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.
General Washington took command of the Continental Army on this date. He found the army to be “a mixed multitude of people under very little discipline, order or government.”
Through many defeats and hardships, Washington and his officers eventually transformed an armed mob into a war-winning weapon.
Thank, you Gen. Washington.
Thank you, U.S. Army.
God bless America.
The historical Russian (using the USSR and Czarist Russia as a proxy for Russia) military generally featured the following characteristics:
1. A heavy emphasis on conscripts, with all males who had any sort of connection or means of escaping service, doing so, since the conditions were horribly and brutally bad
2. A “shell” organization of units with only a few active duty soldiers, to be filled out by reservists at mobilization
3. A vast inventory of equipment of various vintages (i.e. old tanks, planes, artillery) that the reservists would use when called up for service
4. In the old “Soviet” military, many of the soldiers were from regions where they did not speak Russian and communication was often poor. This may be partially mitigated today by the fact that many of these former republics of the Soviet Union have now split off into separate countries and are no longer part of the Russian military organization
5. The Russian navy faces particularly difficult conditions because each of the fronts has to operate independently because they are not interconnected, or make vast sea voyages in order to join forces. This contributed to the defeat at Tsushima in 1905, for example
These concepts began to falter after the end of the cold war and the dissolution of the Soviet empire. The lightning US victory against conventional forces in the various Iraq wars and the Russian military’s poor performance in the military conflict against Chechnya led the Russians to consider new methodologies.
The inaugural issue of “Modern War“, which is a new magazine (to begin in September, 2012) by the publishers of the excellent magazine “Strategy and Tactics“, covers the reorganization of the Russian military and is highly recommended for anyone interested in the field. They sent me an issue (since I used to be a subscriber) and I hope it will be on the newsstand soon if you have one near you.
The article is called “Russia’s Ongoing Military Reorganization” by Bruce Costello. It describes the following changes to the historical Russian model:
1. Russian forces are to be kept in a state of rapid readiness, fully mobilized, equipped and ready for battle
2. The number of units will correspondingly be significantly reduced
3. Unnecessary equipment and non-fighting organization ranks (officers) will be eliminated (or reduced, in the case of officers)
4. There will be four OSD (Operational Strategic Districts) which will jointly command the land, sea and air units in those districts rather than being independently managed (the rocket forces will remain centrally controlled)
5. The brigade will be the unit size of choice, and reconnaissance will be embedded in the unit along with sufficient communication gear to meet the mission
6. The Russians are moving to purchase foreign arms where needed, such as a French amphibious ship, a dramatic departure from former practice
7. There is to be more of an emphasis on professional troops rather than conscripts. There are various sources on the effectiveness of this move from a conscript army to a professional army, but apparently the goal is to have 1/3 of the troops as conscripts (rotating out every 12 months) with the remaining 2/3 professional and long serving soldiers. The article didn’t emphasize this transition enough, from my perspective, since it is a crucial element of the change-over.
As a keen student of military history it is very odd seeing Russia moving to a semi-professional army staffed in a “ready” mode. It also is unusual that they are considering buying foreign arms since the Soviet Union was able to manufacture pretty much everything at the height of the USSR (although the former Czarist Russians and inter-war USSR did purchase foreign equipment, particularly for ideas on home grown designs). Times change, and these changes are reaching even historically consistent organizations such as the Russian military. It is difficult for me to remain neutral on these changes if they make the Russian military more effective; the Russian military has historically not been deployed in alignment with the interests of the US or the West. Note their current backing of odious Assad in Syria, a reaction to their client Gaddafi meeting his end thanks in part by the backing of NATO and their air and sea assets.
Cross posted at LITGM
Most of the commentary I am seeing on Chief Justice Roberts’ Obamacare decision falls into two categories: (1) why the opinion is doctrinally and substantively wrong, and (2) the various awful things which will or might happen as a result of it.
Point 1 may be correct. Mark Levin had a vehement and convincing analysis asserting that the opinion is legally defective. Point 2 may also be correct, the consequences of the opinion may be awful, sooner or later.
But neither of these points much matter. Both are backward-looking. Both, in effect, say, if only Roberts had done something different than he did.
It is a waste of time to worry about that. A Supreme Court opinion is pretty nearly immutable. John Roberts will likely be Chief Justice for decades to come. Bring down the curtain on that act in the drama. It is over.
The only question that matters right now is this: What political dangers and opportunities does this opinion create? How can we make use of this opinion? How can we minimize the political damage from this opinion? (I notice Mr. Obama got an uptick on Intrade as a result of it.)
A military commander has to take the terrain and weather as they are given. The set parameters within which he must operate. He cannot waste time bemoaning the mud, or the rain, or the height of the cliffs or the aridity of the desert.
A major Supreme Court opinion is similarly a “given.” It is like a sudden shift in the terrain. It is as if an earthquake had changed the course of a river. You now simply have to work with that new feature of the landscape, and whether it should have happened or whether it is a bad thing overall are both irrelevant.
My initial assessment is that the opinion provides a substantial amount of ammunition to people running against Mr. Obama, other Democrats, and Obamacare itself. I would like to see the many people smarter than myself focusing on this angle. We only have a few months. There is not a lot of time for theorizing. We should be thinking in strictly utilitarian terms: How can we use this ruling to win elections in November?
Leave everything else for the “long term,” for now.
Since Johnathan posted a picture of the Captin’s Market last week, I thought I may as well post a picture of my favorite corner gas-station and mini-mart. The exterior is … deceptive. The inside of it is very different from what you would expect, just driving past.
This blog has been around for many years and there’s a lot of gold buried in the archives. The problem is that the state of the art in blogging software doesn’t make it easy to find older content. You can sort of search by category or you can google keywords but these are very crude and imprecise ways to do what should be easy.
This problem afflicts most established blogs. There is no reason — other than the arbitrary limitations of the journal format used by blogging software — for it to be difficult to find specific content. We’re not kids discussing our social lives. The contributors here post serious work and much of it remains worth reading years after it was written. The journal format is inadequate.