The hands, the tie, the watch, the game of van Riper
[ by Charles Cameron — because the subtler games are more interesting ]
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It’s the mind that plays the game that interests me.
Why? Because what little I know of van Riper has to do with the war game he more or less closed down by sending a flotilla of tiny “red team” craft up against a US expeditionary fleet in the Persian Gulf:
Van Riper had at his disposal a computer-generated flotilla of small boats and planes, many of them civilian, which he kept buzzing around the virtual Persian Gulf in circles as the game was about to get under way. As the US fleet entered the Gulf, Van Riper gave a signal – not in a radio transmission that might have been intercepted, but in a coded message broadcast from the minarets of mosques at the call to prayer. The seemingly harmless pleasure craft and propeller planes suddenly turned deadly, ramming into Blue boats and airfields along the Gulf in scores of al-Qaida-style suicide attacks. Meanwhile, Chinese Silkworm-type cruise missiles fired from some of the small boats sank the US fleet’s only aircraft carrier and two marine helicopter carriers. The tactics were reminiscent of the al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole in Yemen two years ago, but the Blue fleet did not seem prepared. Sixteen ships were sunk altogether, along with thousands of marines. If it had really happened, it would have been the worst naval disaster since Pearl Harbor.
He may be a chess player, but that’s a whole lot subtler than chess.
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As is this:
Putin doesn't need territory. He needs conflict to hold on to power. You can't appease someone who needs conflict itself to survive.
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) February 5, 2015
That’s a chewable.
February 6th, 2015 at 9:45 pm
Guess the American m-i complex needs the same thing for its proportion of power, which is more than considerable. Hence the eastward provocations reneging on previous assurances.
http://buchanan.org/blog/u-s-russia-clash-in-ukraine-15550
February 7th, 2015 at 2:45 am
When talk of that war game comes up all credit goes to Van Riper for imagination but perhaps we drew a false lesson. The lesson should have been the importance of imagination and originality but the prime lesson perhaps was small boats are ship killers hence the need for a 45 knot LCS. From what I’ve read of past naval conflicts small boats are mostly targets for larger ships (ships with weapons, unlike the LCS). There have been occasional exceptions but mostly small boats are mainly useful fighting other small boats.
February 7th, 2015 at 5:38 am
Two separate points:
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Re: Van Riper at Millenium challenge, it is worthwhile hearing the story over a beer firsthand from friend of ZP Shane Deichman who had a ringside seat as LTG Van Riper’s science adviser as the wargame. Also, a recent wargame posited a clash between US armor and motorized infantry and a motley swarm of drones and robotic-bombs ….the latter won.
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Secondly, in regards to Ken’s comments and the Pat Buchanan column. There’s a solid point there.
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My gut feeling is that Putin flipped after Libya, not so much because the Great Lunatic was overthrown – Gaddafi was never a liked or trusted client of the Sovs, the KGB had no illusions about the man – but because he decided the Western elites couldn’t be trusted. First, we had gone back on our word to Gaddafi for his nuclear disarmament. While that was very significant, the killer was, I infer, taking no account of Russia’s existing financial interests in the Gaddafi regime in the aftermath of his fall while our NATO allies made an unseemly scramble to cash in with the new supposed rulers of Libya. That rankled Moscow and made hollow Russia’s admission as a “partner” and “G-8” member. This assessment was then confirmed by our Hamlet-like policy toward toppling Assad, who unlike the Libyan nut, is a second generation genuine ally and client of Russia
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From Putin’s chekist-siloviki perspective, Western leaders look aggressive, meddlesome, indecisive, greedy, weak and foolishly irresponsible all at once. And, sadly, he’s not entirely wrong either in taking that measure of his Western counterparts. So, Putin has began testing where he can shore up Russia’s geopolitical position by pushing against the West’s most strategically disadvantageous outliers gambling that our leaders lack the wit, nerve, competence and cunning to push back effectively.
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The problem is that some countries – notably the US and Britain – are notoriously unreliable in our reaction patterns and habitually swing abruptly from underreation to irrational overreation, inviting catastrophic miscalculations from our adversaries. The smart thing to do with Ukraine is to facilitate them buying arms from the international market so they have effective counterpressure, not to arm and train them directly or give them weapons that moves the fight up the escalation ladder. This is a red flag (pun intended), not just for Putin but for all patriotic Russians which in turn puts Putin in the corner of escalating or backing down. Completely stupid policy as Putin’s internal political dynamics supporting his regime’s popularity rule out backing down, so he won’t, particularly because he has already decided that he is dealing with treacherous milksops. Instead, you bleed with a thousand (plausibly deniable) cuts while giving Putin face-saving carrots to de-escalate and exit eastern Ukraine in a decent interval. Our leaders aren’t smart enough to do that and are too arrogant to listen to Russian experts, so instead we leak idiotic gossip about Putin having Asperger’s Syndrome, like international relations are the cafeteria of a college prep high school academy at lunch time
February 7th, 2015 at 5:17 pm
“What is happening in Ukraine is a tragedy and a disaster. And we are in part responsible, having egged on the Maidan coup that overthrew the elected pro-Russian government.”
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Whatever material support provided to opposition groups probably made little difference. Considering that we were previously doing it for decades with muted results, I doubt it suddenly had an affect now. The fact is we provide a variety of support to democracy groups in many countries, and the vast majority of the time, maybe all of the time, it doesn’t result in anything.
The real reason why the government fell was because of ineptness, corruption, thievery, defying the will of the people, and then shooting them in the streets. Those things are more than enough to spell the end of the doofus in charge without our help. Once the secret police started shooting, the regime lost the support of the army, who took one look east and one look west and decided they liked the view west a lot better.
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The supposedly illegal action to impeach Yanukovych was really a face saving move after he & the Berkut had already fled:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/world/europe/ukraine-leader-was-defeated-even-before-he-was-ousted.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1
In fact, it’s likely that the Parliament was buying him time to reach Russia before armed mobs from Lviv got to him first.
February 8th, 2015 at 5:35 pm
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Interesting. Aid? How much? This polls badly, especially when it is in support of the Ukrainian arms industry vice outside supply.
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Of course, this gets into larger strategic questions, including divisions within NATO, the EU and the Western “alliance” per se, and whether aid is tenable for a variety of reasons. 90s critics of NATO expansion were in multiple camps including those that wanted it to expand but didn’t like the nature of the expansion. They critiqued the actual nature of expansion and its idea of NATO as a market creator and democratizing force. The tensions in the ideas put forth are evident today. If you don’t know how to think adequately about a thing, you can’t get to the correct action. But this requires reading those back and forth arguments to understand what I am saying, I believe.
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I think this episode will put severe strain on the very concept of NATO itself within the minds of Germans and French and the long term consequences are hard to see.
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“Ukraine to Develop Defense Industry Without Russia,” Eurasia Daily Monitor is a good article on the Ukrainians supplying themselves versus outsiders.
February 8th, 2015 at 5:56 pm
I posted my comment with a snippet of your comment at SWJ, Zen. Just to see what would fall out in discussion.
February 8th, 2015 at 6:12 pm
Oh wait a minute, you mean facilitate as in a bridge while they rebuild their own industry?
February 9th, 2015 at 1:07 am
OK. If there was someone, as observant as Van Ripper appears to be, appears, the Islamist could have pulled off another Pearl Harbor. Who stopped them?
February 9th, 2015 at 2:35 am
Zen:
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Your suggested course of action is the only one that will work, bleed the Russians until they feel it and hope that Putin will then back off. That means killing more Russians, so many that the siloviki can’t hide it anymore and no matter how that is done, the Russ will view it as an escalation. But to do that, the Ukrainians need better weapons. The thing is, it doesn’t matter if we give them Javelins straight off the production line or if we buy them Milans or RPG-29s in such a convoluted manner that even God’s own actuary couldn’t figure out where they came from; it doesn’t matter because the siloviki will blame us anyway and the Russ will buy it.
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This is a war between Russia and Ukraine. As Forrest said war means fighting and fighting means killing. Killing more Russians is the need. The Ukrainians seem quite willing to do that if they get the stuff to fight with. The question is, are we willing to acknowledge that the killing needs to be done and give the Ukrainians the stuff to do it with?
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John Schindler talks often about the sophistication of the special warfare the Russians are waging. He has many good points to make but a lot of what they do only works because of the curious perceptions of many Westerners. All the Russ have to do is take the patches off their uniforms, say innocently “It wasn’t us.” and people like Pat Buchanan start writing things like “Ukraine’s civil war” and “claims of Russian tank presence.”
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February 9th, 2015 at 4:55 pm
“OK. If there was someone, as observant as Van Ripper appears to be, appears, the Islamist could have pulled off another Pearl Harbor. Who stopped them?”
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To deploy enough fast attack boats in sufficient numbers to swarm a naval base located in the US would require a lot of suicidal jihadis. Lots more than 9-11. And that was only 4 planes. They would need many, many boats.
I don’t think a swarm Pearl Harbor was or is realistic (presumably, after a decade we have developed anti-swarm tactics and armaments?)
The Persian Gulf is a different story. Feasible, especially if Iran is involved.
February 9th, 2015 at 5:03 pm
I just remembered after I typed that question –
The best anti-swarm weapon in the arsenal, the A-10 –
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2011/03/p-3-and-10.html
February 10th, 2015 at 4:12 am
Hi everyone,
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Doc Madhu, I’m calling for a return to plausible deniability while doing effective Title 50 assistance. Sure Russia will know it is us, as Carl suggests, but the cut-out factor is diplomatically and legally important for avoiding giving Putin political and legal pretexts for casus belli. Hit your enemy hard but leave him face-saving avenues of retreat. It’s cheaper and less risky.
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