Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Back in January 2015 I wrote the column “Ukraine’s Viking Revival” on the shape of the emerging Ukrainian Nationalism caused by the Putin regime’s invasions of Crimea and the Donbas. It is a phenomena that will be seen in coming decades as one of the formative event of the 21st Century.
Ukraine’s “Viking Revival” complete with top knots, war cats and Tartar warriors.
For reasons best known to my writing muse, I revisited it Sunday for the lyrics and video of “100 BIYTSIV.” (100 Warriors)
Translated to English Lyrics:
Flowing / like blood from a blade across the steppe / in a fine line: left-handed battle / and the right fight, death awaits / in the distant blue . We go one family one hundred warriors and I. And day by day, over again, One hundred warriors and one order. . Day by day, who knows where orders take us and the hundred go. . Through the fire / and bullets flying through coal / and through granite . We go one family one hundred warriors and I. And every day, over and over again, One hundred warriors and one order. . With every turn / and crossroads every fork in the road / so far So far / your beloved is waiting back home / you with her . By chance / yesterday our destiny fell upon us / today, and tomorrow who knows / what will come … For the Fatherland / I give my life … . Tomorrow I, then you Who knows how, and when we go to battle we arm ourselves, death to the enemy! No rest for my feet … . We go one family one hundred warriors and I. And day by day, over again, One hundred warriors and one order. . My love, do listen, and do not cry! He did not die / for our homeland! Let the enemy die / for our Donbass, A long road / awaits us. . We go one family one hundred warriors and I. And day by day, over again, One hundred warriors and one order.
I ran down and updated the video link address in my old post:
…and from there spent time looking across the latest music video markers of Ukrainian Nationalism.
There is quite a bit with really good production values and story telling. Some are from the ATO & Right Sector, but many other artists are now drawing upon these same Viking/Vanagarian/Tartar national symbols, complete with sword dancing and shield maidens, to forge a unique Ukrainian National Identity apart from Russia.
The “Blood Lands” of Ukraine are rising. And the peoples of Ukraine are remaking themselves into a new, wild, Viking ethnic nationalist image, drawing on their past heritage, and their new hatreds, with all that entails.
Proud to be Ukrainian — This video starts with children in fields and flashes to Ukraine’s struggles in the past and with Putin’s Regime.
Ukrainian Army Anthem — This anthem is a repackaging of the OUN Anthem. The 1929 “March of Ukrainian Nationalists”, which is now the basis of the revised and rearranged “Mарш Hової Aрмії [March of the New Army]” Wikipedia has the English lyrics. Putin era Russians hate this song immensely.Ukrainian Army Anthem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgdANpB9PnY
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Марш нової українÑької армії – This has the same Ukrainian Army Anthem set to the visuals of the 2018 Ukraine military parade celebrating the centennial of the brief 1918 Ukraine National Republic. Ukraine‘s first independent state since it was dismembered after the Battle of Poltava in 1709. That Republic was conquered and incorporated into the Russian dominated Soviet Union. The men above wears the uniforms of that Republic.
It’s become something of a regular occurrence for the American mainstream media to blow a foreign policy story because of their Trump Derangement Syndrome. Yet they seem to have greatly sunk to new lows in missing the real importance of events leading to the 19 June 2019 Iranian shoot down of an American drone.
RQ-4N BAMS-D (Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator)
President Trump has ended the 1980 Carter Doctrine!
The free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf is no longer a “Vital Interest,” thanks to frac’ing, for a near energy independent USA.
BACKGROUND
CENTCOM confirmed Last Wednesday night of 19 June 2019, in international air space over the Strait of Hormuz, an Iranian surface to air missile (SAM) battery shot down a US Navy RQ-4N BAMS-D (Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator) Global Hawk. The ~$120 million drone in question was a navalised version of the USAF Global Hawk, used as proof of concept for the production MQ-4C Triton. It was essentially an unarmed, jet powered, sail plane with the wing span of a 737 jet liner and several tons of sensors. The drone fills the mission of the U-2, at similar altitudes, without the risks of a human pilot in the event of a shoot down.
Pentagon RQ-4N Shoot Down Map with Drone and SAM launch battery location.
Iran has claimed it used it’s ‘Third of Khordad‘ domestically built SAM system, operated by the IRGC, to shoot down the drone. This SAM system is described as a copy or derivative of the Russian Buk M3 / SA-17 GRIZZLY that incorporates the Bavar 373 missile that, in turn, appears to be a derivative/copy of the Soviet 5V55/SA-10B with additional controls. If you think of it as a late model Raytheon MIM-23 Hawk medium-range surface-to-air missile battery firing an early version of the MIM-104 Patriot PAC 1 missile, you would not be far wrong.
Press TV Tweet of Iranian SAM
It was this lack of a human pilot, either as a death or a prisoner of war, that saw President Trump jump off Iran’s scripted “escalation ladder.” Instead of destroying a SAM battery and converting 150 odd IRGC missile operators into another “Martyr blood sacrifice” for the Mullah regime to celebrate. Pres. Trump responded with cyber-attacks on Iranian missile control systems to remind the Mullah’s of the West’s technological “Black Magic” and additional economic sanctions that will cause further payroll cuts to both the IRGC and it’s over seas terror networks. (Truth be told, the new economic sanctions threaten the Mullah’s power far more than any set of tit for tat military strikes.)
And in a move treated as an afterthought, if the MSM mentioned it at all, President Trump ended an era in American Middle Eastern Foreign Policy.
END OF AN ERA
It has been almost 39 & 1/2 years — 10 years before the Cold War ended — that President Carter pronounced access to Mid-East oil a “Vital Interest” that the United States would go to war to protect.
Our two wars in Iraq both have that date, and that policy, as their starting point.
Now that era is over.
Last week Pres. Trump forged a completely new Middle East Foreign policy for America. Specifically, Pres. Trump took the opportunity Iran’s military escalations leading to the shooting down of the RQ-4N to end the January 23, 1980 “Carter Doctrine” expressed as follows —
“…An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
This is how Vandana Hari at the Nikkei Asian Review put it:
“U.S. President Donald Trump says he might take military action against Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon. But he has indicated he won’t necessarily jump in to protect international oil supplies from the Middle East if they are under threat from the Islamic Republic.
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The position, articulated by Trump in an interview with Time magazine on June 17, should not come as a surprise, even if it appears to be at odds with the Pentagon beefing up aircraft carriers and troops in the Middle East in recent weeks, citing a threat from Iran.
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As Trump spelt out in the interview, the U.S. is no longer as dependent on oil from the Middle East as it was, thanks to burgeoning domestic production.
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Air Force General Paul Selva, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, emphasized the message a day later, pointing out that China, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea were heavily dependent on supplies moving through the Strait of Hormuz, and needed to protect their interests. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has made similar comments.”
The pronouncement above was the full “Bell, Book and Candle” exorcism of American foreign policy — President, Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State. And please carefully note that it happened two days beforethe RQ-4N was destroyed.
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While “freedom of navigation” on the high seas over all and the Persian Gulf in particular remains a “major interest” of the United State of America. It is no longer one which America will automatically go to war over.
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In ending the Carter Doctrine, President Trump has fulfilled his 2016 campaign promise of “No More Iraq’s.”
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By changing the cost benefit calculations of Middle-Eastern oil — no more free riding on American protection of Persian Gulf Sea lanes — the only way a nation can “win” internationally now is by “getting close” to the American hyperpower.
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If you are functionally anti-American. You get nothing but higher insurance rates included in your price of oil to cover the political risk premiumof lacking American protection. China is now paying -defacto- and additional American oil tariff via much higher insurance rate on the VLCC tankers moving Mid-East crude oil to the Far East.
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Japan and South Korea could get lower insurance rates if they send naval forces to the Gulf to work with the US Navy. Or they can replace Mid-Eastern oil with exported US oil.
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China, not so much.
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As a correspondent put it in an e-mail to me when I mentioned the above to the list he and I are in —
“You all need to defend YOUR oil shipments through those NASTY Straits of Hormuz. The U.S. don’t need that filthy Middle East blood-oil no more. In fact, if you don’t want to spend the money and lives pounding sand in Iraq, Kuwait and Iran, we have some FINE Texas frackin’ goodness to sell at a SPECIAL price, just for YOU, our friends and allies for SO many years!”
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Snicker, choke, GASP….”
The American Left has finally gotten what it always wanted…no more “Blood for Oil“ in the Middle East.
Somehow, I don’t think President Trump delivering that reality to them will make them very happy.
You are a politician and a government official, but without much in the way of real power. You are not a member of the country’s elite class, and out of sympathy with many of the government’s policies.
For the last four years, your country has been involved in a major war–a war that you initially supported. But at least a year ago, you came to the conclusion that the war cannot be won, and that a peace treaty must be negotiated. You have had no success, however, in convincing the parliament and the government of this view.
Now, however, the leading generals have become convinced that a total and disastrous defeat is impending, and peace must be made immediately. Your country’s negotiating position at this point is not strong, to put it mildly. And one of the small group selected to conduct the negotiations with the enemy is you.
Neptunus Lex: The liberation of France started when each, individual man on those landing craft as the ramp came down each paratroop in his transport when the light turned green made the individual decision to step off with the only life he had and face the fire.]
There have been literally hundreds of books and thousands of articles on the June 6th 1944 invasion of Normandy. Almost every facet of the invasion has been examined in the last 75 years. Yet for all that, there are simply some subjects related to the Normandy invasion that professional military historians won’t deal with.
There are a lot of reasons for this, but at it’s heart, it is simply the case many, if not most, academic military historians got into history because they didn’t want to do math. When you start talking about bandwidth, frequency, wavelength, quartz crystal radio control, atmospheric transmissiblity, radio ducting, and how all this related to the command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) systems of the Normandy Invasion. When you bring up all this “Retro-High Technology,” the vast majority run screaming from the subject.
This is a real shame as it has left out the story of how the Allies created a C3I system to control all it’s air and sea forces. Projected this C3I system across the English Channel while destroying/stunning/jamming the German C3I system. And then implanted that C3I system in France. All the while making sure thousands of Allied fighters and anti-aircraft gunners didn’t shoot at each other or down dozens of troop laden transport planes filled with paratroopers or towing gliders, as happened in Operation Husky, the Invasion of Sicily. It simply hasn’t been addressed.
This post is my attempt to fill this gap in the historical record by explaining the problems the Western Allies faced. The Operation’s Neptune and Overlord planning process they used to overcome them with cunning yet simple ideas like invasion stripes, and a broad brush outline of how they executed those plans.
Figure 1. The Allied Operation Neptune Radar Jamming Plan for D-Day Invasion in Normandy. Source: Radar No. 6, page 10, 15 Nov 1944, Office of the Air Communications Officer, Headquarters Army Air Forces, Washington.
RETRO-HIGH TECH BACKGROUND
World War 2’s “Retro-High Tech” warfare was defined on the ground, in the air and on the sea by the use of electronic signals intelligence (SIGINT) with the addition of RADAR for land or sea based airpower. Both SIGINT and RADAR had to be tied together to an effective radio and wire telecommunications network in order to provide both intelligence services the necessary data for evaluation and the military commanders the processed intelligence to act upon in order to be effective.
The effective use of RADAR required a very rapid gathering, processing, decision making and dissemination of those decisions over a vast geographic area by radio, telegraph and telephone. During World War 2 (WW2) RADAR networks had the addition of first radio direction finding and then “low level” signals intercepts of voice and Morse code in the clear, simple, easy to use, but quickly breakable codes — Organizations doing this were called “Y-Service” by the British — followed eventually by higher level cryptographic code breaking (or “ULTRA”) being added into this network.
This four legged stool of military sensors, communications, intelligence, and decision making by military commanders is normally referred to as Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence or “C3I”. In particular, RADAR played the role of “Keystone Military Technology.” And by “Keystone” I mean an analogy to the biological concept of a “Keystone species” in an ecosystem, not unlike the role of algae in the ocean ecosystem or grass for a prairie ecosystem. This military C3I ecosystem model is far more developed in the 21st century especially with the arrival of digital electronic computers — but it is simply a conceptual embellishment of this 1940’s “Revolution in Military Affairs.”
