First US military unit to be continuously stationed in Poland activated

Pretty cool...

Britain's last war?

Since the Cold War’s end, the combined GDP of NATO’s European members has grown 55 percent, yet their defense spending has declined almost 20 percent. Twenty years ago, those nations provided 33 percent of the alliance’s defense spending; today, they provide 21 percent.


This is why Robert Gates, before resigning as US defense secretary, warned that unless Europe’s disarmament is reversed, future US leaders “may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.” Born to counter the Soviet army on the plains of Northern Europe, NATO may be expiring in North Africa.

Netherlands becomes first NATO country to end its combat mission in Afghanistan

Erdogan Rebuffs U.S. While Protesting `Propaganda' Turkey Is Iranian Ally

This is a spectacular overview of the "new" Turkey. Very informative and a glimpse into the new developing dynamic...

Head of Canadian Army shuffled out of job

Broke? Buy a Few Warships, France Tells Greece

Here Greece, buy some warships to settle the Cyprus issue with our NATO ally Turkey. Great.

Greece spends more of its gross domestic product on the military than any other European Union country, largely due to long-standing tension with its neighbor, historic rival and NATO ally, Turkey.

"The Germans and the French have them over a barrel now," said Nick Witney, a former head of the European Defence Agency. "If you are trying to repair Greek public finances, it's a ludicrous way to go about things."

France is pushing to sell six frigates, 15 helicopters and up to 40 top-of-the-range Rafale fighter aircraft.

Greek and French officials said President Nicolas Sarkozy was personally involved and had broached the matter when Papandreou visited France last month to seek support in the financial crisis.

French Plan To Sell Warship to Russia

Mistral-class Littoral Combat Ship

If this ship contains sensitive technology, which it probably doesn't given that it is used in the littorals, it gives us one more reason to question why NATO still exists. If it is a floating scrapheap, like most of the Russian Navy, then more power to the French.

The Eik strikes back...

Despite his current loyalty to the new administration policy, LTG(R) Eikenberry's memos on Afghanistan seem to me, an outsider, like they are spot on. Here is the best excerpt from the article linked to above:

On Nov. 6, Mr. Eikenberry wrote: “President Karzai is not an adequate strategic partner. The proposed counterinsurgency strategy assumes an Afghan political leadership that is both able to take responsibility and to exert sovereignty in the furtherance of our goal — a secure, peaceful, minimally self-sufficient Afghanistan hardened against transnational terrorist groups.

“Yet Karzai continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden, whether defense, governance or development. He and much of his circle do not want the U.S. to leave and are only too happy to see us invest further,” Mr. Eikenberry wrote. “They assume we covet their territory for a never-ending ‘war on terror’ and for military bases to use against surrounding powers.”

He continued, “Beyond Karzai himself, there is no political ruling class that provides an overarching national identity that transcends local affiliations and provides reliable partnership.”

In a second cable, dated Nov. 9, he expressed new concerns: “In a PBS interview on November 7, Karzai sounded bizarrely cautionary notes about his willingness to address governance and corruption. This tracks with his record of inaction or grudging compliance in this area.”

Previous posts on Karl Eikenberry:

McChrystal Hearing

Eikenberry to Washington: Show me the money!

Our Afghanistan Ambassador

Also, take a look at this old post, from September 2008, on Pakistan's Army Chief GEN Kayani:

New Pakistani Army Chief

Russian Laws on Use of Force Expanded

Tensions Stoked Between Iraqi Kurds and Sunnis

There is no surprise here. As predicted, Northern Iraq is falling apart despite the great work Hannibal, Murdock, and B.A. Baracus, did up there in 2005-2006. Although it was recently viewed as a pleasant, up and coming area with a diverse population and a Whole Foods and Starbucks in every town, it is far from it.

American officials have long feared a military conflict in the north, where Arabs and Kurds have competing claims to territory and have legions of trained men under arms. The struggle for power has also fueled the insurgency in the north, giving groups like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia an opening to appear to back an Arab cause. And it comes as American combat troops are scheduled to withdraw from Iraqi cities by the end of June.

I have argued that this is mostly due to troop level drawdowns in the area. Anyhow, here is what I wrote on September 17, 2008:
U.S. Soldiers battling hard in Iraqi city

Canadian: New U.S. troops in Afghanistan will help

Brigadier-General Vance

More U.S. troops will help, eh? That is what Brigadier-General John Vance of Canada says. How about that?! More troops = more stability. Wow. How much will they help though?

The real question is how are we sustaining this? How many deployments are our military personnel up to on average now - 3? Some on their 5th and 6th? How many are now divorced thanks to the deployments? How many are refusing to seek mental health counseling because it will ruin their career? How many need to be told that they have done enough and need to sit out a rotation (0... by the way)? How many have a hard time adjusting to civilian life, a civilian life in which noone really pays attention to those dirty little wars? How many left the service, could not find a job because civilians view them as crazy veterans, and then went back in? How many have just joined the military because they are out of work in the civilian world and their recruiters told them that the wars will soon be over?

Of course there is no talk of activating the selective service system though... not for two wars that are still undeclared, and, therefore, unimportant. Perhaps if the Taliban overthrows the Pakistani government and, in doing so, gains a nuclear arsenal, we could mobilize the entire nation for war and not fight two wars on the cheap.

The "Winnable" War

I know Mr. Brooks means well, but he is obviously being given a spectacular inside the wire tour of Afghanistan by a spit and polish diplomat or military officer.

First, Mr. Brooks agrees that Afghanistan has always been "warm and welcoming" to the U.S. during their adventure in Afghanistan. I assume he agrees then that supporting a drug trade that is directly linked to terrorist organizations qualifies as warm and welcoming behavior.

Second, he claims that the "screwing up" is done in Afghanistan. Far from it, Mr. Brooks. President Obama is throwing more weary combat troops, who are already a shadow of the force that invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, at the problem thinking that somehow this will help. Yes, it will, but to what extent? India has maintained over 250,000 counterinsurgent troops in Kashmir for decades... What has this done? Also, with a diplomatic corps that hates to deploy to war zones or conflict areas, how are we going to do the building and friendship repairing that must be done? Perhaps we could hire the thousands of Army Captains that left the Army in the past few years to do diplomatic functions - they, afterall, won't be afraid to go outside the wire and meet with the locals. Here is an excerpt from the article describing the sorry state of aid workers in Afghanistan:

Western aid workers seem to spend most of their time drawing up flow charts for each other. They’re so worried about their inspectors general that they can’t really immerse themselves in the messy world of local reality. They insist on making most of the spending decisions themselves so the “recipients” of their largess end up passive, dependent and resentful.
Every element of my skepticism was reinforced during a six-day tour of the country. Yet the people who work here make an overwhelming case that Afghanistan can become a functional, terror-fighting society and that it is worth sending our sons and daughters into danger to achieve this.

Unfortunately, President Obama still has not taken the steps needed to "win" in Afghanistan, which involves calling the entire nation to make sacrifices (e.g. a draft, forcing anyone working in the State Dept. to do "combat" tours regardless of region of specialty, perhaps legalizing drugs and taxing the shit out of them...). He could also threaten to disband NATO, remember that organization? You know, the second-rate international fraternity we pay a ridiculous amount of dues to every year so that we can prop up our free-loading fraternity brothers' seemingly more extravagant frat homes (also known as quasi-socialist nations)? How can President Obama force the entire nation to make sacrifices with the economy in shambles? Perhaps high paying jobs in Afghanistan for the unemployed?
Well, I think he has the political capital to sound the call to service by arguing that the two main reasons the economy is in shambles are underegulation, which is being taken care of, and two ongoing wars. He can use his massive popularity ratings to say, "I promise this type of thing will never happen again, but we need to fix this mess. Once we fix this mess, it will never happen again." Sadly, this sounds like Woodrow Wilson's plea for a League of Nations, to prevent more wars. Sadly, with armchair generals and diplomats still glorifying war, it probably will happen again. Everyone loves to be the armchair general, or the learned diplomat smoking a pipe while sitting in a leather chair by the fire... nobody wants to put their life on the line to... um... wait what exactly is the desired endstate in Afghanistan?

The Nixon-Obama Debates

Many polls are predicting a big Obama-Biden win on November 4th. That being said, I'm still not convinced that an Obama-Biden administration, combined with a large, possibly super majority Democratically controlled Congress, will change America's forward deployed force structure. I hope that I am incorrect, but I do not see American soldiers being pulled out of Iraq in 16 months.

The article linked above discusses how Obama has pushed for more troops in Afghanistan with much success. The problem with this is the cost of both wars on America. We already have a broken military due to Iraq and Afghanistan and shifting forces from Iraq to Afghanistan will not fix that. In my mind, we really need to put NATO to the test on Afghanistan, force member nations to spend a certain percentage of their GDP on defense (if we are spending upwards of 4 percent, they should at least be spending 2 or 3 percent), and force them to contribute to the fight in Afghanistan by threatening to disband the alliance. Here is a link to an interesting article discussing linking defense spending to GDP: The 4 Percent Folly

While I agree that linking our defense expenditures, already too high in my mind, to a certain GDP percentage is a folly, I do not agree that it is a folly when it comes to other NATO members who average around 2 percent of their GDP spent on defense. The latest numbers I could find are linked here. Among the interesting facts: Norway - 1.9 percent, Spain - 1.2 percent, and Luxembourg, the financial services capital of the world, checking in at 0.8 percent.

Another flub? Bush vowed Navy aid to Georgia too soon

Is Turkey really an ally of the United States? Why do we only speak to the government when we need something? Furthermore, with Turkey fighting Kurds in Northern Iraq, how is this different than Russians fighting Georgians in South Ossetia? Finally, what exactly has Turkey, a NATO ally, done for the United States of late? Here is an excerpt from the article above:

U.S. officials said the Turks hadn't cleared U.S. naval vessels to transit the Bosporus and the Dardanelles.

"The Turks haven't been helpful," said a State Department official. "They are being sluggish and unresponsive."

The Russian invasion of Georgia has almost certainly unnerved Turkey because it has huge energy and trade interests in adjacent Central Asia.

Turkey also may be reluctant to jeopardize the $24 billion in annual trade it does with Russia, which provides around 70 percent of its natural gas supplies. The Turkish Navy also shares the Black Sea with Russia's powerful Black Sea Fleet, which in part has prompted Ankara in recent years to restrict U.S. and NATO naval operations and exercises there.

The current situation echoes the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, when the Bush administration tried to send thousands of U.S. troops into northern Iraq through Turkey — a Muslim nation where most people opposed the war — without first obtaining Ankara's permission.

The Turkish parliament refused to allow the United States to use its territory.

We helped in Iraq - now help us, beg Georgians

This is just a sad story all around. We train a former Soviet republic's army and happily accept their troops in Iraq, then said former Soviet republic is attacked by an entire armored field army and we do nothing.

Why did we not react? Undoubtedly we fear an official Russian-Iranian defensive pact (the unofficial one has been in place for years). We also fear the outbreak of a world war when our troops are already overstretched, highlighting the problems with our foreign policy in general - why are our troops overstretched to begin with? What if Georgia and Ukraine had been fast tracked to NATO membership in April and this happened? Could we have washed our hands of the situation and allowed President Bush to play volleyball with Misty May in Beijing during the outbreak of a war? Could we have helped Georgia if we weren't overstretched? Would American military response even be a question if there wasn't a binding alliance such as NATO drawing us into conflicts? America can no longer complain about Germany, France, et al, not helping enough in the GWOT; a small former Soviet republic gave us a brigade of their finest in Iraq and now are under attack... and we are looking the other way.

This action undoubtedly was planned beforehand by Russia. With the Russian Army's equipment in disrepair, how could Russia quickly field and execute a mission with an armored field army on such short notice? The answer is simple - they had been planning for this invasion for quite some time and were just waiting for President Mikheil Saakashvili to make the first move (which he did on August 7th).

Don't think that this doesn't have anything to do with oil or Iraq either. Russia will undoutedly regain control of another Black Sea pipeline (meaning price gauging ala Turkmenistan and Ukraine) or badly damage it (cutting down on efficiency and perhaps raising price). Either way, Turkey, a NATO ally, will be quite angry since the pipeline runs into Turkey. In addition, Georgia's 2,000 troops in Iraq are being sent home to Georgia to fight the Russian hordes funneling into Georgia.

Finally, perhaps we could pay close attention to the Russian Army's use of overwhelming force in order to break the will of anyone thinking about resisting. They aren't fighting a war on the cheap, they are ensuring victory. Also, where is the international community's outrage at the loss of civilian life in this conflict?