Sunday Cutdown XX (14 April 2024)
Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document
1) First step in dealing with a problem is admitting you have a problem
WAPO: Top Republican warns pro-Russia messages are echoed ‘on the House floor’
Well, somebody finally said the quiet part out loud regarding Russia’s firm grip on the GOP right-wing in Congress:
Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Sunday that it was “absolutely true” that some Republican members of Congress were repeating Russian propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine instigated by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Apparently, Turner was just echoing previous comments offered by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Tex.).
Brave souls to speak the truth.
Meanwhile, Majorie Taylor-Greene seems to be field testing Trump’s “secret plan” to end the war by forcing Ukraine to give Putin all the land he seeks to carve out of Ukraine. She suggests that would buy Putin’s promise of no more invasions.
All of this seems so Munich, so 1938, so “peace in our time.” What could go wrong?
That’s the specific problem. The more general problem is Putin’s continued ability to make various GOP puppets dance at will.
Of course, those puppets don’t see it that way, believing, in their White Christian Nationalism, that they have found a tremendous ally in the allegedly pious but certainly murderous Putin, who seems to have committed his remaining time on this Earth toward reuniting the world’s Slavs under Moscow’s firm rule — one invasion at a time.
That too is a movie we’ve all seen before, and it never ends well, whether it’s about unifying all Slavs or all Teutons.
Nonetheless, the US Far Right’s love affair with Putin is here to stay (for as long as he remains alive). Why? It all comes down to how they swallow Vlad’s current red-pill offerings, choosing to view him as:
A protector of Russian ethnic and cultural identity against corrupting Western influence
A defender of traditional Christian values and a bulwark against LGBTQ+ rights and secularism
An effective authoritarian leader who is willing to use force against “evil” enemies.
The GOP’s far-right White Christian Nationalism sees in Putin everything they imagine in Trump. Thus, Putin’s enemies must be the enemies of White Christian Nationalists in America.
That’s the most amazing aspect of Putin’s grip on the GOP: determining who our enemies are.
That is serious power.
2) Drones are already warping force structure
NAVAL NEWS: Sea Drone Found In Black Sea Is American Boat With Massive Soviet Warhead
NEWSWEEK: Russia's Bizarre 'Turtle Tank' Becomes Target of Jokes, Memes
WAPO: Glide bombs are raining on Ukraine while the House dawdles
WAPO: A drone factory in Utah is at the epicenter of anti-China fervor
The drone-ification of military force structures globally proceeds apace, with current combatants leading the way by retro-fitting every munition in their arsenal to some sort of pilotless delivery vehicle. In response, we’re seeing “bizarre” retro-fitting on traditional platforms (the “turtle tank” that all but says, we’ve given up on trying to stop drone attacks!).
This drone-ification wave is rapidly spreading across our Military Industrial Complex (MIC) as it goes into high gear prepping for the long-dreamt-of WWIII with China over Taiwan.
Why? Because it just has to be! Stop asking so many questions!
The more our MIC goes down this path, cannibalizing force structure for the sake of radically expanding our drone arsenal (and expanding its utility and use throughout the conflict spectrum), the faster we shall see the extreme spillover into domestic security uses. Heck, if insurance companies can spy on your house from above, looking for ways to restrict your coverage, then the police will be soon to follow along far more intrusive lines, as they begin — just like they did during the Global War on Terror — aping the military’s force structure and operational tactics, in effect militarizing our police system to a degree that makes most Americans nervous.
Black drones replacing black helicopters.
This is where the GOP’s current embrace of authoritarianism AND anti-immigrant ideologies leads the nation down the path of serious tyranny: they believe they must strike first to prevent their “enslavement” by the “radical Left.” It is a self-licking ice cream cone: an ideological arms race fueled by manichaean paranoia, with drones becoming the militarized policing instrument of choice.
The impact and reach of Russia’s war with Ukraine already dwarfs the question at hand (fate of Ukraine) and now extends into far more profound territory (the future of policing and state control in the West).
3) And the beat goes on
NYT: Ocean Heat Has Shattered Records for More Than a Year. What’s Happening?
WAPO: Earth sees hottest-ever March, the 10th record-breaking month in a row
Move along folks, nothing to see here:
This is not the New Normal; this is a way station on the road to the New Normal — one that many of us will not live to see even as our kids will be trapped there.
“Seasonal forecasts suggest spring and summer are likely to be warmer than average,” [Samantha] Burgess [Dep Dir Copernicus] told The Washington Post. “The reality is unless we change our emissions dramatically, we’ll look back at 2023 and consider it a cool year, 10 to 20 years in the future.” [emphasis mine].
4) France epitomizing the WWIII mania afflicting the West
POLITICO: France prepares for naval warfare against an enemy that ‘wants to destroy us’
The generals are marching increasingly to their own beat — a bad sign.
The French navy is shifting its training away from a focus on policing operations to gird for war against foes who want "to destroy us," says Rear Admiral Jacques Mallard, the commander of France’s carrier battle group.
Now, of course, on one level, this flag is merely representing his tribe: carriers are not a small-wars platform of choice, so big wars it must be.
“Naval combat is becoming increasingly likely,” he told POLITICO. “We’re moving from a world where we were pretty free to do as we pleased to one where we feel threatened on a more regular basis ... We now train for other missions, in particular what we call high-intensity warfare.”
The gall of that man.
Yes, yes, we have seen a sharp and continuing rise in naval warfare these past several decades. There must be numbers somewhere to support this, yes?
Alas, no. And yet dinosaurs certainly roared right up to the point where they all went extinct.
Meanwhile, the Ukraine-Russia war hasn’t exactly showcased the utility of naval platforms, has it? Too bad, because it SHOULD have triggered WWIII, by all accounts and expert prognostications.
Another anomaly we should remove from the simulation.
As for the Houthis and the Red Sea, I’m not yet seeing how this isn’t just another case of insurgent warfare.
So, chalk this up, I guess, to the stunning rise of the Chinese naval threat (world’s biggest trading state with a high degree of overseas resource dependencies building a big navy … what the hell’s up with that?) and thus China’s overall threat to Taiwan ( a genuine overmatch on multiple levels). That alone apparently has the power to re-legitimize platform-centric warfare for decades to come, regardless of how drones (see the Pentagon’s rising Replicator program) increasingly relegate such warfare to the dustbin of military history.
Here’s to the Moskva!
Oh, what the hell! Let everybody join in with every toy in their arsenal! Let a million platforms bloom! This is going to be an awesome World War.
5) Why small wars will still matter
WAR ON THE ROCKS: Great Power Competition Will Drive Irregular Conflicts
Then again, maybe the world’s competing superpowers will content themselves with small proxy wars around the planet and eschew the whole, blowing-up-the-planet scheme.
Sad to say, I know.
From War on the Rocks comes this timely reminder:
If the United States is drawn into a new war in the next few years, what will that look like? Will the government deploy troops and heavy arms to a front in Eastern Europe or naval forces to the Taiwan Strait? Or will it engage in the kinds of activities that have been central to recent conflicts: special operations teams conducting drone strikes on insurgents, security force assistance brigades training partner militaries, development professionals running small-scale projects in remote villages, and diplomats learning the fine details of local politics?
The U.S. National Defense Strategy argues that preparing for the former is the best way to stave off major conflicts, and the Department of Defense is overwhelmingly emphasizing preparing for conventional warfare with China or Russia. This is a risky strategy in one key respect: Historically, irregular warfare has been a major part of great-power competition.
It’s like I never wrote The Pentagon’s New Map, where I complained about this Pentagon notion that, in preparing for the Big War, we’d naturally end up with the force structure for all the so-called lesser includeds (code for Small War ops we hate to conduct because they’re messy).
Since the big superpower-on-superpower wars no longer happen — and will not happen so long as MAD remains (and it shows no sign of dissipating), it doesn’t matter if we live in a unipolar or bipolar or tripolar or multipolar world. There’s still the world’s nuclear powers and they continue to refuse to engage in direct strategic war because we all know how that will end (mutual destruction on a vast, self-extinguishing manner — and, for what exactly? The linchpin of global order that is Taiwan?).
Ukraine, believe it or not, totally proves this reality.
Nuclear Russia can do what it wants against a smaller, non-nuclear opponent. Israel can do the same with Gaza.
Nobody will stop them because they have nukes. Players will play around the edges like crazy, but nobody’s going to roll the nuclear dice and somehow win.
So, yes, proxy wars will continue and likely expand as the preferred military competition of choice. Small wars are not going away, just like the Big One is not coming.
This has been our reality for eight decades now. It’s not a “theory”; it’s the historical record.
6) These kids are monsters (Today’s Version)
SCMP: Feral, illiterate, doomed: Generation Alpha are a quarter of the world’s population, and people are worried about them
Everybody above should be wearing a T that says, I’m with stupid! and features an arrow pointing left.
This is the oldest gripe in human history: we’ve raised a bunch of idiots!
It is always proven wrong, and life goes on — progress nearly always on the march!
What these criticisms typically represent is an older generation or generations rationalizing why they must stay in power for as long as possible.
Our Boomer political leadership deserves ZERO more time in office, and Gen X should be summarily dismissed through electoral means.
Bring on the post-Cold War generations, I say. We are living in leadership hell right now.
7) James … take me to my other home!
CNBC: The rich are getting second passports, citing risk of instability
This is not a poor person’s problem or solution. This is a rich — overwhelmingly White — person’s problem and solution.
Geopolitical tensions create geopolitical orphans on both ends of the spectrum. The poor are put on the move as migrants, the rich simply buy themselves “escape” nationalities. With serious money comes the right to emancipate oneself from a failed nationality.
Civil war, you say! Ta-ta! We are out of here, our cash already wired ahead!
Rich people don’t feel the urgency to avoid war and instability and civil strife; poor people do, because, for them, it’s not a complication that can solved by bureaucratic paperwork leading to a change in scenery. It truly is the end of life as they have known it.
8) Drones will dominate small wars too
REUTERS: Sudan civil war: are Iranian drones helping the army gain ground?
Per the War on the Rocks piece cited above, why would Iran want to unleash full-scale war against a nuclear opponent like Israel when it’s increasingly able to play regional kingpin through something as cheap and easy and disposable and distancing and effective as drones?
A year into Sudan's civil war, Iranian-made armed drones have helped the army turn the tide of the conflict, halting the progress of the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Force and regaining territory around the capital, a senior army source told Reuters.
No, that doesn’t mean Iran won’t find ways to strike back at Israel for its recent targeting of its senior military personnel. It’s just that that sort of thing is what is truly performative in Iran’s engagement with the world.
The real work of influence peddling is making Iran a key source of drone exports, whether the client is a nuclear superpower like Russia or a military nobody like whichever side in Sudan that Tehran prefers more (does it matter?).
9) Trump accomplished WHAT by pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal?
WAPO: Nuclear deal in tatters, Iran edges close to weapons capability
The subtitle says it all:
Six years after the Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear accord, Tehran is rapidly accumulating enriched uranium, some of it very close to weapons grade. Experts fear that a bomb could be a short dash away.
You want some real war in the Middle East? Then Trump’s your man. He will back Netanyahu to the hilt, plopping down luxury resorts in the eliminated Gaza Strip, leveraging investments from Persian Gulf royal families. This will push Iran over the edge on nukes, and then we can all get to see a cluster of religious nutcase leaderships experience the learning curve that is Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).
And, if they fail to learn fast enough and actually blow themselves up?
Then, God riddance, say I.
The rest of the world will move on, solemnly observing the anniversary for decades but otherwise paying it little-to-no mind (see 9/11 for details).
10) The definition of a win-win climate change mitigation
FAST COMPANY: This startup uses methane-eating microbes to turn pollution into fertilizer
This is the sort of news one longs for: a start-up saying it can “capture methane from manure, oil wells, and landfills to make nitrogen fertilizer, replacing synthetic fertilizers made with fossil fuels.”
That’s fixing things coming and going, yes?
We hear so much about methane as the worst of the worst, creating many times more warming effect than C02 (86 times over 20 years to be exact), so, some good news on this front is most welcome. Whacking methane is potentially cutting out almost a third of warming over time.
How big can this scale?
The microbes can also capture pollution at … even natural methane sources like wetlands or melting permafrost.
Now we’re talking. Think Siberia and arresting the feared tipping point where methane release triggers faster warming drives greater permafrost-defrosting leads to that much more methane release … in a vicious cycle.
This is why I didn’t spend any space in America’s New Map discussing mitigation, simply stipulating massive creativity and entrepreneurship was to follow — as it is.
Now to a beautiful recursive outcome for, say, a dairy farm:
At a dairy, farmers can connect a tank filled with the microbes to an exhaust pipe from a dairy barn, or to a pipe from a covered manure lagoon. (If farmers add microbes directly to a field, the microbes can also pull methane from the air, but they’re more efficient when there’s more pollution. The number of microbes that naturally live in soil—especially heavily-farmed soil—has dropped in recent years, so adding microbes there still helps.)
After the microbes produce fertilizer, a farmer can spread that on their fields. An organic farmer, who doesn’t buy cheap fossil-fuel based fertilizer, could theoretically rely entirely on the product. Conventional farmers might use a mix of synthetic fertilizer and Windfall’s product. The microbe-produced fertilizer helps improve soil health and is less likely to runoff the soil and pollute water. The cost is around 50% of buying an equivalent non-organic fertilizer.
Understand, Russia is the world’s largest exporter of fertilizer (23% of ammonia exports, 14% of urea exports, 10% of processed phosphate exports, and 21% of potash exports), so a potential bazinga! there also!
When it comes to fertilizer, I say, science the shit out of it!
11) Arsenal of Hemispheric Chaos
WAPO: When Haiti’s gangs shop for guns, the United States is their store
Talk about funding both sides of the war.
Understand, the United States is the primary supplier of guns to Latin America, with more than half of the “crime guns recovered in Central America being sourced from the US. The numbers are worse for Mexico (70%) and the Caribbean (80%).
Sharp power at its worst:
Heavily armed gangs control 80 percent of Port-au-Prince, the United Nations has estimated, where they rape, kidnap and kill with impunity. Haiti doesn’t manufacture firearms, and the United Nations prohibits importing them, but that’s no problem for the criminals. When they go shopping, the United States is their gun store. The semiautomatic rifles that have wrought human carnage from an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., to a Walmart in El Paso are also being used to menace the Haitian government and terrorize the population.
More to the point, Caribbean leaders are proposing a War on Guns in unspoken opposition to America’s War on Drugs:
Exasperated Caribbean leaders last year declared the flood of U.S. weapons “a direct threat to our democracy” and urged Washington to join their “war on guns.”
The Constitutional right to own is not the right to traffic internationally.
A sad article: check out the bit about Haitian cops seizing guns from crime scenes because that’s their best and sometimes only way to arm themselves.
12) A “perfect Earth Day title”?
PERRY HOOK: April’s Know-Ahead List
Perry Hook is a book-promoting machine based in DC.
Her April “know-ahead list” included ANM, to our delight.
Would have preferred to have made the September 2023 know-ahead list, but we take what we can get. She’s a genuine influencer and so we welcome the recognition, being listed just behind Doris Kearns Goodwin’s latest.