrats captured the House of Representatives.  Senior Democrats know it is a political blunder, but they have no choice: the party’s base demands it. It is politics, pure and simple, and most Americans perceive that.  President Trump’s actions have nothing to do with it.

In fact, the evidence so far should put Joe Biden in worse jeopardy than President Trump.  When Biden was Vice President under President Obama, he threatened to block a billion dollars of loan guarantees for Ukraine unless Ukraine’s president fired the country’s chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.  Why would Vice President Biden have cared who Ukraine had as its Prosecutor General? It appears a big Ukraine gas company, Burisma, feared Mr. Shokin was about to investigate it for corruption--which he would have found, because everything in Ukraine is corrupt.  Again, what was this to Vice President Biden? Well, it seems his son was a board member of Burisma, a position for which he was paid as much as $50,000 a month, an extraordinary amount for just serving on a board. But in this case, the money seems to have been well spent, because Mr. Shokin was duly fired and Burisma was not investigated.

President Trump’s sin, for which the House will now vote to impeach him, was asking Ukraine’s current president to look into the matter.  Logic would suggest that if President Trump is to be impeached, the House should also vote to impeach Mr. Biden the day after his inauguration, should he be elected in 2020.  Don’t hold your breath waiting for that.

But something bigger is going on here.  The basis on which the Democrat-controlled House voted to begin an impeachment investigation was a whistle-blower complaint from a CIA employee, presumably a civil servant, and almost certainly a senior civil servant, given that he had worked in the White House.  But should a President of the United States, when speaking by phone with another country’s leader, have to worry about who is listening in--not from China or Russia, but people who are supposedly working for him who then run to Congress with information intended to destroy that President? 

What we are witnessing is a Deep State impeachment.  The Washington arm of the Deep State is made up largely of middle and upper-grade members of the Civil Service.  They are mostly card-carrying members of the Establishment. They accept globalism and, out of either conviction or cowardice, cultural Marxism.  They see themselves as members of an elite membership in which certain political views are required. President Trump, who comes from the populist Right, represents everything they loath.  They see it as their collective mission to destroy him, and they will sabotage him and everything he tries to do in any way they can. They will do the same to any successor who comes from the populist Right.

From a conservative perspective, if we are ever to be able to govern effectively, we must destroy at least this wing of the Deep State.  If we do not, winning elections will matter little. The question is, how?

The best way would be to return most of the powers the federal government has seized since 1860 to the states.  State governments too have a large portion of employees who share the Deep State’s worldview and objectives. But because state bureaucracies are smaller, it is easier to identify and dismiss the saboteurs.  Unfortunately conservatives have been attempting for decades to shrink the size of the federal government, without success. Until the debt crisis and resultant depression hits, that is unlikely to happen.

But here’s something that might work.  The Washington members of the Deep State are mostly very well paid.  Like the members of the Frankfurt School who created cultural Marxism, they insist on combining their Leftist views with a haute bourgeois lifestyle, which takes money.  Their ample salaries and good benefits packages are paid for by American taxpayers, most of whom have far smaller incomes.  In effect, we are financing the elites that despise us.

So let’s change that.  A populist measure I think would prove very effective would rule that no civil servant can be paid more than the average American taxpayer makes.  The worker bees in the Civil Service would see little change. But the vast middle management, where people like our whistle-blower spin their webs, would have to choose between serving what they believe in and their expensive lifestyles.  My bet is they would quit in droves (while Washington real estate value went through the floor).

When corporations become stuffy, stodgy, and unable to adjust to change, a common approach of new owners is to clean out the middle management, not just firing most of its people but also not replacing them, thereby shrinking their ranks.  The new, streamlined organization is not only less expensive, it performs better because the people who do the work are no longer separated from the owners by a vast, wet blanket of bureaucracy.

If conservatives are serious about changing national policy, it is not enough to fight individual alligators.  We do have to drain the swamp, the swamp that is the Deep State. Firing civil servants is extremely difficult.  But creating conditions where they choose to depart might prove easier, and politically popular. Mr. President, may I suggest this could be an effective way to strike back at the saboteurs in what should be your own ranks?  Here in Cleveland, most people would like to see you try.