Napoleon Bonaparte, Betty Davis, and the New President

November 6th, 2016

By the time most read this the election will be over, a new president will have been elected, and everyone, particularly the media pundits, will be in full throat, telling us what happens next.

In that light, a little history to provide some context…

On November 6^th, 1812, the first snow of the year fell on the Russian steppes. Winter 1812 turned out to be a severe winter. It helped change the course of history.

In the spring of 1812 Napoleon Bonaparte, determined to provide the final stroke that would give him rule over all of Europe, decided Russia must be destroyed. He assembled a huge army, nearly 700,000 soldiers, and headed east on June 24th.

The Russians chose a different set of tactics then he expected and as the huge army moved east, Cossack units forced evacuations and then burned everything: crops, farms, villages, towns. The French army advanced over barren land. Supplies dwindled. When Napoleon finally brought the Russian army to fight at Borodino (75 – 80 miles west of Moscow), on September 7^th, the fight was bloody (70,000 casualties on both sides) but inconclusive. Marshal Kutozov, the Russian commander, managed, despite his losses, to keep his army together, and withdrew eastward past Moscow. Napoleon advanced on Moscow to find it abandoned, supplies destroyed, and parts of the city burned. Napoleon thought that with Russian troop losses, and the ‘loss’ of Moscow, Tsar Alexander I would sue for peace; the Tsar had other plans.

After a month in Moscow (but no new supplies), Napoleon decided to chase down the Russian army. The French departed Moscow on October 19^th and met a smaller Russian army on the 24^th near Maloyaroslavets, southwest of Moscow. It was a ‘sharp’ engagement but was again inconclusive, the Russians withdrawing rather than fight a pitched battle. Napoleon realized the Russians wouldn’t engage; as Tolstoy said, they would let ‘General Winter’ fight the French. Napoleon turned west.

By the time Napoleon crossed the Berezina River in November, nearly 400,000 men in his army were dead, more than 100,000 had been captured by the Russians, more than 100,000 had deserted, and less than 30,000 remained as effective soldiers.

What lessons might we learn?

1)    Things seldom work out exactly as planned. Napoleon was one of history’s great “Geniuses of War.” He thought this was a sure thing. His army didn’t even bring winter clothing.

2)    The other side (and there are always other sides) “gets a vote.” And they will always do something different then you expect. How different is really the question. Burn their own crops?

3)    Something else will always pop up (the severe winter of 1812, for example).

And so what does this have to do with the new president?

1)    We have a huge and growing national debt. There are a host of economic fundamentals that need to be addressed, such as work-force participation. Make all the plans you want, but if you don’t deal with economic fundamentals, your plans will fail. It’s our “winter.”

2)    Every other nation is pursuing its own interests; some of those interests directly conflict with critical US national interests. And their actions won’t necessarily provide us “cheap and easy” means to counter them.

3)    There are any number of “wild cards” that are lurking “on the horizon;” solar minimum for example. If the astrophysicists are right, earth should enter a mini ice-age some time in the next 5 - 10 years. Shorter growing seasons, less rain, lower crop yields. Anyone planning for that? And that’s just one possibility.

Point is, the candidates had all sorts of wonderful sales pitches about this or that. If you remember, President Bush ran on the platform of reforming education. September 11^th changed that just a tiny bit. The campaign shenanigans are now behind us. Various reporters will wax poetic about “the honeymoon period” with the new president. Nonsense. The romance is over; now we’re stuck with whomever.

And the real problems will grow in scope every day.

As Betty Davis observed: “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Indeed.

The president works for us. The new president needs to start making real sense and producing real answers – real fast. And We The People need to hold them to that.

Our Unraveling Security

 October 30th, 2016

Shia radicals launch missiles at a US Navy destroyer, missiles provided by Iran, probably made in China.

North Korea continues development of a nuclear weapon and an ICBM.

Russia bombs insurgents in Syria; Russian naval forces return to the Mediterranean; Russian intelligence personnel return to Cuba.

China pressures Japan on islands in the East China Sea.

In the midst of even a routine presidential election, it can be difficult to keep up with what is happening elsewhere. This year, well… Yet, there are things happening around the world that we not only should be watching, we might want to consider before we vote.

The Syrian civil war grinds on, with Russian forces providing substantial support to President Assad. Russian aircraft have been giving the city of Aleppo a working over, despite protests from the international community, and it’s clear Russia is going to insure Assad remains in power. Turkey, a NATO ally, has read the writing on the wall and is talking with the Russians. In Iraq, the long awaited and much publicized offensive against ISIS forces in Mosul is pressing forward, with US help. Mosul will be retaken and ISIS pushed out, but the city will suffer a great deal. Iraq will be the nominal winner and ISIS will shrink back towards Syria.

The real winners will be Russia, Iran and Syria. The Shia-leaning government of Iraq, and the Iraqi Shia militias that are found on the battlefields of northern Iraq, will not become US allies when Mosul is cleared of ISIS. Iran’s position will likely grow stronger and the US position will grow weaker.

In Yemen, the Houthi insurgency, backed by Iran, continues fighting for a radical Shia state. The Saudi – UAE – Yemeni coalition has bogged down, while Iran provides advanced weapons to the Houthis; there’s little indication the coalition has a comprehensive strategy that will produce anything approaching victory.

The Afghanistan war grinds on. Technically, the US is no longer at war there. The Taliban, however, are. Nothing suggests this is going to end soon. Or well.

In the South China Sea, Chinese muscle flexing increases every week, with more aggressive naval patrols; and more aggressive aerial patrols near Japanese islands in the East China Sea; and more aggressive political and economic diplomacy among former US allies. The Philippines moves steadily in the direction of China, Thailand too. Meanwhile, North Korea continues testing its missile force, and continues its nuclear weapon development program. It’s only a matter of time before they have a nuclear weapon and a missile capable of carrying it to the US.

In Europe, Russia continues flexing its muscles. Is it going to attack into Europe? Probably not. But it doesn’t need to, everyone in Europe knows “the score.” Russia controls the oil and gas pipelines that lead to Europe. And Russia, with its once-more-robust alliance with Syria, sits astride any future pipeline from the Middle East to Europe. A recent well-publicized study by the Rand Institute noted that in any conventional Russian assault into Eastern Europe the fighting would be over before the US could move any significant forces into theater.

So?

First, much of what we’re witnessing is other countries flowing into the vacuum left by the US as it has backed out of the Middle East, Asia and Europe. The Obama – Clinton – Kerry legacy is that they’ve accentuated and highlighted the power vacuum. Their decisions have consequences and we’ll be paying for them for years to come.

Second, the problems associated with all this muscle-flexing are just starting. We can anticipate more problems; for example, between India and Pakistan (both with substantial nuclear arsenals), as well as a whole host of possibilities as China, Japan and North and South Korea confront each other in the next few years. The possibility of Japan and South Korea deciding that, absent a clear US nuclear umbrella they will need their own nuclear arsenals is now, incredibly, a real possibility.

Third, any hope that Mrs. Clinton will somehow reverse what she helped engineer is ludicrous.

The Obama administration (and the progressives) has gotten what it wanted; the administration spent 8 years focused on internal political maneuvering and expansion of entitlement programs, with no real focus on the broader aspects of US national security. Now, the global security picture is unraveling and the next president must try to restore some stability. We’ll be living with legacy for a long time to come.