The US Department of Defense recently promulgated a new “defense” guidance document: “Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense.” I use scare quotes because it just doesn’t seem quite right to use “defense” to describe a document that — like its predecessors — envisions something like an American Thousand-Year Reich.
The greatest shift in emphasis is in the section “Project power despite Anti-Access/Area Denial Challenges.” The “threat” to be countered is that China and Iran “will continue to pursue asymmetric means to counter our power projection capabilities.”
That refers to a long-standing phenomenon: What Pentagon analysts call “Assassin’s Mace” weapons — cheap, agile weapons that render expensive, high-tech, weapons systems ineffective at a cost several orders of magnitude cheaper than the Pentagon’s gold-plated turds. In the context of “area denial,” they include cheap anti-ship mines, surface-to-air missiles, and anti-ship missiles like the Sunburn (which some believe could destroy or severely damage aircraft carriers).
Thus the Pentagon defines as a “threat” a country’s ability to defend itself effectively against attack or to prevent an enemy from putting offensive forces into place to attack it. Yes, you read that right: To the American national security establishment, it’s considered threatening when you prepare to defend yourself against attack by the United States. It’s the perspective of a Family Circus character: “Mommy, he hit me back!” That kind of double standard is pretty common in the National Security State’s assessment of the world.
What can one say of a situation in which America runs a military budget equal to the rest of the industrialized world put together, maintains military bases in half the countries around the globe, routinely intervenes to overthrow governments, rings China with military bases — then solemnly announces that China’s military establishment is “far larger than called for by its legitimate defensive needs?”
Considering that the U.S. considers its “legitimate defensive needs” to encompass outspending the other top ten military powers in the world combined and maintaining the ability to preemptively attack any other country in the world, it’s hard to guess what the Pentagon’s criterion is for determining China’s “legitimate defensive needs.” But it’s safe to say “legitimate” defensive forces don’t extend to the ability for China to defend its territory against attack from the main actual threat facing it: A global superpower trying to turn China’s neighborhood into a battlefield.
And how about attacking Saddam for “making war on his own neighbors” — when the U.S. actively supported his invasion of Iran in the 1980s? Not to mention the U.S. Marines waltzing in and out of most of America’s Caribbean “neighbors” throughout the middle of the 20th century. Did they have “incubator babies” in Nicaragua and Costa Rica back in the 1930s?
To Washington, any country capable of resisting American attack, or of “defying” American commands (whether under a UN Security Council figleaf or not) is by definition a “threat.” And any country inflicting significant losses on U.S. military forces, in the process of defending itself against American military attack, is guilty of aggression (against U.S. attempts to “defend our freedom,” one presumes).
American perceptions of “self-defense” and “aggression” are as distorted as those of Nazi Germany. When the only way you can “defend yourself” against another country’s “threat” is to go to the other side of the world to fight it, because it lacks the logistical capability to project military force more than a few hundred miles outside its own borders — and the main “threat” is its ability to fight back when you attack it — you know something’s pretty messed up.
Translations for this article:
Citations to this article:
- Kevin Carson, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery … and Fighting Back is “Aggression”, Islam Daily, 01/16/12
- Kevin Carson, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery … and Fighting Back is “Aggression”, Dhaka, Bangladesh New Age, 01/25/12
- Kevin Carson, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery … and Fighting Back is “Aggression”, Baltic Review, 01/14/12
- Kevin Carson, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery … and Fighting Back is “Aggression”, Antiwar.com, 01/14/12
Not much has changed in 150 years, eh? Stand up for yourself and the imperial state declares war on everyone, civilians included. Talk about war crimes. I wonder why we don't read about 1861-1865 war crimes? Then we elect the primary sadist statist alcoholic to the presidency? Spooner was right.
I have looked into some of the available technologies. Even without going into ways to enhance conventional armies, navies and air forces (mostly by supplementing high end approaches with cheaper but more numerous “poor man’s” versions in a combined arms way), I can list a few that are plausible now, based on what has become publicly known over the last twenty years or so (that includes some that went mysteriously quiet, as opposed to being known not to work out, which suggests that something came out of them and is being kept low key):-
– Drift cruise missiles really could attack countries like the U.S.A. These involve using transport aircraft, small boats or submarines, or even dirigibles, to deploy balloons out of counter-battery range where they would drift into cruise missile range; as well as carrying cruise missiles, many would be decoys or would carry observation equipment (including UAVs) and/or signal relays (which could also assist navigation). The missiles themselves need not have simple warheads but might carry bomblets or more sophisticated area denial devices and other weaponry (see below), achieving the strategic offensive via the tactical defensive.
– Many of the planetary explorer projects, particularly the Russian Marsokhod project which could cope with any terrain by resorting to wheel walking, have yielded results that can be transferred to ground analogues of UAVs (my own preferred device resembles a model First World War tank with a simple walking mode based on repeated flipping, i.e. not needing sophisticated firmware). Toy robots have contributed a little along these lines, too. Such devices would basically offer direct piercing/cutting/clubbing etc., with a final land mine or possibly fougasse mode (tanks have a simple way to half bury themselves by spinning on the spot). Much has been learned from the reasons for the failure of “bouncing mines” some thirty years ago.
– Planetary explorer technology also offers a simple way to launch a missile from an unprepared site, allowing scoot and shoot rather than the more dangerous shoot and scoot (you have to scoot to avoid counter-battery fire). It is easy to truck drop (like the Beddall bar mine) or air drop something without care and time, if it can open up (like the planned Beagle Mars lander, which didn’t reach Mars) regardless and launch a missile on remote command or if triggered by its own firmware (experiments showed it was easy to train neural nets to recognise standardised camouflage). At its simplest, the missile lies flat on a pallet (like a discarding sabot) which is lobbed up by black powder charges in such a way that the missile tumbles upright and then fires its own engine.
Notice that remote use, if not always remote control, is a common feature. Not only does that make life safer for the users directly by keeping them away from enemy action, but it also makes biological and chemical warfare more practical as it keeps the users away from harmful side effects from that (you really, really don’t even want to be in the backwash of a fougasse that fires sodium or ammonium monofluoroacetate).
I will omit my informed speculation about UAV developments as it might reflect on people I know who work in this and closely related areas. Although I have carefully avoided picking their brains, some might suspect otherwise.
Well apparently our world has not change since world war 2. It has some country who seeks for power.
My recent post אתר לסלולר