Not So Smart Power

Any serious thinking person seriously cringed at the recent testiment that a certain political party is totally unserious about Nat'l Defense and Foreign Policies.

“This is what we call smart power. Using every possible tool and partner to advance peace and security. Leaving no one on the sidelines. Showing respect even for one’s enemies. Trying to understand, in so far as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view. Helping to define the problems, determine the solutions. That is what we believe in the 21st century will change — change the prospects for peace. “

Ex Sec o State HRC totally blew it.

Smart Power is all about engaging disparate allies and fence sitters to hop on the cool train and confound, deter, restrain and ultimately defeat Great Satan's enemies.

Like getting the Royal Saudi Air Force, the Royal Jordanian Air Force and Little Satan's Air Force to help with a Persian air raid against new clear chicanery...

Smart Power is NOT about chatting up enemies with respect.

Indeed, it is all about disrespect – either for their illegit regimes, policies or their perceived national interests. Multilateral in Ancient Speak.

"The many financial, cultural, rhetorical, economic, espionage-related, and military actions that states can take short of general war to influence political outcomes abroad. It most crucially should involve a revival of political warfare: the non-violent push of ideas, people, facts, and events with which our adversaries would rather not contend"

 

See, the original thinker upper of Smart Power – Dr Nye defines Smart Power as a sweet hot mash up betwixt Hard and Soft Power. Like “Speak softly and carry a big stick” or in Cold War, hard power was used to deter Soviet aggression and soft power was used to erode faith in Bolshevikish Communism.

Another contender for the Soft Power thinker upper status is ex Ambassador Susan Nossel, yet her piece in Foreign Affairs is more like a pity party about how the bi partisan neocons totally twisted Progressive Foreign Policy interventions to be about intervening when American interests where at stake instead of the Progressive belief of intervening only when American interests would not or ever be served.

Even so - she advocates disrespecting enemies with Smart Power: 

Using diplomacy, understanding of history, personal bridges (personality analysis of leaders), supporting the cause/issue through scientific research/analytic arguments, molding public opinion, pointing out human-right violations (if present) and (indirect/limited) use of hard power (war-readiness demonstration through technological and operational superiority in military exercises/war games as well as published/presented work in science of weaponry, special taxes on imports from non - coöperating countries, sanctions, embargos, suspension of privileges to use air space, airports and sea ports). 

HRC's crazy assetted chiz about respecting enemies is a total buzz kill – a real live WTF moment. And shows again the unseriousness of a certain political party in the modern world.



Pic - "Military Power is the bedrock of a nation's power - from which all power flows"

Infamy Day

 

The 7 December 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was one of the great defining moments in history. A single carefully-planned and well-executed stroke removed the United States Navy's battleship force as a possible threat to the Japanese Empire's southward expansion. America, unprepared and now considerably weakened, was abruptly brought into the Second World War as a full combatant.

Eighteen months earlier, 32 had transferred the United States Fleet to Pearl Harbor as a presumed deterrent to Japanese aggression. The Japanese military, deeply engaged in the seemingly endless war it had started against China in mid-1937, badly needed oil and other raw materials. Commercial access to these was gradually curtailed as the conquests continued. 

In July 1941 the Western powers effectively halted trade with Japan. From then on, as the desperate Japanese schemed to seize the oil and mineral-rich East Indies and Southeast Asia, a Pacific war was virtually inevitable. 

By late November 1941, with peace negotiations clearly approaching an end, informed U.S. officials (and they were well-informed, they believed, through an ability to read Japan's diplomatic codes) fully expected a Japanese attack into the Indies, Malaya and probably the Philippines. Completely unanticipated was the prospect that Japan would attack east, as well. 

The U.S. Fleet's Pearl Harbor base was reachable by an aircraft carrier force, and the Japanese Navy secretly sent one across the Pacific with greater aerial striking power than had ever been seen on the World's oceans. Its planes hit just before 8AM on 7 December. Within a short time five of eight battleships at Pearl Harbor were sunk or sinking, with the rest damaged. Several other ships and most Hawaii-based combat planes were also knocked out and over 2400 Americans were dead.

Soon after, Japanese planes eliminated much of the American air force in the Philippines, and a Japanese Army was ashore in Malaya. 

These great Japanese successes, achieved without prior diplomatic formalities, shocked and enraged the previously divided American people into a level of purposeful unity hardly seen before or since. For the next five months, until the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May, Japan's far-reaching offensives proceeded untroubled by fruitful opposition. 

American and Allied morale suffered accordingly. Under normal political circumstances, an accomodation might have been considered. 

However, the memory of the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor fueled a determination to fight on.

Once the Battle of Midway in early June 1942 had eliminated much of Japan's striking power, that same memory stoked a relentless war to reverse her conquests and remove her, and her German and Italian allies, as future threats to World peace.

Source - US Navy Historical Center
 

Pic - "Pearl Harbor"

WoW!!

The Watchers Council- it's the oldest, longest running cyber comte d'guere ensembe in existence - started online in 1912 by Sirs Jacky Fisher and Winston Churchill themselves - an eclective collective of cats both cruel and benign with their ability to put steel on target (figuratively - natch) on a wide variety of topictry across American, Allied, Frenemy and Enemy concerns, memes, delights and discourse.

Every week these cats hook up each other with hot hits and big phazed cookies to peruse and then vote on their individual fancy catchers

Thus, sans further adieu (or a don't)

Council Winners

• *First place with 2 2/3 votes!-The Right Planet – #Ferguson: If You Like Your Facts, You Can Keep Your Facts
• Second place with 2 1/3 votes –Joshuapundit-The Rams ‘Hands Up’ Protest Doesn’t Bother Me..But Congress’s Is Obscene
• Third place with 2 votes –The Noisy Room – The New Axis of Evil Waging Unconventional Warfare
• Fourth place with 1 1/3 votes –Rhymes With Right – Some Thoughts On Ferguson
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Simply Jews – Assisting Lisa Goldman in her balancing act
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –VA Right! - Article V Convention – Solution or Pandora’s Box?
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – World Police
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Bookworm Room – Bringing common sense to climate science (and life)
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –Nice Deb – Megyn Kelly Asks Judge Napolitano: ‘Does Obama Have an Adult Relationship with the Truth?’
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –The Razor – So Where’s The Inflation?
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –The Independent Sentinel – Obama Feels ‘Incredibly Strongly’ About Illegal Aliens Getting Obamacare  

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 1/3 votes! –Matti Friedman/The Atlantic – What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Second place with 2 votes –Don Surber -Do Not Rebuild In Ferguson submitted by Nice Deb
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes –Fred Maroun/Times Of Israel – If I Were Israeli.. submitted by Simply Jews
• Fourth place with 1 1/3 vote –Sultan Knish –Being Thankful For The Left submitted by The Noisy Room
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote –Joseph Sarkisian/Cicero Magazine – American Grand Strategy or Grand Illusion? submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote – Benjamin Weingarten/The Blaze – 10 major takeaways from the House Benghazi report that the media is completely ignoring submitted by The Watcher (h/t, The Noisy Room)
• Seventh place *t* with 2/3 votes -Robert Avrech/Jewish Action -Warning: Hollywood’s Coming for Your Home and Children submitted by Bookworm Room
• Seventh place *t* with 2/3 votes -Rebel Pundit – The Ferguson Disaster: The Wreckage of Obama & Marx submitted by The Right Planet
• Seventh place *t* with 2/3 votes -Thomas Lifeson/American Thinker – The Left’s War On Civil Society’ submitted by The Watcher
• Eighth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Right On The Left Coast – Obama: “Teachers Suck” submitted by Rhymes with Right
• Eighth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Daily Caller – Eric Cantor’s Son Is A Member Of The UVA Fraternity Accused Of Gang Rape submitted by VA Right!

See you next week!

COIN Diss

COunter INsurgency tactical delights get shot up by a super saavy Field Grader - yup - he's been there, done that and got the tee shirt.

Money Shot:

Outside the wire, the counterinsurgency theories were an unqualified failure at the strategic level. The populations were never protected in either country. The insurgent forces were never fully defeated in either country—and are stronger now than they have been at any time since 9/11. The Afghan and Iraqi governments remain the third and seventh most corrupt governments in the world, and do not have the support of their people. The armed forces for both countries, despite the decade-long effort and tens of billions of dollars that the U.S. spent training them, are virtually incapable of conducting even basic security.

It is incomprehensible that with such an extensive, publicly available record of failure—which cost the United States $2 trillion in direct outlays, 6,842 U.S. troops killed and 52,281 wounded in action—that the designers of this failed concept are given any credibility. The conclusive evidence of the failure is on graphic display right now, in both countries: after six full years and tens of billions spent, the U.S.-trained Iraqi army melted away before a few thousand irregular fighters; after the U.S. pulled out of Helmand province in Afghanistan, the Afghan National Security Forces were incapable of preventing an immediate return of the Taliban.

Pic - "Have you ever read a military concept or doctrine publication, or an academic or professional paper about warfare or military operations, and wondered how it came to include such an ill-conceived idea? "

Russian Naval strategy

Oh no!

France looks to be dissing Commonwealth Russia's hot desires for the Mistral class Helo carriers

Even so - it won't effect Russian Commonwealth Naval Strategy...

Russia inherited her entire fleet from the Soviet Union, and that surface fleet was built for one main objective: to protect and support the operations of submarines so that, in the event of hostilities, those subs could fire their missiles at the United States before being destroyed. Today's Russian fleet carries out the same task.

However, the Mistral is built for the fundamentally different naval objectives of carrying out anti-terrorist and anti-pirate operations and evacuating Russian citizens from states convulsed by internal conflicts — in short, for all operations related to the so-called "projection of force." Russian admirals did not welcome changing the combat mission of the fleet and therefore opposed the Mistral. Shipbuilders were even more upset about the deal because they knew they lacked the capability to produce a comparable vessel.

Thus, Russian admirals and defense industry firms stand to benefit the most from France's refusal to deliver the Mistral warships and from Russia's return to a Soviet-style closed economy. That means the Russian armed forces will receive only the military equipment the domestic defense industry is capable of producing — whether they need it or not.

With oil prices falling, corrupt officials see defense spending as their last opportunity to pocket government funds — and they have no intention of sharing that windfall with foreign defense industry competitors. Putin's recently announced policy of substituting Russian goods for previously imported products will enable those senior officials to siphon off a significant portion of budgetary funds while blaming the failure of the government's plan to modernize the military on the insidious machinations of the West. That is what seems to be happening during the endless series of meetings Putin holds with Russia's defense industry leaders.

Russia's plans to project its force to distant locations with the help of the Mistral warship turn out to be unnecessary now that Moscow is rapidly spiraling downward into a confrontation with the West. The Russian navy can again focus on the former tasks of attacking a potential enemy's aircraft carrier groups and protecting nuclear submarines long enough to launch their missiles. That means the admirals do not need any additional training and that Russia's 30- to 40-year-old weapons will suffice for the current Cold War.

Pic - "In wartime, role of Russian Navy lies in making a maximal contribution to actions of Russian armed forces aimed at fastest stopping of aggression against the Russian Federation and its allies on the most favorable terms."

World Police

Global Po Po?

As the world’s dominant political force and military power, Great Satan is like the only nation that will actually go into the world and strike down evil. And she must not shirk that responsibility—especially because she cannot rely on our so-called allies to defend our freedoms or the good intentions of unfun, unfree regimes.

American history shows we spent the first century and a quarter of our independent existence in creating this great nation. But to protect this treasure, we found that we needed to establish the world’s paramount military structure and become the world’s preeminent political power.

l'hyperpuissant!

No great power can treat foreign policy as a spectator sport and hope to remain a great power. A world in which the leading liberal-democratic nation does not assume its role as world policeman will become a world in which dictatorships contend, or unite, to fill the breach. Americans seeking a return to an isolationist garden of Eden—alone and undisturbed in the world, knowing neither good nor evil—will soon find themselves living within shooting range of global pandemonium. It would be a world very much like the 1930s, another decade in which economic turmoil, war weariness, Western self-doubt, American self-involvement, and the rise of ambitious dictatorships combined to produce the catastrophe of World War II.

A final preliminary: To say America needs to be the world’s policeman is not to say we need to be its priest, preaching the gospel of the American way. Priests are in the business of changing hearts and saving souls. Cops merely walk the beat, reassuring the good, deterring the tempted, punishing the wicked. Nor is it to say we should be the world’s martyr. Police work isn’t altruism. It is done from necessity and self-interest. It is done because it has to be and there’s no one else to do it, and because the benefits of doing it accrue not only to those we protect but also, indeed mainly, to ourselves.

Not everyone grows up wanting to be a cop. But who wants to live in a neighborhood, or a world, where there is no cop? Would you? Should the president?

Pic - " The logical extention of 44's Foreign Policy void"

Strategic Overstretch

Has the Posse of Allah got all overstretched?

Hezbollah, a terrorist organization second only to Al Qaeda in the number of Americans it has killed, is nonetheless viewed in heroic terms throughout much of Lebanon by Christians and Muslims—Sunni and Shia alike—for standing against Little Satan and acting as a vanguard in the fight against the Islamic State.

Until the start of the Syrian Civil War, however, Hezbollah, with at least one notable exception, showed little desire for the kind of international operations carried out by Al Qaeda or Iran’s Quds Force. Since the fighting has broken out, however, Hezbollah has deployed some 5000 fighters to Syria, nearly a third of its total fighting strength, with as many as 1000 of its men killed. That would mean that Hezbollah, which has traditionally made up in sheer numbers what the Lebanese Army has lacked in effective strength, could be significantly overstretched.


See,

Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria exposed its lack of direct firepower as well as its inadequate surveillance for guerilla-style warfare in which it is on the receiving end. The conflict now involved jihadis with light weapons and mobile anti-tank missiles facing Hezbollah fighters with similar weapons.

In a sense, Hezbollah had prepared for the wrong war. Long range missiles and short range Katyusha rockets designed for a war against Israel were now of little use. Chinese anti-ship missiles as well as concealed anti-tank and short range missiles in south Lebanon facing Israel seemed of little military value when the real threat to Hezbollah came from across the long and ragged border with Syria.

Hezbollah did not anticipate this and was ill prepared for irregular warfare and border control. It has resorted to erecting fixed positions not unlike what the Israelis erected in south Lebanon.