Author: Graham J.

Wot Won It?

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From the London Evening Standard, more on American support to Britain during the Falklands Crisis:

President Reagan at first said the US would be impartial in the conflict between two of its allies. But on April 2, 1982, the day of the Argentinian  invasion, he sent Mrs Thatcher a note: “I want you to know that we have valued your cooperation on the challenge we both face in many different parts of the world. We will do what we can to assist you. Sincerely, Ron.”

A week later Reagan’s Secretary of State Al Haig visited London to mediate, but covertly delivered the message: “We are not impartial. We face a common problem. We must do all we can to strengthen you and your government.”

Much of what the article covers has been said already (the supply of Sidewinder and Stinger missiles have been known for some time). But there were some interesting tidbits to uncover, such as:

  • There was some sort of Civil Reserve Air Fleet support, at least infrastructure-wise: “The local Pan Am airline manager, Don Coffee, told us his president had told him that we had to make everything possible [on Ascension Island] available to British forces. He said he wasn’t referring to President Reagan, but the President of Pan Am.”
  • The Argentinian Air Force’s capabilities were qualitatively overestimated: Americans “assess at the outset that the Argentinians have about 220 first- and second-line combat aircraft — but only days after the landings at San Carlos on May 21, the Americans report about half the first-line Argentinian aircraft have been knocked out.”
  • Perhaps unlike my previous thesis, the Reagan Administration saw the USSR as the greater threat to the sanctity of the Monroe Doctrine: ” Washington believed the Soviet Union was prepared to provide ships, weaponry and ammunition to the Argentinians, in return for cheap grain.”

I assume there’s much more to be gleaned from the newly released Agency documents (you have to love that thirty-year rule), which seem to be held entirely at National Archives II, but a selection of which has been digitized by the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, available here. Looking forward to what else might be in there…

The Struggle in the Bardo

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AP/AP - An army helicopter flies over the Siachen Glacier on Pakistan-India border, 2003.

The base at Gayari, where the avalanche hit, sits at about 15,000 feet, near a border where thousands of Pakistani and Indian troops stand guard across a no man’s land at elevations up to 22,000 feet. The Siachen Glacier often is called the highest battlefield on Earth.

-Richard Leiby, “Himalayan avalanche buried scores of Pakistani troops, army says,” Washington Post, April 7, 2007.

Something about this phrasing – despite the tragedy of the situation – inspires wonder and awe. The fact that I’m captivated by it is a reminder that I’m still a nerd, which I appreciate. There’s a cinematic quality to it; an air of futility as well. It’s akin to spacefaring battles, or a war on the moon. An alien, inhospitable landscape that men are willing to die for.

This reflects my own tastes more than anything, but much writing on India and/or Pakistan, though especially the former, seems to take place in the teeming cities or lush semi-jungle areas. But there’s a very distinct subcurrent in military-related fiction and literature set in the mountains and passes. Think General Raj-Singh, the Tiger of Delhi. Or a temporary safehouse in Himachel Pradesh. 10th Mountain: there may be hope for you yet.

Of course, it helps that I can’t help but be reminded of the epic, climactic “War of the Asuras” in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt (it should be fairly obvious why):

Their task now was to blast the defenses away and go south through that pass, down to some level below this floor of the universe. The pass to India, supposedly. Gate to a lower realm. Very well defended, of course.
      The “Muslims” defending it remained invisible, always over the great snowy mass of granite peaks, greater than any mountains on earth could be, asura mountains, and the big guns brought to bear on them, asura guns. Never had it been so clear to Bai that they had gotten caught up in some bigger war, dying by the millions for some cause not their own. Ice and black rock fangs touched the ceiling of stars, snow banners streamed on the monsoon wind away from the peaks, merging with the Milky Way, at sunset becoming asura flames blowing horizontally, as if the realm of the asuras stood perpendicularly to their own, another reason perhaps that their puny imitation battles were always so hopelessly askew.
      The Muslims’ big guns were on the south side of the range, they never even heard them. Their shells whistled over the stars, leaving white rainbow frost trails on the black sky. The majority of these shells landed on the massive white mountain to the east of the huge pass, blasting it with one stupendous explosion after another, as if the Muslims had gone crazy and declared war on the rocks of the Earth.

Now De-“Classified”

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It wasn’t really “classified.” Just FOUO. But now it isn’t even that, so I’m pleased to present (even though I’m probably late to the game here) excerpts the NSA’s “Unofficial Vocabulary.”

DAY LADY: A mildly pejorative term used by workers on evening or overnight shifts to describe a person of either sex who works only “normal business hours”; often characterized by a compulsive concern for wearing a necktie or avoiding jeans.

DESK RATS: that’s OK, you know who you are.

[…]

HAMMERED: describes text with a significant number or garbles, misprints, or omissions that render it unreadable or call into question its validity.

[…]

KORLING: acronym for “Korean linguist,” an occupational speciality. It would look less like a Scottish sport or Canadian beer if spelled with a hyphen.

[…]

U STREET U: nickname for the Agency training school overflow building located on U Street in the District of Columbia during the 1950s. In itself, this is a diminutive for the slightly disparaging nickname “U Street University.”

The whole document is available right here.

The Windup Girl: A Review

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https://twitter.com/#!/johnrobb/status/167605495866208256

https://twitter.com/#!/johnrobb/status/167606075862941696

Everything I hoped it would be and more. This morning John Robb referenced aspects of The Windup Girl and that brought it all rushing back.

Bacigalupi paints the picture of a world where the “calorie men,” representatives of the midwestern agricultural combines that released the blister rust plagues into the wild, whose “U-Tex” and other genetically-engineered crops are the only defense against the diseases created by the same men, and the sterility of which forces India, Burma, and the other starving nations of the world into semi-feudal servility. A world in which rising seas have swallowed New York, Mumbai, New Orleans, and Rangoon, and where only the coal-powered monstrous pumps of King Rama XII prevent the similar fate from befalling Bangkok. Where the combustion engine has been replaced by kink-spring power wound by men and elephant-derived megadonts, where the exertion of labor to power the world requires the fuel of food, and calories are the currency of the realm.

In the midst of this, a former Japanese pleasure construct – the titular “windup girl” – discovers instincts and desires beyond the total obedience and urge to please that has not just been bred into her, but programmed into the very fiber of her being. An accidental übermenschen trapped among a peoples who regard her as trash, she represents a future that she can’t even understand yet. Which, coincidentally, is precisely what Bacigalupi has written here.

It is a rich portrait, indeed, and Bacigalupi excels at the alternate history/speculative fiction techniques of hint-dropping and hastily-sketched background details that he doles out like candy along a forest trail. But you’ll want to go where he’s luring you.

Link Dump

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This will be the last one of these for the foreseeable future. But they should keep you busy.

Strategy/Diplomacy/War/History

Politics/Economics/Society

Culture

Urban

Photography

Sports

Visegrád

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The four constituent nations of the "Visergrád Four."

Apparently, this alliance exists, and as of May, now includes a military component. I like it. As a bloc in the EU and NATO of otherwise somewhat ignored countries, it allows for a little more interdependence without relying on the “big boys.” The history behind the group, which dates back to 1335(!) is just awesome, and I believe was designed for the sole purpose of fascinating me.

Originally a meeting between the King of Bohemia, the King of Poland, and the King of Hungary and Croatia, the “Visegrád Three” (so-named for the Hungarian castle town in which the meeting was held) was intended to create new routes of commerce, bypassing what was then the center of European commerce, Vienna. Replace “Vienna” with “Berlin and Paris” – and possible even “Moscow” – and one gets a decent idea of what the Visegrád revival is all about. Of course, as post-Communist countries, the Visegrád Four (with the split of Slovakia and the Czech Republic) were concerned with maintaining their own sphere of influence without Russian interference.

As for the Visegrád Battlegroup, it is expected to become fully operational by 2016. It is intended to be a separate force from NATO, though elements will begin exercising with the NATO Ready Response Force. Poland is taking the lead militarily, as befits its size and spending relative to the other members.

Aside from the practical nature of the undertaking, the symbolism of this alliance is not to be underestimated. The four countries involved are all European Union members, but not in the Euro-zone (they are the westernmost non-former Yugoslav countries to not adopt the Euro). They represent a strange hybrid between EU membership and existing outside it, and with the Euro looking shakier every day, actual entrance into the common currency may be an increasingly remote possibility. This would solidify the status of the Visegrád Four as, if not second-class member-states, then at least as junior members in an IGO whose legitimacy is derived from the equal status of its constituent nations.

On its own, the Visegrad Group is not particularly powerful or a threat to European unity, but when seen as part of the larger pattern of sub-regionalization it becomes indicative of a larger trend. Even where formal ties do not exist, developments like the emerging German leadership of the EU or the newly-signed Anglo-French defense treaty point to a Europe losing coherence. And in Eastern Europe these new subregions are gaining prominence and a sort of global autonomy. The customs union between Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia that came into being in 2010 harkens back to the collapse of the Soviet Union, when a similar union (with the addition of Ukraine) was seen as a means to preserve much of the structure of the USSR while maintaining the multinational state. That customs union has abolished border controls as of this month, creating another subnational and even subregional entity.

There seems to be growing disenchantment not just with the universal United Nations, but even with the regional variants: the European Union, UNASUR, African Union, SCO, ASEAN, etc. In a world where nations themselves are tending towards autonomy and fragmentation, it should not come as a surprise that some countries would turn to a more specific alternative than the grand regional frameworks that attempt to address an incredible array of problems and cooperative issues.

Also, the conflation of military and economic drivers of an alliance like Visegrád should not be overlooked as a key development. While the two are often treated as completely separate realms – NAFTA certainly does not include a military component, NATO’s economic requirement is that members adhere to capitalism, more or less, and the EU’s EDC unified European military force has been discussed for sixty years without ever coming to fruition. Military power and the economy, however, are inextricable, and it is perhaps for this reason that these microalliances are coming into being. For a group of four, maybe it’s just more manageable that way.

In general, though, keep an eye out for these subregional and some day soon even subnational alliances. The New England Six? The League of Extraordinary PIGS? Flanders? Coming soon to a world map near you.

R.U.S.E.

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American Stuart and Lee tanks advance on a German position.

I gave the real-time strategy game R.U.S.E. a quick whirl last night. Expect a formal review at some point, but here are some initial impressions:

– From what I’ve played, it already seems somewhat more historically accurate than others in the this genre, at least with regards to the campaign. So far I’ve been operating in a support role in the Battle of Kasserine Pass (the North Africa campaign itself is woefully underused in games), and it seems to have a fairly accurate order of battle, down to the Italian bersaglieri regiments and Free French units you’re operating with.

– The actual “RUSE” system has so far been limited to “spies” and “decryption,” the former of which reveals the identities of units in a given sector, and the latter which reveals movements only. Used in tandem, it is a neat trick to predict enemy attacks and move to ambush. Presumably as the game progresses, more elaborate ruses will become available.

– Selecting and issuing orders to units is less easy than one would expect, and the imprecision with which you move a given unit compares pretty unfavorably with something like Company of Heroes. It’s hard to get, say, an infantry squad exactly where you want it, and the AI does not at all compensate for that.

– The zoom-in/out system is pretty neat. Zoom all the way in and you’re practically at the level of a first-person shooter, with individual units all moving separately. As you zoom out from there, your units gradually change to a stacked-counter view, and at the farthest zoom levels, you see you’re actually moving counters on a map table in some sort of command post. The micro/macro views do help.

Corporate Warriors: A Review

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It has been much too long in coming, but I finally finished P.W. Singer’s Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. It is, quite simply, excellent.

Singer is one of the most intriguing defense/security writers out there, as his “thing” is basically finding heavily underrreported – yet crucial – developments occurring in the U.S. military. He seems to always be one of the first to really study in a comprehensive and coherent manner certain evolutionary changes in the way war is fought, and Corporate Warriors is no exception. His other works deal with heady subjects like robotics in war and child soldiers, and here he is at the forefront of yet another startling trend.

Corporate Warriors is an attempt to trace the lineage of the Private Military Firm (PMF) from early mercenaries to today’s corporate arrangements, and in doing so, to fit them into a theoretical framework for better understanding and predicting industry developments. Published on the eve of the Iraq War in 2003, the book mostly deals with the 1990s, though to fully explain the rise of the PMF it jumps back to earlier examples in the 1970s and 80s.

Much of Corporate Warriors is couched in the language of IR theory, but Singer never slavishly tries to fit all of his findings into a rigid framework. Chapter 2 is an excellent historical survey of privatized military history, ranging from mercenaries in the service of King Shulgi of Ur to Syracusan hoplites to the first “companies” of the Hundred Years War. Singer fully explains the ‘state as monopoly on violence’ and the prominence that mercenaries enjoyed from the dawn of history until the nineteenth century, explaining that the odd little gap between roughly 1860 and 1950 in which the state’s monopoly was the only game in town. But he is never overly concerned with the theoretical framework. Chapter 11, “Market Dynamism and Global Security Disruptions,” opens with an epigraph from Professor R.B.J. Walker:

The disjunction between the seriousness of international politics and the triviality of international relations theory is quite startling.

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