This comment was chosen by Mod HS from the post “Moveable Feast Cafe 2016/02/13 13:58:37”. The moderator believes this comment questions whether there will be a World War III. The commenters conclusion is there won’t be a World War III and the window for a major world war is closing.
Comment by Larchmonter445
To all who predict the inevitable war, wherever your mind thinks it will transpire:
It is a requirement of that prediction to tell us what the Order of Battle shall be.
For instance, China attacked by the US.
Or, Turkey and US/NATO/Arabs with oil attacking Russia.
Or, Turkey and the nazis of Ukraine attacking Russia.
Or, some Israeli (Zio-whatever you want) false flag attack that results in attacking Russia.
Please tell us how the war gets going with planes? with missiles? with sub? with carriers and destroyers?
And lay out the first 5-10 hours, then day one in full, and then the next day.
And tell us, dear friends of the next inevitable war, how many men, how many planes, how many ships are involved on the attacking West’s side.
See, that inevitable stuff is nonsense in the nuclear age.
The kind of war we are seeing now in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen and earlier in Ukraine and what we saw in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan are very deadly to be sure. But they are small conflicts.
They have wide impact on civilians mostly. Somehow the armies rarely clash in large formations.
At most, only Ukraine has given us enormous impact because the Ukies are especially ignorant and horribly led. Yemen is a bloodbath, but it is amongst minor players.
But what you predictors of inevitable Russia attacked by the West in any form say is a fiction.
And attacking China is even more so.
One, you do not understand military doctrine. And the most important national military doctrine is Russia’s. It openly states that they will use nuclear weapons in many situations. They have a clear fast path of first use.
The West does not intend to state its first strike use, but it would strike first in full fashion if it could.
It does not because it does not want to be totally destroyed.
Russia does not much care if it gets hit by nukes under the situation of saving its troops from destruction or warding off a massive ground attack, or suffering some attempt at EMP attack or even Cyber or Space (by laser or hypersonic weapons).
What this business of nuclear is really doing is down-scaling the ‘war” between giants. There simply cannot be a war, a grand war anywhere, by proxy or by principals. The big wars are over.
No nation is going to stand still today and watch 300 ships form off its coast ready to send 4000 cruise missiles into its ports, airports, urban centers and industrial sites, and all it military installations and defenses.
No nation will be able to assemble the armor and vehicles of 90,000 men anywhere near a major nation and threaten an invasion.
No nation can send 100 or 1000 or 10,000 sorties of bombers or cruise missiles or IRBMs or ICBMs into another nation without suffering total annihilation in return.
So, there won’t be WW3.
There will be many more Syrias if Russia does not prevail. And more Ukraines if Russia does not prevail. There will be some more Yemens, probably.
But there won’t be WW3. You simply must understand the Order of Battle to form such a war is impossible today. No large nation (or tiny one like Israel with 350 nukes) will stand by and take that sort of preparation and first strike hit. The threatened nation will use their nukes to destroy the formation.
Thus, Saudi Arabia’s invasion threat and Turkey’s invasion threat are by necessity small threats.
Russia and Syria and Iraq can handle these.
The only dominant force the US has left is its naval power. And no nation is threatening it on the seas. So they can’t win anywhere. No one to fight on the oceans.
Where and how they want to fight is blocked. They want to fight the Russians and the Chinese with planes, drones and missiles. But they can’t. The S400 and S300 and next year the S500 will stop them. And if they somehow broke through in a few places, they would be nuked by missiles Russia and China have that they can’t find, can’t see and can’t stop.
The US has to get relatively close with its cruise missiles to fire them effectively. China and Russia can hit the US ships and subs from 3x the distance.
There simply is not a feasible Order of Battle for victory.
There is not going to be a WW3.
There might be a deadly clash. Jets shot down. Troops and defenses blasted.
But it won’t accelerate too widely. Even if a few hundred died, the reaction would be scaled to the region where the clash occurred. It would be over before the whole thing was reported. An hour.
And the window of war is closing. Americans are rising up. They want no more, except with Terrorists.
A thoughtful analysis and most interesting. Worth reading a second time.
Siotu
Totally disagree, this kind of optimism could only come from who do not want see the signs out there, or in other words, “self-impossed blindness”.
To counter this prevailing optimism and denial of reality, two articles, one of them previously posted on the thread of the Russia Defense Report by South Front on some heads of EU´s armies warning about possible war in the next years, and another analysis by El Territorio del Lince blog about the real economical situation of the major world banks and how they usually solve their troubles:
* “Bad news are bad for business” by El Territorio del lince blog
http://elterritoriodellince.blogspot.com.es/
* “Military leaders warn of impending conflicts in Europe”:
http://www.elespiadigital.com/index.php/noticias/historico-de-noticias/12307-lideres-militares-advierten-sobre-conflictos-inminentes-en-europa-
Try to translate with a translator, I have no more time today, I must go to bed, I have flu, but, anyway, tomorrow must go to work, because I have no more right to stay home if I’m sick after the last cuts to pay the debt of bankers´ bankrupt since 2008 onwards.
The link to El Territorio del Lince was wrong, it goes to the blog but not directly to the article i was linking, which is this one:
“Bad news are bad for business”:
http://elterritoriodellince.blogspot.com.es/2016/02/las-malas-noticias-son-malas-para-el.html
Anyway. the last post in that blog is also very interesting for this discussion:
“The goggles of Europe”:
http://elterritoriodellince.blogspot.com.es/2016/02/los-anteojos-de-europa-acaba-de.html
Good analysis, but ultimately flawed.
It assumes that all sides are equally well informed, equally intelligent and most of all – sane. Do you think Erdogan is sane, or House of Saud?
I think Saker’s point of view is much closer to the reality – bunch of rabid megalomaniacs 100% certain that they will win, just because they have been winning for the past 75 years.
USA will not stop until it’s stopped. Hopefully not by a nuclear annihilation, cause that kind of war has no winners.
I must disagree with your ‘won everything for 75 years’. When the locals are shooting at you when you leave, you lost. Think Korea, Viet Nam, Irak, Afghan amongst others.
Great post, Larchmonter. Pretty much nails it and gives much credence to the fact we will see these ‘limited’ conflicts going on for years.
Auslander
Author, Never The Last One
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZGCY8KK
First of all: Excellent analysis. The shadow of total destruction will prevent WWIII, all other notions of winning the war between major powers is just a “neocon-zio-nazi or whatever you want to call them” wet dream.
@Auslander
Correct, and I would go even further: it “Never happened” in any major wars except for small skirmishes against some small ex-colonies and wiping out aboriginies.
In WWII the West was facing only two German divisions, which does not contribute to winning the war.
I forgot one more thing. I suggest that all the “strategists” look at Manchuria, which is never talked about, for obvious reasons I think.
In Manchuria, Soviet army pulverized 1.5 mln strong Japanese army in one week. The Japanese army was well entrenched under the rock and concrete, believing that they were well protected. This showed the “exceptional people” how you do the wars and made them run in panic and nuke Japan so that Japan would not surrender to the Soviets.
One more thing.
Manchuria in 1945 was Russia’s (Soviet Union) payback for the defeat against Japan in 1905. Communists blamed Tsar for that defeat in 1905, conveniently forgetting that in 1905 “liberals” under the guise of “bourgeois revolution” made their first attempt at destroying Russia, which lead to the defeat against Japan. The second was in 1917, and the third is now since 1990.
I think that after all the caos occurred, there will be a new and better World Order, supported by the few superpowers
having the means to rule the Globe. That guidance will be transnational, every subject involved renouncing something on the aim.I mean Echelon countries, I mean Russian Federation, EU, PRC, Israel. In theory a new ONU located for equity and appeasement in Irak. Bingo!
The basic argument made here seems to be that WW3 will not happen because it doesn’t make sense!! It seems to me that wars don’t happen because they make sense, though they do seem to take on a logic of their own. They might make sense from some twisted point of view.
Also, the writer this compendium of famous last words, seems to claim that anyone predicting WW3 needs to be able to explain the exact time and circumstances under which it will happen and the color of the leading general’s underwear. Obviously that sets up an unreachable threshold for credibility. Nobody can say exactly what the circumstances will be for WW3 and how the forces will be arrayed. What we can say is that the US has been playing a game of brinksmanship with Russia and China for two decades, dancing ever closer to a clash that would almost certainly escalate. For example, if Clinton’s plan for a nofly zone over Syria were enacted, would Russia REALLY pickup and go home with its tail between its legs? If Saudi Arabia and Turkey suddenly motor towards the Syrian border, will Russia really hunker down on its little bases? And if the US and Russia start shooting down each other’s planes, is there really no possibility that the fighting would escalate? And if the US and its allies keep pushing, keep creating flashpoints, is it not inevitable that sooner or later a deadly serious war will break out between the principals and not just between various proxies?
I think it’s really crazy to watch folks dancing on the edge of world war and in the face of that choosing to walk around with a virtual sandwich board and a long beard, stridently claiming THE END IS NEVER NEAR THE END IS NEVER NEAR!!!
What I think is this: if the US and its allies don’t stop pushing and pushing for global hegemony, Russia will be forced to submit or to fight.
“What I think is this: if the US and its allies don’t stop pushing and pushing for global hegemony, Russia will be forced to submit or to fight.”
I agree with you. The “trillion” dollar (or Euro,Yuan) question is which will she do. I would say “not” submit. But then I really can’t answer that question with total certainty.
I have deleted you post as it contained not one word of English, and I have neither the time nor the inclination at this late hour to go searching for a translator in order to do your work. Please, note that this IS an English speaking blog, and post accordingly. Then we would really like to hear from you. Many thanks, mod PS
Thanks for the awesome post! I completely agree. There’s no way the people who’re controlling the puppets will risk their own precious butts in a nuclear conflict.
Given that conclusion, my question is ; knowing that Russia’s position is Syria is basically tenuous, will NATO attempt a ‘no fly’ zone? The concensus being that, Russia cannot defend against a NATO onslaught in Syria without nuclear weapons. Although it seems crazy, NATO/the Hegemon would gain tremendously by defeating Russia in Syria. It must be tempting to NATO, given their tremendous material advantage over Russia. Of course, then there’s the amazingly gross incompetence NATO’s shown in war making vs. Russia’s competence….
If you remember that during the first Gulf War,it took 5 months for the so called coalition (from aug 15th till jan 15th first air attack) to get ready.And even it is was probably not so a ‘surprise’,meaning that a lot of the logistic was already ready before SH made the stupidity to trust the US and enter Koweit and fall in the trap.
And the ”ennemy” was not Russia,very far from it.With no WMD(even if they did their best to make the sheeps believe that fable).
This kind of attack is simply impossible against Russia or even China.
Do you really believe they will wait and see,checking the NATO build up at their borders with no reaction?
Threaths of cold wars,WWIII etc are only good for business of the military industrial complex which needs and will always need an ennemy being a fake one or a virtual one(one day they will try with a possible ET invasion from whatever galaxy,when they will run out of wars on terror,cold war on Russia/China..)It is also essential to maintain alive a bunch of parasites(nato,various think tanks,experts,contractors etc).
Without ennemy all this clique would be unemployed.
It is good for the economy to some points,as it creates jobs.Research and Dev in the military field is also good sometime for the private sector(this time for the best).
It is good for the MSM,good as a diversion to hide the economic failure of the politicians.
But with SA proxy forces and Turkey’s, there’s more than enough force on hand to produce a large, low intensity conflict which could easily achieve the Hegemon’s goals, i.e. destruction of the oil fields and partitioning of OPEC states.. As per F. William Engdahls’ article 17/2 in NEO, it looks to me like a giant mousetrap designed to snare Russia. I hope the Russian general staff read that article too…
natoistan
“If you remember that during the first Gulf War,it took 5 months for the so called coalition ”
The European Theatre
There will be a conventional war,a war of nutrition as it was during the second world war and the theater of battles will be the same.If you look at the map of the frontline from 1942 there are some similarities if you put the Baltic states,Belorussia and Ukraine as a frontline.
The Barbarossa 2 is at handy.The influx of NATO troops is low,but is not so important,more important is the buildup of the infrastructure necessary for a
big operation and that is going on unnoticed,mainly covered as civilian infrastructures.Huge amounts of stocks of hardware,munitions,petrol etc.,have been built up in Eastern European countries.Under the pretext of reforms,a large number of hospitals in the same countries have been left empty.The roads from west to east are modernised as well as the railroads.The flow of military hardware from US to Europe has grown,also the flow of hardware from west to eastern european countries(Poland,Baltics,Romania,Bulgaria,)
– and now Ukraine – all this slowly,unnoticed by general public.In the Gulf War,the US needed 5 months to bring about 500.000 soldiers at the gates of Iraq.US is far away,the transport went mostly by ships.The Germans needed some 4 months to get over 3 million soldiers at the borders of Soviet Union.
It’s a big difference between crossing an ocean with an army and a continental land with the same army,so the distance and terrain is important.
Once the infrastructure is ready and fully operational,the needed troops can be very fast deployed and the mobilization of reservists as well.NATO has already achieved a strategic deep (Ukraine,Blatics,Moldova,Romania)
Neither NATO,nor Russia will use nuclear weapons because the fightings will be mainly on Russian,Ukrainian and later on European soil.Nobody wants to inflict major natural catastrophe without the chance of reviving the economy in the aftermath.Maybe the politicians – who are civilians – are stupid but the military men are not,they will not use nuclear weapons,neither europeans nor russians and I think that the americans (military)are not stupid.Even so,the destruction and loss of life will be great.The main strategy of US is to let the europeans and russians bleed themselves out,with no massive US participation.The redline for US is the Rhine.
“The statements of Western politicians about the supposed willingness of Russia to use in a conventional war nuclear weapons , are fantasies , said Russian ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak , towards the Agency Sputnik”
I agree with you there. I’ve been warning for months about the build up happening slowly so no one would notice it. But Russia is “supposed” to have really good foreign intelligence assets. So they “should” have noticed it as well as we have. My only disagreement might be over the “no nukes” point. Both sides have battlefield nukes. And I believe that the one starting to lose would use them rather than lose.And from that it could easily escalate into a full blown nuclear war.I think that the Russians should be informing NATO “officially” that if the war heads that way they will destroy the European and “North American” homelands of the NATO aggressors. Let there be absolutely no room to not understand that fact. Make sure they “totally” understand what is their fate if they begin this war
Uncle Bob,
Interview here with MIT scientist who says the laws of physics mean the US missile shield actually doesn’t work – will that manage to penetrate the neanderthal skulls of the Zio-hawks?
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/333009-us-missile-defense-system/
The only thing required for war is aggressive human nature in a leader coupled with the willingness to gamble and take huge risks.
At the moment the US is keeping tension very high with Russia, on the verge of war without actually going that far, using stress to keep constant pressure on Russia.
Throw in an unpredictable loose cannon like edogan and anything can happen.
It is human nature of leaders throughout history that needs to be looked at rather than the numbers of tanks or aircraft or strategies or whatever.
70 years is an exceptionally long period of time where there is no major war between world powers. How long can it last?
This supposedly shows a Donetsk security man whipping a drug dealer to death. It’s definitely cruel and sadistic.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=eb4_1455747653
Yes it is. But it also shows no “proof” of who was doing that. And since whoever first posted it appears to be anti-Russian (making a point of calling the people in the video “pro-Russian rebels”). I’m not sure I would believe that. It could be true of course. But I’d need to see more (or any for that matter) proof to believe it.
I noticed the Pro russian bit as well. A bit of a giveaway.
and an ever dumbed down manipulated population and media that will support their leaders no matter what, ignore UN resolutions, have R2P philosophies..other governments who are not savvy yet politicians who disagree within those are silenced…..and are incapable of listening to anyone else who might question their intentions and who are forbidden, prevented, treated as traitors anyone who might have a different opinion….turkey, ukraine come to mind, suppose Ukr did still have nuclear weapons, rabid Tymoshenko who fooled the west with a sympathy vote said nuke the russians………remember remember…….there is probably very very bit of land that has not been stained by war, or murder…millions in Yugoslavia/Slovenia WW1 etc, selective memories…revisionism as tools of manipulation……certainly very easily could be world wide chaos, starvation, hunger, death, fighting between ethnic and cultural and financial groups(gated home anyone? CCTV?), the haves and have nots, disease medical treatment etc, polarisation of societies, countries basket case ukraine…………
learnt so much since reading this website……………
http://journal-neo.org/2016/02/17/washington-s-machiavellian-game-in-syria/
“Lo que será, será.” Or, in other words, “But God knoweth best.”
It’s possible that we’ll have a WWIII nuclear event if the thrust to the heart of Russia by the bankers’ sword fails. The AZ crazies plan to degrade Russia from within and thereby weaken its defenses. If they believe Russia is sufficiently softened up by the bank bombardment they may try limited nuclear strikes by proxies.
If Russia actually implements bank reforms such as urged by Sergei Glazyev, and becomes truly sovereign and independent of the AZs, I believe they will go all in nuclear. They will then have nothing to lose but their lives; and like the terrorists they train, will sacrifice themselves to their God in the strong belief that they will be rewarded in heaven. Or alternately, their Messiah will come precisely because of their sacrifice to him.
This analysis is based in part on my belief in the racial factor of Khazarism. Khazar funded research attacks this idea which is what I would expect. The argument is rather circular I admit. However, there are suicide bombers and psychopaths aplenty, and they are probably in the highest places.
We trust in rationality but that choice is everyday contradicted by facts on the ground. So far, fortunately, there are not sufficient grounds for a total divorce from reason in the minds of lunatics.
So the world hangs in the balance. I throw as much love weight on the peace side of the scale as I can. I assume that this vineyard is doing the same. We may have just enough kick to win the game.
“I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand”
—Dylan
Dennis, you are making more sense all the time.
L445 is rational and he cares but we have major actors on the stage of world history in the past and in the present moment that have proven that they do not “care” in the least, in terms of any sort of love of humanity. Would they rather “rule in hell than serve in heaven”, and condemn the rest of humanity to hell, along with themselves, at the top?? Absolutely!! They have gone to extraordinary lengths to prove to themselves and to the world, through their dedication to the mind destroying efficacy of the employment of fear, that they absolutely reject love of anything or any one except their own power. And they set the tone for the present century Sept 11, 2001 announcing precisely the fact that they are aware that they completely lack “the sacred feminine” (love, caring) in that act of Chaos Sorcery. However, it is “all good” as far as these psychopaths are concerned. They hold the “Ancient Hope” that they will be reincarnated without their present spiritual defects, which they are completely aware of. And in that way, remain “on top” and never relinquish that “male” position, throughout their continued rape of humanity.
So, while L445 is rational and he cares, the problem is that the aggregate consciousness of present day humanity is a very different thing than L445 X 7,000,000,000 other persons! The most criminally insane among those fellow human beings, the top few thousands amongst them can definitely upend the chess board, get in their bunkers, and let ‘er rip, if they perceive they might lose the game and even be brought to justice for their crimes against humanity. Do they want to go straight to the doomsday option? No, they do not. Better to use proxies and dummies and their “dogs” of war (what they call the military, the police, etc) to get their way through fear, manipulation bluff, color revolution etc. But will they sacrifice the power of the USA and even Britain, and Israel, ultimately, to be sure of “ruling in hell” rather than serving in heaven, if they have to, if they are losing the game and the love and the caring of awakening numbers of US citizens L445 speaks of threatens to cut their puppet strings of money, ignorance and fear? Count on it!!!!! They would sacrifice all 300 million of us in a heart beat.
Then they would try to rise from the ashes, as they have repeatedly in the past. For they are loyal to no nation.
If you missed it the first time, because I was too rough and teasing, of your rhymes and your numerology on that prior thread, I am not kidding this time. “Know thine enemy!” And if they are communicating in code, break their code, Lumi. That is more intelligent than not being “interested” in even looking at the insights of a defector from their middle ranks, here:
https://youtu.be/SK9xu8tOLpA at the 3 hour 54 minute mark the speaker/defector (from the dark occult) goes straight into the numbers, the code.
Codes are supposed to be hidden, or occult. To break the code is to de-occult it. to discover how to break it one is more empowered by the ability to entertain the possibility of a concept for long periods of time, without either believing it in right brain feminine naivete, not rejecting it in left brain masculine rigid scepticism. Have fun, code breakers!
Excellent analysis Larchmonter445. I always take your comments very seriously as they are well researched, logical and to the point. The typical world war is probably off the table, but something sinister will replace it, no doubt.
In a brilliant article, William Engdahl present an hypothesis, or an Order of Battle that makes a lot of sense. It does not matter if it happens as described, several variations on the theme may be fashioned.
William concludes that in about two months, around late March or April, the US Machiavellians will have lured not only Turkey’s Erdogan and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Salman, but now Moscow into a trap in the Middle East. The initial losers in this unfolding deadly game will be Saudi, Turkey, Syria, Iraq and likely Russia. The ultimate losers, eventually, will also be the American Patriarchs or oligarchs behind these incessant wars of destruction, but not immediately, short of a miracle.
http://journal-neo.org/2016/02/17/washington-s-machiavellian-game-in-syria/
This is a rational analysis.
Which assumes rational actors.
Didn’t pre-WWII electorates make the same assumptions?
But on current evidence, I am not convinced the Western obsession with bringing Russia and China ‘to heel’ is likely to abate anytime soon.
If the US war hawks believe they can beat them both, they are quite likely to start something.
Carter is a truly dangerous ideologue.
He is incapable of absorbing intelligence that would contradict his ‘exceptionalist’ pathology. And, despite his apparent religiousity, he would pimp out his own grandmother for a big bucks war.
With politicians like Graham, McCain, Cruz (currently trying to bring back the draft), Cardin, McConnell in power, not to mention the possibility of the psychopathic Clinton becoming President, the number of ‘rational actors’ in the administration is vanishing small.
That’s scary.
To think that blowhard Trump might be the antidote …is even scarier.
I am hoping for a NATO implosion – I think there will be defections in coming months, particularly Italy.
“Cruz (currently trying to bring back the draft)”
I would hate to see any youngsters being drafted into the mlitary. But precisely this emotion on the part of everyone might actually be a good thing for galvanizing some kind of antiwar and pro-peace movement at home.
It seems to me that our military has been beyond civilian understanding or real control since it became a “volunteer” army (read, in essence, “domestic mercenaries”). Again, I don’t put down those who join the military–many of them are really called to a military career, alnd others see no other career path open to them—but I do not equate this mliitary, which is partly a work program, with “serving.” I think that in Israel they still have mandatory military service. Is there **anything** that we can learn from this (if it is true, which I am not sure of).
I and others have noted that it seems that man;y young Syrian men emigrated in order to avoid military service. That means, they deserted their country when the country and their communities needed them to defend it.
This issue of military service is a big one and I am not an expert in it. But I don’t accept the offhand comment stated as a given premise that bringing back the draft would be an awful thing. Perhaps the debate is worth having at this point.
Katherine
75,000 draft dodgers have been offered amnesty if they give themselves up to the nearest Syrian mission in 2 months and 1 month inside Syria. Instead of the army, minorities are also offered to join the NDF where you are stationed around your own community but they also get paid half. Currently there is 4x the number of people in the NDF than the army. over 400,000 instead of the 125,000 in the army. Why they have huge man power shortages at the fronts.
It is horrible what the AZ Empire is doing to the Syrians (and so many other peoples). I am amazed at what the brave Syrian Arab Army has achieved. I realize Syria is under direct attack. I understand the need for people in the Syrian Army and for their draft.
I live in Germany and have met at least two dozen Syrians and made some friends with them. Among them is a family, but, yes, mostly young men. Most of them support Assad, a few are wanted by the government. But the reason so many of the “healthy single young men” are here is that the draft takes every male over 18 in a family except the last and youngest. A Syrian woman who was pregnant with a male child came here so that her son who was about to turn 18 wouldn’t be drafted into the army as soon as the baby was born. This aspect of the draft has been confirmed by every Syrian I have spoken with.
These are difficult choices.
“Most of them support Assad”
If they do so,then why they left others to fight and die for them,this is treason
No, flight from the war is cowardice and self -preservation, but not treason. Joining the rebels would be treason. Robert E Lee was a traitor. So were the numbskulls that joined the Confederate Army.
According to the Ken Burns Civil War Documentary, a confederate soldier taken prisoner by Sherman’s army was asked, “Why are you fighting?” (It was already clear the South would lose.)
His answer: “Because y’all are down here!”
Now, what about the 16,17 year old males in the south that hid from the draft gangs, and weren’t so brave or stupid as to join that idiot, traitor?
Treason is a matter of conscious choice, not a measure of courage or cowardice.
Katherine,
Yes. It might galvanize people to really question foreign policy at least.
But I think young Americans -particularly from urban areas in advanced decay – would probably see it as an opportunity.
Plus, there has been a notable desensitization to violence, actively promoted through media and so-called ‘entertainment.’ ‘Torture porn’ and graphic horror – usually featuring gory details of violated bodies – are hugely popular.
And then factor in porn – now routinely violent – and widespread drug-use.
Is this a population with the capacity to understand what they would be getting into?
Is it one that abhors violence?
I don’t think so.
It was the sizeable middle class that put an end to the Vietnam war, despite the manufacture of a drugged-up anti-war counter-culture to discredit it by association.
But that class has contracted, and is partially contaminated by the same vices traditionally associated with poverty – especially drug use.
I mean Nixon had to resign over a specific espionage illegality – now the NSA gag
Then throw in the corporate media – there are absolutely no Cronkites.
You mean Italy because of their banks?
Or the League.
I would pick Italy also, because the Lombard northern provinces have a strong separatist bent, fed up with being a tax well for the wasteful south Rome et al.
Ironic it was the Germanic Lombards who settled that land area after the final fall of Rome AD 546, then Charlemagne came in later & took it from them.
Lombards were Arian Christians, who did not get along with that unworthy faux pretender they clearly saw as such which brazenly set up shop in Rome, of all places. Fancy that.
2nd pick would be Spain, due to Catalonia mainly.
Russia is David and NATO camp is Goliath . I support the weaker side.
Nuclear weapons are all scary and what not but eventually humanity will find counter-technology to it. It’s mostly the radioactive effect.
Anti-radiation medication or a process to clean up radiation zones much faster than waiting decades will basically reduce the level of fear for nuclear weapons. Cities can be rebuilt. Populations can be restored. Radiation on the other hand takes forever to disappear.
The discovery of a radiation-resistant bacteria capable of repairing its own DNA is proof that organic life can support some counter radiation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans
Of course we’re still in the infancy stage of understanding radiation and its full potential.
I don’t disagree with you, currently nuclear weapons are an unacceptable level of destruction which prevents RATIONAL players from committing to full-scale warfare, however once the radiation issue is solved the level of destruction will become mute. Seriously look at WW2, people killed each other like it was cool. Nuclear weapons will become an awesome way for the elites to clear the slate and start fresh, without losing an economic region due to radiation.
If the projections of “nuclear winter” are realized, radiation will be of no concern. In this scenario, the entire earth will be covered in a layer of ice and snow which will persist for hundreds or thousands of years after the last plants, animals and humans are dead. WWIII is not an option, even for the rich and powerful.
There’s a lot of uncertainty to how bad a nuclear winter would be. Some say that it would be more of a nuclear autumn, without much impact. Others that it would kill ~75% of world population, but leave the tropics livable, and the winter lasting for a decade or so. If the elites believe the nuclear winter will be mild, they might go for it.
Simply the MAD doctrine, continued. The zpc/nwo mad bugger oligarch club would love to build a workaround, but they get foiled every time.
Decent comment, L445.
Nice post. If there is no WWIII then it is insightful. If there is, it will not matter. I am trouble by the underlying assumption that our uber world leaders have everything under control and are only looking for small defenseless countries that they can invade so as to “blow off steam”, and keep their respective peasant classes focused on an external enemy. Francis Fukuyama; actually went so far as to state we are at the “End of History.” So, is Fukuyama right: We have reached the climax of our sociocultural evolution and are now in an era of perpetual peace, except for the occasional mediocre dust-up that kills hundreds of thousands of civilians? Or is all this barbaric and bestial behavior preparing us for the one group that thinks it is invincible and pushes its advantage to the point of no return only to learn it is not? I also question the underlying premise that the development of nuclear weapons somehow negates the last 6,000 years of human history that is mainly a chronicle of the duration and magnitude of the human species’ blood lusts sated by its wars.
There has been plenty of “history” since Fukuyama announced its end.
BTW, FF is a student of the Sam Huntington (“clash of civilizations”) school of thought.
Basically it seems we have to pray that MAD is still a strong enough fear to drive even the most irrational and blood-lusty in the species.
I have little doubt that if pushed too hard by the West, Putin will push the button rather than permit a takeover of Russia. I think he has to convince Western military leaders and the Neocons and think-tankers etc. that he is serious. The Samson option . . . Of course, any solid opposition so enrages the exceptionalists that it ends up serving as a pretext to play “victim of Russian aggression.”
Actually, the USA’s military stance is very emotional and unstable. If they “feel” threatened it is the same thing as actually being threatened and even actually attacked and wounded.
Katherine
re: “Americans are rising up. They want no more, except with Terrorists.”
Common people have little political influence around the world. Wars are about one group or alliance of elites fighting another group of elites. And that is what we see in the Middle East today.
The other thing is this is written with the sound of the 1900’s. We may be entering a different type of world. We see color revolutions and weaponized immigration, for example. And we see the West trying to set fires around the borders of Russia, somewhat successfully, too. Russia’s large trade with the Ukraine and Turkey has been really hurt. And the war on the ruble has seriously damaged the Eurasian Union. No nukes required, and no real response by Russia yet. Maybe the Russian Army and security services are too focused on bombs and need to focus on currencies and industrial technologies.
The USSR came down without a nuclear war, so the West has reason to be confident that they can take down a superpower through other means than nukes or a big war.
“Maybe the Russian Army and security services are too focused on bombs and need to focus on currencies and industrial technologies.”
Maybe the Russian Army is focused to put and end to all this madness
Something that’s been bothering me a while..
Should we really be focussing on the nuclear aspect of WWIII?
The Pentagon has just received 900million for bio warfare.
What if the ‘distraction’ of Syria is used to catch the Russians unawares by the release of some virus-carrying insect – like the current ‘Zika’ in Brazil?
Given the situation in the Ukraine, this seems to me t by far the most likely scenario.
Edward Basurin recently said as much about the virulent flu-strain in the area.
How alert is Russia to this kind of bio hazard?
Hryvna falls to 30.38 versus Euro as Ukraine Fails to Sell Any Bonds and Russia Files Suit Against Ukraine in London Over $3b Debt
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Appeals to Russia by some Western countries not to hit a 100-km corridor on the Syria-Turkey border with airstrikes turned out to be attempts to ensure uninterrupted logistics supply to terrorist groups, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20160216/1034857356/syria-route-terrorists-ministry.html#ixzz40NKDejxN
ISIS and Turkish flags are together in Mount Turkoman Latakia
https://twitter.com/ebugreyb/status/700051690599424000
Training session for Kurdish girls in Kurdistan Iran so they can join the ranks of Peshmerga in 1970.
https://twitter.com/IslamZebari/status/700032913773981696
Chilling @Wikileaks cable from ’06 showing US efforts to destabilize Syria. Europe now dealing with consequences.
https://twitter.com/DanielleRyanJ/status/697363686302838784
MFA_Russia spox Maria Zakharova on BBC’s ‘mockumentary’ about Russian invasion of Latvia https://t.co/0uhSd9Ab68
https://twitter.com/DanielleRyanJ/status/699946247923355649
Cheerful reading…especially the third time !!!Relief that this enlightened person emphasizes the improbability of a full scale WW3..just bad for business and destroying our dwindling natural resources ie., good farming soil and water, of which Russia and Ukraine have the largest reserves. Bankers and hedge funds are fully aware that perpetual minor conflict is the path..after all we are 7 billion plus which is probably 6 billion too many with CO2 at 405ppm plus, methane levels rapidly increasing and acidifying oceans etc., Grateful Putin declared 2017 year of ecology!! Sorry I am a physical geographer and believe smart, precision and small scale agriculture and horticulture is the future. Thanks, yet again, Comrade Saker…
Interesting article, but I can’t help thinking that the author has left out at least two serious possibilities. Number 1. He seems to believe that the rulers in the west are rational. This could be a serious misconception, and it is one of the central weaknesses in Russia’s realist foreign policy. Consider that Hitler’s war policy of fighting, the USA, the USSR and the British Empire simultaneously was bound to end in Germany’s defeat, but AH went ahead anyway simply because he was a prisoner of his own insane vision. Such a strategic blunder could never have happened in a democracy since the opposition to such insanity would have prevented it. There is good reason to believe that the forces driving US foreign policy are similarly demented. The neo-con vision of total global dominance is strikingly similar AH’s thousand year Reich.
Secondly, there is always the possibility of war by accident. And this nearly happened during the first Cold War. When you have a situation where the nuclear death machine is on a hair trigger, there is the very real possibility of a strike and the basis of a faulty radar reading. We know now that due to the creeping up to Russia’s borders of US nuclear hardware, Russia’s nuclear forces have been briefed to launch on warning.
Unless the present escalation is wound down a nuclear exchange of some sort seems to be a real possibility.
I hope I am wrong, but I am not optimistic.
» Hitler’s war policy of fighting, the USA, the USSR and the British Empire simultaneously was bound to end in Germany’s defeat, but AH went ahead anyway simply because he was a prisoner of his own insane vision. «
Insane vision indeed, or in other words, total Mumpitz. Britain declared war on Germany, which was unexpected. France joined, also unexpected. Britain could embroil Germany on more fronts because it ruled the sea and could threaten to intervene where resource-starved Germany had vital interests, such as Swedish ore and Romanian oil. Soviet Russia turned against Germany, which became 100 % evident in November 1940 (Molotov’s visit to Berlin). Oh, and why did Germany declare war on the U.S.? Hmm, let me see … gosh, it’s so hard to figure out. Yeah, must have been some “insane vision”.
@ Lumi
To address here only your question: why Hitler declared war on the U.S..
A mighty interesting question indeed.
And there is a mighty surprising answer to it, given by well known Belgian-American historian Dr. Jacques Pauwels on the occasion of 70th anniversary of the Battle of Moscow. His remarkable analysis is titled 70 Years Ago, December 1941: Turning Point of World War II, first published on 6 December 2011.
http://www.jacquespauwels.net/70-years-ago-december-1941-turning-point-of-world-war-ii/
From the foreword to it by Dr. Michel Chossudovsky:
“… According to Dr. Pauwels, the turning point was not Stalingrad but “the Battle of Moscow” and the Soviet counter-offensive According to Dr. Pauwels, the turning point was not Stalingrad but “the Battle of Moscow” and the Soviet counter-offensive launched in December 1941 …”
Dr. Pauwels’ well-documented analysis is a must-read one indeed! In summary:
By mid-November 1941, some units of Hitler’s army attempting to take Moscow found themselves at a mere 30 kilometres from the capital. Facing severe well-organised resistance from the Soviet forces, however, the German operation ground to a screeching halt. By 3 December the entire German army in front of Moscow was forced on defensive, and on 5 December the Soviet troops launched a devastating counter-attack, which sealed the fate of the German attempt. Dr. Pauwels:
“… December 7. 1941. In his headquarters deep in the forests of East Prussia, Hitler had not yet fully digested the ominous news of the Soviet counter-offensive in front of Moscow, when he learned that, on the other side of the world, the Japanese had attacked the Americans at Pearl Harbour. This caused the US to declare war on Japan, but not on Germany, which had nothing to do with the attack and had not even been aware of the Japanese plans. Hitler had no obligation whatsoever to rush to the aid of his Japanese friends, as is claimed by many American historians, but on December 11, 1941 – four days after Pearl Harbor – he declared war on the US. This seemingly irrational decision must be understood in light of the German predicament in the Soviet Union. Hitler almost certainly speculated that this entirely gratuitous gesture of solidarity would induce his Eastern ally to reciprocate with a declaration of war on the enemy of Germany, the Soviet Union, and this would have forced the Soviets into the extremely perilous predicament of a two-front war. Hitler appears to have believed that he could exorcize the spectre of defeat in the Soviet Union, and in the war in general, by summoning a sort of Japanese deus ex machina to the Soviet Union’s vulnerable Siberian frontier. According to the German historian Hans W. Gatzke, the Führer was convinced that “if Germany failed to join Japan [in the war against the United States], it would…end all hope for Japanese help against the Soviet Union.” But Japan did not take Hitler’s bait. Tokyo, too, despised the Soviet state, but the land of the rising sun, now at war against the US, could afford the luxury of a two-front war as little as the Soviets, and preferred to put all of its money on a “southern” strategy, hoping to win the big prize of Southeast Asia – including oil-rich Indonesia! -, rather than embark on a venture in the inhospitable reaches of Siberia. Only at the very end of the war, after the surrender of Nazi Germany, would it come to hostilities between the Soviet Union and Japan. [31]
And so, because of Hitler’s own fault, the camp of Germany’s enemies now included not only Great Britain and the Soviet Union, but also the mighty USA, whose troops could be expected to appear on Germany’s shores, or at least on the shores of German-occupied Europe, in the foreseeable future. The Americans would indeed land troops in France, but only in 1944, and this unquestionably important event is still often presented as the turning point of World War II. However, one should ask if the Americans would ever have landed in Normandy or, for that matter, ever have declared war on Nazi Germany, if Hitler had not declared war on them on December 11, 1941; and one should ask if Hitler would ever have made the desperate, even suicidal, decision to declare war on the US if he had not found himself in a hopeless situation in the Soviet Union. The involvement of the US in the war against Germany, then, which for many reasons was not “in the cards” before December 1941, was also a consequence of the German setback in front of Moscow. Obviously, this constitutes yet another fact that may be cited in support of the claim that “the tide turned” in the Soviet Union in the fall and early winter of 1941. …”
So, here we have it:
Hitler, in weak spirits because of the defeat at Moscow, welcomes the Pearl Harbour event, and after mere four days announces the war on the U.S. – in the fatally mistaken hope that the Japanese would “reciprocate” (!!!) and announce war on the U.S.S.R., thus relieving the German military.
But since Japanese had no intention fighting on two fronts simultaneously, Hitler himself now all of a sudden had to fight not one, but two big military powers simultaneously – all alone…
The author does not seem to understand how WW3 will occur. There won’t be a build of armies on Russian or China’s border as in previous wars. Modern technology has made such tactics superfluous. The build up can be seen from miles away and the defending state will have adequate time to adjust their defenses accordingly.
So then how will it be fought ? Mainly with advanced missiles and advanced EW capabilities.
The order of battle once the infrastructure is in place will be:
1- Use EW to neutralize Russian early warning radars
2- Launch nuclear missiles to take out Russia’s nuclear capability
3- Use a missile shield to counter any missiles that Russia may launch that we’re not destroyed in the initial strike
4- Launch a second nuclear strike to knock out any systems not destroyed in the first strike
This is why US is building a missile shield in Poland, Czech Republic and Turkey.
That is why US tried to evict Russia from Crimea through Maidan revolution so it could install missiles in Crimea. If US was successful in this attempt it would have been game, set and match to US as Russia would not have had enough warning time to stop Moscow getting blitzed.
There was an article in Foreign Policy in 2006 where the authors claimed a 50 000 000 loss in a successful nuclear war with Russia was an acceptable figure.
I used to believe such stuff, too, and it scared me. But it is all doomsday propaganda. Best thing is to simply ignore it as 99,5 % of people do anyway, and justly so.
» US tried to evict Russia from Crimea «
Crimea is old Khazar land. Shouldn’t be discounted as a factor.
WRONG!
Using just simple history of warfare these past centuries, say from the time of western use of the ‘borrowed’ (from China) gunpowder, note there has never been any advanced technology that was never eventually used by one or both sides.
Siege engines—used by near everyone.
Atomic (fission or a-bomb, measured in up to a few tens of kilotonnes) bomb—used within a year of development.
H-bomb—(also atomic but fusion, using a fission device as initial trigger only to trigger to produce initial temperatures for fusion to start; yield into tens of megatonnes)—not used yet.
@ Lumi on February 18, 2016 · at 1:54 pm UTC
“””””I used to believe such stuff, too, and it scared me. But it is all doomsday propaganda. Best thing is to simply ignore it as 99,5 % of people do anyway, and justly so.”””””
You wouldn’t even be alive if JFK and before him Eisenhower had not prevented very specific concrete plans of what you call “doomsday propaganda”.
But I’m sure in West-Germany’s Sesame Street and Sendung mit der Maus or Loewenzahn they didn’t tell you about that???
Operation Unthinkable was a code name of two related plans of a conflict between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Both were ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces’ Joint Planning Staff at the end of World War II in Europe.
The first of the two assumed a surprise attack on the Soviet forces stationed in Germany in order to “impose the will of the Western Allies” on the Soviets. “The will” was qualified as “square deal for Poland”[2] (which probably meant enforcing the recently signed Yalta Agreement). When the odds were judged “fanciful”, the original plan was abandoned. The code name was used instead for a defensive scenario, in which the British were to defend against a Soviet drive towards the North Sea and the Atlantic following the withdrawal of the American forces from the continent.
The study became the first Cold War-era contingency plan for war with the Soviet Union.[3] Both plans were highly secret at the time of their creation and it was not until 1998 that they were made public.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable
Operation unthinkable: How Churchill wanted to recruit defeated Nazi troops and drive Russia out of Eastern Europe
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1209041/Operation-unthinkable-How-Churchill-wanted-recruit-defeated-Nazi-troops-drive-Russia-Eastern-Europe.html#ixzz40Tlr9HLY
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1209041/Operation-unthinkable-How-Churchill-wanted-recruit-defeated-Nazi-troops-drive-Russia-Eastern-Europe.html
Declassified Top Secret Documents Show US Planned To Nuke Moscow, Berlin, Beijing
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-24/declassified-top-secret-documents-show-us-planned-nuke-moscow-berlin-beijing
The U.S. Government Just Declassified Their 1956 Plan To Nuke Soviet Russia
http://uproxx.com/news/america-nukes-soviets/
Hahaha, maybe you and your 99.5% call it Mumpitz and laugh about it.
But that wouldn’t turn you back from radioactive dust into some west-german being and “Communism never worked in Germany” Nazi-understander, would it?
http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/01/the-crimes-of-nato-and-united-states.html
very relevant
Weak analysis. Setting a random and subjective rule for those who disagree while speaking from an unknown authority position is frankly not conducive to discussion, but rather shows desire to impose an opinion. It doesn’t help that WWIII is being defined exclusively as a nuclear one and the definition apparently stops there.
What people see is enough tension to result in a war at the smallest provocation, which is a good enough argument, considering what is going on.
“What this business of nuclear is really doing is down-scaling the ‘war” between giants.”
True up to a point. There are well known precedents where nuclear war was barely avoided. Nobody might want to strike first, but that is simply abstract logic. What about a perceived first strike?
“The threatened nation will use their nukes to destroy the formation.”
And it will, apparently, stop there as everyone would think that justice has prevailed?
“The big wars are over.”
I am pretty sure many have thought like this during the last few millennia.
That is opinionated wishful thinking.
“The big wars are over.”
Sounds very similar to “Peace for our time”….
Conspiracy it might be, but while we are ldealing by cruising along chatting about peace and war., the ‘team chaos’ has been busy settting up a huge claustrophobic horror coming to us thanks to them!
Consider the followings facts on the ground..one, evil putin back bagged with all his amazing war tools ready to rock and roll after being pushed around silly by forces of ‘peace democracy and freedom’,he aint taking no more s***!…two,’barrel bombing dictator’ Assad is not willing to sit down for tea with moderate head choppers he is in for the finals!….three,the Kurds an ancient warriors race dishonored by every race they had come into contact with,armed to the teeth led by ten thousands women pissed of by dirty patriarchal hordes allied with ‘evil’ putin and ‘murderous’assad!…Four,The most feared urban warfare guerrillas calling themselves the party of god ,armed with big bad ass kicking ever built tanks in for it too.Just to prove a point……five,Persia out to prove its eminence after 3000 years backed by flying vimanas!…Six,Wahabis flushed with trillions of petrodollars and armed by team chaos who aregoing to teach the rest of the world how to live by the books or ‘off with the heads’!seven,The vengeful modern state of long forgotten ottoman primacy calling itself ‘Turkey’ hungry to rule the oil states or break them under its feets with one of the biggest army in the world!
All these conglomerations are brought to their quadrant clashing point ,a place well mentionedin many ancient texts!Who said ,”All the world is but a theatre and men’s are the bit players’ or something to that effect.We have been drinking the ‘them vs us’ kool aid so the guess is it is inevitable?
The kurds are aiming for Azaz and the rest at Al bab ,Dabiq is right in the middle and the Ottos have engineered a false flag for entry of their army and the wahabis ally to help out the ‘extreme’ head choppers!…You cant make this up,..moment!and all this while the ‘fiat’ system is clogged and the hungry tourists are in Paris and Munich and no where to go!
Evil minds only bring forth evil deeds!
» It doesn’t help that WWIII is being defined exclusively as a nuclear one and the definition apparently stops there. «
I agree. As for the depth and width of this definition, consider these clues:
“Sedan Crater”, Nevada, USA, 100 m deep, 390 m wide
Pozo de las animas, Argentina, 100 m deep, 200 m wide
» See, that inevitable stuff is nonsense in the nuclear age. … And the most important national military doctrine is Russia’s. It openly states that they will use nuclear weapons in many situations. … What this business of nuclear is really doing is down-scaling the ‘war” between giants. «
The truth about “nuclear weapons” means that (a) “nuclear war” is science fiction and (b) war between Russia and the USA is a possibility. Which both will try to avoid, however. Russia will try to avoid it anyway, and Uncle Sam has enough pawns he can use instead so he won’t risk his aircraft carriers being sent to the ground which would mean a couple thousand dead sailors at once. And, what’s more, the loss of prestige.
There have been several incidents during the Cold War and later where it got hot. For instance, the KLA-007 incident in 1983, which was larger than KLA-007 (which was shot down much further South, probably by mistake, and not by the Soviets, cf. Michel Brun’s book Incident at Sakhaline) and involved a bunch of Uncle Sam’s spy planes that were shot down over and near Sakhaline. Or the Kursk incident in 2000, which was torpedoed by an American submarine.
So Uncle Sam is pushing his pawns. Turkey, Saudi Arabia. Just imagine if these countries were embroiled in a war with Syria, Iran and Russia. Would Uncle Sam like it nor not? They Would all bleed, they would all lose. But Uncle Sam would be happy. It would all be blamed on Erdogan afterwards and Uncle Sam would stay in Turkey. And “protect” the Arabian oil.
Turkey must be very careful, but someone is pushing Turkey by means of terror attacks. The hidden hand … often observed in European history …
Great logic and fine analysis. But how does logic prevent irrational actions, accidents, dis-empower sociopaths? More humorously, what about General Ripper and his B52’s out at Burpulson AFB? What about our purity of essence, or bodily fluids? Let us hope a great war doesn’t happen.
For the sake of everyone I hope the man is right that things will not escalate. The thing is that you cannot expect irrational people to behave rationally all the time, by definition they would sometimes do things that cannot be rationally explained. What’s rational about a fanatic blowing themselves up in a crowded square for the sake of religious belief? If individuals can behave in irrational way, what’s to say they cannot end up in places of power, where their decisions can affect millions? And that’s not even taking into account cases, where actors believe that behave rationally and expose themselves to calculated risks, but ending up miscalculating?
As far as I know no one can predict the future and saying that something cannot possibly happen, simply because no one can possibly envision the details as it will unfold is merely subjective belief, not evidence.
How about Turkey and Saudi Arabia invading Syria and some Russian aircraft getting downed in the process? Would that provoke a Russian reaction? Would a Russian reaction to this provoke Turkish and Saudi counter-reaction, possibly involving the Turkish 2nd army massed at the Sirian border or these 350,000 troops, 19,000 tanks and who knows how many airplanes and what have you that are about to take part in that friendly training in Saudi Arabia next week? Would their involvement possibly lead to Russia using tactical nukes? Would that possibly lead to NATO getting into the fray? History is choke full of ambicious megalomaniacs who thought they had things under control but ended up miscalculating badly, this happens all the time, the only difference now is that the stakes are much higher as miscalculations now can erase the human race, things can get out of hand if actors are not willing to back down and can only up the ante, not diffuse situations so as not to appear weak. Anyways, like I said, I hope you’re right, for the sake of us all.
Fisk reporting from Syria.. huge changes happening in very small ways.. I like fisk’s reporting because he don’t interview to make up propaganda. He talks about looking at a situation as an outsider and saying what he feels. Some pros and cons there. Overall he don’t blame, he reports what people are feeling.
Damascus Snapshot: Refugees Returning, FSA Rebels Rejoining Government Army
Robert Fisk with a snapshot of the capital of Syria
No this is not the Great War – though it has lasted far longer – and such comparisons somehow take away the dignity of those who try to return to live in these ruins. Syria is Syria, not Iraq or Bosnia or part of a world war – though there are Arabs who do claim that all this is part of World War Three. Did the Americans not threaten to bomb Damascus? Are the Russian air force not now bombing Isis? Is Turkey not now threatening to invade Syria? And Saudi Arabia?
But what is happening in al-Qadam tells you a lot about the Syrian war. Once in the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra, it lay rotting through three years, under government control but almost empty, until the army struck north of Aleppo and began to conquer its enemies along the Turkish border – and the people started to come back to al-Qadam.
Twenty-six families in the past 15 days alone, even a drift back of former “Free Syrian Army” men – part of David Cameron’s mythical army of 70,000 “moderates”, one supposes – and five prisoners released from government jails. Victory brings confidence, however temporary, and you can sniff it on the government front lines far from Aleppo.
There are fewer checkpoints in Damascus, 100 women dancing the “dubkah” at a noisy hen party in one of the big hotels, convoys of trucks humming across the Lebanese border en-route to Jordan now that the Syrian army has re-opened the main road to Deraa. Syrians drive to Aleppo up the highway again. On Syrian television, there are action shots of Syrian paratroopers entering towns they had not seen for three years. And in al-Qadam, its streets named after ancient Arab philosophers and travellers, they are also returning.
There is even a “reconciliation committee” of elders who talk to both the army and the Free Syrian army – not to Isis or al-Nusra, they all insist – and who drink coffee with the government soldiers. Rather a lot of meals, an army intelligence officer tells me. Some of the Free Syrian Army men from al-Qadam have been allowed to keep their light weapons – after forswearing their opposition to the regime – and the government army have allowed them food and medicine.
Several have been allowed to return to the ranks of the army they deserted, new ranks of course, paid once more by the government. “Yes, of course we knew many of them,” a soldier says. It is a subtle war. Get the opposition to change sides, especially now that they have tasted the bitter fruit of Isis’s ideology and understood the power of Russia’s air force. It seems to work. Silence has settled over the front line here.
But “home” – inherited from his father – has no roof. Like all the other houses in this poor, devastated suburb, they were looted and burned by al-Nusra. One lady in a green dress – this is not yet the time to discard anonymity for most of these people – described how al-Nusra came to this place three years ago. “We did not know them and I tried to stay, but then they came to our home and slaughtered my husband and I fled with my children.”
His family live here and have returned, and it slowly becomes clear that many of these families had sons in the military and supported the regime. And al-Nusra turned on them with a vengeance. Hence all the burned homes – only a few repaired – and the still smashed minaret of the local mosque.
“Some of them have formed a unit to support the army,” he says. “Others tried to fight Nusra and Daesh [Isis] and were killed. Yes, there have been many martyrs.”
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/damascus-snapshot-refugees-returning-fsa-rebels-rejoining-government-army/ri12912?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=socialnetwork
A good article.Its human stories like that,that are important. Certainly we need to know of battles and victories. But we also need to know what happens/happened after those battles and victories. Only that will tell us what the real conditions are in Syria.
Many thanks for this.
I trust Robert Fisk.
He reported on the ground from Baghdad after the US invasion.
I think he is one of the best. Perhaps not always “right” in terms of his analysis, but always right in terms of right vs. wrong. Always on the side of the real people.
Katherine
A German Luftwaffe (Air Force) general with the goods. Talking to a German paper the general reveals that Russian Su-30 and Su-35 fighter planes in Syria make regularly stalk and shadow strike craft of the western powers flying over Syria.
The general also has the explanation why the Russians make it a point to do so. They want to remind the western powers “that they, in contrast to the international anti-IS coalition, are at the invitation of the legitimate Syrian government.”
L445
“There simply is not a feasible Order of Battle for victory.”
I wonder man,on which side are you really,is that your point of view for Russia ? using your words,it’s”transpire” that the defeat of the Evil is not possible any more,thus we have to accept the defeat of Russia and the aspirations on freedom ? is that what you are suggesting ? it seems so…
@ioan: You are right.
BTW the funny thing which annoyed me from the beginning on (when L445 at first posted his long comment in the old thread) was, that everybody making predictions is a fool, because all those things won’t happen – and we are safe.
But in fact he made himself a prediction.
Not only whatever yet onother prediction, but he predicted that all the other folks’ predictions will not come true.
Now calculate the probability that he is correct with that.
And that scares me even more (because the probability is getting lower by the day, it’s steadily running against zero).
Last week I read an excellent comment on ZH, before L445 made his prediction, 1 or 2 days earlier. Unfortunately I don’t find it anymore.
But it stated clearly that it is completely ridiculous to say “calm down, there won’t be WW3, only limited regional conflicts”.
I cannot repeat what was written there (several pages).
However – the future looks dark.
Best joke I ever heard that it is necessary to describe the “underwear” of every minute of the first days of WW3 only to be correct with the fear that something might happen. Take a lesson in Boolean Algebra, L445 …..
If you lose control over your car you notice it without having to describe every screw of your or your opponent’s car. Yet you may see your last fractions of a second in slow motion (higher resolution of your cognitive abilities in such emergency situations). And during these monets you think: Oh, damn shit ….. and then BOOM
Larchmonter445, thank you for the ‘positive’ analysis. I needed that.
My main question regards “No nation will…”No nation can…”. Isn’t that what NATO/US is doing relentlessly step-by-step in eastern Europe? Sure, it’s relatively small now but as the number of military equipment/missiles/soldiers increases how does Russia draw the line–a real line? Words and threats mean little, if anything, to the maniacs in NATO/US.
It seems that, very much indeed, NATO/US can build up its military openly and unimpeded in eastern Europe.
What can Russia do when it’s red line has been reached? Can it go outside its borders? Not an option unless it wants to play chicken with Article 5. Maybe Russia doesn’t have a red line for the western build-up. Is that possible?
Will the lopsided build-up become so obvious that Europeans (especially Germans) will overthrow their oligarchical governments and get out of NATO. I’m not counting on that.
Are we to assume the build-up is maybe just a feint, just an excuse for the military-industrial-banking-congressional complex to make money?
i am a little bit worried about how you your mind, woke up this morning
Because, early in the post, you establish a few premises, as you naturally should. All of them either utterly false or simply taken for granted but who lead to the opposite conclusions.
Let s see:
No, it is not any “requirement of predictions to tell” other what the order of battle will be. There will be situations of unbeareable insecurity, of sensations of iiminent attack no matter if detected, simply feared about or brought in by mere errors/failure of the equipment.
and it may or may not turn absolutely irrelevant, if with missiles or planes oordamn whatever it goes on. Three submarines with sixteen missiles, each of them independently focusing targets make how many millions dead?
It goes on with whatever is STILL anyhow available.
Totally or to a certain point where the AUTOMATIC response systems work. And of course this is the overall nonsense of the nuclear age.
THe fact of the A TOTAL uncontrolability of a nuclear WWIII once started does not imply it will not be started by any of the existing means, or precisely by their failure thereof.
America and its European imperialist allies are not sane actors.
They are psychopath nations who have a fundamentalist belief that they are the essence of goodness, morality, and civilization on this planet.
Everyone else is just an untermenschen.
This is a civilizational pathology, one that is a secular religion for the West and its sick citizens.
In the USA, this sickness goes by many different names: American Exceptionalism, American values, or simply Freedom and Democracy.
But in the West in general, they call it (spit) Western Civilization.
As such, the West simply cannot bear to even countenance the thought, never mind the reality, that there will be alternative civilizations, non-Western nations who will not bow down to Euro-American Empire, its perverse cultural values, or socio-political and economic “model.”
Preventing a multipolar challenge to Euro-American domination, power, and subjugation of the world is America’s Raison D’etre.
That is what drives World War.
This is not only a military or economic/political war.
It is a Civilizational War.
The trouble with these battle plan theories is that they are made in secret conclaves and rest on a number of assumptions about how the various stages in the battle will proceed. In practice, however, there are so many variables and so many things which can and do go wrong all of which makes the planning vulnerable to critical error. The US battle plan, straight forward as it is postulates a first strike to knock out Russian ballistic missiles and then finish off the remnants with ABMs.
Sounds okay as a theory. But then so did the Anglo-French preparations for the battle of the Somme almost exactly 100 years ago. A massive artillery bombardment would smash the German front line, after which the British army would simply stroll into the German positions. Easy peasy. Well not quite, the Germans had dug themselves in and as soon as the barrage stopped, brought up their heavy machine guns and proceded to mow down the British solidiers advancing over no-mans-land at walking pace. British casualties on the first day were 60000, 20000 of which were fatal. The battle dragged on inconclusively for months with over a million British, French and German casualties. Not quite what was planned.
The point is that the best laid military strategies often tend to come to grief in the fog of war and heat of battle. The US/NATO planning in this respect is no exception. The preemptive strike strategy is incredibly risky to any rational minded calculation. But then again who thinks the US/NATO high command and their political and media backers are rational.
my strong sense is that larchmonter 45 is spot on.
russian leadership is super informed and sophisticated, they sure know that no ww3 is an utter nightmare for the elites. means, tney would evenually, and in relative peace, have to account for their immense crime, fraud, theft.. one big war would prevent that possibility, won’t it.
so putin and his team decided not to oblige them with escalation which also means the US main and probably only noteworthy(military) industry is gradually becoming redundant..never mind the massive increase in spending ..it just goes to show they are out of ideas while hoping that some out there will get awe stricken, spooked into subservience..may give saudi warrior prince some comfort, but russian military is not that impressed.
good analysis larchmonter445, thank you.
I totally agree. This is a brilliant analysis. 90 percent of American’s war talk is bluff and bluster. It’s main purpose is to get more money for defense industry which also props up the rest of the stock market. America knows it could not defeat Russia/China in a real war.
So everything will follow the actual path,Russia will go down the river because of economic sanctions and many other issues,not to consider the proxy wars against her.The war is going on,still on economic fronts,on propaganda fronts and the risks of escalation on Syria and entire Middle-East is growing.Ukraine is put on freeze as a bleeding wound.Russia seeks justice not just for herself but for others whom have been destroyed and subjugated for long time.That list is long.Or will the Perpetrators getaway with it ? without punishment ? forever ?
Excessive optimism by Larchmonter. Sooner or later the weapons will be used independently of the intentions and level of rationality of those in command. In many respects, it is a kind of miracle they haven’t been used yet.
What follows is a review of a recent book (2013) on this topic by Eric Schlosser titled:
Command and Control
http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788
How worried should we be?
by Steven Shapin
‘Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.’ That’s known as Murphy’s Law. It’s invoked in all sorts of settings, but its natural modern home is in engineering, where it is generally attributed to a remark made around 1950 by an aeronautical engineer called Ed Murphy, who was working on the design of rocket sleds at Edwards Air Force Base in California. In the mid-1950s, when Murphy’s Law wasn’t yet widely known under that name, Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, reflecting on the political and administrative troubles afflicting him, suggested that ‘a new law of knowledge’ be recognised and called Strauss’s Law after him: ‘If anything bad can happen, it probably will.’ At the time, Strauss was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, which had the responsibility for producing and maintaining America’s nuclear weapons, and the things that can go wrong with the control of such weapons are as bad as it gets.
Nuclear weapons are designed to detonate as the result of specific types of human intention. Explosions are the sharp end of elaborate, and constantly evolving, ‘command and control’ systems put in place to ensure that these weapons are used only as and when intended by legitimate political authority. Although there were concerns at one time that a high proportion of nuclear weapons would turn out to be damp squibs, or miss their targets by a wide margin, their designers, at least in the original nuclear states, are now confident that they will for the most part work as they are meant to.
But nuclear weapons can, in theory, go off accidentally. There have long been arguments about the chances of accidental explosions – failures of command and control in which weapons are detonated when no one intends they should be or when control is seized by an illegitimate party. Some people believe that the risk of accidental detonation has always been oversold. First, the novels Red Alert (1958) and Fail-Safe (1962), and then, based on Red Alert, the 1964 film Dr Strangelove, put in play the idea that all-out nuclear war could happen as a result of technical flaws or through the actions of one or a few madmen, but, despite all the Cold War cold sweats, we’re still here. After 9 August 1945, there has never been either an accidental nuclear detonation, or, several thousand tests excepted, an intentional explosion of any sort. The US has built some 70,000 nuclear weapons since the end of the Second World War, and currently possesses about 4650, none of which has yet detonated accidentally or without authorisation. So how worried should we have been about nuclear explosions, intentional or accidental? How worried should we be now? What has been the relationship between the possibility of accidents and the command and control systems meant to prevent them and to guarantee intentional outcomes, or between nuclear risk and the political structures in which nuclear weapons are embedded?
Since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has had a Doomsday Clock icon on its cover, set to indicate how close to Armageddon we’re reckoned to be. In the beginning, when the US was the world’s only nuclear power, holding only a few atomic bombs, the clock was set at seven minutes to midnight. In 1953, with both the Soviet Union and Britain joining America as nuclear states, and with the introduction of thermonuclear weapons, it was advanced several minutes. Since then, the time on the clock has varied between 11.58 and 11.43, reflecting test-ban treaties, arms races and nuclear proliferation – but, again, we’re still here. Immense stockpiles of weapons vastly more devastating than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs have been accumulating for almost seventy years, guarded by fallible human beings, loaded on ready-to-go bombers and mounted on missiles primed to fly at a moment’s notice, but the world hasn’t ended, and over time it’s become more difficult to work up collective hysteria, or even serious concern, about the possibility of nuclear annihilation, intended or accidental. It’s a state of affairs sometimes offered as solid proof that the use of nuclear weapons solely as a deterrent is highly effective and that the systems for keeping them safe against accident or theft work flawlessly. If you really need a bout of apocalyptic anxiety, then worry about climate change, or pandemic influenza, or drug-resistant bacteria, or meteorites doing to us what they did long ago to the dinosaurs.
That’s one way to steady nuclear nerves: learn to stop worrying and accept the bomb, even if you can’t bring yourself to love it. It’s a position that has its advocates. A few years ago, John Mueller’s Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to al-Qaida urged a relaxed attitude: far more has been spent on nuclear weapons than can be justified by any sensible political strategy; they aren’t of much military use; their proliferation presents little danger; fears of nuclear accidents aren’t justified. Historically, wars just don’t begin by accident and there’s no reason to think that nuclear war would be an exception. A sober effort to reduce the chances of an accidental nuclear explosion might be worthwhile, but ‘the myopic hype and hysteria that have so routinely accompanied such efforts are not.’ Writing in the Daily Telegraph recently, Gerard DeGroot declared that the system for preventing nuclear accidents ‘works’, and that, even if an accidental explosion did occur, it would be unlikely to mean the end of the world. There is a market, he said, for books that frighten us and little or none for those that reassure: ‘Apparently we prefer hysteria to soothing logic in matters atomic.’
The book DeGroot had in mind is Eric Schlosser’s brilliant Command and Control, a gripping, joined-up history of American nuclear strategy and nuclear accidents over the past sixty years or so. The broader story is intercut with a minute-by-minute reconstruction of an accident that took place on 18 September 1980 in Damascus, Arkansas, when the socket from a socket-wrench carelessly dropped by a low-level air force maintenance man caused the explosion of a liquid-fuelled Titan-II missile in its underground silo, pitching its nine megaton yield W-53 thermonuclear warhead – then the most powerful in the American nuclear arsenal – into a ditch hundreds of yards away. Accidents happen in the best regulated families, nuclear families included, and Schlosser assembles information about how many US accidents have happened and how close we’ve come on many occasions to unintended explosions and the consequences that might plausibly have followed. There have been numerous so-called ‘Broken Arrow’ accidents, in which nuclear weapons were lost; or in which they were released from aircraft; or launched without authorisation; or in which fires or conventional explosions occurred or radioactive materials were released. The Pentagon has admitted to 32 Broken Arrows between 1950 and 1980, while other government experts estimate a much larger number of ‘significant’ incidents – 1200 between 1950 and 1968. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Schlosser obtained a Pentagon document titled ‘Accidents and Incidents Involving Nuclear Weapons’ and dealing with the period from 1957 to 1967: it was 245 pages long and had been kept secret from some of the government’s own nuclear safety experts.
Nuclear weapon accidents differ in kind over time, reflecting changes partly in the design of the weapons and their delivery systems and partly in systems of political and military control. Every technological system, as Charles Perrow has observed, has its characteristic ‘normal accident’. The things that Murphy’s Law says will (or can) go wrong depend on the design of technical and human systems that are intended to ensure the weapons work. In the early atomic age, bombs were meant to be delivered by aircraft and, for safety reasons, their fissile cores (or ‘pits’) were kept apart from the cases containing wiring systems and conventional explosives which implode the core and cause the detonation. The pits might be secured in separate buildings at air bases, and then loaded onto planes, where they were inserted before the bomb was armed and released. In July 1956, an American B-47 bomber stationed at Lakenheath in Suffolk took off on a training flight to practise touch-and-go landings. It was not carrying a nuclear weapon but, on one of its touchdowns, it veered off the runway and smashed into a shed containing a cache of Mark 6 atomic bombs. The crew was killed, but the outcome was nevertheless a great piece of luck: the weapons destroyed by the subsequent fire did not contain their fissile pits, which were stored in a nearby ‘igloo’. If the bomber had crashed into that igloo, Schlosser writes, ‘a cloud of plutonium could have floated across the English countryside.’ In March 1958, a Mark 6 bomb lacking its nuclear pit was accidentally released from another B-47 and landed in the backyard of Walter Gregg’s family home in Mars Bluff, South Carolina. Its high-explosive casing detonated, digging a 35-foot crater, destroying the family Chevrolet, killing six chickens and deeply embarrassing the Pentagon, which had led the American public to believe that such things couldn’t happen.
Two months earlier, the rear tyres of another B-47, based in Morocco, had blown out while it was practising runway manoeuvres. The plane was carrying a ten megaton yield Mark 36 hydrogen bomb; its plutonium pit was onboard but hadn’t yet been inserted into the conventional explosive casing. The resulting fire melted the bomber and its weapon into a radioactive slag heap, spreading plutonium over the emergency crews and over the surrounding area, though, since proper monitoring equipment wasn’t available, we don’t know how much of the country was contaminated. The Pentagon did tell the king of Morocco, but otherwise it was thought best to keep the accident secret.
‘Sealed-pit’ designs were first developed in the mid-1950s and later became standard, so cutting out the time-consuming process of bringing pit and casing together. These designs met the military’s need for the weapons to be as ready for use and reliable as possible, but, as Schlosser points out, there was always a tension between the demands of safety and those of readiness and reliability, between a weapon ‘always’ exploding when it was meant to and ‘never’ detonating when it was not meant to. Civilian designers wanted to err, if a choice had to be made, on the side of ‘never’, while the military, preferring ‘always’, won the medium-term historical argument. If a bomb with a sealed-pit design were accidentally jettisoned from a plane, anyone living where it landed might not be as lucky as the Gregg family.
On 17 January 1966, a B-52 carrying four Mark 28 hydrogen bombs and a crew of seven collided with its refuelling tanker over the village of Palomares in southern Spain. Four of the crew ejected and survived, and a search was mounted for the bombs. Three of them were located on the ground; one was intact but the high explosives in the other two had partially detonated, dispersing plutonium across the countryside. The fourth bomb was found intact months later half a mile deep in the Atlantic, and was eventually retrieved by a manned submersible. The government declared that there was ‘not the slightest risk’ in eating fish, meat and vegetables from the impact zone, but that was more than they knew at the time, and the US military collected and burned 4000 truckloads of vegetables from the area, then dug up heaps of Spanish soil and transported it in steel drums to South Carolina for burial.
From the mid-1950s, the military became concerned enough about accidental explosions to calculate the probabilities. Initial estimates put the chances of a hydrogen bomb accidentally exploding in the US at one in 100,000 during any given year, and of an atomic bomb one in 125. Subsequent calculations – done on different assumptions – weren’t so reassuring. They put the chance of an accidental domestic hydrogen bomb explosion at one in five over a decade, and the chance of an accidental atomic explosion over the same period at 100 per cent. The Pentagon saw this as an acceptable state of affairs and its sense was that it would be all right with the American people too, though the public’s view on the matter was never sought.
*
New types of accident became possible when, from the late 1950s, intercontinental ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads came into play. With the two superpowers both armed with ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles, land-based intermediate-range missiles and various other ‘battlefield’ nuclear devices, the timespan for responding to real or imagined attacks had shrunk radically. Missiles fired from the Soviet Union could reach their targets in the US in thirty minutes; from Cuba, in three or four minutes; and for missiles launched from submarines off the American coast, there would be effectively no warning at all. The result was that nuclear weapons were put on a more sensitive hair-trigger than they had been in the bomber era. Schlosser’s chilling account of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis contrasts the highest historical state of American nuclear readiness, and the minuscule missile flight-time, to the means used by the Soviet ambassador in Washington to send urgent messages: a telegraph boy would come to the embassy on his bicycle and the ambassador ‘could only pray that he would take it to the Western Union office without delay and not stop to chat on the way with some girl’. American strategic bombers had been flying for years on airborne alert, loaded with sealed-pit nuclear weapons, patrolling close to their Soviet targets, but with the emergence of the ICBM and the submarine-launched Polaris missile, in the event that a missile attack was detected, there would be next to no time available to consider whether it was an all-out ‘first-strike’ attack, a stray ‘accidental’ launch, or indeed a technology-induced illusion caused by a false ‘early warning’ signal.
In October 1960, America’s ballistic missile early warning system in Thule, Greenland detected, with an estimated 99.9 per cent certainty, a massive missile attack coming from Siberia. The joint chiefs of staff were phoned and urgently asked for instructions how to respond. At that point, with only minutes to go before the first US cities were incinerated, the Canadian vice commander of the North American Air Defence Command thought to ask his officers where Khrushchev then was. When the answer came back that he was in New York, there was reason to pause – which was a good thing because it soon emerged that the computer-detected all-out missile attack was in fact the moon rising over Norway.
On 26 September 1983, a 44-year-old Soviet colonel called Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, on duty in an early warning installation near Moscow, unwittingly returned the favour. During a period of particularly tense superpower relations – on the first of the month, a civilian Korean 747 had strayed into Russian airspace and been shot down, and American Pershing-II missiles were scheduled soon to arrive in West Germany – a Soviet satellite picked up first one, then five, Minuteman missiles coming in from the US. Petrov had minutes to decide whether to inform his superiors that an attack was on its way, thus almost certainly triggering massive retaliation, or to notify them of a likely false alarm. Fortunately, Petrov decided this could not be a real attack, as indeed it wasn’t: the approaching US ‘missiles’ turned out to be an odd configuration of cloud-reflected sunlight. For his services to humanity, a few days later Petrov received an official reprimand and now lives in poverty on a pension of $200 a month.
The Petrov episode was possibly in Gorbachev’s mind when he first met Margaret Thatcher at Chequers on 16 December 1984. Thatcher’s papers minute what he told her: ‘Mr Gorbachev argued that if both sides continued to pile up weapons this could lead to accidents or unforeseen circumstances and with the present generation of weapons the time for decision-making could be counted in minutes. As he put it, in one of the more obscure Russian proverbs, “once a year even an unloaded gun can go off.”’ On 25 January 1995, an atmospheric research rocket launched by Norway – about which Russia had been given prior notification – triggered alarm-bells in the Kremlin. Boris Yeltsin, Schlosser notes, ‘retrieved his launch codes, and prepared to retaliate’, and it was some minutes before a false alarm was declared.
In the ICBM era, what counted as a nuclear accident could be a lot more serious than the fate of the Greggs’ chickens or the Palomares tomatoes, not least because American and Soviet policy came to include ‘launch on warning’ – retaliation as soon as an attack was detected but before the missiles have arrived – and a strategic plan according to which the response to any nuclear attack would be to let all one’s own missiles go. Since each side feared a first strike that would take out its capacity to mount an effective response, all ground-based missiles would have to be launched at once or their obliteration presumed. US policy before 1960 was an incoherent mash-up of inter-service rivalries, with the result that the army, the air force and the navy each maintained proprietary targeting plans, each jealously guarding its own nuclear technologies and strategic prerogatives. As a result, a single Soviet target might be hit by three different types of missile and H-bombs dropped from three B-52s. Some co-ordination was achieved in 1960 through the top-secret Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), which prescribed an all-out strike with the entire American arsenal of 3423 warheads against the Soviet Union, China and allied socialist states. The implementation of SIOP was meant to be ‘automated’ – as soon as a Soviet attack was detected and confirmed, the whole plan was to be set in motion, after which ‘it could not be altered, slowed or stopped.’ It was in this context that some types of ‘accident’ would effectively mean the end of civilisation. The sheer overkill of SIOP made Eisenhower despair – though he was ultimately argued into approving it towards the end of his presidency. The all-or-nothing character of SIOP appalled members of the new Kennedy administration. Discussion of ‘limited’ nuclear war during that administration was understood by the American left as war-mongering, but it was motivated in part by revulsion at what was then the institutionalised national strategic policy.
Fears of a massive enemy first strike, decapitating the civilian chain of command, spurred the American military from early on to urge what was called ‘predelegation’: ceding civilian authority to use nuclear weapons to military commanders when the president or his legitimate successors could not be contacted and were presumed dead. Eisenhower ultimately agreed to predelegation, despite his fears that it might allow some officer or group of officers to do ‘something foolish down the chain of command’, and it was eventually extended to air force fighter pilots and Nato officers in Europe. Eisenhower had some basis for his worries. General Curtis LeMay, who led the Strategic Air Command (SAC), urged military ownership of America’s nuclear weapons in the early 1950s, and later recalled that he intended to take matters in his own hands in a nuclear emergency if he couldn’t rouse the president: ‘If I were on my own and half the country was destroyed and I could get no orders and so forth, I wasn’t going to sit there fat, dumb and happy and do nothing.’ Predelegation, Schlosser writes, ‘made sense as a military tactic’, but the decentralisation of control also introduced further uncertainties concerning human judgment. There were now more people whose states of mind could figure in the making of nuclear ‘accidents’.
In 1958, anxious about SAC’s airborne alerts, the Soviets circulated a Pentagon report establishing that 67.3 per cent of US air force personnel were ‘psychoneurotic’ and that alcoholism and drug use was rife. That document was a forgery, but the Rand Corporation was commissioned to study the risk of accidental nuclear detonation, and concluded there was a real danger that technical safeguards could be circumvented by ‘someone who knew the workings of the fusing and firing mechanisms’, and that psychiatric screening of military personnel was perfunctory or non-existent. The Rand report estimated that ten or twenty air force personnel working with nuclear weapons, in Schlosser’s words, ‘could be expected to have a severe mental breakdown every year’. By 1980, the Pentagon knew that drug use was pervasive in the military. At an air base in Florida, 35 soldiers were arrested for selling drugs, including LSD: they belonged to a unit which controlled anti-aircraft missiles and their nuclear warheads.
There are heroes in Schlosser’s story, including civilian designers who fought long and hard with the military to build more effective safeguards into weapon systems, ensuring that bombs and warheads were ‘one-point safe’: incapable of nuclear detonation if any of their conventional high explosives went off at a single point or fired asymmetrically. Designs were improved in several ways: preventing the arming of weapons by accidental electrical signals, such as those generated by a short-circuit or faulty wire; ensuring that the conventional explosives surrounding the nuclear pits could not go off as a result of fire or single-point or asymmetric impact; including a ‘weak link’ that was bound to fail under abnormal conditions; and installing ‘permissive action links’ to prevent weapons being armed unless activated by a specific externally supplied code or combination. The military tended vigorously to push back against a wide range of recommended safeguards, bridling at their expense and, in some cases, fretting that they would sap the morale of personnel by displaying a lack of confidence in their reliability and discipline. By the late 1970s, a coded control switch was installed in all SAC ballistic missiles, but it locked the missile rather than the warhead. ‘As a final act of defiance’ towards engineers concerned about safety, Schlosser says, the air force showed its attitude towards such security measures by its management of the code: ‘The combination necessary to launch missiles was the same at every Minuteman site: 00000000.’
*
If Murphy’s Law is to be taken seriously and acted on in any practical way, it is necessary to make several modifications. The first is a specification of time-span: over what period of time can we expect the unexpectedly bad thing to happen and how should we deal with different time-spans? The second is some probabilistic qualification: over any period of time, the various things that could go wrong have different chances of actually happening. The third is the scope of the ‘anything’ that might go wrong, a practical sorting of things into those that can conceivably go wrong and those that one can’t, at the moment, imagine going wrong. And the last – pertinent to any practical, accident-avoiding activity – is some sense of the wrongness of any given thing that may go wrong: the tolerability of its consequences, the trade-off between the costs of an accident and the costs of avoiding the accident.
The lessons Schlosser means us to draw from Command and Control address some, but not all, of these qualifications. The first is that we’re not out of the woods just yet: old risks have been better dealt with over time, but new ones are emerging. Civilian engineers have indeed reduced the risk of nuclear accidents, but that risk was for a long time unconscionably high and the current conditions of risk are worth consideration. In The Limits of Safety: Organisations, Accidents and Nuclear Weapons (1993), Scott Sagan reckoned the fact that a disastrous nuclear accident hadn’t yet occurred was down less to ‘good design than good fortune’. By 1999, this was an opinion one could hear expressed even by SAC’s last commander, General George Lee Butler, who said that SIOP was, ‘with the possible exception of the Soviet nuclear war plan … the single most absurd and irresponsible document I had ever reviewed in my life … We escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by some combination of skill, luck and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.’
Criticising Schlosser as a hysteric misses the point. He has no problem acknowledging that if even one of the seventy thousand nuclear weapons constructed by the US had been accidentally detonated or stolen, the command and control system would have proved 99.99857 per cent safe, and that is a very impressive degree of security. But the precautionary principle more familiar from environmentalist arguments relates the quality of damage inversely to the acceptability of risk, and nuclear weapons are, as Schlosser notes, ‘the most dangerous technology ever invented’. This is so even if one puts aside worries about the detonation of weapons and considers (more than Schlosser actually does) the damage that could be brought about by dumping some stolen plutonium over London or Manhattan, or even by ‘dirty bombs’, which disperse radioactive materials – including non-fissile isotopes widely used in industry and medicine – by combining them with conventional explosives. With these technologies, any degree of complacency is dangerous.
The improved security of the American nuclear stockpile was achieved largely through the prompting of people worried that it wasn’t nearly secure enough: by civilian weapons designers and by technical experts, politicians and activists alarmed by nuclear accidents real and imagined, and by those suspicious that the Pentagon was lying about safety. Yet the military tendency has always been to control not just the weapons but information about their security, and the result of that institutionalised secrecy has been not more security but less. That’s why Schlosser thinks all the worry about accidents was justified in the past and why, even with greatly improved security, we should carry on worrying. The rational attitude sometimes looks like irrational anxiety.
Apart from a few asides about Soviet nuclear systems, Command and Control is about America, but it closes with gestures towards present-day nuclear proliferation and future risks. India and Pakistan are historical enemies and now considerable nuclear powers; missile flight times between them are four or five minutes; and they have already come close to nuclear exchanges, Schlosser says, half a dozen times since the early 1990s. Pakistan is ‘the only nuclear power whose weapons are entirely controlled by the military’. Neither side’s command and control facilities are hardened against attack, so there is great pressure to launch first if an enemy strike is feared. Worries about an attack from India probably explain why Pakistan has dispersed its weapons to many different sites, including in the North-West Frontier Province, making it much easier for non-state terrorists to steal one.
Superpower command and control systems have got better; superpower stockpiles have been reduced, and there is a chance of further reductions. Former Cold Warriors including Henry Kissinger and George Shultz put their names to an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal imagining and urging ‘A World Free of Nuclear Weapons’. Not so long ago, Barack Obama promised an effort to realise that goal, and the UN Security Council endorsed the idea. That’s the good news. The bad news is that while the risk of a world-ending nuclear exchange has probably diminished, the risk of some form of proliferation-related hostile nuclear explosion, accidental or intentional, has probably increased. There are still nuclear command and control lessons to be learned from the close calls of the Cold War.
First, what is the definition of World War? Is it a war that engages most of the planet’s nations, like what’s known as the Second World War; or is it because it occurs in every region of the planet; or is there some other definition? If it’s to be either the first or second definitions I offer, then it’s very true that there won’t be a Third World War. IMO, the term World War Three is hyperbole.
What’s happening as noted by many astute observers is a “hybrid” war that omits direct combat between the Outlaw US Empire, Russia and China as the former tries to implement its policy of Full Spectrum Dominance as described in its Vision 2010 and Vision 2020 documents while the latter two implement their own policies focused on trade-centered, peace-promoting economic growth–a difference as stark in reality as it is on paper.
It’s very possible the hybrid war will evolve into combat between The Outlaw US Empire and one or both of its foes. But even if it included the Empire’s vassals–NATO–it still wouldn’t be a World War by definition, although the planet’s viability to support humanity might be destroyed through the use of nuclear weapons.
IMO, there have only been two truly global wars. The first involved the efforts of colonized peoples to throw off the yolk of colonial exploitation and attain their freedom, which was a truly global process that’s yet to be completed. The second is also known as the war between the United Nations and Axis Powers, which engaged most of the nations existing in 1939, although not all directly participated or suffered combat on their territory. What’s known as the First World War wasn’t anywhere near global in scope and thus cannot truthfully be considered a World War, being an almost exclusively European War (that it’s coined a World War tells much about the hubristic world view of Europeans).
You almost had me convinced, however, I can’t help thinking that World War I did not make any sense either, but it still happened. In fact there were a series of cross-linked treaties specifically set up to prevent an all out war, but nobody reckoned with the indiviual machinactions of the European Powers or the wildcard of a Gavrilo Prinzip.
Now I admit back then there were no nukes, but considering the aftermath of WWI – with which ewe live to this day – three major empires destroyed (German, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian), the other two sent into terminal decline plus the Russian Revolution and the mad borders scrawled across the middle east, then perhaps they didn’t need nukes as a deterrent.
@Larchmonter445
Though I usually agree witho your commentary, though I ALWAYS find it extremely interesting, thought provoking, and worthy of a re-read, I have to respectfully dissent and agree with some of the other commenters on this thread, that if anyone does not pre-sage every escalating detail that this dismesses the possibility of a wider conflict.
I for one think it may well be likely, and would like to remind you of this purported news from early Augsut 2015, Putin explicitly threatening Turkey:
http://awdnews.com/top-news/russian-president-to-turkish-ambassador-tell-your-dictator-president-he-can-go-to-hell-along-with-his-isis-terrorists,-i-will-make-syria-a-big-stalingrad-for-him
Cheers
I agree with you that its too early to dismiss the probability of war. But as to that article you posted. I’ve read quite a few dismisses of it as not truthful. And considering of what we hear of Putin, I doubt he would said something like that. But if he did. I think Erdagon would know he meant it. So I doubt he would be daring to do the things he is doing now.Now maybe he should have said something like that. That’s another question. I just don’t think he did say it.
Your analysis is flawed because it assumes that all wars are purely rational and well analysed.They are not. I remember in the 70’s or 80’s for eg. two latin american countries went to war because one lost a soccer match to the other…
To every and all commenters who disagreed with my article (originally an opinion), I thank you for the critiques, your thoughts, your analysis, your disbelief, your suggestions. Such dialogues are very fruitful and hopeful. When we all contribute thought, reasoning, even stout doubts and simple clear naysaying, it sharpens everyone’s mind on the topic.
To all who support or were enlightened by the discourse, I thank you for the expressions you offer.
The great thing about the Vineyard is the potential of minds and hearts from all over the globe, from many very different cultures to adhere to a topic with human reasoning and knowledge. I am always thrilled by such amazing commentaries whether I participate or originate or merely read them all.
I won’t go another round with this. I hope it was clear what I intended. I don’t believe a WWII will happen as a WWIII. The major reason is nuclear weapons are now tactical, right down to small platoon or squad size munitions, small rocket and missile warheads, torpedoes and other subsea munitions. These prevent wide theater wars.
The irony of nuclear is we could suffer some nuclear exchanges by minor and less than major powers (North Korea, Pakistan, India, some day Iran, and Israel). The grand doomsday from Russia-USA will not happen.
The kinds of wars we will see for quite some time are what we see now. But even they will eventually pass.
We are closer than ever to a relatively better world. It does not look like it. But the geopolitical tectonic plates are moving. China, Russia, Iran, India, EU (negatively), Silk Road Belts and Roads, Eurasian Union, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, BRICS New Development Bank, Maritime Silk Road, and the shrinking of the petrodollar are the definitive signs of massive change.
Russia’s EW, S 400, Air Force demonstrable superior warmaking efficiency,expanding navy, Kaliber missiles, Space technologies, logistical superiority, and excellent submarines have changed the balance of US dominance in the military sphere.
China’s military rise, most of it modeled on Russian weapons and systems, extends the challenge to further diminish the US domination.
The failure of the US with ISIS for proxy dominance in the ME has left the neocons with very deep fissure in civilian support for any war. The rise of discontent is similar to the post Tet-1968 anti-war sentiment.
The US economy is intrinsically broken. Only Trump can fix what needs to be fixed.
The Hegemon is still very capable of chaos. But there is no path to WW3. All the resources needed by China and Russia are in China and Russia. Eurasia is there enormous market for import and export. They have the other big nations of Eurasia in SCO with them. Indian and Pakistan and soon Iran.
So, tactical nukes, geopolitical shifts that cancel hegemony, internal supply and markets within Eurasian boundaries from Asia Pacific to Europe and Mediterranean indicates the canceling features for WW3.
Certainly, China and Russia are not going to attack and begin a WW.
There could be regional clashes if Abe and the Japanese go Imperialist again. If Indian and Pakistan go crazy (Russia and China are very mitigating forces on these two big enemies) there could be regional war. Highly unlikely.
North Korea could start something bad. But China is sending signals that Beijing is done with Kim. Not done with a Communist government running NK. But Kim has broken all bounds with China and Xi. They would agree to a clean decapitation. Russia has been working to try to turn Kim, but he resists everything. He may be eliminated in the coming months. He is a great danger to the region with ballistic missiles and 3-9 warheads. He is a proliferator to Iran, doing some tests for them.
The last months of Obama are fraught with peril. But there will be some realization soon about Syria. Russia controls the battlefield. Assad must obey. Iran must concur. It has taken 5 months (shortly) to take back the major cities. Raqqa is the next big prize. That should take another month or so. By April, ISIS may be defeated, destroyed in Syria.
The wild cards are Obama, Erdogan, Saudi Arabia. They could easily extend the war. However, I believe Russia will defeat whatever attempts are made. A humanitarian and rebuilding (with China’s money and engineering) will begin the rebirth of the major civilian centers pre-war. This will contrast with war elsewhere in the country caused by US, Turkey and the Arabs.Eventually, as time runs out on Obama, the war will dwindle away.
Thanks again to all you who think and write so profoundly and passionately for your positions.
Why did the hegemon behave so stupidly? Is there no long-term planning? Are Chinese and Russians superior beings: the only ones who can think beyond five years?
Why hollow out the manufacturing/industrial base and transfer it to rival military power, China?
Why transfer sensitive technologies with military application to rival military power, China?
Why allow a 25+ year anti-ship missile “gap” to develop with hobbled, on-her-knees defeated military rival, Russia (and also with China) ???
Why (allegedly) manipulate the price of gold to keep your fiat currencies afloat just a little bit longer, and in the process deliver yet more of your nation’s real, tangible wealth to your military rivals – and now also your economic rivals – Russia, India and China?
What is under Yamatau Mountain, and why doesn’t the West know about it, considering we allegedly “won” the Cold War and were in total control of Russia during the 1990s decade, if the prevailing alternative media narrative is to be believed? Also, see the Underground Great Wall of China.
Why, why why? There are many more “whys” where those came from.
Rockefeller, Rothschild, Kissinger and their less-publicised friends are all dummies? Victims of psychopathic hubris and tunnel vision is one theory; i.e. the greedy predators who – operating on base animal instinct alone – consumed all the natural resources on the island and must now consume each other, or starve. A different species, more well adapted to the change in the environment (a change that the greedy predators themselves brought about), will now replace them as top predator.
Another theory is…?
Perhaps we must alert the world to the danger of a nuclear war because a nuclear war may be part of the script. The US Congress, the Senate and the UK Parliament are all currently in recess.
Psychopathy and related pathologies explains it quite well. It is known that psychopaths can’t conceive of future consequences as non-psychopaths can – so planning by definition is limited to the psychopath’s limited conceptions, which are quite lacking and impulsive….
I would disagree overall with the very optimistic outlook by Larchmonter, though. Trump and the rest of the narcissitic clowns will NOT save anything. A mature pathocracy has nowhere to go but down as studied in Political Ponerology. We will not have to wait all that long to see the fruits of what these networks of psychopaths in power have sown. Whatever human survivors are left will have to apply the lessons of how to prevent psychos from taking over and dominating everything in society again.
Larchomonter445
I thank you for your article,thus for the opportunity as you say for ” passionate” responses.This is a good thing,thanks also to theSaker.Good to know there are people who are thinking,reasoning and sharing their views from all over the world.At least this is a good premise for the future.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-historian-slawomir-cenckiewicz-positive-proof-lech-walesa-was-a-communist-spy-a-561414.html
Lech Walesa was Soviet informant?
Was Golitsyn correct regarding a the fake collapse of the Soviet Union?
Dmitri Khalezov alleged that Solidarity was a fake movement, in his book 9/11 The Third Truth.
During the 1962 Missile Crisis LeMay advocated a preventive nuclear strike, going so far as to virtually insult President Kennedy by referring to the cowardice of Neville Chamberlain and stating that not attacking the country would be almost as bad as the pacification of Munich………. LeMay asserted that the USSR could do nothing to prevent a direct and immediate military strike. He had the backing of all the chiefs of staff, including that of the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell Taylor, appointed by Kennedy to replace Lemnitzer, in an unsuccessful attempt to contain the other military commanders……… A few days previously, Lemnitzer and Allen Dulles, who was still CIA director, had proposed in a meeting of the Security Council to plan a surprise nuclear attack on the USSR. The President left the meeting angrily, according to his advisor Arthur Schlesinger
GABRIEL MOLINA FRANCHOSSI
Minor wars, with millions dead over a few decays. Yeah right…
Only thing for sure. The number of civilians %, increases each time humanity develops more modern wars.
And WW3 not coming?
Joking?
Its one thing that is 100% sure, is that there will always be more wars. Its in human dna. Only way to avoid would be for humans to get extinct.
Regardless, a war never starts on day1. It is an ongoing escelations, which eventually leads to public confirmation that one are at war.
The west (usa) is allready way into WW3 buildup.
WW3 will proberly be public within max 40 years. (I give it 10 years max).
Either through “normal” escelations, or through pushings and eventually some lunatics goes over the many lines. (Often because he was allowed to cross lines before without consequences, and because he thought he was imune due to backings etc).
I need to comment on the Saker’s comments on the scandal at RI, with Bausemen added.oe could I feel otherwise.
Mrs. Hilary Clinton has given herself the goal of bringing down all free press in Europe, especially that from Russia, which is also Europe.
I think most highly of RI, little could bring it down for me as I am fully aware of the Clinton/corporate powers being unlimited, as well as 500% criminal. Small experimental issues as RI was when it began are easiest for the US to destroy as they are more vulnerable than larger successful stations, like RT.com, Russian financed.
I know the complete set of terrorism tactics US intelligence agencies love to use and do use. How relentless they are. The Russian did not know, now, perhaps they do. One hopes.