National Security Matters

[old salt]

Idlib bloodbath predicted :

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... dlib-syria

Russia is going to extraordinary lengths to justify in advance the murderous onslaught that observers fear is about to descend on Idlib, a province in north-west Syria that is home to nearly two million internally displaced people. Idlib is the last large populated area outside the control of Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator. And Assad, backed by his Russian and Iranian allies, is determined to get it back – whatever the human cost.

In a series of coordinated moves last week, Russian government officials and military spokesmen tried to pre-empt or deflect western opposition to the expected air and ground offensive. ...The escalation is all on Russia’s side. It is assembling a naval armada off the Syrian coast, comprising 25 ships, combat aircraft and the missile cruiser Marshal Ustinov – the biggest show of force since Putin intervened in Syria in 2015. The fleet is ostensibly engaged in exercises. But Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, admitted the drills were directly linked to Idlib, which he termed a “terrorist hotbed” that must be tackled soon.

The Russia-Syria axis is stepping up its diplomatic offensive, too. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, warned last week that “militants” in Idlib (he did not say who) must be liquidated, describing them as “a festering abscess”. Walid al-Moualem, Syria’s foreign minister, who met Lavrov in Moscow the following day, was blunt: “We are at the final stage of solving the crisis in Syria and liberating our whole territory from terrorism.”

...Turkey, fearing another cross-border refugee influx, opposes any new offensive, its forces inside Syria appear powerless to prevent it.

...Russia’s efforts to influence international opinion include a repeat of previous disinformation campaigns concerning chemical weapons. Despite documented evidence of numerous instances of illegal chemical weapons use by the Assad regime, Moscow and Damascus continue to insist these attacks either did not happen or were staged by jihadists or rebel factions.

The fear now, ...that Assad intends to resume chlorine attacks and then claim it is all a rebel stunt. Mistura called last week for humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to escape the Idlib kill-box, warning of the “most horrific tragedy” if they remain trapped.

Putin is eager to portray the Syrian war as all but over ...his attempts to switch the international focus to post-war reconstruction – he recently discussed this with German chancellor Angela Merkel – are also designed to draw attention away from Idlib, where the war is far from won.

In order to vindicate the 2015 intervention, ensure Assad’s survival and seal an epic Russian strategic victory over the US, Putin requires physical control of Idlib – the final piece of the fractured Syrian jigsaw. His pre-emptive message to the western democracies, with axe poised to fall, is keep out and don’t interfere – whatever the cost in human life and suffering.

[old salt]

Russian airstrikes resume. The battle for Idlib appears to have begun. inshallah

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/09/ ... 02071.html

[old salt]

Top Gun, Part Deux -- will Mav mount a new F-35C (in addition to Jennifer Connely),
or be stuck on tanker duty, passing gas from an old F-18 with a buddy store ? (or all of the above ?)
...can't wait to see Val Kilmer in a flight suit.

https://news.usni.org/2018/08/27/top-gu ... e-fighters

Was Jack Ryan a laxer at Loyola HS ? Tom Clancy's best bud, helo pilot was, who went on to play at BC..

https://news.usni.org/2018/08/31/jack-ryan-untold-story

[old salt]

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/0 ... e_today_nl

The China Hype

While Beijing’s military gains are impressive, their value fades in the circumstances we’re told to worry about.

Last week’s New York Times offered a breathless take on China’s Navy, noting that its two-carrier fleet is now larger than the United States’ and poised to project power globally. This naval prowess, plus a new generation of accurate land-based anti-ship missiles, create a robust anti-access/area denial capability, which, the Times suggests, means China may “prevail” in a fight with the United States off its coast.

The United States and its Asian allies are “only beginning to digest” the implications of this shift in the “balance of power,” according to the article. That worry fits with Washington’s emergent conventional wisdom, as delivered with varying degrees of explicitness in think tank reports, congressional hearings, and years of reporting. The idea is that China’s military gains undermine the deterrence essential to the U.S. alliance structure in East Asia, which is what ostensibly keeps its peace. China may attack a U.S. ally, gambling that a successful missile attack on a U.S. carrier or destroyer would cause a U.S. military withdrawal, or the United States might effectively abandon its allies to avoid such an attack. It follows that, to maintain stability in Asia, the United States needs to do something radical and expensive—maybe invest more heavily in submarines and long-range strike options, throw money at theater ballistic missile defense, or more.

But the conventional wisdom is unduly alarmist.

China’s gains have upped the cost of going to war against it, but there are several reasons why that shift doesn’t much threaten East Asia’s peace or demand splashy new U.S. military efforts. First, the media’s portrayal of China’s anti-ship missiles typically ignores their dependence on fixed radar installations, which the U.S. military, in a war, would try to jam, spoof or destroy via direct attack. U.S. carriers aren’t invulnerable, but they are far from sitting ducks.

Second, China’s military capability erodes if it goes on offense—which is the circumstance that could cause war with the United States. If the People’s Liberation Army Navy ventures out from coastal waters, where surveillance systems and shore-based weapons best protect it, to attack Taiwan or something further out, U.S. aircraft and ships—possessed of superior firepower, surveillance, and targeting capability—could likely sink most of it. A Chinese aircraft would be the last place you’d want to be in that fight.

Third, the same A2/AD capabilities China employs are available to the United States, rich and technology-proficient East Asia allies (Japan and South Korea), and quasi ally (Taiwan). China’s navy may project its power globally, but near enemy coastlines, it remains quite vulnerable. Even small expanses of ocean remain a potent check on military ambition.

Articles like the Times’ miss the real military shift. China isn’t taking over the Pacific—no one is. The defensive gains are shared and conducive to peace. The best way for the United States to respond to China’s military gains is free: push the allies to improve their own A2/AD capability rather emulating our military’s offensive features.

Fourth, the Times article, like most analysis of this issue, ignores nuclear weapons, the bedrock of deterrence and our security architecture. Their mutual possession makes a war between the United States and China especially unlikely. Given the specter of annihilation, China’s leaders would have to be crazy to attack U.S. forces in an act of territorial aggression. They do not appear to be crazy.

That leads to the final point: The deterrence that the United States extends to allies isn’t nearly as wobbly as the conventional wisdom contends. Deterrence doesn’t require U.S. invulnerability. If China were to attack or even sink a U.S. carrier or ship, the enraged U.S. public would likely demand a fight rather than call for withdrawal. For deterrence to fail, China would have to bet everything on the opposite result.

The bottom line is that while China’s military gains are impressive, their value fades in the circumstances we’re told to worry about. Assuming we do not attack Chinese territory unprovoked, the United States and its Asian allies would enjoy tremendous advantages in a war against it. We can ensure that things stay that way by encouraging our allies’ adoption of defensive technologies. That is good news for East Asia’s stability and U.S. taxpayers’ wallets.

https://warontherocks.com/2017/01/demys ... a2ad-buzz/

Demystifying the A2/AD buzz

...those advantages are strongest over controlled landmasses and weaken over distance. As a result, as China and the United States (and its allies) deploy countervailing A2/AD capabilities, the current U.S. command of the East Asian commons will give way not to Chinese hegemony, but to a more differentiated pattern of control. This will likely result in a U.S. sphere of influence around allied landmasses, a Chinese sphere of influence over the Chinese mainland, and a contested battlespace covering much of the South and East China Seas, where neither power enjoys wartime freedom of surface or air maneuver.

[old salt]

The Brits have id'd the two GRU operatives who carried out the Salisbury CW assassination. The Brits are still in the EU.
Maybe now our recalcitrant EU/allies will finally enact more sanctions, to "stand shoulder to shoulder" with the US & UK.
Meanwhile, work on the Nordstream 2 pipeline continues apace.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45421445

[old salt]

Where are our aircraft carriers ? Our splendid isolation peacetime deployment pattern continues.

-- 4 carriers at sea with embarked air wings in home waters, within 1 week's sailing time of home port.

-- 7 capital ships (4 CVN's + 3 LHA's), with 7 embarked air wings & 3 Marine Expeditionary Units.
6 within 1 week transit to home port. Cocked & ready. Readiness improving.

-- Our Japan based CSG & ESG are both underway in WPac.
Reagan CSG in company with Japan's potent ASW helo (& future F-35B) carrier & AEGIS escorts.
Freedom of Navigation island hopping in the S China Sea.


-- 2 E coast CSG's, operating together in WLant, op testing the F-35C, filming Top Gun II, & keeping Ivan guessing.

-- 1 W coast CSG underway in EPac. 1 E coast ARG operating in WLant.

-- Only 1 US based capital ship (Essex)) deployed to the far side of the world.

The Essex ARG introduces the F-35B (w/ new sensors) into the CENTCOM AOR. It will be interesting to watch where the Essex operates.
She may stay in the Gulf of Aden / Red Sea approaches supporting our special operators in Yemen &/or Somalia,
or move N into the Arabian Sea & Persian Gulf, to play in the sand box. Still no Carrier Strike Group in the 5th Fleet.
SecDef Mattis, as a former CENTCOM Commander, has the chops to tell them they no longer need one.
It plays into Trump's isolation, but it's still Mattis who makes the call.
Home cookin' -- train, maintain, & liberty.

[old salt]

The Mattis method.

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/0 ... f=d-skybox

Woodward’s reporting also reveals how Mattis has improbably stayed in Trump’s good graces. He ducks the media, refusing former Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s repeated requests to appear on Sunday talk shows. He finds himself at odds with the president on many major military and foreign-policy issues—U.S. involvement in the Syrian war, America’s military alliances in Europe and Asia, transgender Americans serving in the military—but seems to take his policy defeats (failing to persuade the president to remain in the Iran nuclear deal, for instance) in stride with his unlikely victories (persuading Trump to commit more troops to the war in Afghanistan). He puts only so much stock in face time. “Mattis tried to limit his visits to the White House and stick to military business as much as possible,” Woodward writes.

Woodward also portrays Mattis as sometimes advocating for his more traditionalist foreign-policy positions in passably Trumpian terms. Yes, by Woodward’s account he pointedly informed Trump that America’s forward military deployment in Korea is intended to avert World War III. But by the same account, Mattis also made a cost-benefit argument designed to appeal to a transactional president far more interested in fending off external threats than in leading the free world: that the alliance with South Korea was, as Woodward put it, “one of the great national security bargains of all time.” Part of Mattis’s case against pulling U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, in Woodward’s account, was that Trump, who often styles himself the anti–Barack Obama, shouldn’t leave behind a safe haven for terrorists the way his predecessor did in Iraq.

This, Woodward writes, is the Mattis way: “avoid the confrontation, demonstrate respect and deference, proceed smartly with business, travel as much as possible, get and stay out of town.”

[Typical Lax Dad]

[old salt]

Special envoy Jim Jeffrey on Idlib.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... s-us-envoy

There is “lots of evidence” chemical weapons are being prepared by Syrian government forces in Idlib, north-west Syria, the new US representative for Syria has said, warning any attack on the last big rebel enclave would be a “reckless escalation”.

“I am very sure that we have very, very good grounds to be making these warnings,” said Jim Jeffrey, who was named on 17 August as secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s special adviser on Syria overseeing talks on a political transition. “Any offensive is to us objectionable as a reckless escalation,” Jeffrey said. “There is lots of evidence that chemical weapons are being prepared.”

Washington has issued a strong warning to Syria’s government against using chemical weapons in the widely expected operation.

Jeffrey said any offensive by Russian and Syrian forces, and the use of chemical weapons, would force huge refugee flows into south-eastern Turkey or areas in Syria under Turkish control.

The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has massed his army and allied forces on the frontlines in the north-west and Russian planes have joined his bombardment of rebels there – the prelude to a possible assault.

The fate of the insurgent stronghold in and around Idlib province now seems to rest on a meeting to be held in Tehran on Friday between the leaders of Assad’s supporters Russia and Iran, and the rebels’ ally Turkey.

Backed by Russian air power, Assad has over several years taken back one rebel enclave after another. Idlib and its surroundings are now the only significant area where armed opposition to Damascus remains.

Jeffrey described the situation in Idlib as “very dangerous” and said Turkey, which has backed some rebel groups in the region, was trying to avoid an all-out Syrian government offensive.

“I think the last chapter of the Idlib story has not been written. The Turks are trying to find a way out. The Turks have shown a great deal of resistance to an attack,” he said.

He said the US had repeatedly asked Russia whether it could “operate” in Idlib to eliminate the last holdouts of Isis and other extremist groups. Asked whether that would include US air strikes, Jeffrey said: “That would be one way.”

[old salt]

US troop increase in Germany. Artillery & Air Defense units. Cold War II, here we come.
More firepower to protect Germany's now unstoppable Nordstream 2 pipeline. Hooah !

https://www.dw.com/en/us-transferring-1 ... a-45404469

Despite repeated bluster from US President Donald Trump about NATO, the US will increase its presence in Germany.
Germany has welcomed the move as a commitment to the defense of Europe.

The US is transferring 1,500 soldiers to Germany, Ambassador Richard Grenell announced on Friday.

The move, while not a major increase percentage-wise, is a strong signal of the US support for the NATO alliance.

Details of the plan

Between now and September 2020, 1,500 additional soldiers will join the 33,000 US troops in Germany.
The deployment will include a field artillery brigade headquarters and two multiple launch rocket system battalions in Grafenwöhr, near Nuremberg, a short-range air defense battalion in Ansbach, and various supporting units in nearby Hohenfels.
Outside Bavaria, supporting units will also be sent to Baumholder, west of Heidelberg.

Even before taking office, US President Donald Trump's relationship with NATO has been a tumultuous one, to say the least. He has disparaged the trans-Atlantic alliance, once describing it as "obsolete" and a relic of the Cold War. Here are Trump's most memorable quotes about the military alliance, even if they are at times false.

The US Army's European headquarters in, near Frankfurt, said the new troops would be permanently stationed as "a display of our continued commitment to NATO and our collective resolve to support European security."

"The addition of these forces increases US Army readiness in Europe and ensures we are better able to respond to any crisis."

Ambassador Grenell said: "Americans are committed to strengthening the transatlantic alliance and President Trump's promise to increase US defense capabilities means the alliance is stronger today."

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said: "The US decision to increase the military presence here in Germany is a welcome sign of the vitality of the transatlantic relationship and a commitment to our joint security," she said.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Germany in particular for, in his eyes, not contributing enough militarily to the defense of Europe. He has repeatedly raised questions about US commitment to the alliance, but would seem to signal a commitment to US involvement in the defense of Europe.

Meanwhile: Fellow NATO member the UK has prepared to withdraw 350 troops from Paderborn, east of Dortmund, reducing its deployment in Germany by about 10 percent.

https://www.stripes.com/news/army-to-cr ... y-1.546457

GRAFENWOEHR, Germany — The U.S. Army announced a plan Friday to add more firepower in Germany by creating new short-range air defense and rocket artillery units, in one of the largest troop boosts in Europe since the end of the Cold War.

The unit activations will begin this year and will result in about 1,500 more soldiers on the continent as well as their families by 2020.

The plan is to stand up a new field artillery brigade headquarters, two Multiple Launch Rocket System battalions, and additional supporting units in the Grafenwoehr Training Area; a short-range air defense battalion and additional supporting units in nearby U.S. Army Garrison Ansbach; and various supporting units at the Hohenfels Training Area and at the Army’s garrison in Baumholder.

The overseas force structure change is a result of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which directs the Army to increase its numbers, service officials said. A significant portion of the expected growth will occur in Europe to counter a more aggressive Russia.

The U.S. Army announced a plan Friday to add more firepower in Germany by creating new short-range air defense units, adding about 1,500 soldiers as well as their families by 2020.

The Army has yet to designate names for the new units, which will result from new activations rather than relocating forces from the United States.

The MLRS battalions add up to the most substantial fires capability permanently stationed in Germany since the end of the Cold War.

Most of the forces coming to Europe over the past four years have been on rotational missions rather than permanently assigned to U.S. European Command’s area of responsibility.

EUCOM and USAREUR had expressed concern about a lack of short-range fires capability on the Continent.

In March, EUCOM chief Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti told Congress he needed an Army fires brigade added to the permanent force structure in Europe. A month later, the National Guard’s South Carolina-based 678th Air Defense Artillery Brigade was deployed to Germany on a rotational basis.

Earlier this year, the Army in Europe, for the first time in 15 years, began training on the FIM-92 Stinger Man-Portable system in Hohenfels.

[holmes435]

Just wanted to let you know there are people reading this and appreciate it, me included. I just don't have much to add at this time.

[old salt]

Some interesting perspective from the always intriguing former Sovietologist Cold Warrior & now Russian hardliner, Ralph Peters

https://www.hoover.org/research/toe-toe ... l-possible

...the lengthy annals of Americans and Russians tramping on each other’s feet followed a brief interlude when we danced the light fantastic to our mutual benefit, with neither side’s dancing shoes scuffed. That was at the historic high-point of U.S.-Russian relations. In 1863.

Russia’s only liberal reformist czar, Alexander II, ...In the latter half of 1863, the czar’s admiralty dispatched a squadron from Russia’s Baltic Fleet on a visit to Union ports and the warships—whose crews included a distinctly unseaworthy junior officer named Rimsky-Korsakov—would visit multiple harbors during their half-year stay. A second squadron from the Far East later anchored in San Francisco, willing to protect the bay against Confederate commerce-raiders.

Lincoln’s government and Northern society were ecstatic—suddenly, all things Russian were in vogue. With Great Britain and France leaning toward Richmond, the czar’s evident show of support seemed a great strategic boost.

Yet, the visits were not intended primarily as a goodwill gesture. Russia recently had been humiliated by Britain, France, Sardinia, and Turkey in the Crimean War, and with Russia suppressing yet another gallant-but-hopeless Polish insurrection with fire and sword, renewed war with Britain, at least, appeared imminent. Those Baltic Fleet ships were sent to New York to avoid being bottled up at Kronstadt, the fleet’s home port, by the much more powerful Royal Navy. By sheltering in neutral American ports, the Russian cruisers could set forth—with a strategic advantage—to raid British commerce in the North Atlantic. The squadron in San Francisco, too, was to act against British shipping, should war commence (the sailors’ most-significant “combat” action, though, was to pitch in to help fight one of the city’s recurring fires).

Despite the disparate agendas and misunderstandings of purpose, both Washington and St. Petersburg won, and neither side paid a price. Britain and its allies did not go to war against Russia and did not grant recognition to the Confederacy. Then, with the czarist government fearful that Britain would seize indefensible Alaska in any future war, Russia’s foreign ministry offered the re-united United States a deal—“Seward’s Folly”—that would rival the Louisiana Purchase as the greatest real-estate bargain of all time.

Until the Second World War, when a very different atmosphere prevailed, there would not be another example of U.S.-Russian defense collaboration—and none in which one side or the other, or both, would not end up feeling wronged.

A half-century after the balls and gala dinners welcomed the czar’s naval officers, the forgotten (by us) low-point in U.S. relations with Russia arrived. In 1918, 13,000 U.S. Army troops joined allied expeditionary forces that—setting diplomatic euphemisms aside—invaded revolutionary Russia. The declared goal was to protect stores of munitions, property, and interests, as well as to evacuate POWs. But the deployed militaries actively backed the czarist White Guards against the then-beleaguered Bolsheviks (in 1921, Herbert Hoover would oversee humanitarian missions to famine-ravaged Russia, but that was stricken from history by the Soviets).

We may have forgotten that ill-starred occupation, but the Russians never have: Indeed, in the iciest years of the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev was glad to remind us that we had killed Russians on Russian soil (in fact, the U.S. troops on the Murmansk-Arkhangelsk front did kill and wound thousands of Russians, while those deployed to the Far East and Siberia engaged in fewer large-scale combat operations but prefigured our current counterinsurgency doctrine of embracing the people, achieving perhaps the highest venereal disease rates in U.S. Army history).

Even during the worst years of the U.S.-Soviet bipolar struggle, U.S. and Soviet forces never openly fought each other again—although there was a good deal of uniform-swapping and subterfuge. Mutual disdain did not prevent mutual restraint, and Soviet violence was directed primarily at its subject peoples.

The grand alliance against Hitler did result in a brief warming of feelings on both sides, but, beyond the diplomatic handshakes, shipments of Spam and Studebakers, and a brief heyday for fellow-travelers here, this was a cold-blooded teaming of enemies against a greater enemy, and the clearest heads in Washington and Moscow never succumbed to the notion of enduring amity.

From 1945 onward, as one pretense after another crumbled, the United States and the Soviet Union became and remained enemies. Then, after nearly half a century of the Cold War, the Soviet Union came apart in 1991 and gangsters took power in Russia, just as romantics took hold of Washington’s Russia policy.

With the Soviet Union’s dissolution, American intellectuals and students of Russian affairs surrendered to an optimism utterly ungrounded in geopolitical or basic human reality. During the Clinton administration, those in positions of influence seemed to believe that, with the Soviet bogeyman gone, Russia would revert to the visokaya kultura beloved of the Kulturati, a fairy-story realm of Tolstoy and Chekhov, of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, of the ballets russes, Nijinsky and Diaghilev. But the Russian culture of the Golden and Silver Ages was exterminated by Stalin in the GULag or, at best, driven into exile. The DNA is gone. Russia’s hard-won European veneer was scraped off without mercy: Russia remains the tragic land depicted by Dostoevsky and Mussorgsky...

Despite the density of Mercedes and BMWs on Moscow streets, behind the Italian-designer shops and the frenzy of pop culture, Russia is less European today than it was in 1914: It’s not a matter of what people wear or own, but of how they view the world. Vladimir Putin’s well-cut suits do not make him a statesman in the Western tradition.

We face an arthritic, spiteful nuclear power led by a brilliant, bitter leader who seeks revenge against those he views as Russia’s enemies—above all, the United States of America. And he is immeasurably dangerous. It has been observed that Putin has played a weak hand extraordinarily well. Indeed, he consistently beats the house with a pair of deuces. Yet, this genius of subversion remains willfully misunderstood by Westerners who cannot imagine, even now, that a major leader might have as his priority inflicting suffering on them or destroying their freedoms, their societies, and their lives. Spoiled by safety and cushioned by wealth, we cannot grasp the plain-as-day existence of hatred before us.

The core question isn’t whether there is still a place for realistic engagement with Russia in U.S. foreign policy, but whether there’s a possibility of useful engagement with Vladimir Putin. The answer, for now, is “No, but… .”

The problem is Putin, not us, and we need to stop blaming ourselves. From the exuberantly naïve Clinton administration, through President George W. Bush’s hallucinations about Putin’s soul, and President Obama’s childlike conviction that he could cut behind-the-scenes deals with a cold-blooded murderer who resented shaking his hand, to President Trump’s as-yet-unexplained deference to Russia’s new czar, the problem, for over a quarter century, has not been our lack of goodwill toward Russia, but Russian malevolence toward us. We have tried, again and again, to embrace Russia, only to be clawed again by the bear.

Where, then, does that leave us? Faced with a breathtakingly unscrupulous Russian strongman who means us harm and is willing to pay dearly to inflict it on us, and forced nonetheless to confront the realities of a nuclear power whose born-to-pessimism population has been inoculated with virulent anti-American propaganda far more sophisticated than yesteryear’s clubfooted efforts, we cannot simply fold our arms and stand back in mute patience. Putin is active, so we must act, as well. Our passivity in the face of Russia’s innovative aggression will bewilder future historians.

Yet, for all that, we have to talk when it makes sense—with subdued expectations or none at all. ...we still must keep open our lines of communication. But ...we must beware our recurring gullibility. President Reagan’s perfect-to-the-age admonition to “trust, but verify” may have become a cliché, but it’s a cliché we might usefully update to “Distrust, but talk.”

We can never—never—trust Vladimir Putin on any issue that cannot be consistently enforced and monitored. Our diplomats, in particular, must re-embrace our 1950s skepticism and abandon their enthusiasm for accord at any price, anytime, anywhere.

We must be willing to counter Russian military adventurism with surrogates, proxies, and, when necessary, our own forces. We must counter Russian subversion and cyber attacks with up-the-ante reprisals. Another cliché is that, one day, we will face a cyber Pearl Harbor. We already have, in the 2016 election. It’s as if, after December 7th, 1941, we were still pondering our response in mid-1943. Russian cyber-invasions have turned Clausewitz’s most-famous dictum on its head: Today, policy is “an extension of war by other means.”

So yes, upon occasion there can be realistic engagement, even with Putin’s Russia. But the emphasis must be on “realistic,” rather than on engagement for its own sake: We must always be prepared to walk away from the table, no matter what a fickle electorate has been led to expect.

And we learn more from such interactions than the Russians do. Thanks to our open society, they already know our positions.

From 1863 and through 1867, we experienced the zenith of Russian-American relations, when both sides benefited enormously at no cost to either. We may never return to such an ideal state (and Putin would like Alaska back, thank you), but, were it not for Putin’s raw and irreducible hatred of the United States, we might find that we have many interests in common—not least, countering the rise of China, which troubles the U.S. but threatens to overwhelm Russia.

Or perhaps the ultra-skeptics are correct that this global town isn’t big enough for both cultural, ideological, and literal gunslingers, that we’re too alike to co-exist: the U.S. with its globalized sense of Manifest Destiny and crusading impulses, and Russia with its own version of manifest destiny intertwined with a revival of the mystical vision of Moscow as the “Third Rome.” Indeed, in the 1860s, even as we fought our bloodiest war amongst ourselves in the temporarily disunited United States, we continued expanding across our Wild West just as czarist Russia pushed into its wild east. For much of the 20th century, we competed to extend our visions around the world...

Perhaps we were destined to clash, at once too alike and too profoundly different. The Bering Strait may be the world’s widest body of water.

Or perhaps not. History is a chronicle of the unexpected, the unintended, and the unfathomable.

We do not know for certain where, how, and indeed, if this destructive rivalry will end, but, in the meantime, we can talk between shouting matches, but with the recognition that successful engagement requires two committed horse-traders. And Vladimir Putin just wants to shoot our horse.

[tech37]

Just wanted to let you know there are people reading this and appreciate it, me included. I just don't have much to add at this time.

+1 Holmes, and I second that of course.

[seacoaster]

Just wanted to let you know there are people reading this and appreciate it, me included. I just don't have much to add at this time.

Me too; some great posts and good information; many thanks. I have to say, the link to the early treatment on Jack Ryan and Gerry Carroll was great.

[thatsmell]

This is an interesting perspective, reading what the Military sources (Army News etc.) is covering and prioritizing.
Not the same stuff as the MSM.
The activity in the Baltics is highly troubling. Here's hoping it remains a show of force and nothing more. Russia needs to keep its mitts off of other countries.
Putin used a smoke screen to annex Crimea, ultimately telling the world to eff off.
Glad the world at least appears to care a little more about the Baltics.

[seacoaster]

Really enjoyed this he piece on n Mattis and the essay. By Peters, with whom I have to agree. Old Salt, where do you stand on Peters’s views?

[old salt]

Really enjoyed this he piece on n Mattis and the essay. By Peters, with whom I have to agree. Old Salt, where do you stand on Peters’s views?

I posted the excerpt from the Peter's piece primarily because of the historical perspective he provides, in helping us understand why Putin does the things he does & why the Russian people support him.

I was a bit surprised that Peters acknowledged that we should have a "trust but verify" working relationship with Russia.

I think he overstates Russian cyber PSYOPS as cyber-warfare. I think that overstates what was done.
To me, it's not an act of war until critical infrastructure is attacked, which threatens public safety.
I disagree with the notion that we can harden or regulate the web sufficiently to thwart cyber PSYOPS.
The best defense is a public which is warned by the govt & MSM when disinformation is detected.
As an open society, we are vulnerable, but our openness & freedom is also the most effective defense.

[old salt]

...link to the early treatment on Jack Ryan and Gerry Carroll was great.

I don't recall which one, but the dedication in one of Clancy's novels is to -- "the Great Geraldo".

I'm pretty sure the shipboard helo pilot character in Red Storm Rising, & the helo hoist transfer of Jack Ryan to a submarine in heavy seas in The Hunt for Red October, were both inspired by Gerry.

After he retired from the Navy, with Clancy's encouragement, Gerry authored 3 very readable novels which accurately depicted the naval air war in Vietnam.

[old salt]

Germany threatens to join US/UK/France coalition air strikes against Assad's facilities if chem weapons used again.
Frau Merkel considering going kinetic.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mide ... ce=twitter

German and U.S. officials had discussed last month the possibility of German fighter jets helping with battle damage assessments or dropping bombs for the first time since the war in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

The German air force already provides refueling support and carries out reconnaissance missions using four Tornado fighter jets from a base in Jordan as part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State militant movement in Iraq and Syria.

Bild said a decision on whether to join any strikes would be made by Merkel, who ruled out joining April 2018 air strikes against Syria by U.S., French and British forces after a previous use of chemical weapons.

In a joint statement on Monday, the German foreign and defense ministries urged restraint in Syria.

“The goal is that the conflict parties ... avoid escalating an already terrible situation ... That is particularly true for the use of banned chemical weapons which the Assad government has already used in the past,” it said.

US Marines conduct company sized air assault & artillery live fire "exercise" in Syria, demonstrating the ability to reinforce US anti-ISIS training & staging FOB At Tanf, if the 55 mile deconfliction bubble is threatened (again) by Russian forces or their proxy mercenaries.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/09/07 ... ussia.html

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/y ... -in-syria/

A company size element of Marines conducted an aerial assault exercise in vicinity of a small U.S. base in southeastern Syria known as the At Tanf garrison amid concerns of a potential Russian military operation in the region.

CNN reported that the Russian military has used a deconfliction line several times this week to warn the U.S. military of a potential Russian and Syrian military operation to clear militant fighters in the area around the 55 km deconfliction bubble that surrounds the Tanf garrison, which houses dozens of U.S. troops.

“The Russians informed the U.S. on Sept 1, via the deconfliction line, that they intended to enter the At Tanf deconfliction zone to pursue terrorists,” Army Lt. Col. Earl Brown, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command told Marine Corps Times in an emailed statement. “The Russians indicated via written note on Sept 6, that they would make precision strikes in the At Tanf deconfliction zone against terrorist.”

Brown said that Russia was “advised” to stay clear of the 55 km At Tanf zone and that the U.S. did not require any assistance to fight ISIS in the region surrounding the garrison.

With worrying signs of a pending Russian military operation that could jeopardize U.S. forces there, Marines launched a rapid show of force training evolution via aerial assault and were expected to conduct a live fire shoot before departing the 55 km deconfliction bubble around Tanf.

“Our forces will demonstrate the capability to deploy rapidly, assault a target with integrated air and ground forces, and conduct a rapid exfiltration anywhere in the OIR combined joint operations area,” Navy Capt. Bill Urban, spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said in a command release Friday. “Exercises like this bolster our defeat-ISIS capabilities and ensure we are ready to respond to any threat to our forces.”

At Tanf is seen as a strategic training base for U.S. and coalition partner forces battling ISIS. Analysts contend the base’s location provides a check on Iranian efforts to dominate the region and serves as a buffer to protect Jordan’s border from the incursion of ISIS and other militant groups.

But the base has stoked the ire of Russia and its Syrian ally in the region who see Washington’s presence at the base as meddling in the country’s civil war.

“Coalition partners are in the At Tanf deconfliction zone for the fight to destroy ISIS. Any claim that the U.S. is harboring or assisting ISIS is grossly inaccurate,” Brown said.

The U.S. has launched several deadly strikes against proxy forces aligned to Syrian President Bashar Assad regime forces for violating the base’s 55 km deconfliction bubble in the past, including the downing of suspected Iranian drone aircraft.

“The United States does not seek to fight the Russians, the government of Syria or any groups that may be providing support to Syria in the Syrian civil war,” Brown said. “However, the United States will not hesitate to use necessary and proportionate force to defend U.S., coalition or partner forces, as we have clearly demonstrated in past instances.”

[old salt]

Where are our aircraft carriers ? Our splendid isolation peacetime deployment pattern continues.

-- 4 carriers at sea with embarked air wings in home waters, within 1 week's sailing time of home port.

-- 7 capital ships (4 CVN's + 3 LHA's), with 7 embarked air wings & 3 Marine Expeditionary Units.
6 within 1 week transit to home port. Cocked & ready. Readiness improving.

-- Our Japan based CSG & ESG are both underway in WPac.
Reagan CSG in company with Japan's potent ASW helo (& future F-35B) carrier & AEGIS escorts.
Freedom of Navigation island hopping in the S China Sea.

-- 2 E coast CSG's, operating together in WLant, op testing the F-35C, filming Top Gun II, & keeping Ivan guessing.

-- 1 W coast CSG underway in EPac. 1 E coast ARG operating in WLant.

-- Only 1 US based capital ship (Essex)) deployed to the far side of the world.

The Essex ARG introduces the F-35B (w/ new sensors) into the CENTCOM AOR. It will be interesting to watch where the Essex operates.
She may stay in the Gulf of Aden / Red Sea approaches supporting our special operators in Yemen &/or Somalia,
or move N into the Arabian Sea & Persian Gulf, to play in the sand box. Still no Carrier Strike Group in the 5th Fleet.
SecDef Mattis, as a former CENTCOM Commander, has the chops to tell them they no longer need one.
It plays into Trump's isolation, but it's still Mattis who makes the call.
Home cookin' -- train, maintain, & liberty.

Other than the pre-hurricane sortie of Norfolk based ships, little change in Fleet disposition since last wk.

In WPac, our Japan based battle groups remain at sea :
The Reagan CSG in the S China Sea, the Wasp ESG in the Philippine Sea

The Essex ARG has finished transit & is operating in the Gulf of Aden.

For E Coast ships :
The Truman CSG remained at sea, doing ASW ops with the Canadians, in preparation for transit to the 6th Flt AOR.
The Lincoln CSG & Kerasarge ARG returned to Norfolk, but will be departing again, ahead of the advancing storm.
Lot's of ships (w/ embarked helos) will be at sea to chase Florence as she comes ashore.