As a rule, I eschew political news here but I think this one merits an exception.

The big story of the moment for political junkies is the illegal hacking of cell phones allegedly carried out by employees of one of Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid newspapers. Not just any phones either, the cell phones of British VIPs, political bigwigs, celebrities and perhaps, some 9/11 victims. All of the details have not been revealed, but there are police investigations, one of News Corp’s top employees has been arrested, parliamentary inquiries and demands by Murdochs political enemies there to have the British government “dismantle his empire“.

Rupert Murdoch is not, it must be said, a cuddly public figure. He is a press baron throwback to the era of Joseph Pulitizer and William Randolph Hearst and has a reputation for ruthlessness in business and overweening ambition in politics to gain personal influence for promoting his conservative views. He is a hate figure to Democratic and liberal partisans of the intolerant kind who see political disagreement as evidence of evil and would like FOXnews, one of Murdoch’s most influential and profitable properties, to be suppressed by the FCC (though Murdoch’s right-wing views did not preclude him from trying to cozy up to China’s communist leadership). These folks are naturally celebrating Murdoch’s dilemma and hoping for a collapse – and Murdoch and his son James are in genuine jeopardy, possibly legal, certainly political and commercial.

Much indignant outrage is being heaped on Murdoch’s head now by the enlightened; I have no love for phone hacking and I definitely agree that and violating people’s privacy is a crime that ought to be punished by sending those responsible to prison. I am curious though, how this position is squared morally with the fact that the two liberal news outlets most triumphant about the News Corp scandal, The New York Times and The Guardian, themselves recently were knowing accessories to the much more serious crime of espionage.

Actually calling these papers criminal accessories is not a full picture of their behavior during the Wikileaks document dump; it is more accurate to say that they reaped corporate financial benefit from facilitating espionage, grand theft and treason, for which their editors have not faced any legal consequences. 

Yes, treason. Look up the definition.

Much unlike the nobody Army private and patsy, Bradley Manning, who is likely to face a sentence of life in prison. Good thing for  Manning that he only outed a vast array of US intelligence and diplomatic secrets and exposed ordinary, unimportant, unprotected Afghans and Iraqis to murderous retribution by Islamist degenerates. If Manning had phonehacked a Labor MP or a wealthy, airhead celebrity – you know, really important and beautiful people – the NYT and the Guardian would be calling for a death sentence. It is a most curious scale of values.

Go back and look at which partisan blowhards with columns and bylines and talking head opinion shapers thought Wikileaks was just great and defended Julian Assange and what their opinion is on phonehacking today and see if any – any at all – evidence some consistency. Or awareness of the relative magnitude of each crime – and crime is the right word, neither of these scandals are mere pranks, but one is important to national security and the other, so far, is only interesting.

There’s something amiss here in the way that partisan politics and a seamy, not too subtle, undercurrent of class entitlement have warped the perspective and sense of proportion of some people who are smart enough to know better.

The Profession by Steven Pressfield 

Tequila Junction: 4th Generation Counterinsurgency by H. John Poole

Steve’s novel The Profession I have mentioned previously, but I confess that I am puzzled by the choice of book jacket on Tequila Junction, which looks somewhat like a children’s illustrated guide to COIN in 1980’s El Salvador. H. John Poole is a respected veteran and tactical expert and Tequila Junction carries the warm endorsements of General Anthony Zinni and William Lind. Maybe his grandson drew it? Odd.

In any event, small unit tactics are not a subject I pretend to know much about, so it will remedy a gap in my knowledge base.

Modern German Diesel Electric Submarines (Type 212)

by J. Scott Shipman (diesel electric submarines, naval strategy, Taiwan, Republic of China, submarines)

David Trombly at the new Fear, Honor, and Interest blog posted a thought provoking article on Taiwan, sea denial, and the bounding of US dominance.

This post caught my eye for several reasons, not the least of which is that in another life I rode submarines (ballistic missile subs: USS VON STEUBEN (SSBN-632) and the commissioning crew of USS PENNSYLVANIA (SSBN-735). Another is I attended on behalf of a former employer in 2001/2002 an industry day event soliciting interest in the US production of diesel electric submarines for the use of Taiwan (Republic of China, or ROC). US production was authorized (see background: here) because the ROC was having difficulty purchasing through European diesel boat manufacturers. Germany, Sweden, and France have proven platforms, as do the Russians and their KILO class. All of these nations export submarines, but few want to antagonize the ROC’s increasingly global neighbor China.

The industry day event was well attended, but as I sat there I had little confidence there would ever be a diesel electric submarine produced in a US shipyard. Here’s why: the US Navy is heavily vested in nuclear powered submarines which are incredibly expensive, with the most modern VIRGINIA Class coming in at around $2B a copy. When compared to modern diesel boats which run between $200-$300M, Big Navy understandably wants to avoid any possible comparisons—or for the question even to be raised. The industry event was more a public show of supporting Congress and the president than a serious inquiry, and nothing more than slides were produced (which is often the case in Washington, btw).

The USN is overextended by almost any measure, our national shipbuilding infrastructure is perhaps at its lowest point and our Fleet has less ships (about 283) than any time since WWI. We have about 70 submarines (18 OHIO Class of which 4 are guided missile submarines, 7 VA Class, 3 SEAWOLF, and about 43 older Los Angeles Class). These boats spend about half their time deployed, which drives up maintenance costs and cost to crew separated from family [the OHIO Class ships rotate crews about every 90 days] Our submarines are built exclusively in Groton, CT, and Newport News, VA. We have naval shipyards for heavy modifications, nuclear refueling/overhauls in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Bremerton, and Pearl Harbor (though I don’t believe Portsmouth or Pearl are authorized refueling facilities).

In this environment of increased op-tempo, and low numbers of ships/boats we have continuing challenges to the maritime domain, including China’s increasingly muscular approach in the South China sea and that age old naval scourge, piracy. (H/T Feral Jundi at Facebook)

These realities, combined with an ally in need (and perhaps many more potential customers) seem to form a perfect storm of need for a small fleet of stealthy, American-made diesel electric submarines. If the Obama administration wanted to strengthen it bonafides in East Asia and with the American public, it would reengage on the Taiwan submarine issue and this time, instead of a deal neither side could abide (our side the very thought and insane requirements, their side appropriating the funds). If Taiwan is willing to pay for R&D, allow the building shipyard to keep the design, and find an American suitor, that all translates into that three letter word Joe Biden is so fond of: jobs. Jobs that would have little to no reliance on the increasingly precarious federal government and shrinking defense budgets. Taiwan and the region would gain stealthy deterrents to potential Chinese mischief, the US could invigorate a fairly inbred shipbuilding industry with new talent, new ideas, and new competition, and maybe, just maybe we could build a few boats for those missions too mundane or cost-prohibitive for our nuke boats (like the piracy problem for a starter).

Postscript: As a former nuclear navy submariner, I am intimately familiar of the many positives nuke boats offer (I once spent 82 days submerged). My musing here is not a call for replacement, but rather to point out yet again (see this analysis), that our navy should have room for both in our increasingly complex world.

Please read my exchange with David at the Fear, Honor, and Interest post, as some innovative ideas not included in this post are presented. But I thought I’d share with the zenpundit audience as we spend a great deal of time talking strateegery here, but rarely naval issues, and I don’t post often enough…

From SWJ Blog:

Irregular Adversaries and Hybrid Threats

My amigo and SWJ News co-columinst Crispin Burke recently put forth a very interesting and provocative jeremiad “Be honest: Who actually read FM 3-24?” and one of his targets, journalist and Iraq war veteran Carl Prine, has been duly provoked, Prine has responded in great detail yesterday at Line of Departure:

Starbuck is wrong

Starbuck is wrong.

And in his drive to keep getting it wrong, he’s trying to rewrite FM 3-24, the military’s chief doctrinal publication on counterinsurgency.

But that just makes him more wrong.

He’s wrong about me.  He’s wrong about what I believe.  He’s wrong about the literature that informs FM 3-24.  He’s wrong about what the manual says and he’s wrong about what it left out.  He’s wrong about historiography.  He’s wrong about how a caste of top officers and diplomats came to understand “strategy” in the wake of the occupation of Iraq.

Let’s help get him right.  Or, at least, less wrong.  He’s a good man.  We need to turn him and ensure he quits taking shots at me I don’t deserve!

….The problem to anyone who studies Malaya, however, is that since the publication of the memoirs of exiled communist leader Chin Peng a dozen years ago, we now know that the civic, military and political policies under the British “hearts and minds” approach didn’t defeat the revolution.

Instead, the revolt was irreparably broken by brutal operations against the guerrillas, then a most coercive “screwing down the people” phase that dispossessed or killed thousands of Chinese, followed by draconian “population control” measures that, as Peng put it, starved the guerrillas in the bush because they snapped their rat lines and cut off their rice.

The “hearts and minds” initiatives designed to bring medical care, education, social welfare and other aid to the resettled Chinese and woo them to the colonial government’s side from 1952 – 1954 didn’t crack the back of the insurgency, a point now pretty much beyond dispute.

Why?  Because the previous “hearts and minds” claptrap as the cause of pacification in Malaya was contradicted by the Malayan Chinese, most especially those guerrillas who took up arms against the British regime!

You know, the people targeted by a population-centric counterinsurgency.  The people most counter-insurgents in their pop-centric fantasies almost never discuss except as abstractions, the human yarn wefted and warped by their long needles of war.

One finds “Hearts and Minds” prominently mentioned 11 times in Dr John Nagl’s valentine to Templer and colonial Malaya, Eating Soup with a Knife; to Nagl it’s the stuff of police services and economic development and whatnot with the psychology of the people being the center of gravity those reforms are meant to snatch.

And Nagl would like the best burglar of hearts and minds to be a learning, nimble and evolving military-political institution such as the U.S. Army.  It’s no small wonder, then, that Nagl became a dominant voice in FM 3-24 and that many of this thoughts in Eating Soup came to dominate the manual, too.

Or, as the introduction to FM 3-24 echoes soupily, “by focusing on efforts to secure the safety and support of the local populace, and through a concerted effort to truly function as learning organizations, the Army and Marine Corps can defeat their insurgent enemies.”

This is mere euphemism and wasn’t worth the ink that it cost taxpayers to print it.  But it sets the stage for the rest of FM 3-24, which follows a hearts and minds template that Starbuck doesn’t apparently realize is borrowed from mid-century….

Ouch. Note to self: if I ever decide to square off against Carl, I will make sure to do my homework. Read the rest here.

First, I would point out to readers here for whom some of this in both essays is inside baseball, that the tone is less harsh and the substantive distance between Burke and Prine less great in  the comments sections of both blogs than it first appears in reading their posts. It is a healthy, no-holds barred exchange and not a flame war.

Secondly, it is an important exchange, tying together COIN disputes over theory, historiography, empirical evidence, operational and tactical “lessons learned”, strategy, policy (Clausewitzian sense), politics (colloquial sense) and personalities that have raged for five years across military journals, think tanks, the media, the bureaucracy and the blogosphere. In some ways, these essays can serve as a summative of the debate. I say “some ways”, because what is the most important element or effect of America’s romance with COIN will differ markedly depending on whom has the floor. My own beef is not with doing COIN, it is with not doing strategy.

As Crispin and Carl’s vignette about General Creighton Abrams demonstrated, American historians are still having savagely bitter arguments about the war in Vietnam. For that matter, everyone who lived through the era did and still does. It is a wound that never seems to heal and has crippled our politics to this day, even as the veterans of Vietnam now turn to gray.

The 21st century COIN wars have not ripped American society apart down to the soul the way Vietnam did. As with the Korean War, the soldiers and marines in Afghanistan and Iraq fought bravely, at times desperately, to a general and mild approbation back home that sometimes looked a lot like indifference. Even the anti-war protestors mostly made a point of stating they were not against the troops, the venemous public malice of the 1960’s New Left radicals in the 2000’s was a property only of the lunatic fringe.

But COIN itself will be a historical argument without end.