WAR

Guest Post by Ol’ Remus

There’s been a bumper crop of well thought out, well documented predictions of catastrophic war, much of it retreaded 1950s-style doomsday scenarios. Life in the ’50s was bright but bounded by dark fatalism, death row except with good food, nice cars and rock & roll. But no prospect of a reprieve.

There were regular air raid siren and radio tests, year after year. Bomb shelter outfits did brisk business. There was a strong sense of inevitability to it, a “when” not “if”, so much so kids strained to look for the dreaded red star on passing aircraft. It’s part of why boomers are like they are. Would it all end today or after summer vacation? In the times that followed it was good for a chuckle but once again history rhymes. Once again there are predictions of extinction-level war. Once again bomb shelter outfits are doing brisk business.

-----------------------------------------------------
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal

-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)

As with all predictions, including those of full spectrum war, it’s good to repeat the obvious: by definition the future doesn’t yet exist and is for that reason unknowable. Said another way, the future has no attributes and thus defies measurement of any kind. Predictions are an exercise in present probability. While it’s legitimate and necessary to make such estimates, it’s a mistake to assume they’re anything else.

The proximate cause, progress and outcome of a future war is a serial prediction, each step derived from and reliant on the one before, inheriting and amplifying its errors. The more complex the prediction the longer the chain of assumptions and the less wiggle room for as-yet undiscovered, perhaps decisive realities, and therefore a dubious candidate for success. Complex predictions are an evolved facility of less demonstrated survival value for the individual than, say, experience or common sense, as anyone with a drawer full of corporate three-year plans knows.

Any quest for certainty about the future comes to resemble something akin to astrology. The future isn’t “something out there” we are approaching, something we can analyze and backwards test. We can make informed approximations and prepare according to our level of confidence, relying on our versatility and resourcefulness to make whole its shortcomings. That’s about it.

In engineering terms, risk equals probability times severity. When considering a general nuclear exchange, severity is so large a constant even a small probability yields a large risk. When probability rises even slightly the resultant number jumps massively, reinforcing the notion of reliability. But no matter how large the number, probability is always probability, never inevitability. The intent and only competence of risk calculation is to instill discipline in gambling. Its stand-alone predictive value for the event itself approaches zero, it’s merely probability reprocessed. Its value as click-bait is another matter.

That said, oversaid actually, I shall put my notions on the table. We’re apparently in the WWIII pre-season, complete with exhibition warettes to sharpen up and intimidate the enemy. By one theory, WWI, WWII, the Cold War and the Middle East dustups are a continuum from 1914 through today. Alliances shift back and forth, the intensity varies, but major war and world war have been one and the same for over a century. Worse, all major wars are now two-front wars, potentially or in fact.

The general object in war is to defeat the enemy and occupy their territory. Expeditions rise to the level of war only when sovereignty itself is at stake. Defeating an enemy isn’t enough. Air operations can, theoretically, defeat an enemy, even deny territory, but they can’t occupy territory. Guerilla outfits can occupy territory but can’t defeat the enemy. The partisans of WWII were supported by, and coordinated with, the national armies of the Allies. Yet they were commonly destroyed by regular forces where warranted.

Armored ground forces with air support can both defeat the enemy and occupy conquered territory. It’s here we find the indispensable core of modern armed forces. It’s why America has 19 carriers, 6,000 main battle tanks and 41,000 armored fighting vehicles. It’s why China is building a blue water navy. Wars are won by standing where the enemy stood, be it a hill or the Reichstag. Which brings us to a crucial question.

Would an enemy attack and defeat America militarily, if it could, without the means to occupy America? Unlikely. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor suggests the capability for one all but requires the capability for the other. Pearl Harbor was a successful blunder, a drive-by shooting that revealed Japan’s lack of capacity for even the appearance of victory over America. In turn, this was the fundamental fallacy of Viet Nam. Only the enemy can confer victory.

Occupation of a defeated America would take a form other than garrisoning huge numbers of troops and running the place as a prison camp, the standard motif of doomer movies and novels. The likeliest would be a Vichy-type puppet government that took care to mimic our current structure and outward forms. Just as in France, they’d have little trouble finding reliable, unprincipled opportunists already in place and eager to serve.

Without the prospect of occupation we’re to imagine asymmetric near-annihilation as the full extent of the enemy’s strategy. While possible, it’s unconvincing. The downside is too great without an offsetting upside, and the shelf life for anything other than real victory is not long. It’s also true that imposed occupations, including the “absentee landlord” kind, are all but unsustainable in the long term, but that’s for another time.

Recall my notion that predictions can’t include as-yet undiscovered, perhaps decisive realities—T-34 tanks in huge numbers for one, the atom bomb for another. This is different from miscalculation. Military men put it this way: we don’t know what we don’t know. No strategist will ever say, or can ever say, “then there will be a surprise attack that changes everything”. The fog of war isn’t remarkable, moments of clarity are. History is written from those moments, which is why it’s impossible to read history without wondering at least once, “how could they have been so stupid?”

If there’s to be war, don’t be stupid. Be willing to be surprised. Prepare as if the worst will happen and seek you out personally. As always, stay away from crowds. They attract ordnance, and even that isn’t their worst feature.