Current Events

Rhetoric Versus Reality

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ZAPORIZHIA, UKRAINE — Deep into a conflict that has sundered decades-old ties between Ukraine and Russia, Ukraine is still selling military gear over the border to its neighbor, Ukrainian defense industry officials say.

Ukraine’s new leaders have vowed to stop the flow of these defense products, which include key parts for ship engines, advanced targeting technology for tanks and upkeep for Russia’s heaviest nuclear missiles. New laws passed this week bolster their powers to do so. Kiev says helping to arm Russia is tantamount to equipping an enemy during wartime when Moscow is sending support to separatist rebels, a charge the Kremlin has denied.

Those factories have employees and employers, and, as in any country, might have different interests regarding neighbors compared to the west of the country.

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Raytheon, MSPO 2013
June 30/14: Finalists. Poland’s MON announces the Wisla program’s finalists: Raytheon’s ‘PATRIOT with options’ offer, and EuroSAM’s SAMP/T Mamba system that uses the Aster-30.
Poland won’t become part of the MEADS program, nor will it buy Israel’s David’s Sling. The 2-stage technical dialogue led Poland to conclude that they required an operational system that is deployed by NATO countries.

NATO expansion insures that certain military suppliers will not only gain contracts, but that those contracts are more likely to go to certain countries given the nature of the political situation.

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Poland’s agriculture minister went on television to announce the country was taking action against Russia’s new import ban. “We believe Russia has broken international law in both its embargo against Poland and its embargo against the EU,” Marek Sawicki said.

Greece also hard-hit

Although about 70 percent of the Russian population approve of its sanctions, Pickett said the odds are good that the complex WTO mechanism will uphold Poland’s complaint.
“In my view, war-like conditions must either prevail or be imminent. Russia argues that this is a matter of food safety. I doubt that will be legally sufficient.”

Lithuania, Germany and Greece also benefit from trade with Russia: Last year, Germany exported agricultural products worth almost 600 million euros, while Lithuania sold more than 900 million euros of food to Russia. Greek farmers export large quantities of peaches and fish, especially during the summer months.

According to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” daily, if the WTO mechanisms do not work, or do not take effect quickly enough, this could mean a loss of 178 million euros for Greek vegetable and fruit farmers. Athens has therefore already begun to hold bilateral negotiations with Moscow.

Russia is a threat, but apparently a threat with coffers to be filled by the very states asking for protection. Perhaps the world is more complicated than white hats versus black hats and requires a more careful understanding.

PS: I have tried to change the formatting. I think the problem is copy and paste but when I go back and try and change it, it still doesn’t work. The main problem is lack of time, really. Sorry, Jonathan. I know you like to run a clean and tidy ship :)

[Jonathan adds: No worries :)) ]

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Two Good Analyses of the Gaza War

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Strategy Page has a very interesting discussion of how Israel’s military has learned and adapted from its failures in the 2006 Lebanon war:

After the 2006 war Israel realized two things; its military was still superior to Arab forces and its military was not as superior as Israel believed it was. The major Israeli deficiency was communications. What the Arabs, or at least Iran-backed Hezbollah, had done was learned to move faster and more resourcefully than the Israelis expected. What really shocked the Israelis was that although they could spot and track these Hezbollah moves they could not get artillery, aircraft or ground troops moved quickly enough to take out a lot of identified targets before the enemy managed to change position. All the different levels of Israeli headquarters and combat units could actually communicate with each other, but not fast enough to hit a target that had been identified and located but was not staying put long enough for the completion of all the procedures and paperwork required to get the strike order sent to the unit best able to carry it out.
 
The solution was new technology and procedures. Since 2006 Israel has built a new communications system that is faster and able, according to Israeli claims, to hit a lot more targets than the 2006 era forces could manage. Much of the solution had nothing to do with radical new hardware but to simply standardizing the procedures everyone had long used to call for fire, or to deliver it. Now commanders at all levels can see the same data and call for and receive fire support quickly. Thus when a target is identified the bombs, shells or ground attack follows quickly. Everyone was shown how easy, and damaging it was to underestimate the enemy. In training exercises the “enemy” is controlled by Israeli troops with ordered to be imaginative and try real hard to not get spotted and hit. It’s been amazing what these “enemy” troops come up, and necessary to keep this secret so that the real enemy does not find out.

While we withdraw from the world in the face of external threats, downsizing our military, slow-walking R&D and firing thousands of experienced NCOs and mid-level officers, other countries are learning and adapting. Not all of those countries are our allies.

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Top of the Slide

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Forty years after the fact is a fine time to wonder if that murderous freak Charles Manson had a point, after all. This is a savage disappointment to me, having been carefully schooled in racial tolerance since about the time that my mother nearly kicked off an epic family fracture when she requested that my paternal grandfather please tone down his expressions of racial denigration in front of us kiddies. She might also have asked the same of Dad, back in the day he was, after all, raised by Grandpa Al, who by his talk couldn’t abide Negro-Black-African-Americans, or whatever the current socially correct term is and Grandma Dodie, who couldn’t stand Jews. That their favorite entertainer of all time was Sammy Davis, Jr., was just one of those amusing ironies that and the fact that they were always perfectly cordial to those of my parent’s friends and mine who were Jewish, and/or not by any stretch of imagination white Anglo-Saxon protestants was another one.

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By Way of Explanation

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Everyone has these two visions when they hold their child for the first time. The first is your child as an adult saying “I want to thank the Nobel Committee for this award.” The other is “You want fries with that?”
Robin Williams

I suppose I should say something here, because this quote turns out to be a bit on the poignant side. Readers already aware of some portion of the following detail may be excused for skipping this one; I have alluded to various portions of it in posts and comments on different blogs over the years, and I tend to feel like I’ve worn friends and acquaintances out with it in conversation. It’s that worst of topics, my autobiography.

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Schrecklichkeit

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It’s a German word it means “frightfulness“ and it was used, if memory serves and a brief internet search conforms as a sort of shorthand for the reprisals exacted by the German Army against civilians during both wars. If not an actual German military field policy in WWI, it had certainly become one by WWII; brutally persecute, torture and execute civilians, and make certain that such horrors became well-known through extensive documentation within the theater of operations, and outside of it. To encourage the others, as the saying goes, but on a grand scale to make war on a civilian population, once all effective military have departed the area in hopes of cowing everyone who sees and hears of what brutality has been meted out on the helpless, and especially the helpless.
Was it an explicit policy of the German armies to apply the principle of schrecklichkeit by that name or another in the field in those wars?

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