Category: THE WORLD IS CHANGING

Russia Prepares for a Big War: The Significance of a Tank Army

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn HISTORY, NATO, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WAR ON RUSSIA, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

 

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2016/04/russia-prepares-for-a-big-war-the-significance-of-a-tank-army.html

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http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.ca/2016/04/patrick-armstrong-russia-prepares-for.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/russia/comments/4d6dxh/russia_prepares_for_a_big_war_the_significance_of/
http://warnewsupdates.blogspot.ca/2016/04/russia-gets-ready-to-fight-big-war.html
https://kassander4ppp.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/summary-events-analyses-cartoons-29/
http://russialist.org/russia-ukraine-johnsons-russia-list-table-of-contents-jrl-2016-66-tuesday-5-april-2016/
https://platosguns.com/2016/04/05/sic-semper-tyrannis-russia-prepares-for-a-big-war-the-significance-of-a-tank-army-patrick-armstrongsic-semper-tyrannis/
https://www.facebook.com/PolicyResearchandInnovation/posts/1112581058774202

People who already understand how armies are put together should skip Part 1.

Part 1. How armies are put together

One of the things that I find irritating about battles in movies is that the director seems to think that battles are about getting an inchoate mass of soldiers together, giving a rousing speech and yelling “Charge!” That is absolutely not how it works nor ever has worked. Real armies are assembled out of groupings made from smaller groupings, themselves made from still-smaller groupings and so on down to the smallest group.

The smallest group is about ten soldiers. This is the fundamental bonding size – these are your buddies, the people you will really remember, the ones you depend on and who depend on you and for whom you will fight and sacrifice. Yes, you’re fighting for Freedom or some other Large Cause, but it’s really your buddy you’re doing it for. So we start with about ten soldiers.

In the Roman Army this was the contubernium – a corporal, seven legionaries plus two servants who shared a tent and ate together. The fundamental tiny piece out of which everything else was constructed.

The next thing to know is the span of command or control. The commander of each level, is trying, in very difficult circumstances, to get his subordinates to do something they would never do in their right minds. They know perfectly well that the first guy in the house, the lead guy attacking the machinegun post, the first guy out of the trench, the first guy out of the landing craft is almost certain to be killed or injured. It is very difficult to get people to do this and long experience shows that a commander can only control three to five elements.

The next principle to remember is square or triangular. Armies are usually constructed by making the next level of organisation out of three or four of the lower level. Why? With three, you can have two engaged and one in reserve. (A great deal of the problem of a commander, once battle is joined, is knowing where and when to commit his reserves). The “square” structure allows two in contact, one in reserve and one resting, or two up, one in reserve and one manoeuvring. Five or six are too many but two are too few. This introduces the fundamental principles of “fire” (applying the destruction to the enemy) and “movement” (moving so as to apply that destruction most efficaciously). (Movie battles have lots of the first, but little of the last.)

Finally, we have the combat arms – infantry, armour (cavalry in its time) and artillery – and supporting arms. “Combat arms” because they directly apply the violence. Other specialities assist them: engineers help them move, transport moves them, medical patches them up, signals communicate, logistics supplies them and so on. No army can function without them.

In what follows I will discuss infantry organisations because they are the purest soldier – the other two combat arms are machines, whether tanks or guns, and the support arms are functions. But, the principles of infantry organisations are followed in the other components. It should be noted that different military traditions have different names for some of these things but it’s all the same principle.

Three or four “tents” (sections) make a platoon; three or four platoons a company; three or four companies a battalion. At battalion level some specialisation will appear: it may have a mortar platoon, or a machinegun platoon, there will be a simple first aid element, some light engineers, communicators, headquarters and so on. But they are all capable of being ordinary riflemen if needed. The battalion is the first construction that is capable of some sort of independent action – it has enough companies to provide fire and manoeuvre and reserves, its machinegun or mortar elements give it some support. But it is still infantry and still pretty “light”.

The next level is a brigade of three or four battalions. But there is a decision point here: do you envisage this brigade being an “independent brigade” or a sub-division of a larger formation? If the former we introduce the other arms, if the latter it remains all infantry.

An independent brigade, or brigade group, will have, in proportions depending on what you want to do, infantry, tank and artillery battalions from the “combat arms” as well as “support” elements: like combat engineers, medical and dental, post offices, laundry facilities, possibly a helicopter battalion and on and on. It is an independent military town of 4000 to 6000 people which needs almost everything a civilian town needs while also being capable of moving anywhere at a moment’s notice. This formation is intended to carry out military tasks by itself with help from the air forces.

The brigade that is intended to be a piece in the next largest structure would have three or four infantry battalions and would still be mainly riflemen with very little added from the other arms. Next level is the division made of infantry, tank and artillery brigades in the proportion thought useful. In the Second World War divisions were usually the smallest thing one would see on the battlefield that could be given an independent task.

A tank division would be constructed the same way except that the basic “tent” is the tank itself, three or four make a platoon, and then companies, battalions and brigades. Artillery would only rarely be organised into independent structures because while it has fire, it does not have much movement. The supporting arms – engineers, signals, logistics, medical and so on, because they exist for support, rarely appear as independent structures. In short “divisions” are infantry-heavy or tank-heavy (bitter experience has taught and re-taught that none of the combat arms can function alone).

Moving up, three or four divisions make a corps; two to four corps an army and a couple of armies make an army group.

So, a whole gigantic army group is assembled, step by step, out of our little “tents”.

Part 2. What’s All This Mean?

How big a war do you anticipate? A smallish one, a bigger one or a really big one? Your answer will determine the formations that you construct.

An important decision point, which reveals your answer, is whether you add in the other combat arms and specialised support elements at brigade (ie 5000 or so troops) or at division (10,000 or so)? If at brigade, you have made a decision that you expect your future wars to be rather small and that all-arms formations of 5000-or-so soldiers is as big as you need. If on the other hand, you decide to create divisions – formations about three times as large – you are showing that you are expecting a larger war. If you then start combining these divisions into corps, armies or even army groups, you are expecting a really big, all-out war against a first-class enemy. Something the size of World War II in fact. In 1945, for example, the Western Allies entered Germany with three army groups, totalling eight armies, totalling 91 divisions: about four and a half million soldiers.

It is possible to have a bit of both, but it’s only a bit. You may decide on independent brigades but also have a divisional headquarters. But, unless the brigades routinely exercise under the command of a standing divisional headquarters, and that headquarters controls assets, only the idea of divisional operations is kept alive.

In short, if you stop at independent brigades, you are telling the world that you expect, and are planning for, relatively small wars. If you go to divisions you are expecting something larger and if you construct a corps (or army in Russian terminology) you are telling the world that you are preparing for a big war.

And so, an observer who knows how armies are put together, can tell a lot about what kind of war a country expects by understanding how it has put its “tent groups” together.

Part 3. The Russian Army

The Soviet Army was organised for a huge war: it had divisions, organised into armies (corps in Western terminology) which were organised into fronts (armies in Western terminology) and further grouped into TVDs or Theatres of Military Activity (army groups in Western terminology) all backed up by a conscription and reserve system, immense stocks of weapons and gigantic pre-positioned ammunition dumps. This time, the Soviets did not intend to fight the decisive battle an hour’s drive from the Kremlin. When the USSR collapsed, so did that structure. The most ready elements were based in the Warsaw Treaty countries; Russia took responsibility for them and they were hurriedly moved back, shedding conscripts as they went. The formations which would have been filled up and then supported the ready elements were in Ukraine and Belarus and lost to Russia.

For some years the management of the Russian army did not appear to have understood that everything had changed – that the huge Soviet forces were gone and would not magically fill up with hundreds of thousands of conscripts to fill up the “empty formations”. But, they didn’t know how to make them smaller either: we were always told in talks with the Russian General Staff that the state could not afford to pay the officers the pensions and housing allowances they were entitled to. And so this once mighty army decayed.

Perhaps it was failure in the First Chechen War that finally convinced headquarters that the Russian army was not a temporarily shrunken big war army. We started being told that they were re-designing their army around independent brigades. It was clear from reading the periodic military and strategic doctrine documents that the wars that Moscow foresaw were smaller wars, on the scale of border infractions or a Chechen-sized war in which the enemy would be small agile lightly-armed groups. For such conflicts, anything larger than independent all-arms brigade-sized formations would be too large and complicated.

And, gradually, between the two Chechen wars, “divisions” (which our inspections had shown to be empty of soldiers but full of poorly-maintained equipment and under-paid dispirited officers) disappeared and were replaced by “storage bases”. We assumed these to be a way of avoiding the huge retirement bill while giving officers something useful to do. At the same time independent brigade groups began to appear, with the first ones in the south where trouble was expected. This is one of the reasons why the second Chechen war was a victory for Moscow.

At this stage, (I’m looking at the 2002 CFE data now) there were entities called “divisions” and “armies” (corps) but they were very understrength – apart from the North Caucasus, there were perhaps two divisions in the western area worthy of the name; neither of them deployed to the west. The real force was in the North Caucasus: three divisions, fully staffed and an army (corps) headquarters. But the future was there too with the first two independent brigade groups setting the pattern for the rest.

In short, by the turn of the century, in their published doctrine, in everything they told us in meetings, in deployments and in their formation structures the Russians were showing us they had no offensive designs against NATO and they expected no attacks from NATO. The south was where they saw danger.

The CFE Treaty showed us all this: the Russians were obliged to give us a list of elements showing their precise location and relationship to other structures with the number of soldiers and major weapons; we could go there and check this out at any moment. Thanks to the Treaty we always knew what they had, where they had it and how it was organised. Our inspectors found no discrepancies. But the NATO member countries never ratified the Treaty, continually adding conditions to it and, after years, Russia, which had ratified it, gave up and denounced it. And so we all lost (because it was reciprocal) a transparent confidence building mechanism based on full disclosure with the right to verify.

All this time the Russians told us that that NATO’s relentless expansion, ever closer, was a danger (опасность) although they stopped short of calling it, as they did terrorism, a threat (угроза); “dangers” you watch; “threats” you must respond to. NATO of course didn’t listen, arrogantly assuming NATO expansion was doing Russia a favour and was an entitlement of the “exceptional nation” and its allies.

It is important to keep in mind with the everlasting charges that Russia is “weaponising” this and that, threatening everyone and everything, behaving in an “19th century fashion“, invading, brutalising, and on and on, that its army structure and deployments do not support the accusations. A few independent brigades, mostly in the south, are not the way to threaten neighbours in the west. Where are the rings of bases, the foreign fleet deployments, the exercises at the borders? And, especially, where are the strike forces? Since the end of the USSR they have not existed: as they have told us, so have they acted.

They planned for small wars, but NATO kept expanding; they argued, but NATO kept expanding; they protested, but NATO kept expanding. They took no action for years.

Well, they have now: the 1st Guards Tank Army is being re-created.

This army, or corps in Western terminology, will likely have two or three tank divisions, plus a motorised rifle division or two, plus enormous artillery and engineering support, plus helicopters and all else.

The 1st Guards Tank Army will be stationed in the Western Military District to defend Russia against NATO. It is very likely that it will be the first to receive the new Armata family of AFVs and be staffed with professional soldiers and all the very latest and best of Russia’s formidable defence industry. It will not be a paper headquarters; it will be the real thing: commanded, manned, staffed, integrated, exercised and ready to go.

It should be remembered that the Soviet Armed Forces conducted what are probably the largest operations in the history of warfare. Take, for example, Operation Bagration which started shortly after the D Day invasion. Using Western terms, it involved eleven armies, in support or attacking; recall that the Western allies entered Germany with eight armies – five American, one each British, Canadian and French. Tank corps (armies in Soviet/Russian) are the hammers – either they deliver the decisive counter-attack after the defence has absorbed the attack (Stalingrad or Kursk) or they deliver the offensive strike. The decision to create a tank army (armoured corps in Western terminology) is an indication that Russia really does fear attack from the west and is preparing to defend itself against it.

In short, Russia has finally come to the conclusion that

NATO’s aggression means it has to prepare for a big war.

As a historical note, Dominic Lieven’s book shows the preparations Emperor Alexander made when he realised that, sooner or later, Napoleon was going to come for Russia. And everyone knows how that ended. As Field Marshal Montgomery, who had more experience of big war than anyone in the Pentagon or White House today, said: “Rule 1, on page 1 of the book of war, is: ‘Do not march on Moscow’.”

This is what the light-hearted decision to expand NATO, “colour revolutions”, regime changes, cookies on the Maidan and incessant anti-Russian propaganda has brought us to.

And it won’t be a war that NATO will win.

 

Another Lesson from Moscow Washington Won’t Learn

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn SYRIA, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2016/03/another-lesson-from-moscow-washington-wont-learn-.html

When the announcement of a partial withdrawal was made I was as surprised as anyone. I thought: Daesh is not been defeated, the threat of Ankara doing something extraordinary has not disappeared, the Syrian Army still needs air support to liberate other parts of the country, I can’t believe that Putin trusts either Washington’s promises or its ability to fulfil them. I then went on the Presidential website and found this: “In this context, Mr Putin said that Russia’s Armed Forces have fulfilled their main mission in Syria and a timetable for the withdrawal of the Aerospace Forces’ main air grouping has been agreed.” A timetable is not the same as withdrawal, I thought. But then it transpired that aircraft were in fact leaving and the formal meeting of Putin, Shoygu and Lavrov was published. So, think again: the schedule was for the present and not the future.

I think we now know three things. 1) Not all the Russian aircraft are leaving, in fact large-scale strikes against Daesh positions near Palmyra occurred yesterday. 2) Strikes are possible from outside Syria. We have seen the use of long-range aviation from Russia and cruise missiles from the Caspian and Mediterranean. 3) Russian aircraft can be moved back in under 24 hours if needed.

At the beginning of the operation, the strategic purposes were laid out. 1) To shore up government power lest a vacuum be formed that Daesh would occupy (vide the US-NATO disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya). 2) To create the possibility for meaningful negotiations on Syria’s future. 3) To reverse Daesh’s record of constant expansion and victory. 4) To kill as many jihadists originating from Russia and the FUSSR as possible so they don’t come home. Other benefits, like exposing the hollowness of the “isolated” and “powerless” Russia memes, showing off and testing weapons systems were present; they were not, however, as important as Western commentators thought they were.

From an operational perspective, there were four tasks. 1) To secure the airbase and freedom of operation (an issue complicated but not derailed when Turkey ambushed a Russian aircraft). 2) To degrade Daesh’s infrastructure by destroying troop concentrations, headquarters, arms dumps and, especially, crippling its cash cow, the oil trade. 3) To provide close air support to Syrian and allied forces. 4) To re-equip and train Syrian forces.

It is quite true that “The objective set before the Defence Ministry and the Armed Forces is generally fulfilled” . Задача, поставленная перед Министерством обороны и Вооружёнными Силами, в целом выполнена. Not all of it, but most of it. Strategically: the Syrian government is much more secure; negotiations are underway together with a ceasefire; Daesh is in reverse; many jihadists will not be coming home. Operationally: the bases are secure; Daesh’s infrastructure and oil business have been severely degraded; close air support continues and will for some time. “Generally fulfilled” indeed. Or, as NATO says, in private, “efficient and accurate”.

And, should the situation on the ground be reversed, Russian airpower can return in hours.

This is the third time Moscow has shown Washington how to use armed force. It is never something to be used alone, it must always be part of a complete package. We saw this in the second Chechen war, in the Ossetian war and now in Syria. Bayonets are useful for many things, but not for sleeping on. However, it is unlikely that Washington will learn anything: the alcoholic binge of more violence to solve the problems the violence created is too well entrenched. In fact, they can’t understand, as Fort Rus points out, that to more thoughtful planners “withdrawal” is not a candy-coating of “defeat”.

It’s because a funny thing happened along the way in the development of US foreign policy lingo. The term ‘defeat’ was replaced with the term ‘withdrawal’. This happened as a result of needing to soft-sell major defeats like Vietnam or Iraq. Defeats were re-branded as ‘withdrawals’, even though in doing so, the term withdrawal was forever changed into a synonym for defeat, and a lack of resolve.

Many Western responses are amusing. Here Chatham House fearlessly demolishes a straw horse: 3. ‘Mission accomplished’ is a bit of a stretch… 4. Nonetheless, the intervention has achieved several key Russian objectives. Of course Putin didn’t say “mission accomplished”; this contortionist invents it so he can pretend that he failed.

Some are just incoherent: “Moscow is thus is committed to ‘monitoring’ the very agreement that it’s been opportunistically breaching…“.

But so far I find this the most amusing example of someone not getting it. “A Well-Timed Retreat: Russia Pulls Back From Syria” by Alexander Baunov. Two samples will show how absurd his thoughts are:

President Putin’s announcement that he is pulling back from Syria should not have come as a big surprise. He believes he has met most of his goals there—many of which have nothing to do with Syria itself. Russia has found a way back to the table where the world’s board of directors sits and resolves regional conflicts together.

This time, Vladimir Putin did not need to pretend too hard when he announced that a mission was accomplished.

And

On the Russian domestic scene, which some experts had considered the main reason for Russia to get involved, interest in Syria had begun to wane among the home television audience. The pictures of silver rockets in a blue sky had been shown so often that there was no mood for a second season of them. The public would rather see successes on the home front.

Too many Americans (“some experts”) comment from Gulliver’s Island of Laputa and tie their imaginations into contortions. Read what Putin says, watch what he does and think about it. Don’t assume.

Or you can join Samantha Power in Laputa: she “doesn’t make it a point of listening to President Putin’s claims” (Here at 2:39) but is always ready to tell us what’s really going on: “Russia’s military deployment in Syria to back Bashar al-Assad ‘is not a winning strategy,’ America’s ambassador to the United Nations said Monday.“

NATO, Alcoholism and Homer Simpson

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn NATO, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WAR ON RUSSIA

http://russia-insider.com/en/nato-alcoholism-and-homer-simpson/ri13322

That great American philosopher Homer Simpson once observed that alcohol was the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.

One might say, as Pepe Escobar has, that “NATO may indeed incarnate the ultimate geopolitical/existential paradox; an alliance that exists to manage the chaos it breeds.”

They’re both right: NATO now exists to attempt to – or more accurately, to pretend to – manage the problems it created the last go round. That is now NATO’s chief purpose. Apart, of course, from making money for weapons companies. Which it does quite satisfactorily.

NATO is a geopolitical alcoholic: last night’s binge is the need for this morning’s hair of the dog which lays the foundation for tonight’s bender. Every weekend is a lost weekend for NATO.

The first case of alcohol causing the problems it solved was NATO expansion itself. In 1998 George Kennan predicted the future: “There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else…. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.” NATO expanded; Russia reacted; Russia is a threat; NATO was right to expand.

In my diplomat days in Moscow in the early 1990s NATO expansion was just beginning: it will bring stability said wooden American diplomats when I and a colleague from another NATO country questioned its wisdom. Well, we have had at least two wars now – the Ossetia War of 2008 and the ongoing civil war in Ukraine – that have a connection to NATO expansion. But they are both used as a justification for the application of more alcohol to solve the problems of the earlier binge.

Now, apparently, Russia is about to invade the Baltics. (Of course Kennan foresaw that too: “We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.”)

NATO attacked Libya on flimsy grounds. Indeed, as the Clinton e-mails tells us, on the most meretricious grounds. But grabbing Libya’s gold is what you might call the real NATO (the distillers’ profits, so to speak) and supporting the heist by fake atrocity stories and R2P is the advertising campaign. But the NATO bender in Libya, or as we say in Canada “defence of our cherished democratic principles“, has led to another drinking problem. Quite apart from waking Moscow up to the reality of NATO.

And the other problem, requiring another lost weekend, is of course the thousands of refugees/migrants from Syria, Iraq, Kosovo, Libya and Afghanistan – all places that have received the blessings of NATO’s attention. But, never fear, NATO steps up to the bar to buy another round: “We have just agreed that NATO will provide support to assist with the refugee and migrant crisis.” When it’s not blaming Russia for it, that is.

But, says Robert Kagan, the ur-neocon and husband to the Baker of the Maidan, just one more war and all will be well. One more drink and it’s solved.

First, it would require establishing a safe zone in Syria, providing the millions of would-be refugees still in the country a place to stay and the hundreds of thousands who have fled to Europe a place to which to return. To establish such a zone, American military officials estimate, would require not only U.S. air power but ground forces numbering up to 30,000. Once the safe zone was established, many of those troops could be replaced by forces from Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, but the initial force would have to be largely American.

NATO will be curing its hangovers with the hair of the dog for years to come.

Mohamed Heikal’s Lesson

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn HISTORY, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

I see Mohamed Heikal has just died full of years and honour. He wrote a book from the Egyptian side in the preparations for the 1973 war. In it he told a story that I have never forgotten.

I haven’t the book any more so I have to tell the story as I remember it.

The time was the early 1970s and the Israeli Air Force was really busting up the Egyptian defences along the Canal – Israel had conquered up to the eastern edge in 1967. Nasser and Heikal went to Moscow to get help from the Soviets.

So they’re in the meeting room and Brezhnev and Kosygin are on the other side of the table. We need new air defence weapons, says Nasser. OK, say B&K, no problem. Ah, says Nasser, but there’s another problem we need your help on. While our people are training on the new weapons, we’ll need somebody to man the existing defences. So we want you to send us troops to run the existing air defence systems and fly the planes. No way! say B&K, that’s too much. Never! Oh dear, says Nasser, I guess I’ll just have to go home, tell the Egyptian people that I’ve failed and that we’ll have to go to Washington for protection. B&K confer, and agree to sent troops.

What’s the lesson? It is that great powers – and most international affairs pundits – think the great powers always control their clients. But they’re wrong: as this story shows, the clients frequently manipulate the great powers.

The reason is that for the great powers it’s a sideshow, for the clients it’s the only show; for Moscow this was one of many balls to keep in the air, for Cairo it was the only ball. Cairo had much more to gain from understanding how Moscow worked and where the hot buttons were than Moscow had in understanding Cairo. And, in this case, Cairo’s investment of time and study paid off.

Just because, for example, Ankara is a “client” of Washington, doesn’t mean that Ankara always follows the script written in Washington. And we certainly know that Israel and Saudi Arabia have invested a great deal of effort and money to influence, if not altogether create, the script that Washington reads from in the Middle East.

The tail often wags the dog; maybe even more often than not.

Heikal’s Lesson I call it, and I’ve never forgotten it.

Putin, Munich and Today

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn THE WORLD IS CHANGING

Response to a request from Martin Sieff on behalf of Sputnik on my thoughts on Putin’s Munich speech of 2007 now that we have all actually made it to 2016… But. Not to the end of 2016.

I suppose, to put it most succinctly, that Putin’s speech at Munich in 2007 was the first half of the speech that he finished at the UN: “I’m urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what you’ve done? But I’m afraid that this question will remain unanswered, because they have never abandoned their policy, which is based on arrogance, exceptionalism and impunity.“

Is there much more to be said that that? He warned them, it happened.

(Speaking personally, I remember people coming back from our delegation, just stunned. Stunned by his “hostility”, that is. No one wondered about whether what he was saying was worth a thought. I wonder if they do today.)

And they’re still doing it. Here is the uber-neocon himself calling for just one more small war. But that teeny-tiny war, even shorter than the other teeny-tiny wars he promised us, will be the last. And then All Will Be Well.

The Obama Era has forged a terrible alliance of neocons and humanitarian bombers. They united to destroy Libya for, in the first case: grabbing its gold, running guns to Syria, killing opposition to Exceptionalism; in the second: because he “was bombing his own people!” But Libya has been destroyed and turned into a misery; nothing is safer, better or more secure.

Meanwhile, as Putin predicted, the BRICS and the counterforce has got stronger.

But one of his predictions has not yet come true regarding the fate of the “sovereign”: “It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.”

But it’s coming.

Russia Answers Turkey

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn SYRIA, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WAR ON RUSSIA

Today, unannounced combat readiness inspection started in troops and forces of the Southwestern strategic direction under the order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces. This was stated by the Russian Defence Minister General of the Army Sergei Shoigu during the session.

General of the Army Sergei Shoigu stated that in accordance to the order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces, forces of the Southern military district, separate formations of Airborne troops and military transport aviation have been put on “Full” combat alert since 5 a.m. The inspection is held at the Southwestern strategic direction.

The Defence Minister noted that it was necessary to assess combat readiness condition of the Southern MD for responding different crisis situations…

The Head of the military department ordered the Commander-in-Chief of the Aerospace Forces Colonel General Viktor Bondarev to organize the inspection of the 4th Air Force and Air Defence Army including redeployment of aviation, repelling and making of massive air strikes…

The Head of the military department ordered that particular attention should be paid to the troops’ control system with deployment of mobile field control centres at full scale. Those tasks are to be carried out jointly with the Central MD…

Looking through the site shows there are a lot of other activities in the Southern Military District since this order was given on Monday. This is clearly a warning to Turkey and a preparation for acting if Turkey doesn’t take the hint.

 

The Yawning Heights of New Ibansk

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, THE WORLD IS CHANGING

http://russia-insider.com/en/yawning-heights-new-ibansk/ri12389

(My title is a tribute to Зияющие Высоты by Aleksandr Zinoviev which I read years ago. We all now live the Total Ism in New Ibansk.)

As the West spirals down the toilet there are occasional – well, truth to tell, not so occasional – signposts of decline along the way. One is this piece from The Guardian; the title is pretty self-explanatory. “Europe is in crisis. Once more, America will have to step in to save us.” By one Natalie Nougayrède, she starts off comparing Joe Biden to George Marshall. To which one can only say !.

In essence Washington has to save Europe from Brexit; save it from Russia’s “military offensive” (such a slow-moving one, isn’t it? still not past Donetsk airport after months of fighting and dozens of invasions.) And take a few more Syrian refugees.

Oh, and US President Obama maybe should put Churchill’s bust back in the White House.

There. Fixed that, didn’t she?

But the interesting fact is not that the editors of The Guardian thought it worth while to devote space and, one assumes a fee, to this pitiful tripe but the reactions of the readers. I invite you to look through the comments – 800+ so far – and find one that is not completely scornful and contemptuous of what Nougayrède has written.

Here are some:

So then: to ‘save’ the EU, the US should attempt to influence a UK referendum, take some unspecified military action against Russia, and accept many more Syrian refugees even though most migrants entering the EU are not Syrians.
Yes, that sounds like a plan.

Bonkers logic there again from Natalie Nougayrede.

Yep,cos it’s not as if US foreign policy has triggered crisis in the middle east or prodding the bear has resulted in Putin’s actions in Ukraine. America can do no wrong,of course.

the last thing is to let the USA into our problems, it was they who started it in the first place

So the EU is a complete failure get out now and lets make our own decisions

Europeans can perfectly well look after themselves thanks… given that they get rid of the impenetrable layer of self serving fuckwits that run the place. THEY are the problem – not ‘Europeans’.

It seems that Natalie, whom I may have assumed wrongly is French, has fallen off the edge of her right wing flat earth and not heard that among many thinking people the U.S. has acquired the title of the ’empire of chaos’. Europe could certainly do without any more of that.

I don’t know if the Europeans will rise up, march on Brussels and raze it to the ground some day or whether they have become so morally emaciated that, as many Americans apparently are doing, they drink themselves to death in despair.

But, eventually, one way or the other, this will stop and New Ibansk will fall as Old Ibansk fell.

Toss Your MSM Subscriptions and Buy The Saker’s Book: You’ll save money and learn more

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn HISTORY, THE WORLD IS CHANGING

http://russia-insider.com/en/toss-your-msm-subscriptions-and-buy-sakers-book/ri11224

JRL/2015/226/12

http://thesaker.is/review-of-sakers-book-by-patrick-armstrong/

The Essential Saker (ISBN 978-1608880584) is available at Amazon.com (print and ebook).

Additional information at http://www.nimblebooks.com/index.php/saker.html

and http://www.nimblebooks.com/index.php/where-to-find-nimble-books.

Like thousands of others, I discovered The Saker early on in the Ukraine disaster and quickly added his site to my list of essential reading. His writing is an example of the finest that can be found on the Internet and and an illustration of just how important that resource is. Formerly working for some Western security organisation, he was sickened by the parade of wars and regime changes unanimously promoted by the Main Stream Media as a response to some atrocity later revealed to have been exaggerated if not entirely faked. For a long time he felt alone – a “submarine in a desert” – and it has only been with the explosion of readership that he has realised that there are many other beached submarines. The Internet is very liberating this way – no matter how much the monovoice of the MSM shouts you down with Party Line infomercials – you are not alone. As a small illustration, I invite the reader to Google images of “democracy freedom“: a lot of “submarines” know they are being lied to. The Saker is one of the forces leading dissident thinkers out of their isolation. And he understands what keeps us unpaid writers going: “So yes, knowing the truth does make one free, and the truth is the most powerful empire-buster ever invented. It brought down the USSR and it will bring down the AngloZionists too. It is just a matter of time now.”

One of the things that jarred me when I first began reading The Saker was his use of the phrase “AngloZionist”. Oh oh, I thought: what have we here? The Elders of Zion marry the Masons and bring forth lizardoids? Other people had a similar difficulty and, eventually, he wrote an essay explaining what he meant by the phrase. (Part IV) I think he means “exceptionalism”; the sort of belief that, on the one side there are ordinary, unexceptional states, and on the other, there are the pure, the exceptional. A perfect example of completely uncritical rah-rah exceptionalism may be found in this piece by the Cheneys: “Our children need to know that they are citizens of the most powerful, good and honorable nation in the history of mankind—the exceptional nation.” That’s the “Anglo” bit of The Saker’s expression; the other “exceptional nation” is “the only democracy in the Middle East”. Because of their exceptional virtue and excellence, the USA and Israel aren’t bound by the rules that apply to other, ordinary, countries. When “exceptional nations” bomb a hospital for half an hour it’s a “tragic mistake” to be swiftly forgiven because of the purity of the bomber’s intention. Other, lesser, countries, bomb hospitals because that’s what they do. So I would recommend, if the phrase offend you (and I don’t much care for it myself), that you mentally replace it with “exceptionalists”; or you might even prefer “neocons” where the two exceptionalisms meet and merge into one exceptionalism.

Which leads us to this important theme; a theme that grounds most of the book: “For better or for worse, Russia is objectively the undisputed leader of the world resistance to the Anglo-Zionist Empire”. How this situation came to be – and it’s certainly not something anyone in Moscow wanted – and when Moscow decided that enough was enough and predictions of where it will go form a great part of the book.

Moscow’s fightback began in 2008. I suggest you start your reading at his chapter on the Ossetia war (Part III). It’s early Saker, he was not a great admirer of Putin, but the key points of his thinking are there – the USA/NATO/EU are trying to bring Russia down; Russia has had enough and began its fight back in Ossetia; Russia is in a much stronger position than they think.

He thinks – I agree – that the Ukrainian mess marks the beginning of the end of the empire of exceptionalists. He sums it up: “In conclusion and to put things simply: what the AngloZionists are openly and publicly defending in the Ukraine is the polar opposite of what they are supposed to stand for”. Hypocrisy will do them in: “What really brought down the Soviet Union was something entirely different: an unbearable cognitive dissonance or, to put it more simply, an all-prevailing sense of total hypocrisy”. He’s right. Look at the Google search again. People see it.

Russia has confounded the exceptionalists: “Thus the USA is in a lose-lose situation: it cannot threaten Russia and seek world domination, but it cannot give up world domination and hope to be able to threaten Russia”. Not many people could have written that in 2008. And, from the perspective of today, there are still remarkably few who understand its truth.

He doesn’t always get it right (but who does? Washington? Brussels? Western intelligence agencies?) and here is an example: “One more thing: the notion that the Russians could somehow protect Syria or meaningfully oppose US/‌NATO plans is laughable”. He, I, we, but especially Washington and Brussels, continually underestimate the cleverness and coolness of Putin and his team.

I am not going to attempt a summary of the book: it is almost 200,000 words long (that’s two PhD theses); I haven’t mentioned the essays on Russia and Islam with which he leads the pack. Nor have I mentioned his assessment of power struggles inside the Russian government or much of what he has to say about Ukraine.

Many collections of essays bore after a while because so many of them are the same thing over and over again. Essential Saker is an exception – he has thought a great deal about a lot of subjects (mostly related to Russia, but that is a large subject) and they are all worth consideration. Not a book for one sitting then: read an essay or two and take time to reflect. There is much there.

Dr Johnson once said “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money”; today he would probably add page-views. Well, The Saker has the page-views, now it’s time to give him some money. Buy his book; you won’t be sorry: there’s more about what’s really going on in it than the last ten years of the NYT and The Economist rolled into one. And, of course, don’t forget to bookmark and faithfully read his blog http://thesaker.is/.

And, a final zinger: “As for Obama, he will go down in history as the worst US president ever. Except the next one, of course”.

The World According to Putin

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn SYRIA, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

Note 2016. And now it transpires that Obama knew all along that the evidence that Assad was responsible for the Ghouta attack was weak.

http://us-russia.org/1762-1the-world-according-to-putin.html

JRL/2013/173/25

The dénouement of the Syria crisis provides a learning opportunity for two inimical groups of Americans. For Obama’s admirers there is the uncomfortable revelation of his and his team’s unimpressive behaviour. They will have to process this revelation.

A more conflicted group, however, are the anti-Obamites. They are to a degree delighted to have Obama shown up; they gloat that Putin “schooled him”, made a fool of him and so forth. On the other hand some are starting to complain that the agreement legitimates Assad to a degree and, in the end, may not destroy any weapons. Some, convinced, as these people are, that Putin is not only the sworn enemy of the USA but also devilishly cunning (a favourite gibe is that while he plays chess, Obama plays tick-tack-toe or some other childish game), have decided that the agreement is a huge victory for Russia. Of course this gives them another opportunity to bash Obama’s leadership which is 90% of the point of these pieces, actually.

But none of these people notice the big news. Or, rather, the big non news. And that is that we are not today hearing and seeing attacks – attacks that while “unbelievably small” are not “pinpricks” – commanded by the uncertain; attacks that are unsupported by Congress, the American population or by allies. We do not see an intervention in a savage civil war that will benefit only the jihadist enemies the US is fighting elsewhere. We do not see the light-hearted beginning of another “short sharp” intervention that will drag on and on like the eight month Libyan intervention or the three month Kosovo intervention followed by 12 years of military occupation. That is the big news: the US is not getting stuck into another mess. Were Putin the cunning enemy so many think he is, he would have encouraged Washington: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Instead, he extracted it.

That is what was so unforgiveable about what he did: Putin the Evil saved America the Great from the folly of its leaders.

Russia and the G8: Is Russia isolated or does it represent the global majority?

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn CONTRIBUTIONS TO GROUP DISCUSSIONS, SYRIA, THE WORLD IS CHANGING, WORLD POWER RELATIONSHIPS

http://us-russia.org/1365-russia-and-the-g8-is-russia-isolated-or-does-it-represent-the-global-majority.html

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_06_24/G8-leaders-are-out-of-sync-with-opinion-in-their-own-countries-8715/

JRL/2013/ 117/42

Is Putin really as isolated on Syria as we are told? There is plenty of evidence that he is in general agreement with world opinion. He is in better agreement with Americans about intervention than Obama is: a number of polls show opposition to US involvement in the 60s. Better with the British than Cameron is: similar results in the UK. As to the rest of the world, a recent Pew survey shows there is little support for intervention anywhere else either. Putin’s opposition to outside interference much better reflects world opinion than the interveners do. Which may be why there is such an intense campaign against Russia and Putin: he must be discredited.

He does not “support Assad” – that is an accusation to drown out what he is really saying. Putin opposes intervention in Syria (and Iraq… and Kosovo… and Libya…) for three reasons: principled, practical and personal. Intervention violates a key international principle because, like it or not, Assad’s regime is the recognised government of the country. By what right does a fraction of NATO, unsupported by its population, decide to pick a side in a vicious civil war? Once upon a time, interventions were legitimised by the UN (1st Gulf War); then by NATO (Kosovo); now by only some of NATO (Libya). Secondly, there is nothing to suggest that the end result will benefit anyone. Russia is a cautious country that plays by primum non nocere – first, do no harm. Previous Western/NATO interventions have done little for stability and have often resulted in aiding and comforting their enemies (a definition of treason in most countries). Finally, he fears that Russia might be on the list of undesirable governments to be overthrown. He has seen the appetite for intervention grow with the feeding.

Therefore, Putin opposes intervention in Syria because it is questionably legal, sets (another) dangerous precedent, will almost certainly leave behind it a more chaotic, miserable and dangerous situation (vide Kosovo or Libya) and because he fears the extension to Russia. It has nothing to do with any “alliance”, “support” for Assad, the so-called naval base or arms sales. There is no alliance, he does not “support” Assad, the naval base is a corner of a small port with few facilities and most of the arms sales contracts have been placed on hold. But it is necessary to demonise Putin to drown this out. The fuss about the Russian air defence missiles which never appeared was a useful distraction from the (US-crewed) air defence missiles which did appear. The fuss about the so-called naval base distracts attention from new US bases. The ritual reiteration of Putin’s support for Assad smokescreens the surreptitious support for his enemies.

So: not only will Putin be proven correct in that some-of-NATO’s interference will not have a happy ending, not only is his condemnation of intervention in accord with majority world opinion so far as can be determined but it is even in accord with opinion in the countries whose leaders are cheering on NATO’s next adventure in “humanitarian interventions”.

While Putin may be out of step with the G8 majority (somewhat smaller than it pretends to be – does anyone seriously think Tokyo has signed on? Berlin kept out of the last adventure, who expects it to participate in this one? Is Rome on board?), that pseudo-majority is itself out of step with public opinion in its own countries and, so far as can be determined, out of step with world opinion.

Calling him isolated is an attempt to shout down the reality that the interveners’ own electorates do not support intervention.