WMD Forum

[fstolz]

Frank:
You have more common sense in these couple pages of comments than numerous books written on these topics! Enjoy reading your views...(as usual)

Big Mac
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Col. M: At the end of the first article (last paragraph) below by Kaplan, he states that "the hard-liners will be frustrated with this new Maritime strategy, if not its language." I do not believe it is necessarily hard-liners that will disagree with this strategy, but rather those like yours truly and others who oppose the unproven ideals and theories of globalization and internationalism, and all of which is based on the eventuality of a New World Order run by a One-World-Government.

The opposition to this concept has to do with common sense, and the realization that we not only have the Communist nations like China, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. seeking our demise, but we also have supposedly former communist nations like the Russian Federation and others, who wish to see the USA thrown onto the discarded and discredited heaps of past forms of national governance, and replace it with their own ideals on governing. On top of all of this, we also have the Islamic Terrorists and Jihadists, who also seek to control the world through their varying beliefs on how Islam should take over the world governance, through their own radical religious interpretations.

Whether Communists, so- called former Communists, or Radical Islamists, the threats to our nation and to the world remain many, and they appear in many different forms as some threats are merely failures to cooperate, while others are undermining our government and our citizens or those of other nations or governments, and still others are purposely confrontational as with the Chinese, Iranian, and North Korean saber rattling of the recent past, or the Russians and French openly selling nuclear components and plants to Iran. Meanwhile the Iranians continue to resupply the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan with arms and financial assistance. While all the above remain on-going issues, the United Nations and other political bodies of this same ilk, do little to promote peace around the world, but they continue instead to berate the USA and the Israeli's almost on a daily basis, while this most corrupt and inept institution continues to remain on our soil and as they vie continually for our taxpayer dollars.

Sadly, many of our senior officials including military Officers have bought into the above under the guise of a new strategy promoted by one Thomas P.
M. Barnett a one time Pentagon analyst, who brought the concept of "Core verses Gap" nation strategy into being, and which fits in very nicely with the above New World Order. In his book titled "The Pentagon's New Map," he just had to include the fact that his wife is an ACLU card carrying member, as though to poke his finger in the eyes of conservatives or those most apt to disagree with his philosophy and his proposed strategy on military issues around the world. I might add that while unquestionably a bright individual, he never served in uniform and yet seems to have all of the military answers for every topic, sort of like the MacNamara Whiz Kids of yesteryear.

This new idea that under the 1000 or even 800 ship world fleet, the world will be safer and better sounds to me like something out of the Alice in Wonderland story, whereby common sense does not exist. The present situation in Afghanistan should be the example for how a Navy fleet of differing nations (both friendly and non friendly) could be expected to cooperate with one another. In Afghanistan, the NATO Allied Forces have been given their own areas of responsibility, and as should have been expected by the Pentagon, they avoid the need to seek out and destroy the enemy, and for the most part prefer to try and get along with locals minus conflict and mostly by remaining in their safe havens, and which congers up images of the French in Vietnam and on the Maginot Line prior to WWII. Furthermore, many of the NATO nations do not find the planting and harvesting of poppy plants to produce illegal drugs to be a problem or an issue, and so they pretty much ignore these activities, even though the income from this trade supports the enemy, and that regardless of one's personal views on illegal drugs, per se.
That means that NATO Forces and the American military and DEA forces are hardly on the same sheet of music, much less trying to accomplish the same goals. And so, the enemy is able to circumvent and avoid, when desired, the USA and its allies forces on many occasions since these groups appear to have seemingly differing goals and missions against their common enemy.

Why anyone would expect a different outcome with forces even more at odds with our missions and policies than that of the NATO Forces, is beyond comprehension, that is, were we to combine our Naval Forces with those of other nations not allied with the USA? Naturally, if these futuristic combined Naval Forces were to fall under the UN auspices (which I believe is the ultimate goal), then each ships commander would be obliged to follow UN orders, even if attacking their native soil! However, I would suspect that the idea would be to exchange naval officers amongst the various fleet forces and ships, and so it would then not be uncommon for say a Russian, Chinese, Iranian, or Venezuelan to be commanding a US. warship, and which might eventually include our carriers as well. After all, in such a scenario, the corrupt and inept United Nations would by then have all of the Naval Warships under their control, and those forces would then be able to be used specifically for UN planned purposes.

One thing would be certain in such an eventuality, and that is that no American would ever be in control of the UN, and mainly because almost 90 of the 120 nations in the UN tend to side with those opposing the USA and Israel, and on almost all issues of international prominence and concerns such as Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, etc. In fact, the UN has made a joke of tweaking the noses of Americans and Europeans, by electing some of the most ruthless, notorious, and vile national government representatives to the UN Humanitarian Councils and Committees, yet we tend to ignore it all. The same can be said of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whereby the Russians who set up and developed the defenses and provided WMDs to the Iranians, Iraqis, and to the Syrians along with various terrorist groups, are also Inspectors on the IAEA teams! Now one has to be awfully stupid to not be able to see through that sloppy attempt at deception, and yet there are few that dare mention these issues much less complain about them in public.

I do not know what these globalists, internationalists, and one-world-government advocates foresee for the future of the USA and its people. But in my humble opinion, were we to eventually fall under the control of the UN, I cannot foresee a day when any American would ever be elected to the leadership of that criminally oriented body. But I can foresee the day, were the above to occur, when our incomes will be drastically reduced to that of basic needs, our saving and retirements becoming near worthless, and our leaders coming from nations other than our own, our highways and roads becoming pot-holed and not maintained, and our homes falling into disrepair due to lack of monies, and our freedoms and rights being comparable to that of the old Soviet Union or present day China, or alternatively to that of most Middle East nations living under Sharia Law. Either knowingly or out of gross stupidity, we are falling down a slippery slope that leads us to either Communism, Fascism, or Radical Religious control, and in any of the above scenarios the future does not bode well for us the American citizens. Yet many of our leadership, both political and military, appear to be blinded by the hype of a New World Order and with none of the consequences of such a transition to our people being discussed or debated publicly. -VRS-

-Stolz Sends-
www.WMDTERROR.com

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From: Col Wayne Morris USMC (Ret) [mailto:waymor@bizec.rr.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 8:46 AM
To: 'Col Wayne Morris USMC (Ret)'
Subject: FW: Navy's Flat-Earth Strategy

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From: Gregory
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 7:38 AM
Subject: Navy's Flat-Earth Strategy

Atlantic Monthly
November 2007

Navy's New Flat-Earth Strategy
by Robert D. Kaplan

The U.S. unveils a collaborative plan for policing the seas

Over the decades our Navy has been slowly disappearing on us. At the end of World War II we had 6,700 ships. Throughout the Cold War we had around 600 ships. In the 1990s we had more than 350. Now we are down to fewer than 280.
This decline is occurring while China is in the midst of a shipbuilding and acquisition craze that will result in the People's Liberation Army Navy having more ships than the United States Navy sometime in the next decade.
Qualitatively, the United States will still very much have the edge, but China is catching up. And China is merely one of many challenges-terrorism, piracy, port security, and humanitarian disaster assistance are others-that the Navy now faces.

The Navy has plans to increase the number of ships from below 280 to more than 310. But according to the Congressional Budget Office and the Congressional Research Service, cost overruns of 34 percent, plus other factors, mean that these plans may be overly optimistic. In fact, over the next decade and beyond, if the Navy builds only seven ships per year with a fleet whose life expectancy is 30 years, the total number of its ships may dwindle to the low 200s. And yet we live in a world where 75 percent of the Earth's population is within 200 miles of the sea, and in an era when 90 percent of commerce travels by sea, including two-thirds of petroleum exports.

Such is the sobering context for the United States's new maritime strategy, just released after many months of study-particularly at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. The study was commissioned by Chief of Naval Operations Michael Mullen, recently promoted to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was released by the Navy, Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard-the first time the three maritime services have jointly authored a common strategy.

This is very much a diplomatic document, meaning it is necessary to read between the lines. Without mentioning China and without going into specific numbers-or even asserting the need for more ships-the 16-page document makes the case for a Navy that must do, if not everything, then nearly everything.
And it makes its case within an intellectual framework that should resonate with the public and a Democratic Congress: the dialectic of globalization.
"Our Nation's interests are best served by fostering a peaceful global system comprised of interdependent networks of trade, finance, information, law, people and governance."

As this document sees it, our world is interconnected, its population clustered in dense, pulsing demographic ganglia near the seas that will be prone to disruptions such as asymmetric attacks and natural disasters. The document pointedly does not rule out great-power military conflicts, asserting that "peace does not preserve itself." But according to the new strategy, even great-power conflicts are apt to be subtle and asymmetric.
There is little talk here of conventional sea and land battles and the need to spread democracy. This is a post-Iraq document, with an emphasis on soft power. Indeed, the war in Iraq appears less relevant to the document than the Indian Ocean tsunami emergency of December 2004/January 2005. To wit:
"Building on relationships forged in times of calm, we will continue to mitigate human suffering as the vanguard of interagency and multinational efforts ... Human suffering moves us to act, and the expeditionary character of maritime forces uniquely positions them to provide assistance."

The title of the report aptly describes its essence: "A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower" is all about cooperation between the three maritime services and, more significantly, between the United States and allied nations. For the past few years, Admiral Mullen has been talking about a 1,000-ship Navy-an international coalition of friendly navies to share intelligence and help each other police the world's coasts and seas.
The phrase "1,000-ship Navy" does not appear in the document. (I heard reports and rumors that the Bush administration did not like it.) But the spirit of the 1,000-ship Navy and "collective security" is everywhere in these pages. In fact, the new strategy goes further than Admiral Mullen's concept, expanding the definition of partnership beyond friendly navies to other institutions. "No one nation has the resources required to provide safety and security throughout the entire maritime domain. Increasingly, governments, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and the private sector will form partnerships of common interest to counter .... emerging threats."

In essence, this new maritime strategy represents a restrained, nuanced yearning for a bigger Navy, albeit one whose mission will be cooperation with other navies. That requires more than just new ships. "A key to fostering such relationships is development of sufficient cultural, historical, and linguistic expertise among our Sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen to nurture effective interaction with diverse international partners." Such training costs money and creates bureaucratic challenges, but it helps lay the groundwork for an exceedingly gradual, elegant decline of the Navy's capabilities-a future in which it has fewer platforms but gets more out of the ones it does have by working more closely with others.

Strategies make bets, often subtly. This document does not disappoint. While it refers to the need to project massive power in a conventional conflict, its focus represents a clear wager that it would be a mistake to mirror-image a future peer competitor like China. "Adversaries are unlikely to attempt conventional force-on-force conflict and, to the extent that maritime forces could be openly challenged, their plans will almost certainly rely on asymmetric attack and surprise, achieved through stealth, deception, or ambiguity." In other words, even if China does emerge as a peer competitor as the Soviet Union once was, it will act subtly and be just one of myriad threats that the United States is best positioned to handle through a Navy that's forward deployed and interlocked with allied ones. As bets go, this seems like a reasonable one-but it's still a bet.

Bottom line: The new maritime strategy posits an unconventional naval vision for a flat world, as Thomas Friedman calls it. Consistent with that vision, it also calls for a powered-down command structure, with junior officers better trained and more influential than ever, working in dispersed networks around the world, in which marines and coastguardsmen are integrated with sailors in the same units: each unit built around a specific task, be it combat, irregular warfare, or humanitarian relief.

Hard-liners will be frustrated by the spirit of the new maritime strategy, if not its language. Yet because the new strategy travels with the prevailing political winds in Washington, it is likely to win support among Congress and the larger public. And that could produce what the Navy needs but the new strategy doesn't really talk about: more ships.

Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a visiting professor at the Naval Academy. He is the author of Hog Pilots, Blue Water
Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground.
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Speaking of the Navy, here's an item relative to China and our Navy...

Wall Street Journal
26 November 2007

China's Thanksgiving Snub

The military relationship between China and the U.S. isn't always smooth sailing. But last week's stormy waters came as a surprise. On Wednesday evening, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied permission for the USS Kitty Hawk and its carrier battle group to make a four-day port call to Hong Kong for the Thanksgiving holiday. The 8,000 servicemen aboard the ships -- and the 290 families of crew members who had flown to Hong Kong to meet them
-- were left with their Thanksgiving plans in tatters.

The Kitty Hawk's visit had been well known for months, but Beijing didn't officially respond to the U.S. request for permission to dock until Wednesday evening -- at which point the ships had been waiting outside Chinese waters for a day. After getting the red light, the convoy began to head back to Japan. The ships were already more than 300 miles away when Beijing reversed its decision Thursday afternoon -- too far to make it back in time for Thanksgiving dinner.

Beijing's reasons for its rejection and reversal remain opaque, like most Chinese government decisions. The snub may have been retaliation for the Pentagon's recent approval of a $940 million upgrade to Taiwan's Patriot antimissile shield. Or for President Bush's meeting this month with the Dalai Lama, the exiled religious leader of Tibet. The Chinese have offered no explanation.

The only message that stands out loud and clear is that China is not a reliable military partner. Beijing's diplomacy is also not as sophisticated as it seems. Surely the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has better ways to send messages to the U.S. than by stealing Thanksgiving family dinners from American seamen.
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Major Frank Stolz, USMC (Ret)