Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

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Hegseth’s Speech and Fitness Standards For Soldiers

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On October 2, 2025

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I took the time to read a transcript of Secretary of War Hegseth’s speech to the gathered generals and admirals. To my surprise, I agreed with a lot of it, though not all. The crazy bits, especially combined with Trump’s statements, are the talk of domestic enemies and using the military against them.

But most of the speech is about standards. No beards, no slobs, and most of all, fitness standards:

Because war does not care if you’re a man or a woman. Neither does the enemy, nor does the weight of your rucksack, the size of an artillery round or the body weight of a casualty on the battlefield who must be carried. This — and I want to be very clear about this. This is not about preventing women from serving. We very much value the impact of female troops. Our female officers and NCOs are the absolute best in the world.

But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender-neutral. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That is not the intent, but it could be the result. So be it. It will also mean that weak men won’t qualify because we’re not playing games. This is combat. This is life or death.

And the thing is, I more or less agree with this.

But. (You knew there’d be a but.)

What fitness standards are really required?


The only major army, at war, to use a lot of women was the USSR. They weren’t allowed in all roles, but they were in some. Particularly famous were the snipers:

Roza was one of more than 2,000 female snipers trained and employed by the Soviets to put fear in the hearts of the invaders by striking thousands from the Germans’ “rations list.” Other women were even more deadly and more famous. Lyudmila Pavlichenko, for example, had 309 confirmed kills and was selected to go on a wartime goodwill tour of Allied countries that included a visit to Franklin Roosevelt’s White House.

The initial female snipers were individuals like Nina Petrova, who served as a nurse on the front, although she had been a physical education instructor who had trained marksmen before the war. At first, the Soviets had been reluctant to employ her as a sniper because of her sex and the fact that she was 48 years old.

But the nurse was persistent, got her hands on a sniper rifle, and eventually was given permission to “go hunting” in her free time. As her official kill tally mounted, she gained the go-ahead for further outings, and she began to teach frontline sniper courses.

Other units also set up similar frontline programs, and in March 1942, a Central School for Sniper Instructors was established in Veshnyaki near Moscow. Petrova, Pavlichenko, and other women on the front lines had already demonstrated their abilities and coolness under fire, so it was a fairly logical follow-through when the Soviet high command established a separate three-month-long women’s training program there in December 1942.

The Soviets thought that women made excellent snipers because they could handle cold better than men, and they were more patient and willing to wait for the right opportunities. The confirmed kill numbers on many of them were very high, in the hundreds, and there’s little question that unconfirmed kills were much higher.

That and other “decamping” events to the front lines led to further sanctions and an angry fit when a political commander refused to let her go on additional excursions. She was an adrenaline junkie who begged to go back on the front lines. “Some force draws me to the front lines,” she wrote. “I’m bored in the back. Some people say I just want to get back to the boys, but I don’t have anyone I know there. I want to see real war.”

In one frontline attack alone, Roza reportedly killed 54 Germans and captured three others. Those figures were not included in her official sniper tally but resulted in a front-page feature in a Moscow magazine. Her action prompted Soviet writer-propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg to “thank her 57 times over. She has saved the lives of thousands of Soviet people.”

I don’t have a strong view on this. I just suspect that there’s a sort of generalized misogyny at the heart of the MAGA movement, a resentment of women who “took our jobs” that will lead to the standards not actually reflecting the requirements of the field. Hell, I’m not even a fan of women in war (some latent chivalry from my upbringing, I suspect.)

It’s my annual fundraiser. We cover a lot of ground on this blog and those who read it regularly know what is going to happen before most who don’t: the end of American Empire, the end of dollar hegemony, that Russia was going to win the war, the new Hegemon China, and even minor things like Tesla’s oncoming collapse. It’d be great if you can help out (please don’t donate if your financial situation is dire.) You can Subscribe or Donate here or contact me at ian-at-fdl-at-gmail-dot-com if mail or another method would be better. (Most US cash apps do not work in Canada.)

The snipers carried two grenades. One was to be used against the enemy, the second to avoid capture by killing themselves and hopefully taking some Germans with them. If captured they could expect rape and torture. (Many looted a German pistol and saved the last bullet for themselves instead.)

That said, fairness requires that those who can do the job and want to, be allowed to. The only thing that matters in war is if you can do what needs to be done. How many air force technicians are going to be separated because they’re a bit too fat, say? Does it really matter if they are? With widespread recruitment issues, can you replace them? The US military letting in more women and so on wasn’t just about “woke” it was about fairly consistent problems meeting recruitment goals with people who weren’t criminals or morons or who have serious health issues. Is it better to have American women serving, or to offer non-citizens a route to citizenship in exchange for service? (Hire mercenaries, in effect?)

Not, of course, that the US military being high functioning is in almost anyone’s interest, including most Americans. After all, Trump has deployed troops against Americans and wants to deploy more, against his domestic enemies. Nor has America been “the good guys” in many wars. America losing its wars, historically would have been good nine times out of ten. (Fortunately Americans have become better and better at losing wars.) Hell, America’s currently helping the Israelis commit genocide and a carrier task force is currently steaming thru the Med, perhaps to attack Iran again.

So perhaps Hegseth’s reforms will just make America’s military even crappier. Let’s hope so.

Care To Tell Me What Is Wrong With This Headline?

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On September 16, 2025

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Screenshot

Link to article here. 

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Euro Proposal For A No Fly Zone in the Ukraine: the Consequences

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On September 16, 2025

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In the aftermath of several errant Russia drones crashing into Poland, said nation’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, invoked Article 4 of NATO, and whilst giving an interview to a German paper, called for  “a limited, NATO/EU-run no-fly buffer for drones nearing alliance airspace.”

Dmitri Medvedev, the former president of the Russiann Federation while speaking at a Russian Security Council meeting on Moday said that “Russia would consider NATO forces protecting Ukrainian airspace as a declaration of war. . . .”

Russia, it should be added, asserted that “that “no targets on the territory of Poland were planned for destruction,” and that the drones it used in Ukraine have a flight range of no more than 700 kilometers (435 miles).” I would add the Russian first deputy Permanent Representative  to the UN made a very good point in an interview this morning. He asked simply, “cui bono?”

Cui bono notwithstanding, a lot remains open for interpreation, especially without the evidence being reported on seriously and assiduously. (Which won’t happen in the West.) That said, the number of drones that landed or were shot down in Poland is troubling. Look at this map for a better idea of what worries me. I’ve heard several explanations, from Ukrainian spoofing and EW warfare, to a false flag operation. Spoofing, EW warfare, cui bono or false flag–any others?–really doesn’t matter. It is simply bad ju-ju for all parties concerned.

Regardless of what really happened, are we absolutely insane?

Have our diplomats and leaders lost all touch with reality? If we declare and attempt to enforce a No-Fly Zone over the Ukraine we are declaring war on the Russian Federation. Declaring war on a nuclear power that could absorb a full force first strike by the USA much better than we could absorb their very robust response is as stupid as someone with brains for dynamite who cannot blow the wax out of their ears if their brains exploded.

Thank heavens for the brothers Lieven, one, Dominic, is an historian of empire, the other, whom I will quote below, is foreign policy analyst that writes frequently for the site Responsible Statecraft. Anatol is an adult in a childish firmament of foreign policy know-nothings, like Kaja Kallas. As one Russian observer said about her: she is critically undereducated. But back to Anatol, as he writes on the drones falling in Poland: “We should remember that during the Cold War, there were a number of far more serious violations of air space by both sides, some of them leading to NATO planes being shot down and American and British airmen killed. These incidents led not to threats of war, but careful attempts to de-escalate tensions and develop ways to avoid such clashes.” What a mature idea. I wish we had more adults in the room, so to speak.

The whole Ukraine debacle has only unravelled our power faster than if adults were running our foreign policy. And a No Fly Zone over the Ukraine is the height of childish, bat-shit crazy ideas. But then, we have not had an adult running our foreign policy since George Schultz left foggy bottom on January 20, 1989. I take that back, the last adult to manage our foreign policy was James A. Baker, who left foggy bottom on August 23, 1992. It has been unipolar willy nilly serially destroying nation after nation ever since.

It has got to stop. I just fear how it ultimately will stop.

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The Solution to The USA’s Taiwan Dilemma

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On September 11, 2025

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“The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.”

三国演义 ~by Luo Guangzhong

Earlier I promised to post my plan to prevent a war between the United States and China over Taiwan. I’ve traveled and met with Taiwanese diplomats. They are some of the most sophisticated operators I’ve ever encountered. Taiwan is a highly advanced technological country. Very wealthy, with a sophisticated full coverage heath care system and a vibrant democracy. Furthermore, based on the Shanghai Communique issued on February 27, 1972 by Nixon and Mao, both mainland China and the USA formally acknowledged that “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China”.

The Communique goes on to state the US side does not accept a violent solution to the unification of the two parties and the Chinese side retains the option to violence if Taiwan ever declares independence, paraphrasing here, folks. It’s been a long time since reading my Kissinger.

Conversely, I have traveled seven times to China. Here is an idea most Americans will probably never understand. China’s potential to utilize enormous amounts of soft power is profound. This is based on China’s circular view of history and that China has been invaded and ruled by foreign powers many times in its history. In each and every case China has overcome said invaders very differently than the way the Russians have. Or anyone else for that matter. Where the Russians trade space for time to husband their resources for a great counter attack and push the invader out of the country, China seduces the invader, with its ancient, deep, amazing and incredibly seductive culture. I cannot emphasize enough the depth, breadth, and tantalizing sophistication of its culture, be it material, artistic, political or spiritual. I do, after all, practice Chinese Chan Buddhism in my own life. Every time China has been invaded and completely taken over by a foreign power this strategy works. Even today we’re watching Chinese movies on Netflix. That is the use and export of soft power. And unlike America, that has only 250 years of history to draw upon its soft power, China has almost 4000 years of history to draw upon. The efficacy of Chinese soft power is not to be underestimated. It is indeed seductive.

Now the question moves to goals and intentions. And here an understanding of Chinese history can aid us in a better understanding of the present Chinese leader, Xi Jing Ping.

What are Xi Jing Ping’s true goals? Simple, he seeks membership among the greatest of Chinese emperors. The greatest of Chinese emperors are judged by a single metric: did they unify all of China? As the opening sentence of the great Chinese novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I quoted at the beginning of this essay, unification is the way the Chinese see themselves when in a golden age.

This compulsion to unify all of China is the defining source of Xi’s ambitions. And that means Taiwan. Taiwan is the last remaining province of a fully unified China. China equal to that ruled by the Qin Shih Huang Di, the very first emperor to unify all of China, or the great conqueror Han Wu Di, or Li Shimin of the mighty T’ang or Zhu Yuanzhang of the wall building Ming. It is to this rank of Chinese men that Xi aspires.

What should America do? I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to avoid a war with China that most people are certain is inevitable. They call it the “Thucydides Trap.” But, if the study of history has taught me anything it is that nothing is inevitable, contingencies matter, and human agency means the most. We may live in a complex adaptive system, but nothing, nothing is inevitable. Therefore, America must find a way tone down its arrogance and find a way to peacefully unite Taiwan with China.

Here is how I would do it if I were president.

First, I would engage in a series of CBM’s (Confidence Building Measures in diplospeak) with Xi Jing Ping regarding our naval stance in the Straits of Taiwan. I would make it policy that no American naval ships traverse the Straits of Taiwan any longer. Then I would halt the sale of advanced weapons to Taiwan.

Second, I would begin preparing the Taiwanese to consider peaceful unification with the mainland along the lines of the British handover of Hong Kong to China in the 90s. I would make it clear that we would not consider unification unless Taiwan was allowed to keep its democracy, and democratic traditions for a minimum of 80 years. I would do this to assuage the Taiwanese about a possible authoritarian takeover of the island in the case of unification. China did one nation, two systems successfully once before. They can do it again.

Third, I would secretly engage Xi Jing Ping with the following proposal: the United States of America would fully encourage and accept the unification of Taiwan with the mainland under the following conditions. Number one, Taiwan would have three representatives on the politburo, one of which would be a power ministry, either interior, defense, or foreign affairs. My fallback position, which is my true goal of course, would be the acceptance of two politburo members from Taiwan, but I would not relent on one serving as a power minister in one of the three ministries aforementioned.

I am relatively certain that Xi and the current politburo would agree to this proposal. It would serve to put Xi in the exhalted ranks of Chinese leaders in which he craves to be included. Mos timportantly, it would not harm a single vital national interest of the United States. The Chinese might have a salient in the first island chain, that being the island of Taiwan, but the United States would still have Korea, Japan, Okinawa, and the Philippines. Not to mention the defenses in depth that the second island chain provides us in the Pacific ocean. Much less the great fortress of the third island chain of Midway, Wake and Hawaii. Defenses in depth matter much more than a salient in the first island chain.

Now, I recognize this goes against every national security intellectuals thinking. It is completely contrarian. But the more I’ve thought about it over the last few years the more I believe that is the best way to avoid general warfare between two nuclear great powers from the Straits of Malacca to the South China Sea and into the deep blue waters of the Pacific.

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Follow Up and And Reply On My “How to Lose Allies” Post

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On September 10, 2025

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First, I want to follow up on this: “I am due to have a conversation with a friend that lives in Denmark tomorrow and I’m going to ask him about energy prices.”

His reply, and I paraphrase as I did not record it or take notes: “if we still had to make our house payment, we would be totally screwed. The amount of money that we pay for energy now is about equal to what our house payment used to be. It’s about five times higher than it normally is, but what’s even worse is the high cost of energy filters out into everything in the Danish economy. A simple item like bread is three times higher than it used to be. Specialty items are three or four times higher than they used to be. Fish from fisherman that we go to the docks to buy from because we live on an island is four times more expensive because they’re paying four times more for the energy they’re using to go out and fish. It’s brutal and it’s all because the United States or somebody allied with it blew up the Nord stream pipeline. I try to keep my mouth shut about this because most people have drank the Kool-Aid, but I really hope Russia wins because I’m sick of all this global elite bullshit.”

These words were spoken by a well educated American married to a Dane with two teen-aged Danish children. If the Danish economy is suffering like this Germany must be fucked.

Where does Europe get its energy now? From the US, now exporting LNG (liquid natural gas) to Europe for 4x the price of Russian and Turkmen natural gas. Here is my question as a Texan: why haven’t natural gas prices risen in tandem with the export of the commodity? People I have asked who recieve natural gas royalties are pissed because there is no price increase pass through. So, owners of the wells are getting screwed and so are the buyers of the product. Welcome to Oligarchical America.

Next I want to address a handful of commenters in my post, best reprersented by Mark Level. He writes, in a very gracious and polite comment that he takes issue with my outline of American Grand Strategy. He notes, “This insane hobby-horse (or idee fixe, choose your metaphor) dates back far more than 120 years, probably 3x that long, and originates in British Colonial phobias about Russia and “the East” generally. Halford John Mackinder developed this lunacy & published it almost exactly 120 years ago, but it had a long pre-natal development among arrogant Imperial gits in Asia. (Gits and twits, upper-class British twits, like the Monty Python sketch.) See here, and the delightful childish fantasy of being Alexander Magnus from this Mackinder thought bubble . . . .”

Please note, first and foremost, I used the word hostile power or hostile coalition. Hostile being the primary variable.

I’ve read Mackinder’s works. Anyone who has traveled across the Silk Road pretty much has to read them. His idea is not necessarily original. It’s more a fusion of ideas that came out of the late 18th century and 19th century Western European dominance of the world that began, as I previously mentioned, with the defeat of Venice in 1509,  Portugal’s conquest of a Spice Empire, and its desrtuction of the Ottoman Navy in the Indian Ocean, thus having no rivals, and of course Spain’s rapacious theft of New World gold and silver.

During the 17th and 18th century, a new idea developed with the growth of the British Navy, who outstripped the Dutch and pretty much took over their empire. New York City was, after all, New Amsterdam. What these developments presaged was an idea that centered around the ascendancy of the Littoral powers over the Continental Empires that had ruled Eurasia for millenia. Gunpowder, boats, better firearms, better steel and in the New World, devastating disease leading to genocide in many cases up and down North and South America. The Littoral is defined by strategists “as those land areas (and their adjacent areas and associated air space) that are susceptible to engagement and influence from the sea.” Thus the emphasis on a strong navy by Alfred Thayer Mahan who proved just how dominant Littoral Powers could be. For a time, that is, only for a time, as I see it.

Add to this ascendancy the wars of the Western European powers of the United Kingdom, Spain, France, and the Holy Roman Empire primarily fought during the 18th century for two strategic reasons, primarily by two very different nations with very different vital national interests at stake.

One, was the United Kingdom’s insistence that no power could dominate the Low Lands of the Netherlands and later Belgium because if they could, it would threaten an invasion of the British Isles, plus their massive exports of wool textiles, fueling the nascent industrial revolution. Smart, if ruthless policy.

Second, we must understand France‘s main goal during the wars of this time (and for several centruies prior) was to ensure a divided Germany. So long as the German states were littered into 100 different little principalities France had nothing to worry about. Thus France could go on dominating the continent. The first seismic change to this was the War of the Sixth Coalition which saw for the first time Russia flex its true potential when Russian troops occupied Paris. France’s cataclysm occured not in 1941 but in 1870 with her defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. The result of which was Prussia unifying all of Germany into one empire, adding insult to injury by having the Kaiser crowned in Versailles and taking Alsace Lorraine away as its prize.

Fuse those two strategies together and it is not too far an intellectual leap, considering the Great Game going on at the time between the UK and the Russian Empire, for Mackinder to conjure up his ideas. Were his ideas taken up by the United Kingdom? You bet, but by 1917 when it was clear that the United Kingdom could no longer maintain the balance of power in Europe and the United States had to intervene, (everyone should read AJP Taylor’s magnum opus, The Struggle For Mastery in Europe, to understand the balance of power and its collapse in 1917) US foreign policy intellectuals adopted it. And rightly so.

I think it’s the correct idea. But my reasons for thinking it’s the correct idea are not gonna make many of you happy. You might have to face some hard truths. Oh yeah, I did tell you I was a Realist in the old school manner of the word? In fact there have been a few times when Ian has chastened me pretty seriously for my realism. With that admisssion I will make another one: I don’t mind the criticism from Ian or from others. Ian is probably the smartest person I’ve ever met in my life and I listen to what he has to say. And when I say listen to him, I mean, I consider his words deeply. A man who cannot change his mind will never change anything. Nevertheless, I digress.

Here are my reasons for why I believe the prevention of a single hostile power or coalition of hostile powers from dominating the Eurasian landmass is smart policy. Please, if you take anything away from this sentence, take the meaning hostile. 

Number one: the Monroe Doctrine. Oh, I hear you screaming already. But the fact is that if this were not “our” hemisphere, not a one of us would have the standard of living we do today. Our hegemony of the Western Hemisphere is the primary foundation of our wealth and our power. You might not like it. I grimace frequently at the crimes we comitt to protect it. But, the Westphalian System is not built on justice. It is built on the acceptance of international anarchy. Each nation to its own. There is no single sovereign power governing planet Earth. Thus, violence is the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived. Is this a grim Hobbesian outlook? Yes. I don’t like it and I’m pretty sure you don’t either. But as a realist, I take the world as it is, not as I desire it to be. A hostile power or coalition of hostile powers that dominate Eurasia can take that hegemony away. You might not like it but trust me when I say you don’t want that to happen.

Second, a hostile power or coalition of hostile powers that dominate Eurasia can take more than our hegemony away, it/they can invade us. We don’t want that either. Thus we have a powerful navy that projects power to keep Eurasia divided–for the time being, because I think if we get into a war with China, their indirect way of war–read your Sun Tzu–will probably outwit us on the high seas. I’ve spent a great deal of time in China and have a healthy fear of their capabilities. However, my greatest fear is that in our arrogance we will engender the very hostility we must prevent and by our own devices bring about the doom we should seek to avoid. We have lost our edge, our generosity of spirit and our understanding of power. We have become a mean spirited, two-bit, cheap and vulgar people. And sadly, because so many of us are beaten down economically by rich elites who are delusional, we’re going to lose a big war in a painful way. A war that could be avoided, but probably won’t be. I hope I’m wrong, but don’t think I am.

That said, these very wise words, written by Robert D. Kaplan recently, convey the gravity of our present predicament, “There is no prediction. It is only through coming to terms with the past and vividly, realizing the present that we can have premonitions about the future.” Moreover, as a wise woman wrote about history, “the more I study history, the more I learn the art of prophecy.” Deeply contradictory statements, yet both true in their essence.

Are we any more perceptive now about what awaits our planet than were the Russians of 1917, or all of Europe in 1914, and, for that matter, the Germans of the 1920s and the early 30s?

Do we honestly think we know better than they did? With all of our gadgets and our technological triumphalism I bet you there are a handful of you out there that think we do know better than they did. I hate to disappoint you, but we don’t. History is the story of contingency and human agency, not inevtiablity.

So, there it is. Rip me to shreds if you wish. I’ve suffered enough Shakespearean arrows of outrageous fortune in my 54 years to handle it. In fact, I welcome your ideas and if you got this far I’m grateful for your time.

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America’s In the Position the USSR was in the 80s

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On March 24, 2025

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Back in the 70s and 80s, the USSR’s economy was in terrible shape. It hadn’t always been, that’s a triumphalist myth: for a long time it out-performed the West, and economic textbooks of the 50s discuss the problem that the Soviets were growing faster than we were.

So Reagan’s administration came up with a plan: they’d increase defense spending, the Soviets would have to do the same, and the strain would screw over their economy. There’s various arguments, but it seems to have worked.

Recently Trump suggested that Russia, America and China all cut their defense spending in unison. Russia was interested, China said no.

Now, of course, the US spends way more than anyone else on its military, but that’s mostly because it over-pays for everything because of vast corruption.

But the real issue here is that China is a rich state, and the US is not. Forget GDP, it’s completely misleading. China is ahead in everything that matters: 80%+ of tech fields, has more population and the largest industrial base in the world and it’s the main trade partner of more nations than anyone else, including America.

This graphic is illustrative, but it applies to everything except planes and launch capacity, and soon it will apply to them too:

As Keynes once said, “we can afford anything we can do.” The corollary is that we can’t afford anything we can’t do. China can afford almost anything because it can do almost anything. Within four years it will have cheaper and more lift capacity than the US. Its civilian airliner industry is taking off, it’ll take longer, and the competition is Airbus, not Boeing, but they’ll win that competition too: even if Airbus avoids the Boeing quality collapse, Chinese jets will be cheaper and about as good.

China can easily afford its military budget. I’d guess it could double or triple it and be OK. The US is struggling: the Trump cuts are a reflection of that, and are at the same time reducing government capacity, of which China has plenty, and unlike America government, they’re competent and at this point not even very corrupt and what corruption does exist is honest corruption—you can take a cut, but you have to deliver on time and on budget.

So China’s laughing at America. “No thanks. We’ll just keep out-producing you and we know you can’t keep up, but feel free to try.”

 

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What if We Threw a Civil War and Nobody Came?

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On August 28, 2024

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UPDATE: I forgot to include a hilarious bit of business involving the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation vs. the Millersville (TN) Police Department. Have added it below:

Sean Paul’s post on the 2nd Amendment got me thinking about the prospects for civil war in the USA, in particular this spicy quote:

So, Sean Paul, what does this have to do with the Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms?

Everything to do with slavery, and nothing to do with holding our government accountable. Seriously, do you honestly think a couple thousand Texans with AR-15s could out fight an armored brigade? GTFOH.

It won’t be lard-ass militias that matter if there is a civil implosion in the US.

These things always come down to intra-elite splits and/or intra-military splits.

There seems to be a split between the Trump-supporting majority of American police forces, right-wing military personnel, some military officers & at least some FBI vs the Trump-hating “Deep State” CIA, NSA, Pentagon elite and the rest of the active duty military.

As NPR reported in 2021, some po-po’s were even willing to put their bodies on the line for whatever it was they were trying to do on Jan 6.

Nearly 30 sworn police officers from a dozen departments attended the pro-Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol last week, and several stormed the building with rioters and are facing federal criminal charges as well as possible expulsion or other discipline.

The officers are from departments large and small. There was veteran officer in Houston, the nation’s eighth-largest department; a sergeant in the small town of Rocky Mount, Va., and a group of Philadelphia transit officers.

Note that caveat in the headline about the vast majority of them being retired. Are we too “demographically advanced” ie old to get a war on?

Also check these nifty stats from Seton Hall’s “A Demographic and Legal Profile of January 6 Prosecutions”:

The government has won all but 12 cases brought to date (five died, four fled, one acquitted, two dismissed);

517 of 716 (72%) were charged as the result of tipsters and informants;

Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, and California are home to 43.9% of those charged;

Only states not represented among the 716 arrested were North Dakota, Nebraska and Vermont;

35.1% of defendants were identified as going to the Capitol alone;

25% were armed;

18.5 % had a background in law enforcement or the military;

Largest employment group identified is the Business Owner group, which accounts for 24.7%;

Only 35 of the 716 individuals were identified as unemployed;

22.2% had a criminal record.

Note that a disproportionate amount of the Jan 6ers came from just five states: Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, and California.

And two of those states are “solid blue” and even the red and purple states each feature very Democratic cities.

If there’s no geographic continuity to the two sides are we just going to have a nationwide running gun battle instead?

But wait, the case for imminent civil war has a couple more points to make.

TX Gov Greg Abbott turning the Texas National Guard against the US Border Patrol was a very ominous sign:

Most explosively, Texas Governor Greg Abbott in January deployed the state National Guard to block the U.S. Border Patrol from accessing a 2.5-mile-long section of the border in the city of Eagle Pass. The section includes Shelby Park, a 47-acre city park along the Rio Grande named for a Confederate general who fled to Mexico rather than surrender. Border Patrol officials had been using the park for processing encountered migrants. Now, they are effectively locked out of the park, and are mostly unable to access a heavily crossed border area to do their jobs.

Fl Gov Ron DeSantis’ creation of the Florida Guard outside federal control and his proposal to send them to the Texas border is another clown show that is also actually quite scary:

DeSantis established the Florida Guard on June 15, 2022, purportedly to enhance Florida’s capacity to deal with hurricanes. It was announced as a civilian force of approximately 400 volunteers to supplement the Florida National Guard, which balances both state and federal government control. The governor asked for $2 million.

Within a year, DeSantis and the super-majority Republican Legislature converted the small volunteer force into DeSantis’ expensive private army.

MORE BUDGET, MORE POLICE POWERS

House Bill 1285 skyrocketed the budget to $107.6 million, with half of the funds designated for “military” equipment. The number of “volunteers”— handpicked by the governor — increased from 400 to 1,500, and they were granted “police powers” to detain and arrest.

Although there is a titular head of the volunteers, the Guard may be “activated only by the governor and is at all times under the final command and control of the governor as the commander in chief of all military and guard forces of the state.”

And it is not under the state’s military control because the law further provides that: “The division [i.e. State Guard] shall not be subject to control, supervision or direction of the Department of Military Affairs in any manner…”

DeSantis moved quickly after that. He set up a military training center for millions of dollars and hired a combat-training company to recruit and train members of the Guard. The contractor was awarded a non-competitive $1.2 million contract and the company’s manual provides for hand-to-hand combat, busting down walls and interdiction in the sea.

These developments show an ominous willingness to escalate political fights into military conflict on the part of the two southern GOP governors.

But militarily this is pipsqueak stuff at this point. Were a war to erupt between the Feds and Abbot and DeSantis it would be over in a few savage minutes, as long as it takes for a pit bull to maul a baby.

And the yokel governors are not the pit bull in this scenario.

But things get very interesting, in the ancient Chinese curse sense, if Trump wins the presidential election and actually manages to place loyalists in key positions at the federal level.

But that’s a big if.

Politically Trump seems way off his game from 2016. Steve Bannon’s in jail and Trump has his head up his own ass. The rousing populism and ‘did he really say that?’ demagoguery are missing.

That makes it less likely that he could motivate supporters to truly crazy extremes.

Does Trump really seem to care enough to organize a civil war?

Also there’s the matter of social cohesion — oddly, it’s a critical ingredient for a civil war. Each side has to at least some internal unity to present a sufficient problem to the other side necessary for the brouhaha to go from “civic disturbance” or “riot” to CIVIL WAR.

Aurelian argues we don’t have enough social cohesion to get a war on.

For all the fashionable talk of “civil war,” a civil war requires organised parties competing for control of the future of the political system. We don’t have that, we just have individuals, and small groups without much cohesion, united only in their detestation for the system.

It may be the case that we can bumble our way into something really nasty without  leadership on either side capable of catalyzing discontent into a coherent force.

If there’s a major economic collapse or a military disaster on a foreign front all bets are off.

But even in those scenarios, I’d anticipate more of a gradual disintegration into warlordism than an 1860 type thing.

UPDATE: I can’t believe I forgot to include the piece de resistance. This is a classic real-world example of a conflict between MAGA chuds in power locally vs. a state law enforcement agency:

In a perplexing pair of podcast interviews, the Millersville chief of police says the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has begun limiting his department’s access to certain sensitive law enforcement data.

It follows a scandal first dug up by NewsChannel 5 Investigates into the troubled police department for the community of 6,000 just north of Nashville.

“Once we start getting this bad publicity, our access starts getting cut off to financial reports, FinCen,” Chief Bryan Morris said in an interview with far-right podcaster Tom Renz. The interview was posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“We can’t do investigations,” the chief continued. “We don’t have everything in this office that we need, you know.”

Renz chimed in, “You need the tools provided by federal law enforcement and other agencies, and state agencies.”

“And now we’re being denied that,” Morris insisted.

…

Morris — who also serves as interim city manager — claimed his department is now cut off from one of the most sensitive law enforcement data sources available.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — sometimes known as FinCen — is a program run by the U.S. Department of Treasury that can give police access to certain banking and other financial records of individuals when there is a legitimate law enforcement purpose.

Morris claimed that, because of NewsChannel 5’s investigations into his conspiracy-minded assistant police chief, Shawn Taylor, the TBI has now cut them off.

Renz asked, “Have they given you a good reason that they are denying you access?”

“No,” the chief answered. “I’ve actually called down there and talked to them, and what I’ve been told is we’re on hold because they are auditing us.”

As part of Taylor’s many bizarre conspiracy theories — including claims that some of the nation’s most powerful political figures are involved in child sex trafficking — Taylor has sometimes boasted about having access to sensitive data linked to some powerful people.

That includes the banking records for U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn’s campaign.

 

When And Where Will A Great Power War Happen?

By

On March 13, 2024

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I was asked this question by a friend today and I found myself uncertain if there would be a great power war or not.

My thoughts were roughly five:

  1. The US can’t win a war with China or Russia, in my estimation. Russia by itself is outproducing all of NATO by about 7:1 in terms of munitions. China has so much more industrial capacity that it’s insane. China won’t let Russia be taken out, if it has to it will intervene, in my estimation, because if Russia falls, it’s next. Russia provides the feed, fuel and mineral reserve it needs, in a form which can’t be interdicted by naval power.
  2. If there is going to be a war, the sooner it happens the better America’s chances, but right now, munitions are so depleted by Ukraine and Israel, that a war is essentially impossible. Since NATO can’t restore its munitions at current rates without years of effort, and has shown little ability to ramp up production, that means by the time the US/NATO is read for war, it’ll be even weaker comparatively.
  3. Western elites are incompetent idiots at anything but keeping power and accumulating wealth in their own nations. They continually blunder into wars they lose, they’ve shipped their industry to China, they’ve spent three generations systematically weakening their nations in pursuit of profit and power.
  4. Western elites also display breathtaking arrogance and assurance of their power and their ability push other people and nations around. They believe in their superiority and are isolated from any feedback which proves otherwise.
  5. Historically, great power transitions usually include large wars. Not always, but about two-thirds of the time. (Thucydides Trap, by Graham Allison goes into this in detail.)

Basically, the US is like Japan pre-World War II: powerful military, no way to keep up with losses during a war. Yamamoto famously noted that it was impossible for Japan to win against America, and was ignored. So the tiny island nation went to war with a continental power with far more manpower and industry than it had, and lost. America today is comparatively stronger than Japan was, but by less than people think, especially if China gets involved.

If there is a war, it could explode in any number of areas: Taiwan and the Lithuania/Estonia are possibilities, but if I had to lay a single bet I’d bet on Iran. Russia, China and Iran are currently conducting naval exercises together. Iran came to Russia’s aid in a big way during their war with Ukraine. Israel recently attacked Russia diplomatically, burning the good will there and Russia is hosting meetings between Palestinian factions to help them get over their differences so they are stronger. Iran has substantial industry, since it was blessed by American sanctions and is large enough to develop anyway. America is currently showing that its government is completely controlled by Zionist interests.

Iran is powerful, but it may look like a target America can win against.

Except that Russia and China aren’t likely to let that happen. If Iran looks like it will really lose, Russia might even intervene militarily.

But truthfully I don’t know. Americans would be insane to pick a great power war: the odds against them are way too high, even now.

But American elites are insane: completely out of touch with reality beyond their own inbred elite circle. They’ve been the world’s greatest power for as long as they can remember, feel entitled to the spot, and may not give it up without a fight.

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