The United States, in decline but still able to kill us all

 The global dominance of the United States, in so many fields, from space, to science, to entertainment, to sport, to novelty in the development of the English language, has been taken for granted, is part of our fabric of Australian existence. Reinforced by the Covid Era of Isolation, Netflix, Facebook, and Computer Games and inability even to get to Bali or Thailand let alone China. We are now in a noisy metal barrel where even dissident voices seem projections from the dissident voices of the US, similarly muted and squeezed. At a time when the US and its roles in the world are suddenly dramatically changing.

The undoing of the United States, the collapse of the imperial centre, is happening with little awareness in Australia. Our generally oblivious mindframes affect the capacity of political leaders to reflect upon or point to core problems of our world. Richard Adams, the author of Watership Down, that great rabbit adventure full of meaning for human society, coined the rabbit language word 'tharn' for the mental state of rabbits caught in the headlights and stuck. We are a tharn nation, gabbling about entertainments and irritations, eyes glued to the seatback monitor, not wanting to know the plane is crashing. 

Heed these markers:

• the Americans were first to the moon, but NASA for some time depended on Russian rockets to get to their joint space station and the Russians are now planning to remove the propulsion units of the station which keep it from crashing, for use on a bigger new venture. America is losing in space, though US private business has appallingly taken the lead in cluttering near space with junk.
• the US economy, measured in purchasing parity terms, has not been the biggest for some time. 
• with Donald Trump, America became revealed much as the Great Oz. With his successor Biden, for whom we all hoped for something better, we have a revelation of a dodderer behind the big screen. 

• The fiercely presented wearisome trope of commitment to a Rules Based International Order is quite suddenly unmasked as an American Establishment desire to maintain a unipolar control of the world, with violence. This is being unmasked in much of the world if not NATO and AUKUS and the conservative acolytes in Japan and ROK. Ideological assertions of democracy versus autocracy, built by vilification and isolation of China and Russia, is rotting from the head as big democracies are in serious trouble. We are doing OK in Australia, our minds from age 12 filled with bubblegum flavoured vape and Tiktok, graduating to Facebook and the metaverse, and with a newer, kinder, kinda-tealish government we can all go to sleep, take off our masks and order American franchised fast food. Or real Aussie drinks. But while we have had a narrow focus on bad boys in the SAS we fail to review our complicity in the great crimes of the twenty first century, led by champions of democracy, smashing the lives of people in a number of countries far more violently than has the Ukraine war so far. Biden and his Secretary of State were advocates for invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, so appallingly bringing down bad governments and making countries ungovernable. Creating Al Qaeda and ISIS in the process, directly through funding and arming extremists (in Afghanistan beginning before the Russians were invited into Afghanistan) and via embitterment of ordinary people. The world is destabilised, American control is widely undone.
• The march of folly in American strategic policy has enshrined the madness of control by a giant defence industry and defence budget now past $800 billion. Poverty of foreign policy has led to regimes of sanctions which have been substantially shaped by Richard Nephew, whose book reveals that far from focusing on potentates and oligarchs, the targets of sanctions must be ordinary people and the purpose is to inflict pain and weaken resolve (his words). Consider sanctions related deaths in Iraq, Venezuela, Cuba, Afghanistan. Pain but no loss of resolve, hatred not submission. The US official study of the effects of strategic bombing on Germany in World War II by J K Galbraith and others long ago suggested morale and resolve were increased by the bombing of cities and civilians. And yet we have the ongoing commitment to defend and achieve democracy by mass murder, with constant focus on disruption, regime change, and violence... not on peace. 
• Jeffrey Sachs has recently returned to the themes of his 2013 book on the 50th anniversary of President John Kennedy's Commencement Speech at American University in 1963. Speaking in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy spoke of peace not as an event or a state but a constant process of engagement. We now have no such thing, we are in an Age of Meanness, Folly and Decay. 
• There is no more important issue than climate. Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Accords, Morrison pretended not to. Australia, Canada, and the United States lead the world in per capita carbon dioxide emissions (apart from small states and oil producers), emitting around 15 tonnes; the EU 6 (Germany 8... Luxembourg, where the population produces 300kg of steel per capita, is up there with us at 15). China while factory to the world and producer of more than 50% of the world's steel, 7.6% in 2019. [World Bank numbers]. Biden and now Albanese quick to signal climate intent internationally. But there is the problem of passing legislation in the US... On 27 July 2022 after prolonged negotiations there was agreement on a so-called Inflation Reduction Act, for expenditure of $433 billion, of which $369 for energy and climate. Democrat Senator Manchin, a coal magnate from West Virginia, who has hitherto opposed all climate spending, agreed but with the stipulation that if the Interior Department plans wind or solar projects on any public land it first must hold a sale of oil and gas leases on that land. The Republican party as a whole, and soon as a majority in both houses, is entirely opposed to climate action. That is to say, the prospective majority of the legislative arm of the United States government wants the planet to die... while also continuing the campaign for a rules based planet under American exceptionalist power. This is religious fascism, as well as existential folly. Barbara Tuchman we miss you!
• The American constitution of government, with Executive, Legislature and Judiciary equal (very different from Australia), is coming undone. Most celebrated recently in the actual and anticipated reduction of rights by the Supreme Court, a process only just begun. Most dangerous is the legislature where as noted Democrats are blocked by one of their own, a coal magnate senator who lets little of the Biden agenda through. There will likely be a rout of Democrats in the midterm elections this November, for the whole of the House and part of the Senate (there are two senators for each state, six year terms). Electoral prospects are affected also by the efforts in many states to make voting more difficult. The Republican party and major business appear steadily more openly oppose as far as possible government involvement in anything beyond defence and the massive subsidy of the defence industry and banks, and a capacity to print money. This is the most likely successor to Trump, Florida governor De Santis. The American mind is to be narrowed down. Religious fascism.
• In the executive there is evident enfeeblement of a president of my age, 79, notionally working hours that grey the hairs of young men. He is now universally unpopular, not even Democrats want him to stand again in 2024, though he wants to. His international policies are driven by his long experience in the Senate and as Vice President to Obama; dreaming of past power. Both he and his Secretary of State are foreign policy mainstream conservatives who advocated for invasion of Iraq in 2003. 
• Into this separation of powers comes Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a long term heavyweight for pro-democracy intervention and regime change, planning a visit to Taiwan to spruik independence. The president says not a good idea but out of my control. The Chinese president and American president on 29 July 2022 had two hours of phone conversation. Reuters reported: "Those who play with fire will perish by it," China's foreign ministry quoted Xi as telling Biden in their fifth call as leaders. "It is hoped that the U.S. will be clear-eyed about this." The aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan and missile cruiser Antietam have left Singapore and are headed north. (The inconclusive Civil War Battle of Antietam in September 1862 in a tiny valley near Washington DC was the bloodiest day in American history to now, 22,000 dead or missing in the morning and afternoon.) I do not know what Australian naval or air force elements are entangled with this. Australia recognises, as does the United States, that Taiwan is part of China. Though the media vague up the history, China kicked the Portuguese and Dutch out of Taiwan early in the 1600s, long before the greatest land grab in history, of Britain over the Australian continent, could even be imagined as the British didn't know it was there then. The government in Taipei is the Government of the Republic of China. The large opposition party in the National Assembly is the Kuomintang, ruling party of the government of the Republic of China that lost the revolutionary war on the mainland in 1949 and retreated to Taiwan. The ROC held the China seat in the UN until 1971 with American backing. The majority of local governments in Taiwan are governed by the KMT because the party of the national government is on the nose both because of its independence-advocating foreign policy and corruption allegations. Pelosi's visit risks great power war as not seen since 1945. The American right wing is fervently in support.  Stanley Kubrick made a movie about such madness, we are sleeping through it.

• The US economy is in serious trouble. Disrupted by COVID. Made flaccid by many years dependence on China for products of all kinds, and with industry shipped abroad. The economy bulged by COVID recovery funding. Growing inflation and technical recession. Because of the dominant anti-socialist, anti-interventionist (other than in subsidy of major industries and banks) perspectives, there is no control over inflation other than by the Federal Reserve lifting interest rates. Not only does this inside the US favour the rich and hurt the poor , but also much the same is the case internationally. There is a big shock arising from US interest rates in Asia. Also in Australia: there is a big difference between US housing loans, predominantly at fixed rate, and those in Australia, predominantly variable, shifted in response to official interest rate changes. Where the US needs a sharp yank on the reins of interest rates to get results, such action has greater impact outside the US. The US dominated International Monetary Fund wants to give no more loans to Asian countries in trouble, including Sri Lanka. China is blamed for Sri Lanka's debts but borrowing from China represent less than 10% of total foreign borrowing. See this not-friendly-to-China Indian study.
• The US dollar is the reserve currency of the world and the US government can print money to cover its huge fiscal deficit. This situation is made more serious as Japan and China are, for their own economic reasons, reducing their near trillion dollars of holdings of US government bonds. They may each see emerging risk in having such exposure. China is succeeding in getting more trade transactions settled in Chinese currency. Saudi Arabia thinks it's wise to do that with China. India and Russia want the same kind of shift from the USD, Russia has more leverage. 
• The US campaign for unipolar dominance has included partly fabricated propaganda against China and Russia. This no longer convinces or concerns a wide sweep of the world beyond NATO, the G7,  the EU and AUKUS. The summit meeting of BRICS in June seemed a more constructive meeting than the G7. The countries of Eurasia also have the SCO. The Iran, Russia, Turkey summit meeting in Tehran in July 2022 seems to have been more successful than President Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia to meet also other Arab leaders, a visit described by the Wall Street Journal as worse than an embarrassment, with no success in getting more oil onto the market, no turning Arab countries away from growing ties with China, no agreement to sanction Russia, no advance on the mad notion of war with Iran. A new rail line from Russia to Iran with plans to connect it to ships to India has been opened. The American desire to frustrate development of the overland Eurasian world is not succeeding. 
• The Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in June exposed erosion in support for the United States because the US refused to invite people it did not like; therefore the Mexican president and others stayed away. There is unraveling of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine of US dominance of the western hemisphere. The Cuban president, Miguel Diaz-Canel addressed a 'peoples summit of the Americas' held at the same time, from home.  Part of the live broadcast... 
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• The ferocity of sanctions against Russia this year has speeded the diversion of US oil and gas to Asia and away from Europe. 
• In the 1950s Mao used the expression 'paper tiger' to describe the US: "Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain."  In the mid1970s, heading towards normalisation of relations with the US, the Chinese Foreign Minister spoke of the US having "ten fingers on ten fleas" to describe American overreach and in particular the failure of the US war in Indochina and absence thus of any threat capacity of the US against China. It could be said that the US now also has ten fleas under ten fingers... but it has two lively ambitions afoot: to antagonise China and damage Russia. 
• As Dostoevsky observed, we tend, in seeking to see the world, to look in a mirror. The United States in looking at the world sees threats. The world, broadly speaking, is not like the US. Australia, with our military imperialist views, is similarly misguided. Some useful words from an intelligent young Chinese entrepreneur:
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• There is a podcast accessible on Patreon and YouTube called Fall of Civilisations... serious presentations about civilisations and how they came to an end, so far fifteen episodes, by Paul Cooper an English writer with relevant doctorate. One of these is about the end of the Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean, suddenly, around 1200 BCE. Literate societies, writing, maintaining financial and trade records, big cities trading with each other. Appearing to be eliminated by climate change and food shortage, with evidence of violence and fire in all the cities; also with the arrival of 'sea people', probably climate and starvation refugees. There is gentle comparison with our present global situation. The big point to me being that crises are not gentle or slow, but come about in lurches, much as a brain tumour works, growing and pressing and with pressure in a confined space smashing parts of the brain suddenly and unpredictably. The world is littered with failed civilisations, none of whom believed they would fail and disappear.  

Australia muddled in a changing world

text submitted to John Menadue's blog on 29 July 2022.

DENNIS ARGALL: Teal is important but blood red international issues are right now dangerous.

The Whitlam Government took office with public support for fundamental changes in our approach to our region, to embrace reality. The Albanese government is tangled in the neocon skirts of Morrison and Dutton. There is a serious risk of drift into a situation comparable to the mind-closure of apartheid South Africa. Despite gentle tones of the Foreign Minister, our broader strategic perspective has gone bung.

The Albanese government has been confronted dramatically with international issues from its first day. The Whitlam government was similarly confronted but there was a major difference. The Whitlam government came in with passionate concern to make changes: to end our involvement in the Vietnam War and shift our recognition of government of China from the authorities in Taipei to the authorities in Beijing… to attune Australia to the realities of our region, including in immigration policy. Those things were done swiftly despite hostility from the authorities in Washington DC. This year there has been a muddle of passions on international issues, rather than clarity about national interests. It's a difficult year with the interaction of pandemic, climate, environment, and fear of war entangled.

In several international matters we are dangerously up the creek. These must be discussed nationally, openly and in the parliament. Citizens worry and need sound information.

First. We are silent while the Speaker of the US House of Representatives is planning a visit to Taiwan. This is opposed by President Biden, but seems to include planning for US defence force involvement, defence forces of course under command of the president not the speaker. Republican leaders, including Trump's secretaries of state and defense, are in vociferous support of a visit by Ms Pelosi, second in line of succession to the president. This plan carries more risk of war in the Pacific between major powers than anything since World War II. Even without planet-threatening use of nuclear weapons, the global economy would crash.

It has been part of the alliance fabric that Australia be consulted by the US on matters of fundamental security concern… and any decent ally should speak up. On this matter of the possible Pelosi visit, Australia needs to be sending a clear message, writing to the speaker and the president, and publicly. There is little public awareness of this risk. A government statement is essential, not least to keep the initiative away from Dutton.

Second. We still have a muddle of views on China. The Prime Minister as well as the outspoken Deputy Prime Minister are advised by deeply conservative people who have neocon perspectives but no understanding of China. China is not a threat to Australia unless we continue to develop hostile approaches to China. Apart from the absurdity of believing we have a sense of entitlement to send warships to the straits between Taiwan and the mainland (where in any case most of the commercial shipping of direct relevance to Australia and needing ‘freedom of navigation’ is between Australia and China) there is the question of how we would feel if China patrolled the waters between Tasmania and the Australian mainland. There is widespread understanding and concern not just in China but throughout Southeast Asia that AUKUS and the long ranging nuclear powered submarines make Australia an aggressive and destabilising force, not a friend. We need to embrace the future, not pretend there is some white mans empire to be proud of.

Third, we have signed on to a notion of "rules based international order", alliances of democracy versus autocracy. This not the same as a law based international order as advocated by China, instead it is an American desire to sustain a unipolar world, dominated by the US: it's America’s rules. The rules based international order is destroying the planet. This notion of omnipotence has been falling apart for decades since it first arose in the braggadocio after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In these decades the Champions of Democracy have been responsible for more deaths and destruction in interventionist wars than in any other conflict since World War II. Notions of alliance with the United States enhancing Australian security are illusions in a changed world. If at the G20 Summit in Indonesia the Australian prime minister rattles off the nonsense of international rules and AUKUS, he will be seen as a fool by countries in our region. He could do better.

We have now joined a war far from Australia's interests, continuing to arm and avoiding peace negotiation, in support of a country, Ukraine, ranking 122 on the 'corruption perception index' of Transparency International. With a secret police organisation child of the KGB and as numerous as the FBI, for a population one eighth of the US. Political opposition and independent media are stifled, closed, imprisoned, hunted. The population of Ukraine has declined by 20% since 1990. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian women have been trafficked. The rights of the 40% of the country speaking Russian and culturally Russian have been removed,. Agreements signed in Minsk, with France and Germany participating, for a regional system to protect minorities in the east, have been ignored. The war is not new this year, not begun by Putin, but begun with a coup in Kyiv enabled by the US in 2014, against an elected government that had chosen economic association with Russia rather than the EU. There was abundant warning of the inappropriateness of carrying an anachronistic militant NATO up to Russia's borders, long before. Listen to President Putin's 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference.

Ramifications of the current war in Europe are expanding. European governments are destabilised; they tire of the whip of Zelenskyy and his implausible demands for money. Much as with the Euro crisis a decade ago, the big countries Germany and France are expecting smaller members to make sacrifices for them. The Italian government has collapsed and the party most likely to lead a new government is Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) heir to Mussolini's fascist party. There is a muddle of voices in Germany, few critical of the rearmament program of the Social Democrat-Green government, but there are blunt statements at state and federal level from social democrats and Greens that the winter without fuel will produce great anger and political upheaval.

In France the centre-right banker President Macron has lost control of the National Assembly to the left. In Britain... who can say what coherence is possible.

There is high risk of another crisis in the Eurozone as there was a decade ago.

In response–even to questions about the effect of the Ukraine war on gasoline prices–the US President has said the war will be fought “for as long as it takes”.... Takes to do what? There can be no military victory, there will be no humiliation of Russia. Peace becomes more elusive as Ukraine is destroyed. Ukraine is not a level platform. The territories in the east cover what was an energy and resources powerhouse of the Russian empire, and the Soviet Union. Rebuilt after each World War, run downhill by oligarchs after independence, and battered in war since 2014. The Russians cannot stop advancing while US heavy weapons stand back and hit not only military opponents but civilian populations in Donets. Our rules based order is murderous here as elsewhere in the world. Democratic ideals need to respect rights of minorities. Gigantic defence budgets need to be diverted to save the planet.

what title? unfinished

If we are to think clearly about the United States we have to think also about China and Russia.

The Chinese foreign minister has again said he is ready to recalibrate China's relations with Australia but that Australia needs to correct its understanding of China.  This is the simplest explanation of the necessary adjustment that I have seen.

But, but, but the oligarchs of strategic hoohaa will say.  

Foolish misjudgement of China is not new. Exactly 40 years ago when I was head of the North and South Asia Division in the Department of Foreign Affairs I received a delegation of more matured officers of the department to tell me the policy, for which I was responsible and for which I had drafted the 1980 cabinet submission, of working to assist China with its reform policies was folly. I was told by the genteel elders that we were watching a dirty trick comparable to the New Economic Policy in the Soviet Union that Stalin crushed in 1928. 

Or someone might, noting very recent intensification of China's relations with Russia, unearth the Record of Conversation of Owen Harries from lunch with the Soviet Embassy in 1980. Harries was speech writer for Malcolm Fraser and much more, shaper of Fraser's fiercely anti-Soviet speeches, accepting of Fraser's united front with China, invited to lunch by Soviet diplomats to write in his record of the conversation that the Sovs said to him "one day we will get back together again with China and then we will fuck you at both ends". The intelligence czars who have made beds in the Albanese office, plus the chiefs of ASPI and the Lowy Hubricator are today's old guards to defend old perspectives. 

We are in a mess. We are stuck with allegiance to the concept of Rules Based International Order which is a ratbag collation of inconsistent arguments for acceptance of American dominance where that is sliding away. We have put several hundred million dollars of old army toys and more on the madcap adventure of defeating Russia in Ukraine... to the last Ukrainian. We seem oblivious to the rise of social and political disorder in the US and even more so among the Europeans, where politics is polarising and the cost of following the US and NATO in closing relations with Russia in economic recession and social misery. The suckerisation of the west is perhaps best illustrated by Vogue giving its cover to an oligarchically associated and enriched President Zelinskyy enveloping his wife: Zelenskyy who who has destroyed opposition parties and non-government media, while sacking his secret police chief and chief prosecutor because some of their staff are in parts of Ukraine under government by the new republics of Luhansk and and Donets, and working their. This self-proclaimed republics products of the refusal of Zelenskyy and predecessor to implement the so called Minsk agreements. These agreements followed on from repression of Russian speaking Ukrainians and turmoil over the president in 2013 choosing closer association with Russia rather than the EU and NATO. And the notorious entanglement of the US in oversight of the coup of February 2014. Efforts have been made to suppress, erase, from YouTube the conversation of then US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland with Geoffrey Pyatt, US ambassador in Kyiv. This survives:

Nuland now occupies the most senior career position in the State Department, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs. President Biden was Vice President back then. There is a stern resolve to repress any information about Biden's son who may have been deeply involved in corruption in Ukraine. Donald Trump shamelessly tried to twist Zelenskyy's arm, to get dirt on the Bidens with leverage of denying aid to Ukraine. But the involvement of the apotheosis of dirt in the matter does not prove his suspicions wrong.

There is a pattern. The people who run the show remain the people who run the show. Antony Blinken now Secretary of State was among other things Deputy Secretary of State under Obama, also close to Biden as his national security advisor. His wikipedia story says he helped craft policy towards Afghanistan. An earlier sign of his quality of judgement, when he was chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was his advocacy for invading Iraq. A champion of and frequently advocating for a Rules Based International Order, he has a deep commitment to aggression and no understanding of peace. 

Aircraft in NATO's tactical command and control of Ukraine air defences

 

I am just parking these images here for the time being...

This first is unmanned, flying far above commercial aviation, based in Sicily. Able to stay on post for many hours. 

That Global Hawk is providing electronic intelligence data probably including to this beast below. A Rivet Joint, an AWACS, airborne warning and control system. The extent to which these NATO units directly talk to crews on the ground in Ukraine or via other channels command I don’t know. There may be Ukraine staff on board. The air war in Ukraine is between Russia and NATO. This aircraft is alongside commercial traffic as you see. It may be based at Mildenhall, one of many US bases in the UK labeled as RAF bases.

This is Turkish airlines regular route Istanbul to Moscow, skirting the war zone. 

This is Etihad going to Chicago from Abu Dhabi last night, over Iran, then up the Caspian, then Russia. 

My interest is in basic facts. 

The Age of Stupidity, Bewilderment and Enthusiastic Folly

A draft essay potentially for John Menadue's blog

I need to begin with some sweeping observations, because I believe that if Australia is to be able prosper and be an harmonious society some sweeping changes are necessary. 

Australia has a damaged tertiary education sector, first because of the flight of students to the money in accounting and commerce; second because the Morrison Government set fees deliberately to discourage teaching and study of subjects that would enable the development of free-thinking minds with an awareness of history and of other societies; third because in the wake of 9/11 universities rushed to build departments of security studies that train minds to think in adversarial terms. I have not seen these security organisations presenting views on one of the major threats to our whole framework of  security and identity: the drift of the United States into oligopoly and fascism.

Economics as a body of knowledge in the west focuses on Darwinian notions of survival in competition … when evolutionary science has for the most part moved on to see that evolutionary progress occurs mainly because of collaboration. Narrow Darwinian perspectives of conflict and survival of the fittest are driving forces for chewing up the planet. We have to rethink many things, escape narrow Darwinian perspectives, to find ourselves on safer ground. We also need to be aware that China, committed to globalism, has been victim of trade war assaults and is actively pursuing other ways of making products and using money, away from sanctions and the US dollar. So my point is not academic: we need to be aware of the ideological basis of market economics.

We are an adversarial society. Going to war more often than most, almost uniquely sending our heroes to distant battles where our interests are obscure; where our involvement may be illegal or supporting the illegal but we don’t care — because it’s a blind and perverse element of belief in a ‘rules based international order’. The broader population remains isolated from war, oblivious of the violence, violation, killing, destruction, hunger, despair, and total upheaval that are the essence of warfare. 

We are addicted to loyalty to sporting teams and gambling, filled with need for winning and defeat; admiring of Australian cricketers who mired the sport in sledging. In the New Guinea highlands the introduction of Rugby League reduced enthusiasm for constant war; less so in Australia. Many of us are addicted to computer games, most of them involving killing. Big careers are made in law, fighting for issues or money or property; our politics, heavily infested with lawyers, is contestatorial. Loving the look of men and women in uniform; enjoying entitlement to strut in uniform. In politics no uniforms, but factional feuding–fighting–that diminishes focus on national interest. Our parliaments are unrelentingly conflictual. At the last national election we saw a drift of voters away from the self-stuck, self-struck major parties. Whether this is clearly understood by the major parties is not clear. The marginal Labor majority in the House of Representative may mean a stubbornness in Labor at a time when collaboration essential. 

We face as a planet dual threats of climate change and of nuclear war, more serious than at any time in history. 

The Executive Editor of the South China Morning Post, of Hong Kong, wrote in an email on 17 July about the death of Shinzo Abe that “[h]istory is often a summary of accidents”. This sounds a simple notion but look closely and compare with what great leaders believe they do; history is what happens when you dream of something else, often enough. We could look upon history also as the detritus left by great men who in their determination cause great harms. Robert MacNamara former head of the Ford motor company, former US Defense Secretary during the Vietnam War, subsequently chief of the World Bank,  thirty years ago wrote a book about ‘blundering into disaster’, expressing disappointment that people were not like him, doing things with orderly discipline. But in counterpoint, at Reykjavik around the same time, the chiefs of the US and Soviet tribes, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sent their advisors out of the room so they could discuss the dismantling of nuclear weapons… such a foolish and blundersome notion, quickly diminished by the orderly men behind them. We will all be killed by sound consistent thinking. There was agreement achieved on a treaty to eliminate intermediate range nuclear missiles from Europe. This eventually ran down into the ground. (We should bear in mind that in NATO planning of defence against the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War there was heavy reliance on the NATO side on theatre nuclear weapons to meet the preponderant conventional capacity of the Warsaw Pact countries.)

Other writers in this blog in recent days have produced a body of good sense on strategic policy, relations with China, connection to NATO, etc… leaving me needing first to recommend that everyone read their work. They need to be published as collection of important essays. John Menadue did a great service to the new Labor Government assembling recommendations in many essays during the campaign. But now that the tadpoles of Opposition have become hopping frogs with ministerial power there is greater need to put sensible ideas before government and its advisors. There are two very large ideas of first importance. 

• First the need to understand cultural and language differences in relations with China, eloquently articulated by Jocelyn Chey and Wanning Sun. 
• Second the need to stop thinking in conflictual terms and build a strategic environment on the basis of cooperation. 

Teow Loon Ti binds this together with the business of relations with China, as does Geoff Raby. 

Mike Scrafton and Brian Toohey make important comments on the problems of the defence and security areas of government and their power over the prime minister and defence minister who have arrived on the one hand with background education and work in economics and the union movement and law and industrial law on the other. 

The tale is wagging the dog, defence force strategic views still are strangely taken as appropriate for national strategy, a folly, as I pointed out here, several years ago. This dog is, of course, tethered by a leash to the grand (and now foolish and dangerous) strategic designs of the United States. The lack of vision and sense of national interest is disturbing. 

There are four globally important matters that lead me to the view that US strategic policy is now foolish and dangerous. I write having had responsibilities in relation to the relations with the United States in the Washington embassy and the Department of Defence in Canberra, and China both in Canberra and Beijing. The four areas are: 

• Ukraine and the long war coming between the US and Russia in Ukraine; 
• North Asia and the Pacific and the folly of hunger for war with China; 
• the Middle East and hunger for war with Iran; and 
• the cavalier approach to the global threats of climate change and nuclear war. 

There is also combination with the coming likely decline and disintegration of Europe; a  Europe riding to war with Russia as Napoleon did, to destroy his empire and kill half the horses of Europe; as also Hitler did, convinced of strategic necessity, creating in Ukraine a boiling pot of anguish, corruption, hatred and capacity to bring down the chandeliers again. 

This is my 1000 word limit here. I will write about the grand follies and dangers separately.

Elements for a strategic perspective for Australia

As published in John Menadue's blog, 27 June 2022

A national strategy needs to encompass all that we can do to build harmony, particularly in our part of the world, diminishing prospects for conflict. Image: iStock

As the Australian prime minister heads for the Nato summit in Madrid on 29-30 June, there is churn in the global strategic situation. The Albanese government has thus far taken strongly supportive positions towards US policy in both Asia and Ukraine. We are supporting flawed postures.

The government may well be following elements of public opinion but poll driven policy is not wise, no matter how strong in a democracy public opinion may be. Government must lead sensibly. We the Australian public are in a vacuum of news and notions of strategic and foreign policy concern. This is dangerous, leaving most people to run on unfounded worries. We are in a period without the parliament sitting. The government nonetheless needs very soon to set out a strategic perspective for the nation (and especially for the Green and Teal elements in community and parliament)… which absolutely should not be based on defence force threat perceptions, as the previous government’s policy seemed to be. If you start by defining threats, as defence assessments do, you just get a list of problems from which to claim funds for weapons. A national strategy needs to encompass all that we can do to build harmony, particularly in our part of the world, diminishing prospects for conflict.

Key elements in a new strategic policy need to be:

• That China is not an enemy and is victim of a lot of propaganda. Our relations with China must be based on interests not hysteria
• That the United States is entering into a period of instability at home and overreach abroad. The US’s declared intent to use the Ukraine war to diminish Russia is neither healthy nor attainable. The US provocation of war with China is contrary to our interests as well as common sense
• That the shift to discussing the potential for use of tactical nuclear weapons is an existential threat to the planet
• That the war in Ukraine and the continued delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine is destroying Ukraine
• Nothing will alter the certainty of Ukrainian military defeat, or descent towards very destructive guerrilla warfare. The best daily military sitrep is here There is no sanity in destroying the country to save it
• That continued delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine will not reverse the rapid depletion of Ukraine’s armed forces, will increase the direction of fire onto civilian populations and diversion of weapons to the black market
• That the serious threat of food shortage in the middle east and beyond cannot be eased without a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine. Ukraine mined its ports (and so might the Russians, Ukraine will not remove the mines while there is a threat from Russian naval forces (and removing them will not be quick, and rail and road options are limited
• That resolve in the EU in support of Ukraine will be seriously dented as winter approaches. The fiscal and monetary problems of many EU countries are serious, and for next winter there is no alternative to gas supplies from Russia. The granting of candidate status for membership of the EU to Ukraine does not admit Ukraine to the EU soon. Ukraine has to reduce corruption and there will be other obstacles, compare the position of Turkiya which sought membership in 1987
• That sanctions against Russia have (putting aside propaganda baloney) been effective mainly in altering Russia’s trade to the east and south. The ruble is the best performing currency of 2022
• That there is prospect of global economic and financial divide, with Russia and China and the BRICS countries and more of Asia, Africa, and Latin America developing trade patterns and currency connections away from the US and EU; Australia’s position in this situation must be based on sensible articulation of national interest
• Australia’s dealings with the South Pacific and Asia must relate to realities there, not projection or intervention of strategic partnerships
• Australia has no permanent friends in NATO, AUKUS, Quad, or Five Eyes; Australia must base its posture on interests not mateship memes
• If the government can accept even half of these propositions, it will underscore the need to be prudent at the Madrid NATO summit

Indonesian President Widodo will be in Madrid, as chair of the G20 until the Bali summit of the G20 in November. He will seek to shift the US and UK away from their declaration that they will not attend the Bali summit if Russia is there. Prime Minister Albanese has assured President Widodo that Australia will attend.

The period from now to the Bali summit on 15-16 November will see much movement in the variables above, not least with the US House and part-Senate elections on 8 November.

This is an entry in the blog of a retired Russian defence force officer, published on 11 July 2022 here:

https://m.vz.ru/opinions/2022/7/11/1166515.html  

The blog is in Russian, this below is an untidy literal Google translation. If you open that link (or any other) in the Chrome browser you will be offered a translation. You may need to duck off and make yourself a coffee while Ms Google thinks about that.

It is of course a Russian perspective but frank and informative about the evolution of war in the air space since February, including with the present circumstance of US/NATO participation at tactical level, difficult for the Russians. There is context that the Ukraine ground forces have suffered badly in direct conflict. So there is a retreat to firing shells and rockets from a distance, including at civilian targets in Donbass. 

NATO aircraft and satellites etc can see Russian aircraft and missiles and missile launchers from the moment they move and where they sit, and are closely involved in command and control of Ukraine's air defence system, certainly from the AWACS and other assets outside Ukraine... and on the basis of Washington Post reporting there are US defence personnel inside Ukraine.

You will see that Mr Shurygin is a member of the Izborsk Club. This is a north American defence community paper on the Isborsk Club.

This copy and paste has advertisements, outlinks, still visible.

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Why Ukrainian air defense has not yet been destroyed Vladislav Shurygin military expert, member of the Izborsk Club

July 11, 2022, 09:08

A discussion has begun on the Web about the actions of the domestic Aerospace Forces (VKS) to suppress the Ukrainian air defense and why the Ukrainian air defense still retains some of its combat capabilities.

Before proceeding to the presentation of my position, let me state a few basic points.

Now there will be a piece of scientific text from the collection “Tactics of RTV Air Force. Fundamentals of Combat Use of Forces and Means of Aerospace Attack”, developed by the teaching staff of the Military Engineering Institute of the Siberian Federal University. It is very important to read it for a better understanding of the issue. The topic of discussion almost entirely fits into the concept of the main forms of use of aerospace attack forces in offensive operations. These are:

- air campaign;
- air offensive operation (VNO);
- systematic military operations;
- air space operation (VKO).

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At the same time, air campaigns and operations are the main forms of the operational-strategic use of large groupings of the Airborne Forces, and systematic combat operations are the main form of their operational-tactical use. The air campaign is a combination of the first and subsequent air offensive operations, united by a common concept and aimed at achieving the most important military-strategic goals in the theater of operations.

The duration of an air campaign in a theater of operations, including air offensive operations and systematic combat operations of air attack forces, can be up to 30 days. For the first time, the air campaign as a form of combat use of the Air Force was defined during the war of the coalition forces against Iraq. An air offensive operation (AOO) is the main form of using air attack means (AOS) in a war using only conventional weapons.

An air offensive operation is understood as a set of interrelated and coordinated in terms of purpose, place and time of hostilities carried out in the theater of operations by operational-tactical forces using only conventional weapons and a limited number of strategic aviation according to a single plan and plan. VNO is carried out with the aim of gaining air superiority by destroying enemy aircraft on the ground and in the air, suppressing its air defense system and disorganizing the work of control, communications and support systems.

The duration of the operation is from three to five days. After the first air offensive operation, the combined NATO air forces, as a rule, move on to systematic combat operations, solving particular tasks. One of them is the provision of constant fire impact on the enemy in order to disrupt command and control and demoralize the personnel. The conduct of the second and subsequent air operations is determined by the degree of achievement of the goals of the first air defense and was coordinated with the actions of land and sea groupings of troops.

The main method of using aviation and cruise missiles in defeating the enemy and gaining air superiority is the implementation of massive air and missile strikes (MARU) against airfields, centers and points of radar detection, guidance and control, and communications. For those wishing to explore the issue in more detail, I advise you to read here .

On this topic

The words "Be careful!" don't make sense in Donetsk How Donbass and Ukraine fight with stamps Ukrainians are forcibly driven to "fight with Russia"

Everything according to the rules

And now about the actions of our VKS. During the first three days, we delivered massive strikes on the main and alternate airfields, on radar posts, on the control posts of the Air Force-Air Defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on communication centers - and this fully fits into the strategy of the VNO outlined above.

In the first strike, our VKS destroyed the radar network, violating the unified radar field of Ukraine, thereby creating an information vacuum about the situation in the sky. These strikes decentralized the air defense system of Ukraine, deprived it of the ability to act as a single combat system and adequately respond to threats. At the same time, airfields were attacked. The runway, taxiing, weapons depots and fuel and lubricants were put out of action. Aircraft were destroyed in parking lots. Also, strikes were made on strategic stocks of fuel and lubricants, aviation weapons depots. There are at least four waves of such attacks. At the same time, massive strikes were carried out on the reconnoitered positions of the air defense system.

How can you evaluate the effectiveness of this stage? Our Aerospace Forces were able to disorganize the Ukrainian Air Force-Air Defense, destroy most of the radar and air defense command posts, disable most of the airfields and suppress up to 50% of Ukrainian air defense systems. The Air Force-Air Defense of Ukraine was unable to resist our actions as a whole, to carry out organized air defense of their military and industrial facilities, and from the third day they switched to single sorties of surviving combat aircraft and ambush operations of their air defense systems.

Until now, the actions of the Ukrainian Air Force have been episodic, without any significant impact on the course of hostilities.

Until mid-March, we were moving towards the conquest of complete air supremacy. There are three points associated with this term - more precisely, three states. The first is “air superiority”, in which the side that has achieved it has the initiative, suppresses the activity of the enemy and, as they say, dictates its own conditions. The enemy only "snarls" and defends himself, retaining certain opportunities to respond to blows and, in turn, also deliver episodic blows, at great risk to the forces involved in this.

The second is air supremacy in a certain area, when in a certain area where this or that operation is carried out, superiority is first created, and then air supremacy after the destruction of enemy aircraft operating here, the disabling of airfields and the suppression of ground air defense. Enemy air defense can retain separate systems, most often MANPADS, it is also possible to save air defense systems, but devoid of means of controlling the air situation, with the threat of immediate destruction when switched on to the active mode, they can no longer provide any effective counteraction to aviation. We achieved such air superiority over Mariupol by the end of April.

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And there is the concept of complete air supremacy, when the enemy's air defense system is completely disorganized and destroyed at all its levels - from the Air Force to the object and military air defense. Separate systems such as MANPADS can be preserved, but this is no longer any factor influencing the course of hostilities.

An example of air supremacy is the two Iraqi wars, during which Iraq's backward air defense was completely suppressed and ceased to exist in an organized manner. In Afghanistan and Libya, air superiority was simply a factor - due to the enemy's complete lack of air defense systems. But already during the war in Yugoslavia (1999), the combined air forces were only able to achieve air superiority, but they never received air supremacy - until the last day of the war, the Yugoslav air defense retained strength and combat capabilities, snapped, which forced the Americans and their allies to work from altitudes of 6000 meters and above.

Ukrainian-American air defense

What is the situation in the NWO sky today? Let me remind you: after the first three days of the operation to actively destroy the air defense infrastructure, we destroyed most of the radar stations, disabled most of the military airfields, destroyed at least half of Ukrainian aviation on the ground and in the air, and defeated the main air defense command posts and the main combat control centers , guidance points, and other objects. Accordingly, the hunt for anti-aircraft missile systems began and was constantly conducted. In the first few days, most of the SAM was destroyed, at least definitely more than half.

At first, the Armed Forces of Ukraine still tried to cover their military, rear, industrial and political facilities and daily lost anti-aircraft missile systems, lost aircraft, because the predictable appearance of Ukrainian aircraft in the areas of the covered objects, the operation of their air defense systems in the conditions of our complete control of the air situation made them enough reachable targets. But two months later, the Armed Forces of Ukraine changed their tactics and moved to a qualitatively different level of confrontation. This was due to the fact that the NATO coalition led by the United States joined the military operation.

Instead of the destroyed radar stations, communication centers and command posts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, American means of airspace control took over their role.

- AWACS aircraft, which are on combat duty around the clock in the air along the border with Ukraine, heavy reconnaissance drones, reconnaissance satellites, radio interception tools with which the Americans opened our air defense system, the actions of our aviation, and these data, after processing, were transmitted in real time to command APU points.

In fact, Ukraine received from the Americans a stable and powerful air defense information system. It was enough for our plane to tear off the front pillar, as the American AWACS, American drones, American satellites were already transmitting information to the US command centers about the take-off of Russian aircraft, from where they immediately appeared at the Ukrainians via automated systems. Today, this unity of NATO information capabilities and Ukrainian command centers is the basis of the combat work of Ukrainian air defense.

I must say that Ukraine carefully prepared for the war. This training was facilitated by the fact that the Ukrainian air defense was armed with the same weapon systems and detection equipment as the Russian one, had the same combat work algorithms, the same tactics. The same military school of anti-aircraft warfare. Therefore, the Ukrainian command knew both the strengths and weaknesses of the Russian Aerospace Forces. They were supplemented by US military advisers who had been preparing for a confrontation with our Aerospace Forces for many years.

As part of the preparations for the war, the Armed Forces of Ukraine secretly transferred part of their aviation to the territory of other countries - to Bulgaria, Romania and Poland. In total, up to 100 aircraft and helicopters were deployed there, guaranteed to take them out from under the blows.

In addition, Ukraine conducted an audit of its vast fleet (more than 1,000 pieces) of obsolete and out-of-service aircraft that it has in storage. During November-February, the most maintainable aircraft were secretly transported to aircraft repair enterprises in Poland and Bulgaria, where local flight specialists began to repair and restore them with the help of Soviet aircraft repair kits available there, left over from the time of the Warsaw Pact. In total, up to 30 MiG-29 and Su-25 aircraft and the same number of helicopters were restored in this way.

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New tactics of Ukraine

The anti-aircraft missile systems of Ukraine, after heavy losses in the first weeks, switched to the ambush mode. Let me explain right away: ambush actions and guerrilla actions are completely different concepts. Guerrilla actions differ from ambush ones in that during guerrilla actions, air defense systems that are in ambush or simply disguised in positions do not have proactive information about the appearance of the enemy. And the enemy is detected either visually, when VNOS observers report about him, who simply observe the sky with the help of optics, or receive information from radio interception equipment and even agents that, say, some kind of aircraft is flying from point A to point B , and in this case, the SAM crews try to turn on and catch this target at the moment of approach, after which they immediately turn off and change their location. This is partisanship.

In Yugoslavia in 1999, at the last stage, when most of the radar stations were disabled, information about NATO overflights was received from air surveillance posts and agents, which also played the role of Russian military intelligence deployed there.

In Ukraine, the situation is qualitatively different. Here, the air defense systems operate in ambush mode. As I said, the entire American military machine is working for Ukraine, and above all, a very powerful airspace control system. That is, American air surveillance systems track the movements of our aircraft and UAVs, and as soon as these aircraft are over areas where certain Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile systems are on alert, they simply give them target designation: azimuth, altitude, speed, range to the target, and almost always the target type. And then they give the command to turn on at the moment when the target, that is, our aircraft, appears directly in the zone of reaching the air defense system. In the minimum time, the radar search is turned on, the target is detected and the missiles are launched, after which the calculation is immediately curtailed and leaves the area, from where it was launched. It is almost impossible to detect such air defense systems until they are turned on. At the same time, the positions of such "ambushes" are carefully camouflaged and protected by cover units. All this has sharply reduced the ability to detect Ukrainian air defense systems.

There are simply no Ukrainian air defense systems, especially serious ones (such as Buk or the same S-300), at a distance where our artillery can reach them. The Ukrainian command is not fools to be substituted under our artillery strikes. Since they have complete information about our movements in the air, it is not at all necessary for them to all be deployed in the Donbass, as someone wrote. On the contrary, they are dispersed throughout the territory of Ukraine and are located in places where they can intercept our attack aircraft over their strategic targets. More precisely, on the approaches to them: in the area of ​​bridges, crossings, industrial facilities of the military-industrial complex and other strategically important objects, which, as they are sure, sooner or later Russia will try to hit. Directly above the battlefield, where our attack aircraft and our helicopters work,

The main reason for the protracted fight against Ukrainian air defense is that here we are fighting not against brigades and battalions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but against the Aerospace Forces of the most powerful military power - the United States,

which supports the Ukrainian Air Force-Air Defense with all the resources at its disposal, realizing how important their role is.

The fight against air defense is a complex task

So how do we deal with Ukrainian air defense? Someone wrote that this is the main task of the "special forces" of the GRU and the Airborne Forces - to identify and destroy such targets. Even sniper weapons were mentioned as an effective means of dealing with these dimensional and weakly protected targets.

Such tasks are really set before the special forces and the rifles are really capable of hitting such targets, disabling equipment and even causing the detonation of missiles. But you need to understand that in the conditions of the Ukrainian theater of operations (sparse, narrow forest belts, steppes, density of Ukrainian defense, often disloyal population) such deep (and Ukrainian air defense systems are definitely not located in the reach of our artillery) objects can easily become a one-way road for any the most prepared group. Therefore, a successful fight against air defense systems for special forces is from the section of random luck. Of course, there are also Hurricanes and Iskanders to combat enemy air defenses, but their use also requires accurate target designation.

The fight against the Ukrainian, or rather the integrated Ukrainian-American air defense is a complex task that can only be solved by a whole range of tools:

aviation reconnaissance from electronic warfare aircraft and UAVs, satellite reconnaissance, undercover reconnaissance (including from the field from residents), multiplied by very painstaking analytical work. For example, by analyzing the statistics of Ukrainian missile launches, when we roughly know that, for example, two Buk-M1 or S-300s are operating in the Izyum region, and then we try to track them down and destroy them. And, of course, the highest professionalism of our pilots, missilemen, special forces and gunners.

The combat algorithm from detecting a Ukrainian air defense system to striking it should take a few minutes, and not turn into a multi-stage system for transmitting information across all levels of combat control. Here, the work of an automated control system integrated with means of reconnaissance and destruction of precision-guided munitions is necessary. Only by outstripping and anticipating the enemy, we will be able to defeat him. Chasing and simply reacting to his attacks means giving him the initiative.

And the last. Of course, this has already been written and said, I will only repeat. We have relatively compact Aerospace Forces, and our combat aircraft, which can be used as front-line aviation, are spread over a front of 1,500 km. Unfortunately, they simply cannot physically become today the decisive element in suppressing the enemy, which we would like. Now this role is unconditionally performed by our artillery and missile forces.

The fight against air defense is ongoing, but we must understand that we are dealing with an enemy who is aware of our tactics, because he fights with the same weapons, studied from the same textbooks, understands our vulnerabilities and our advantages. But most importantly, it relies on the huge information and technical support of our opponents in the face of the United States, Britain and others.

We are fighting Ukrainian air defense, we are hunting for air defense systems, aircraft, UAVs. This is a complex task, and in talking about it, we should not oversimplify and profane the challenges we face. CBO is a severe test, and we must find accurate answers to all questions. This is the only way we can defeat the enemy. And this is by no means a clown in Kyiv.

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