Wars and Rumors of War, 2025. Part 3. The peace didn't break out on day one edition.

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

Matthew, Chapter 24.

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons. 

Herodotus.

May 12, 2025

Turkey v. The Kurds.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PPK, announced that it will disband and disarm after forty years of conflict.

May 26, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

Trump posted the following yesterday:

I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever. I’ve always said that he wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia! Likewise, President Zelenskyy is doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop. This is a War that would never have started if I were President. This is Zelenskyy’s, Putin’s, and Biden’s War, not “Trump’s,” I am only helping to put out the big and ugly fires, that have been started through Gross Incompetence and Hatred.

More and more it's impossible not simply regard Trump as stupid.

June 1, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

Ukraine pulled off a sort of scaled down Pearl Harbor, or Battle of Taranto, or perhaps attack on Port Arthur today/yesterday by mounting a major drone attack on Russia air assets inside of  Russia itself.

The drones were  smuggled into Russia and launched from cabin launchers in what will go down as one of the most successful clandestine internal actions of all time.  At least 40 Russian aircraft were destroyed on the ground.

June 3, 2025

Russo Ukrainian War

Ukraine's security service, the SBU, struck the Crimean Bridge with underwater explosives, damaging the structure.

June 8, 2025

US Civil Unrest

Donald Trump has federalized some units of the California National Guard and ordered them to Los Angeles in response to violent immigration protests there.

A President federalizing a Guard unit ab initio like this is very unusual.

June 9, 2025

US Civil Unrest

Absolutely nuts:

Press Release | June 9, 2025

USNORTHCOM statement on additional military personnel in the Los Angeles Area

U.S. Northern Command Public Affairs

PETERSON SPACE FORCE BASE, Colo. – U.S. Northern Command has activated the Marine infantry battalion that was placed in an alert status over the weekend. Approximately 700 Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division will seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51 who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area. 

The activation of the Marines is intended to provide Task Force 51 with adequate numbers of forces to provide continuous coverage of the area in support of the lead federal agency. 

Task Force 51 is U.S. Army North’s Contingency Command Post, which provides a rapidly deployable capability to partner with civil authorities and DoD entities in response to a Homeland Defense and Homeland Security Operations. It is commanded by Maj. Gen. Scott M. Sherman.  

Task Force 51 is comprised of approximately 2,100 National Guard soldiers in a Title 10 status and 700 active-duty Marines. Task Force 51 forces have been trained in de-escalation, crowd control, and standing rules for the use of force. 

 June 10, 2025

US Civil Unrest

Trump is doubling the size of the California National Guard deployment to Los Angeles.

June 11, 2025

US Civil Unrest

Californian National Guardsmen found their role expanded to protecting immigration agents as they made arrests in Los Angeles.

My guess is that this is going to be a long deployment, or that the Courts will find the this use illegal rapidly.

The deployment of military forces to California is costing the US $134,000,000.

Wyoming's Congressman predictably came down on the side of Donald Trump:

Hageman Blasts Newsom For Putting ‘Rioters Over The Side Of Law And Order’

Texas, not the United States, has deployed the Texas Army National Guard to Austin in advance of anticipated ICE raids there.

June 13, 2025

Israel v. Iran

Israel launched what are being termed "massive" air attacks against Iran's nuclear program and military command structure.  Initial reports are that the raid were highly successful.

US Civil Unrest

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled the Trump's direct Guard deployment was illegal, violating the Tenth Amendment and exceeding Trump’s statutory authority.  An appeals court stayed enforcement of the order upon review.

cont:

Israel v. Iran

The Israeli attack expanded today to nuclear installations.  Operation Rising Lion also took out a number of senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps figures.

Iran is presently attempting to retaliate with missles.

June 14, 2025

US Civil Unrest

The Governor of Missouri activated his state's National Guard in advance of today's protests.

Related Threads:

Misusing the National Guard.

Last Edition:

Wars and Rumors of War, 2025. Part 2. The world is not a development opportunity edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2025, Donald Trump, Kurds, Mexico, Russo Ukrainian War, The Second Trump Administration, Turkey, United States, US Mexico Border Crisis, War, Wars and rumors of wars, Winston Churchill

Thursday, January 20, 1944. Crossing the Rapido, Trying to persuade the Poles.

The Battle of the Rapido River began in Italy when the 36th Infantry Division crossed the river at night.  They'd establish a beachhead, but things would not go well.  Within a couple of days, the 36th would have to withdraw back across the river.

The attack, widely regarded as producing a disaster, was ordered by Gen. Mark Clark over the objection of the 36th's commanding officer, Gen. Fred Walker, who had experience with a disastrous river crossing in World War One. 

Walker, who at 56 years of age was the oldest divisional commander in the Army at the time, was correct in his assessment.

The 36th Infantry Division assigned to the task was a division of the Texas National Guard.

Walker, who complained that Clark and Gen. Keys were ignorant of the difficulties of the assault, was in ill health at the time, but a very good officer.  Helping to make up for his physical condition was the fact that two of his sons were on his staff.  He was returned to the United States in June, where he went on to command the Infantry School.  In spite of ill health, he lived until 1969, dying at age 82.

Winston Churchill met with the Polish Government In Exile to attempt to convince the Poles to accept the Curzon Line for discussion purposes.  Churchill promised that he'd resist Soviet efforts, in exchange, to influence the makeup of the post-war government.

By radek.s - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1720759

The Curzon Line had been first proposed as a demarcation between the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union following World War One by Lord Curzon and Herbert James Paton, and it was based on demographics. Poles did live to the east of the line, but they became increasingly mixed with other populations in what has been termed, quite appropriate, as "the Bloodlands' in a fantastic book on the post World War One era of the region by Timothy D. Snyder.  Like every other imperial domain in Europe, Imperial Russia had regions of strong ethnic uniformity and others of mix ethnicity.  The region that became the westernmost region of Poland had a large Polish population, but also had a Belarusian population and a Ukrainian one, as well as many areas of Jewish populations.  From 1918 into the early 1920s, every country in the region, to include Lithuania, had fought to establish their borders.  Poland had been remarkably successful, throwing back a massive Red Army assault in the Russo Polish War, but even at that the Second Polish Republic did not extend as far to the east as it had originally sought to.

Ethnographic map of Poland, based on pre World War One census data.

None of the parties in Post World War One Eastern Europe were ready to accept the Curzon Line and so the proposal went nowhere at the time, contributing to the wars between Poland and the USSR (which would have occured anyhow), Poland and Ukraine, and Poland and Lithuania.   The result of those disputes resulted in the post-war border, but Communist Russia had always had an appetite that stretched into Germany.  The mixed population in the area to the east of the line, however, guaranteed that it would be uniquely subject to bloodletting, with the Soviets wanting the territory, the Germans wanting to eliminate the Slavs entirely, and the nationalist Ukrainians wanting to expel the Polish and Jewish population on lands that they had claimed or wanted to.  Every culture in the region, for that matter, disliked the native Jewish population in varying degrees.

With the Soviets crossing the frontier of pre-war Poland, the Polish Government In Exile became increasingly concerned that the Soviet Union would annex what it wanted and replace the Polish government with a Communist one.  It was completely correct in both of those fears.

A 40mm gun of the 251st Coastal Artillery (AA), 14th Corps, California National Guard, on Bougainville. Mt Bagana, 6560 feet, an active volcano, is in the background.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 20: 1944  Marjorie Woodsworth and Paul Kelly, motion picture actors, appeared at the University of Wyoming to open the 4th War Loan Drive.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

California National Guard and Mexican forces nearly clash, August 4, 1916

A Mexican sniper shot a California National Guardsman on this day in 1916 at the Santa Cruz River and members of the patrolling 14th California Infantry returned fire.  This nearly resulted in an engagement, but leadership on both sides managed to steer clear of that.

 D. C. Guard training for border duty.

This item is really interesting in that often the Guard's role in the story of the Punitive Expedition tends to be marginalized.  The suggestion often is that because they didn't cross the border, they didn't really do much. But they did.  There are several examples such as this of Guardsmen getting into combat with small parties of Mexican raiders.  This is simply the earliest example of that I ran across, and it may well be the very first.  As we have seen from newspaper entries from this past week the Guard did not all deploy to the border at one time.  Indeed, this was not accidental as Guard units came and went, reflecting their initial state of training and the desire to not overtax them, and to get them all trained.  Nearly the entire Guard served on the border during the crisis, but not all at once.

 California National Guard, 1906.  Note how much had changed in just a decade.  These soldiers look a lot more like soldiers from the Indian Wars than ones who would serve in World War One.

That meant, and not coincidentally, that stories like we saw in the Wyoming newspapers earlier this week were common.  Soldiers who were not fit for service were getting discharged.  That leads us to another aspect of this. The Punitive Expedition is often treated a bit in a vacuum but the newspaper articles we've been reading (and if you look at Reddits "100 Years Ago" subreddit you'll see this to be even more the case) show that as time went on the huge fear and expectation that we were going to war with Mexico rapidly declined over a period of a few weeks and, instead, the disaster of World War One loomed increasingly large.  It's hard not to believe that a large part of the purpose of Federalizing the Guard changed over those few weeks and Wilson, while he may have "kept us out of war", was preparing for one, including using the border crisis to bring the Guard up to fighting speed.

In Wyoming's case, that meant getting the  Guard up to full strength, amongst other things.  As we've seen, the Guard was recruiting to make its quota.  In California's case, however, it apparently deployed very rapidly, which makes sense.

California National Guard, 1906.