Vimy Ridge and the perils of a land war in Eurasia

9 April marks the anniversary of the 1917 attack by the Canadian Corps on the German position atop Vimy Ridge in France.  This is held up as the battle which forged Canada as an independent nation, and that is certainly arguable.  What is also arguable is whether or not it was worth it.  Pierre Burton (spoiler alert) is of the opinion it was not, and the scale of the carnage makes this view compelling.

3598 soldiers of the Canadian Corps were killed and another c. 7000 wounded in a battle which was 90% over in one day, finished in three. For this reason (and that we did what the French and British armies had failed to do) Vimy should also be remembered in the hope that we can avoid it happening again.

Canada lost over 66.000 men in WWI and 45,000 in WWII, so some lessons were learnt, albeit at the expense of the Soviet soldiers who died in heaps fighting the bulk of German forces on the Eastern Front.  My take-away from all of this is "stay out of Europe", and current events are reinforcing that view.

Speaking of the Eastern Front, the Russian shenanigans are in play again in Eastern Ukraine, specifically the Donetsk/Kharkov area.  Hearkening back to my last post, my notional Putin Risk Matrix is looking more like Risk, the game.  An exaggeration of course, but the current government building take-overs and calls for referendums in Donetsk, etc. is exactly the same play as Crimea and shows no signs that the West's stern finger-wagging is in any way a deterrent.

I've heard some vague reports of Ukraine mobilizing some forces to take out the agitators occupying those facilities, and if so it's about time.  I'll not hold my breath, but it could happen.  My point here is that things could get messy, and in this case no-one outside of Ukraine cares enough (proven by lack of concrete, effective action) to start a war over it being carved up. As lethal as modern warfare can be, the Vimy casualties are comparable to US losses in Iraq over an eight year period, so whatever could happen in Ukraine (militarily) won't be WW magnitude.  That said, our tolerance for losses is not what it once (sort of) was so our bar for expenditure of blood is much lower. 

Prediction?  I'll go out on a limb based on available info and say there's another putsch in Donetsk.  Again, no warranty on that opinion is expressed or implied.  I will put money on no Western troops confronting the Russians over this, and hope that I'm right.  That's not because I wish any ill to the Ukrainians, but because if their cause isn't worth enough for them to bleed for it, our people shouldn't either.

  

Greater Eurasian Co-Prosperity Sphere

The trigger for me to reactivate this blog was the Crimea crisis, and that is not yet over at time of writing.  A number of people have been impressed by how PM Harper is sticking it to the Russians over this, but I don't see the value of it.  I'm pretty sure Putin realises that this posturing (authentic as the feelings may be) is political in nature, but it doesn't look to have made any difference on the ground whatsoever.

Putin continues to play his cards close to his vest and my appreciation of the Donetsk basin as the next potential flashpoint is still in play.  As the US tries to figure out what Putin plans, I will put out there what I suspect is happening in his head on this.

As stated previously, Russia needs Russians, and there are a lot of them in the eastern Ukraine.  That is the grand plan, recreation of as much of the Russian Empire as they can without getting in a (big) shooting war to do so.  Second factor, Putin has proven himself a highly adept geopolitical opportunist, which plays into the empire building as well as general manoeuvring.  When faced with such inept (America) and beholden (Europe) opposition as Russia is right now, Putin is king of the hill.

Canada is making a principled stand against the annexation of Crimea, but principles are cheap when you have no skin in the game.  Crimea is not going back to Ukraine barring force majure and that's not happening.  It didn't work so well last time either.

My question is whether the Kremlin's threat assessment of international action in case of "assistance" to Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainians comes up plus or minus.  If Putin gains more than he loses, he'll probably go for it.  The sanctions we can/will bring to bear are limited in effect on a country as large and endowed with resources as Russia.  Equally important, the Chinese and the Indians, as well as most of Central Asia will continue to trade and otherwise work with Russia, China more so if it discomfits the US.

It has also been said that Ukraine had better show some willingness to fight for its' territory, and I think this an excellent point.  Russia would beat them handily, but just because you will probably lose isn't sufficient reason to not fight in this case.  What does get drowned out in all of this is the political/social mess that Ukraine is, so I have no real faith in their ability to put an effective military force in the field even if they are inclined to do so.

 At this point I think military force is the only credible deterrent to Putin, and even then only when it will actually be used.  An armed, contested invasion of Ukraine is an undeniable act of war and contravention of international law, and that was enough to get people to defend Kuwait 24 years ago.  Ukraine doesn't have the oil of Kuwait, but it does occupy a strategic buffer position in Eurasia, so you'd think the Europeans might take some issue with carving it up.

I suspect that most Europeans consider Ukraine not worth the bones of a single Swabian Panzer Grenadier, so it's up to the Poles and other border countries to stand up and conduct some "exercises" of their own in Ukraine.  An attack on the troops of a NATO member would force NATO to act, and forcing NATO to act is in the "minus" column for Putin.  As a side note, if NATO isn't prepared to act to counter Russian territorial aggrandizement, it might as well pack it in, as that's what it was set up to do!

Putin could over-reach himself, but under current conditions taking the Russian-majority areas of east Ukraine wouldn't be stretching too far, so consider that.   I think the decision on what to do will come in the next few days, and will depend heavily on what the US does.  On past performance, I'll bet on Putin having effectively a free hand, whatever that portends. 

Exit, Stage Right

As I write this, the last of Canada's mission to Afghanistan are back home.  At 12+ years it is our longest war, even though the intense period (2006-2011) puts us in the same ballpark as WW2. 

Is Afghanistan better off than in 2001? Without question. The questions come in when you look at the prognosis for stability, and that isn't great. We did what we could, more than Afghanistan has ever done for us, and anyone who expects more than that can do it themselves. Hopefully enough Afghans have something to lose now and will fight to keep their gains, but time will tell.

What separates Afghanistan from our previous expeditionary wars is the casualty rate.  We lost 158 dead and several hundred (unpublished) seriously wounded: that's one bad Battalion attack in either World War and a large fraction of our losses in Korea over a much shorter period.

Each of those losses is a tragedy for individuals, but the scale makes a negligible impact on the fabric of Canadian society; the Army was at war, the Country wasn't.  The frequent question is "Was it worth it?".  I don't know the calculus of nation-building, so I can just hope that more people were helped than were hurt.  Some will regret going due to injuries or loss of friends, but the CA is a professional volunteer force, and nobody was forced to go.  It was, for lack of a more sensitive word, an adventure for many of us, and indeed what we signed up to do.

Afghanistan has profoundly changed both the Canadian Army and the public's relationship with us, and I hope that goodwill remains.  The public is fickle however, and there is nothing new about it:

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind",
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind.

RIP to my comrades fallen in Afghanistan, and the best possible recovery to those who came home wounded in body and/or mind. Lest we forget.

Peninsular Peril

The votes have been cast (by those who didn't boycott the referendum) and Crimea has seceded from Ukraine and wants to go back to Russia. I regard this as a done deal as will any realistic observer, despite the protestations of illegitimacy from Western leaders.

That most people living there would prefer to go with Russia is obvious, even if the fact that Putin continues to gather Russians continues to elude people looking for motivation. It is known that Putin continues to use the immediate recognition of Kosovo after we'd bombed the Serbs out of there as licence to annex his own "self-determining" majority areas back to the Rodina, but not acknowledged by most of the media, let alone Western politicians.

So what? Sure, some people will be unhappy, and Ukraine is out some income from Sevastopol rental to the Russians, but what does that mean to anyone else? Ukraine has had a sequence of corrupt governments since independence from the USSR and I sure as shit don't want to get dragged into another war in Europe. Certainly not over an Anschluss like this, and I see the geopolitical cost to North America to be nil from the Crimea changing hands. The damage from puffing up and making vague threats of sanctions against Russia is potentially great.

A lot of people really didn't like G.W. Bush, but most of them were either lefties for whom realpolitik-clueless Obama can do no wrong, or people GW decided to take some action against, like, say, the late Saddam Hussein. One thing which definitively separates Bush II and Obama is that nobody who counts takes the latter seriously. Even in a no-win situation like the invasion of Georgia by Russia in 2008, Bush made a point of having American assets in the capital (Tbilisi) to present the Russians with an unspoken "red line". It must be noticed that as sub-optimal as things may have turned out for Georgia, the Russians took the hint and pulled most of the way back.

The lost Georgian territory is a lesson to them not to poke the bear, no matter if you're provoked. The lesson to us is (again) Talk - Action = Zero, Action - Talk = >Zero. I don't know what "we" would do if Russia had another crack at Georgia right now, but somebody had better be taking some proactive steps to dissuade Putin from cooking something up in Eastern Ukraine to take that also. After that? Belarus? The Baltic States?

The Balts have less to fear, and more potential European support than Ukraine due to ethnic/national/cultural connections to Europe vice Russia. I may have read The Clash of Civilizations too much, but birds of a feather do flock together and it makes sense to me to draw our lines along those natural fault lines.

I keep talking about action, so what should be done? In practice I don't see a lot of potential for the sort of thing that I think would send the right message, but if Europe still had any armies, it'd be a good time to start scheduling boots-on-the-ground joint exercises with what's left of Ukraine and put some bases in the Baltic States. Physical assets, preferably those which can shoot back, will do the job. Putin doesn't want a war as it's not in his interest to lose more than he'd gain. He will walk into as many places with a Russian majority population as he is permitted to, sanctions be damned.

Whatever. For my money, the next flashpoint is Donetsk, but it's not exactly crystal ball territory to come up with that. This is NOT a fait accompli but if Putin pushes for it he has enough support on the ground to pull it off in some fashion if there is no physical response from "our side". As long as Obama/Kerry are running the US show and the Europeans are beholden to Russia for their heating fuel, it's Putin's geographical and demographic prize to gain, and Ukraine's to lose.

But the cat came back...

It's been over a year since I last posted anything here. I felt I had nothing left to say about what was happening in the world, but recent events have caused me to re-evaluate that.

The immediate catalyst for this is the current stand-off in the Ukraine, Crimea specifically at this point, and the kaleidoscope of ideas about what should or should not be done. I have some definite ideas, and they are along the lines of, well, drawing some lines.Brzezinski's article of 3 March 14 is in the ball park, and his background is such that he's familiar with how Moscow does business, pay no attention to the President he worked for.

Obama has made a complete mockery of himself world-wide with his "Red lines" and lack of response to them being trampled, and what Putin is doing right now is in full knowledge that the US (and consequently the EU) will do nothing concrete to stop him.

The problem actually goes all the way back to the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO into former Warsaw pact countries. Poland, Czech Republic and the Baltic States are hostile to Russia and a natural fit to NATO updated for Russia vs USSR. Likewise Romania and Bulgaria were never part of Russia but subject to the latter's pressure, therefore good candidates.

There is a bigger question here though; what is NATO's raison d'être in a post-Cold War world? Let's start with the name: North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This suggests a geographical connection and a group of like-minded countries. Those are two separate criteria; I consider Australia and New Zealand to be like-minded countries but the geographical connection isn't there. There is another concept at work too though: the Sphere of Influence.

The US had a shit-fit in 1962 about the USSR putting nukes in Cuba, immediately in America's back yard. It is instructive that the solution to that stand-off involved the US removing the equivalent (already placed) missiles from Turkey, an analogous geographical threat to the USSR. In the labour relations field this is called "Interest-based Bargaining" and it works with human nature. The hypocrisy of the USA in this case is not to be overlooked, but all's fair in love and Containment.

Containment was the strategy of The West vs. the USSR/World Communism. My off-the-cuff assessment of Containment's contribution is that it was plausible in concept but flawed in execution. What success it had was basically attritional (Vietnam and Afghanistan the most significant episodes) with eventual economic exhaustion of the USSR from trying to out-produce us in war materiel. It is widely overlooked these days, but "collapse by arms race" was the basic Reagan strategy against the "evil empire". Gorbachev formally ended the "Red Menace" of World Revolution, thus obviating the need for Containment, or so you'd think. Inertia however is Newton's First Law for a reason, and huge organizations and the mindsets behind them are as subject to it as much as any minor planet zipping around the solar system. Flash forward to 2008...

Putin called NATO/G.W. Bush's bluff in Georgia then, partly to reabsorb South Ossetia, more to serve notice that Georgia was in Russia's sphere and NATO could sod off. This isn't a Human Rights blog so I won't argue rights and wrongs in a moral sense which are subjective in any event. We don't tend to think that way since we are so certain that we are morally superior, but moral superiority doesn't protect you from jackbooted thugs, and that's the real-world issue.

What then is my real-world prescription for the Ukraine thing? Draw some lines and then put troops on them. Ukraine is a Frankenstein nation which could be simply and logically partitioned into East (Russia) and West (Europe) with the consent of most people on the ground. West Ukraine could then join NATO if that seemed the thing to do, but it's an economic basket-case with a per-capita GDP somewhere around that of Egypt so I'm not sure the EU wants it, but not my problem. Not ideal in a lot of ways, as there are resources and industry involved as well as people, but you have to pick your battles.

The talk right now on our side is economic sanctions, but that's not the language Putin is using right now so it's not certain the point will be made. This does have similarities with the Sudetenland in 1938, and the remedy is the same: military force. The Czechs could have held the Germans off with any military backing at all from France, but the iron to do so was lacking. The level of war-weariness in France at that time far exceeded anything in the US and Europe right now, but the present level of hand-wringing will be as (in)effective as that of '38.

If the US is serious, it should land some Marines in the Ukrainian controlled parts of Crimea and dare the Russians to try something. Putin is, contrary to wishful thinking in the liberal media, an entirely rational actor and is unlikely to bite off more than he can swallow. The Crimea is bite-sized right now, the rest of the East is still too big. That can change in either direction based on the response from Ukraine and Europe/the US; making Crimea too prickly to swallow or folding completely and allowing the Russians to walk uncontested into majority Russian areas of east Ukraine.

Putin doesn't want a war, but he'll absorb as many Russians outside Russia's current borders as he can without a big fight. That's Putin's strategic objective and it would do well to remember it in order to interpret his actions. He (and most Russians) doesn’t want to be like "us" and it's pretty chauvinistic to presume that they should. Seeing what blowhard self-referential pretentious busybodies “we” are these days I can't say I blame them.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

[I found this as a draft after I said I was ending the blog but I hate leaving things unfinished, so THIS is the last post for AotF]

The "social media" which is supposed to connect us is also a catalyst for distilling previously hidden differences which will push us apart.  I know people who insist on spewing their pet causes and political ideals all over the news feed, and I have "unfriended" several over things they insist on inflicting on everyone they know. 

Once upon a time there were rules for polite company, and not discussing politics or religion played a large part in them.  Now everybody knows what (almost) everybody thinks about pretty-much EVERYTHING, all the time, and familiarity does indeed breed contempt.  "Social Media" encourages a great deal of what I consider to be anti-social behaviour, specifically ad hominem attacks.  I will go after peoples' IDEAS, but not them personally; if I feel that negatively about the person I won't waste my time or effort on them.

Of course what happens when people know who you are pales in comparison to what happens when people can be anonymous.  Yes, I know that sounds hypocritical on my anonymous blog, but I have work-related reasons to keep things the way they are. More importantly, I never say anything here that I would not say in person to whoever I'm talking about, violent idiots excepted; I'd rather deal with them through a rifle scope or the business end of a cosh.

My point?  I couldn't deal with 600 real friends, I see no point in aspiring to have that many cyber acquaintances.  How many of your Facebook "friends" would help you move?  Show up to a BBQ? It's now like people have anywhere up to thousands of pen-pals, except that you are sharing your life in 140 characters or so at a time.  What do we really know about the personalities of these people?  Knowing their taste in cat videos is not the same as knowing their hopes and dreams or having those "you-had-to-be-there" in-joke memories from the stupid things you've done together.

Facebook is a tool, and like all tools it can be misused and hurt people.  The anti-bullying efforts that are being made today are being stymied if not outright thwarted by the fact that if people are hassling you, it doesn't end at school.  Even if you try to avoid them online, once those parasites have their sights on you they will spread horrible shit about you via whatever social media is trendy at the time.  My personal solution for bullying is to meet it with superior force or at the very least surprise and violence to make them think twice about messing with you, but the sort of kids who get bullied are picked on because they are incapable of standing up for or organizing amoungst themselves.

The title refers to a Kipling poem about cutting through bullshit and identifying basic truths:

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

One look around the world indicates that our part of it at the very least is trying entirely too hard to ignore objective reality in favour of what we'd LIKE to see. This blog started modelled on "Arithmetic on the Frontier" (hence the name, go figure) but as it has moved along over the years I think the message is more in line with the above.  New and shiny is not necessarily better, and that applies to ideas as well as gadgets.  Certainly things have improved immeasurably since the Bad Old Days, but hard times taught some hard lessons which we would do well to remember lest we need to constantly re-learn them the hard way.

Not the End of the World, just the end of this.

It's been over a month since I've had any real drive to write anything here so I think this'll be it.  I just don't feel that I have anything new to add, in effect I have run through all of my opinions on anything I'd write about; I really wanted to stimulate some discussion here but that has not really worked either.  I'm not sure exactly what happened but I find it much harder to get worked up about this stuff, and the intemperate rant was the lifeblood of this blog. 

The problem is of course me and not whoever is/is not reading my stuff, but the good news is that the demise of AotF won't disappoint too many people.  The blog has survived a lot of upheavals in my life including a combat tour to Afghanistan, but it's tired so it's time to retire it.  Maybe when I retire as well I'll find a new life for this, but that's a few years off yet so don't hold your breath. 

There are some real diamonds in all of this rough, so I remain pleased with the six years that AotF has skulked in its' obscure corner of the interweb.  At the end of the day, if I have managed to make even one person actually THINK about something as opposed to just parroting what the schools and media indoctrinate them with, I will count it a sucess.