Tuesday, January 8, 1974. Suppressing dissent and the news.

South Korean President Park Chung-hee  issued an emergency decree making it illegal "to deny, oppose, misrepresent, or defame" the president's decisions.  The same decree prohibited reporting on dissent  "through broadcasting, reporting or publishing, or by any other means."

He must have been concerned about "fake news".

Park started his adult life as an army officer in the Japanese puppet Manchukuo Imperial Army.  After serving a little over two years in that entity during World War Two, he returned to the Korean Military Academy and joined the South Korean Army.  He was a figure in the 1961 military coup in South Korea.  After large scale protests in 1979 he was assassinated by  Kim Jae-gyu, the director of the KCIA, and a close friend of his after a banquet at a safe house in Gungjeong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul. Kim Jae-gyu would be hanged the following year for the action.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association approved allowing amateur athletes to play as professionals in a second sport.

Wednesday, August 15, 1923. The toll of the explosion.

The papers reported followup information on the Kemmerer mine disaster.

At the same time, De Valera made the front page of the Casper page for his arrest.

De Valera, like other Irish Republican leaders, had come out of hiding and many of them were being arrested.  He was campaigning for a position in the Dail, oddly enough, but under the abstentionism thesis in which people were elected and refused to take office.  It's a policy I've frankly never grasped and De Valera was soon to abandon it.

Tidal waves killed over 300 people on the west coast of Korea.

The first U.S. Navy Reserve air station was founded near Boston.

A KKK rally was broken up in Steubenville, Ohio by a crowed that reacted to their presence in a hotel violently.

Monday, April 23, 1923. No Dope in Canada.

I continue to be amazed by how the Tribune, in 1923, routinely issued headlines that were largely irrelevant locally.

Cannabis was added to the Canadian list of prohibited narcotics.

Banning marijuana was part of the spirit of the times, just like liberalizing marijuana laws are part of ours.  This act in Canada nationalized a ban long before this was done in the United States.

Hyeongpyeongsa was organized in Korea by merchants and social leaders with the goal of eliminating the Korean caste system.  At that time, Korea had a class of untouchables known as Baekjeong.

Poland opened up the Port of Gdynia on the Baltic in order to attempt to avoid the labor problems the country had been having in Danzig.

Women appeared in Turkish film for the first time.

Kodak introduced 16mm film.

Delaware authorized the Delaware State Police.

Hoover helped break ground for a model house.

The Lord's Prayer in Korean.

 하늘에 계신 우리 아버지

아버지의 이름이 거룩히 빛나시며

아버지의 나라가 오시며

아버지의 뜻이 하늘에서와 같이 땅에서도 이루어지소서.

오늘 저희에게 일용할 양식을 주시고

저희에게 잘못한 이를 저희가 용서하오니

저희 죄를 용서하시고

저희를 유혹에 빠지지 않게 하시고

악에서 구하소서.

(주님께 나라와 권능과 영광이 영원히 있나이다.)

아멘.

Tuesday, July 4, 1972. The Koreas ponder reunification.

North and South Korea announced that they had agreed to discuss reunification.  Their joint statement held:

The July 4 South-North Joint Communiqué

4 July 1972 

Recently, talks were held in Pyongyang and Seoul to discuss the problems of improving SouthNorth relations and of unifying the divided country. 

Lee Hu-rak, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in Seoul, visited Pyongyang from May 2 - 5, 1972, and held talks with Kim Young-joo of the Organization and Guidance Department of Pyongyang; Vice Premier Park Sung-chul, acting on behalf of Director Kim Young-joo visited Seoul from May 29 - June 1, 1972, and held further talks with Director Lee Hu-rak. 

With the common desire of achieving the peaceful unification of the nation as early as possible, the two sides engaged in a frank and openhearted exchange of views during these talks, and made great progress towards promoting mutual understanding. 

In an effort to remove the misunderstandings and mistrust, and mitigate the heightened tensions that have arisen between the South and the North as a consequence of their long period of division and moreover, to expedite unification, the two sides reached full agreement on the following points. 

1. The two sides agreed on the following principles as a basis of achieving unification: First, unification shall be achieved independently, without depending on foreign powers and without foreign interference. Second, unification shall be achieved through peaceful means, without resorting to the use of force against each other. Third, a great national unity as one people shall be sought first, transcending differences in ideas, ideologies, and systems. 

2. In order to ease tensions and foster an atmosphere of mutual trust between the South and the North, the two sides have agreed not to slander or defame each other, not to undertake military provocations whether on a large or small scale, and to take positive measures to prevent inadvertent military incidents. 

3. In order to restore severed national ties, promote mutual understanding and to expedite independent peaceful unification, the two sides have agreed to carry out numerous exchanges in various fields. 

4. The two sides have agreed to actively cooperate in seeking the early success of the SouthNorth Red Cross talks, which are currently in progress with the fervent support of the entire people of Korea.

5. In order to prevent the outbreak of unexpected military incidents, and to deal directly, promptly, and accurately with problems arising between the South and the North, the two sides have agreed to install a direct telephone line between Seoul and Pyongyang. 

6. In order to implement the above items, to solve various problems existing between the South and the North, and to settle the unification problem on the basis of the agreed principles for unification, the two sides have agreed to establish and operate a South-North Coordinating Committee co-chaired by Director Lee Hu-rak and Director Kim Young-joo. 

7. Firmly convinced that the above items of agreement correspond with the common aspirations of the entire Korean people, all of whom are anxious for an early unification, the two sides hereby solemnly pledge before the entire Korean people to faithfully carry out these agreed items. 

Upholding the instructions of their respective superiors S

Lee Hu-rak 

Kim Young-joo

A similar communiqué has been issued at least one additional time.

Today, in 2022, prospects for reunification are dim, and frankly they may well be moving further, even permanently, apart.  In 1973 when this statement was issued, many Korean had lived in a unified state.  Now, many fewer have, and its becoming fewer every day.  South Korea is a modern, capitalist, democracy, and younger South Koreans have waning interest in reuniting with the communized backwards north.

The news of the day:

Wednesday, June 17, 1942. Yank goes to press.

First issue of Yank's pinup girl.

Yank magazine, a service produced magazine issued entirely by enlisted men, was issued for the first time.  

Actress Jane Randolph appeared as the pin up girl for the of the first issue, something that was a feature of every issue. Generally, the pinup was pretty mild, as would be expected from a service magazine.  The first issue's color pinup was unusual for any magazine of the era, as color was much less used in magazines at the time.

I'd like to put up the front cover of the magazine, but I can't find it.  Generally, Yank featured a black and white photograph.  It occasionally had combat illustrations on the cover, a lot of which were of very high quality.  Every now and then the pinup girl made the cover if she was a famous actress, such as Rita Hayworth.   The magazine was published throughout the war.

A second group of German saboteurs landed in Florida.  This was the second part of the plot to land German operatives in the US to sabotage German production, something that didn't go far due to the nearly immediate defection of two of the operatives who were landed in New York as addressed the other day.

Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo was slightly wounded when a Korean nationalist shot him. The assailant was immediately killed by the return fire of Japanese policemen.

The Afrika Korps took control of the coast road to Bardia, thereby surrounding Tobruk.

Tuesday, March 28, 1922. Transferred Intent.

Mrs. Bertha Shelton, March 28, 1922.  No, I don't know who she was, or why she was photographed.

To would be Korean assassins attempted to kill the former Japanese Minister of War Tanaka Giichi as he disembarked a ship in Shanghai, but missed and instead killed an American woman.

In Berlin a would be assassin attempted to kill former Russian Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov at a gathering of Russian exiles.  He missed and killed Vladimier D. Nabakov, the father of the author by that name who is famous for the novel Lolita, which I've never read.  The assassin, Sergey Vladimirovich Taboritsky, was a Russian untranationalist and monarchist who would go on to be a Nazi during in the Third Reich. He survived the war and died in 1980 at age 83.

A final Republic of China/People's Republic of China Showdown? Weighing the costs and benefits from a Red Chinese prospective. Part II

Flag of the Republic of Formosa, which existed for only a few months in 1895. By Jeff Dahl - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3550776

But why, you may ask, would the Chinese risk such a move?

The answer to that would have to be found in the answer to the question, why do nations start wars?  And the answer to that is much more difficult to answer than we might suppose.

First, let's look at the risk v. the benefits to the People's Republic of China invading Taiwan.

The most obvious part of the answer to that question would be the one a wag would give. Red China would get Taiwan. But Taiwan in and of itself is obviously not the goal.

Nations do invade other nations simply for territorial gain, although that has become increasingly uncommon since World War Two.  Indeed, now it's very rare, and frankly it's been fairly rare since 1945.  When nations invade another country, if we assume that the Chinese view Taiwan as another country (and they don't, really) there's always more to it.  Indeed, the Second World War saw most of the real outright land grabs by aggressor states.  The last one I can really think of since World War Two was the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which had that feature.

Given that, for the most part when nations, post 1945, invade another, they have some claim of some sort to the territory they're seeking to incorporate.  Indeed, this was the case prior to 1945 as well, and a few of the minor aggressor states in the Second World War entered the war on the Axis side with this goal themselves.  Romanian sought, for example, to incorporate Moldova, which it borders and which is ethnically Romanian.  They went further than that, charged up with aggressor greed, but that was their primary goal.  Finland, which went into the "Continuation War" without greed, provides another example, and they actually stopped once they had reoccupied what they'd lost the prior year, not even going further and taking all the ethnically Finnish lands that they could have.  

That provides clue here really.  What the Chinese would really get is the Chinese population of Taiwan combined with the island and its strategic value, and the Republic of China's industrial base.

Okay, what of those.

Well, that may all be fairly illusory.

We'll start with the islands strategic position.  It's real. . . but not as real as it once was.

Taiwan, or Formosa if you prefer, is a major Western Pacific island and all the really big Western Pacific Islands have traditionally been island bastions.  Japan was an island bastion nation in and of itself, and it really still is.  The Philippines were an American bastion, although one that fell fairly rapid.  Taiwan was a  Chinese bastion, then a Japanese bastion, then a Nationalist Chinese bastion.

Or was it.

We noted the other day that Japan secured Taiwan as a result of the First Sino-Japanese War. At that time, Taiwan really made sense as a Japanese possession, even if that result was not just.  It provided a large island landmass off of China which gave it a base to protect its interests in China, or to mess with China if it wanted to, and it wanted to.

But, by 1941, its utility had diminished.  The United STates considered invading Taiwan rather than the Philippines in its advance toward the Japanese home islands, but it didn't.  That's partially due to political considerations, but it was partially as we didn't need to. That didn't mean, however, that the Japanese needed to quit defending it. They had to garrison it right until the end of the war.

And the Philippines themselves were abandoned by the US after the Vietnam War.  We just didn't need a base there anymore.  An American military commitment to the Philippines quietly remains, but it serves in a nearly clandestine way in an ongoing war against radical Muslim elements in the country.

The modern aircraft carrier, from the American point of view, made the Philippines unnecessary to us.

China doesn't have modern carriers. . . like ours. . .yet, but it's working on them.  But the real strategic value of the islands to China is that they're in the way.  If China was to get into a war with the United States, Formosa would be an American base against it, or at least we can presume so.  And it would be difficult for Chinese forces in the region to avoid it.  So, oddly enough, it might have what essentially amounts to a negative strategic value to China.  I.e., if they're thinking they're likely to fight the US, they need to grab it.

But that probably doesn't provide the motivation for grabbing the island, as China likely knows that the only way it gets into a war with the US is by providing one itself, such as by attacking Taiwan.

So what about Taiwan's industrial base?

Well, Taiwan does have an advanced economy.  It's more advanced than Red China's in fact.  That might be tempting, but in reality it surely isn't a consideration.  China's vastness and large-scale command economy enterprises really don't need Taiwan's more advanced corporate free market industries, and indeed, there'd be no guaranty that a war to seize Taiwan, or the Taiwanese themselves, might not wreck them.  And frankly, taking in millions of Chinese who have worked in a Western economy into a Communist command economy would be unlikely to go really smoothly.  That actually provides us with a clue as to why the Chinese might invade, actually, which we'll get to in a moment.

China would get the Taiwanese Chinese, many of whom had ancestors who left mainland China in 1948, together with those Chinese who left in 1948, or since. That's what they want, combined with lands that have been historically governed by China.

That may seem odd.  China doesn't have a deficit of people. But ethnic reunification has been a driving factor of wars over history and it's been particularly strong since 1918.  A lengthy post World War One period saw multiple border wars and invasions that were over nothing other than ethnicity.  Nations that had been imperial possessions fought to be independent single ethnicity nation states.  Nations with messy ethnic boundaries slugged it out in the 1920s over who got to rule those areas.  The first moves of Nazi Germany in 1938 and 1939 were excused by the Germans on this basis, although outright colonial and genocidal invasions followed, which were on a completely different basis.  

Since World War Two China has grabbed territory that what not Chinese, ethnically.  But here, its primary motivations are to accomplish that goal, reunification, and to assuage Chinese pride.  Taiwan is Chinese, in the PRC's mind, and they have a right to it.  That's the justification.

But is a justification upon which they're likely to act?

It certainly wouldn't be cost free.

Besides being involved in a war with the Republic of China, invading Taiwan obviously will provoke some sort of international reaction, and China knows that.

In recent years China has abandoned the Stalinist command economy model that it had for decades following 1948, complete with murder on a mass scale, and gone towards more of a command economy NEP model  It may have done that in part as it was a witness to the Stalinist model crashing in the late 1980s when the USSR found that it had run its course, and it was too late to adapt.  Chances are high that the NEP model will do the same, but the NEP model of Communism, being gentler and allowing for more liberty, if still falling far short of the Capitalist model, will forestall that for a while and probably has convinced the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party that they have a chance of avoiding its fall altogether.

If China invades Taiwan, however, they'll face an economic disruption at a bare minimum.

However, based on their observations of the West and how little it really does in this area, they may simply not really believe it.  Russia has managed to survive sanctions, for example. And the Chinese know that they're such a big part of the world's economy that they may feel that, for the most part, sanctions will simply be lip service.

And frankly, they'd have reason to believe that.

If they were wrong, however, it would be economically devastating.  And economics being what they are, China might not recover for decades, if ever.  Manufacturing might simply shift to the south and leave China with a massively failing market.  If so, it'd revert to Stalinism by default, if it could.

And it might not be cost free militarily.  

China certainly is building up its military, to be sure, but any invasion of the island would be bloody.  It might be really bloody if the United States intervened on Taiwan's behalf, which it very well would likely do.  Indeed, even with a limited strategic goal, it might be a rampaging naval failure which would send thousands of Chinese soldiers and sailors to a watery grave, and leave many more stranded on Taiwan in one way or another while the Republic of China cut them apart.  And a military failure on China's part would have long reaching implications of all sorts, including diplomatic, military and economic.

And even if it was successful, the primary achievement would be to take in 24,000,000 Chinese who have grown up and participated in a free market democratic state and who would be massively disgruntled in a Red Chinese one.  The Red Chinese have't seen the Chinese of Hong Kong, 7,000,000 in number, go quietly into the night even though there's nearly nothing they can do about the government in Beijing.

All that would be problematic enough, but there's already discontent in China itself.  The events of 1989 in Tiananmen Square showed that the young Chinese middle class isn't thrilled with their country's autocratic Communist government, and it also showed that elements of sympathy with students had crept into the Chinese Army.  Indeed, as the Chinese Army's makeup is regional in character, the Chinese had to bring in army units from outside the region to suppress the demonstrations. This ended up creating a sort of odd resistance movement in the form of the Fulun Gong, which is ongoing and which operates now partially out of the US, publishing the right wing propaganda newspaper for an American audience, The Epic Times (which absurdly claims that everything was nifty prior to 1948).

So the net result would be, best case scenario, to take in 25,000,000 new people who would be opposed to your reign in every fashion in exchange for an island that you only really need if you intend to be aggressive somewhere else, in a pre aircraft carrier naval fashion.  The worst result would be a bloody defeat that leaves the nation embarrassed and an international pariah.

So why do it?

Well, for a reason that has nothing to do with much of the above.

Lots of wars were fought after World War One solely on the question of whose nation a scrap of territory would be in.  The Poles fought to unite to newly established Poland territories that were Polish, or which had been at one time.  The Turks briefly tried to expand the border of Turkey into ancestral Turkish homelands.  Many other examples exist.  All of these are the flipside of national independence movements.  We're used to the concept of, for example, the Irish wanting to be free of the United Kingdom, but we don't often stop to think that this impulse isn't also what drives desires to do something like unite Ulster to the Irish state, even though it has a large non Irish population.  It's comparable to the Polish independence movements that existed during World War One which spilled out into wars and proxy wars after independence to secure territory that was Polish or had been.  Nations risk all to engage in that impulse.

And the Chinese government in Beijing is proud, wounded, and arrogant.

It's pride and history leave it convinced that it must take back all that was once Chinese, and that may be enough to cause it to act.

And its arrogance may be sufficient to override any concerns that the West would act. Recent history suggest that belief would not be irrational, although history also suggests that at some point, the reaction sets in.  Nobody helped the Czechs keep the Sudetenland in 1938. . . but when it came to Poland. . .

And history suggest that this impulse has a time element to it as well, which may motivate the Chinese to act.  People retain long memories, stretching back centuries, of their ethnicity. . . until suddenly they don't.

Lots of example of this abound.  All the Scandinavian people were at one time one people, but by the Renaissance they were no longer thinking of themselves that way and fought wars against each other in order to be ruled by one another.  At some point the Norwegians and Swedes simply weren't one people, even though they retain a mutually intelligible language now.  The Estonians and Finns were once one people as well, and then weren't. The connection is sufficiently close that Finnish volunteers came to fight for Estonia in its war of independence against Soviet Russia, but they didn't become one state.  The Scots were Irish early in their history, but don't conceive of themselves in that fashion at all now.  The Dutch were a Germanic people from the "far lands", but they've long had their own identity and don't think of themselves as German.  The Portuguese were Spanish at one time, but don't want to be part of Spain, and the Catalonians are Spanish, but don't want to think of themselves that way.

Going into perhaps more analogous examples, when Germany reunited following the collapse of the Communism in the West, the process was not only rocky, but some East Germans have never really accommodated themselves to it and some West Germans continue to look down on them.  Ethnic Germans from elsewhere, still eligible to enter the country under its law of return, have been completely foreign to Germans from Germany who have been shocked by them.

And up close and personal, young South Koreans are very quickly reaching the point that they don't want to reunite with the North, long a dream of the government in Seoul, as North Koreans now are more or less an alien Korean-speaking people.

At some point the Chinese in Beijing may start worrying about that.  It's already the case that the government in Taipei no longer claim the right to rule on the mainland.  Have they started thinking of themselves as a Chinese other? After all, there's more than one Chinese culture. . .why not add one more. . . one with its own state?

Keeping that from happening may be a Communist Chinese priority, and not for economic or even territorial reasons.

A final Republic of China/People's Republic of China Showdown? Part I.

Wars and Rumors of War. 2021

 

January 15, 2021

Israel v. Syria, Fatid Brigade and Iran

Last week Israel conducted an air raid on positions in Syria, killing 57 people. The raids were directed at the Fatid Brigade, which had recently received weapons from Iran, but the losses included members of the Syrian forces an another Iraqi militia as well.

What it's about:  The Fatid Brigade is an Iranian backed Shiia militia dedicated to the defeat if Israel, one of several such Iranian funded and equipped entities.  The brigade is made up of Afghan Shiias, an oddity in that there would seem to be plenty of fighting to do inside of Afghanistan itself if they were looking for a fight.  Syria has received Iranian support in its civil war and is an Iranian ally.

Who else is involved:  As noted.

What are the combatants like: All of the Iranian backed militias are serious units, but none of them compare to the Israeli forces and Syria is obviously impotent to prevent Israeli strikes.

Good guys and bad guys?:  The ongoing Iranian contest with Israel is really something out of the past which most Islamic countries in the region have de facto abandoned, if not officially abandoned.  The Iranians themselves would likely abandon it but for their radical political leadership, and the nature of the fascist government of Syria speaks for itself.

North Korea v. Everyone

North Korea revealed a new submarine ballistic missile yesterday, proving that nations that can't really do anything else, can still produce weapons.

What's it about:  It's about the world's only Stalinist monarchy keeping itself relevant.

Who else is involved:  South Korea and the United States are the North's most active opponents, but Japan is as well and most of the West in some ways.  China seems to back North Korea but its an ally that the North can't really trust to intervene in its affairs itself.  North Korea can also look to Russia for some support due to a legacy stemming from the USSR.

What are the combatants like:  North Korea's military can field some modern weapons, but in reality, the pathetic state of the nation's economy and seventy years of Communist demoralization make it a major menace, but not a serious opponent, for anyone.  Only the presumed backing of nearby China, which is probably a military threat to North Korea itself, keeps it propped up and a dangerous threat.

Good guys and bad guys:  North Korea has one of the worst regimes in the world.

January 28, 2021

Yemeni Civil War

The United States, now under a new administration, has suspended arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE pending review.

Both countries have been involved in the civil war in Yemen, an involvement that has been controversial in Congress.

What's it about:  Yemen has been unstable its entire history, and indeed was once two countries, one of them being a Communistic one.  Since 2014 there's been a multi party civil war going on with the Saudi and UAE backed government fighting a Houthi backed rival government, a secessionist movement, and ISIL.  Saudi support restored the government to power but has featured a Saudi air campaign that has resulted in largescale loss of life.

Who else is involved:  Players are listed above.

Good guys and bad guys:  Frankly, this regional conflict is hard to grasp in some ways.   The Saudi and UAE involvement is geared towards opposing the rise of fundamentalist Shiia powers in the region and ISIL, which also serves our interest, but their fighting has been traditional Middle Eastern, i.e., without quarter.

February 6, 2021

Yemeni Civil War continued.

The Biden Administration reversed the Trump Administration classification of the Houthi's rebels in Yemen as terrorist.

February 11, 2021

India v. China, continued from first thread.

Indian and China have agreed to pull troops back from part of their disputed border.

February 26, 2021

Syrian Civil War and Iraqi insurrections, continued.

The United States conducted an air strike yesterday on Iranian back militias that had conducted a recent rocket attack on US sites in Iraq.

India v. Pakistan

Indian and Pakistan have been in a state of hot and cold war over the Kashmiri border since their independence.  Yesterday, they announced a cease fire line to the surprise of everyone.

March 22, 2021

United States v. Iran

Intelligence reports have revealed that Iran has threated to attack facilities as the Army's Ft. McNair outside of Washington, D.C.  Iran has also threatened to target at least one senior officer in an attack.

What's it about:  The United States and Iran have been at odds ever since Iran's Islamic Revolution made it a theological state. As such, it's been hostile to nearly every state in the world that are not Shiite Islamic ones.

Who else is involved:  Nearly every country that isn't Shiite has at least some problems with Iran to some degree.  States that are highly at odds with Iran include Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.

Good guys and bad guys:  Iran has been a center of Islamic extremism every since its revolution and at this point is adverse to the desires of its own average citizens.  Indeed, the highly educated population of Iran has rumored to have seen a lot of secret abandonment of Islam over the last several years.

March 27, 2021

Myanmarese v. Myanmarese Army

Not really a war, yet, but certainly something in the armed strife neighborhood, back on February 1 the Tatmadaw, the Myanmarese Army, staged a coup and overthrew the democratically elected government.

Today, March 27, the army opened fire on protesters and killed over 100.  Protests have been continual since the Army staged the coup and show no signs of letting up.

Anyone here heard of Saigon in the 1960s.. . . 

Anyhow, this isn't looking good.

What's it about:  Burma, which is the older name for Myanmar, is basically a failed state.  A British possession up until the 1948, it chafed under British rule and was then occupied by the Japanese.  In the general sort of romanticized recollection of the Second World War, a sort of Bridge on the River Kwai image has come down to us, but its not very accurate. Originally administered as part of India, when separated out as a separate colony the British received next to no local support.  Efforts to recruit Burmese soldiers to a local army were a failure, and over 15,000 Burmese joined a Japanese supported army during the early stages of World War Two, although support for the Japanese rapidly dropped off due to Japanese brutality. Indeed, major Burmese independence forces that had been allied with the Japanese switches sides during the war.  The country was rewarded for its trouble by the British with independence in 1948, but like much of Southeast Asia the governments proved to be unstable.  In 1962 the then in power civilian leadership turned to the military to impose order, and the military ran the country from 1962 to 2011, fighting a number of civil wars in that period.

In 2011 the country returend to democracy and Aung San Suu Kyi was elected as prime minister.  Her administration has been a democratic one but was marred with repression of the country's Muslim minority.

Even as a democracy the Army has had an outsized role in the administration of the country, and 25% of the country's parliamentary seats have been reserved for it.  In addition to that, it has its own political party.  That party lost ground in the recent election and the coup followed.

Who else is involved:  The Burmese army has had support from China and Russia and in the lead up to the return to democracy it administered the country in a quasi Communist fashion.  The army is known to have consulted with the Russians and the Chinese just prior to the coup and both nations have refrained from criticizing it.

Good guys and bad guys:  Transitioning to democracy is generally a mess, something which tends to be missed by the Greenwich Village crowd, and few countries manage it without something to be ashamed of.  Myanmar has had a long and difficult road on its way there and the army, which has had support from the NEP Corporate Communist in China, and the Neo Tsarists in Moscow, is having a difficult time realizing its day is done.  It is done.

April 1, 2021

Ethiopia v. Oromo Liberation Front

The Oromo Liberation Front in Ethiopia killed 30 villagers in the Oromia region of that country.

What is it about: The organization seeks sovereignty for the Oromo people in Ethiopia who were independent as a practical matter up until the 19th Century.  They maintain that since that time they've been dealing with oppression and a legacy of oppression.

Who else is involved:  Presently no one.  At one time Eritrea and Somalia supported the group, but they no longer do.

Good guys and bad guys:  The overall cause of the Oromo's is something I know nothing about, nor do I know anything about their history, but killing villagers is inexcusable irrespective of the cause.

April 9, 2021

Iran v. Israel

Iran and Israel have been fighting a low level naval war against each other involving the targeting of ships.  Attacks up until last week involved limpet minds set above the water  line, which caused cosmetic damage.  Last week, however, Israel appears to have targeted and severely damaged a floating base for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard that was stationed off of Yemen.

What is it about:  Iran's theocratic government is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the spread of Sunni Islam.  It has never been shy about using force in that effort although it has tended not to use full scale force out of fear of that being counterproductive.  Otherwise, however, it has generally openly acknowledged using any force it can and has sponsored a good deal of revolutionary and guerilla activity against in the region.

Who else is involved:  It's hard to know, but Israel generally has the support of Sunni states and the US in its efforts, although it may not at anyone time be informing them of what it is doing.

Good guys and bad guys:  Iran's theocracy is an anachronism that's at odds with its own people and nearly every state in the region.  It will ultimately fall but constitutes a danger to everyone in the region, and to some extent well beyond that, until it does.

April 11, 2021

And, following up on the item from the 9th:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran's underground Natanz nuclear facility lost power Sunday just hours after starting up new advanced centrifuges capable of enriching uranium faster, the latest incident to strike the site amid negotiations over the tattered atomic accord with world powers.

Hmmm. . . that's odd.

April 21, 2021

Chad v Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat

Idriss Deby, the President of Chad, was killed in action while visiting government troops fighting rebels in the northern part of the country.  His son, a general in the army, was announced to be the acting head of state.

What is it about:  Chad along with Algeria and other North African states have been combating the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat for some time. The rebels seek to impose a theocratic state in the region and are supporters of Al Queada.

Who else is involved:  The conflict is a regional one so many countries in North Africa have a role in fighting it.  France has troops in Chad supporting the government there.

Good guys and bad guys:  Hardly needs to be asked in this case.

April 22, 2021

Israel v. Syria

An anti aircraft missile launched in Syria landed in Israel near the country's nuclear reactor.  In return, Israel launched an airstrike on the Syrian battery.

What is it about:  Syria has been hostile to Israel since Israel's founding and, moreover, is allied with Iran.   The tension is heightened by Israeli's long occupation of the Golan Heights, which Syria lost decades ago in its fighting with Israel.

Who else is involved:  Syria is allied with Iran.  The two countries remain the most hostile Middle Eastern states towards Israel where as the majority of the states in the region have slowly come to accept its presence. 

Good guys and bad guys:  Syria's Baathist regime had a record of hostility towards its own people and is unrelentingly hostile to Israel in a manner which is fairly clearly standing against history and beyond reason.

May 11, 2021

Afghanistan

A bomb went off in Afghanistan yesterday resulting in destruction and lost of life.  Its target was a school that educated girls.  Nobody has taken credit and the Taliban denied any association with it.

What is it about:  Radical Islamist are hostile to the education of women. This is part of the overall struggle in Afghanistan, and its been a feature of radical Islamist groups everywhere.

Who else is involved:  Hard to say, as nobody is associating themselves with it.

Good guys and bad guys:  This hardly needs to be asked, but its important to note that NATO's departure is likely to give groups that have this same view a renewed strength in Afghanistan.

France

Not really a war, but a warning of one, a large number of signatures have appeared on an open letter originating in the French army predicting a civil war in France between the native French and Muslims in the country.  The letter portrays itself as an attempt to warn the nation and a promise that the French army will side with the native French.

This letter follows one from last month signed by 20 retired French generals.

Following publication of the letter, a French petition supporting it gained strength.  Polls show a majority of Frenchmen endorse its views.

What is it about:  Islamic immigration to France has been a hot button issue for many years.  Secularization has been a policy of the French government since the French Revolution, with breaks in it from time to time, but France has been reluctant to impose it on Islamic immigrants and in spite of the country being very secular, traditional France is never very far from modern France.

Who else is involved:  The extent to which this has support outside of the French army is unknown but its clear that a majority of the French are backing the views of the soldiers.

Good guys and bad guys:  As this is a warning letter, and frankly one that's not likely to come true, the question isn't really valid here, but it is a sign that France, which has been struggling to deal with this issue for years, needs to devote some more attention to it.

United States v. Iran

The Coast Guard fired on Iranian speedboats that approached US vessels.

Hamas v. Israel.

The radical Islamic group Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem yesterday.  This followed clashes in the city between Israeli authorities and Palestinians.  Israel retaliated with air raids into the Gaza strip.

What is it about:  Hamas opposes Israel's existence as the overall cause, but the direct cause was a Hamas retaliation for Israeli efforts in Jerusalem.  Hamas is a Palestinian organization and makes up the Gaza government.

Who else is involved:  I don't know enough about Hamas to say.

Good guys and bad guys:  Israel, pretty clearly, but this sort of event shows how complicated the situation in the Middle East really is.  Hamas departed from Fatah in its goals in regard to Palestine and that's operating to keep this conflict going.

May 14, 2021

Hamas v. Israel

This has been massively expanding over the past few days with Hamas, which is politically in control of Gaza, firing 2,000 missiles at Israel, most of which have been intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system.

Israel's military capacity grossly over matches Hamas' and Gaza exist as a Palestinian entity solely due to Israel's political calculations to allow it to do so.  The launching of missiles by Hamas is deeply immoral as it must provoke a retaliation by Israel and that will kill Palestinian civilians no matter how careful Israel is, which Hamas knows.

As of today, Israel has expanded its counterstrikes to include ground based artillery.  There's a serious chance that the Israeli army may invade Gaza.  As Israel deems it politically necessary that the tolerate the Gaza Strip as a Palestinian entity, and nobody who borders it (Israel and Egypt) want to actually occupy it, that is highly problematic, but it becomes more likely every day.

One thing that won't occur is a general Middle Easter war, contrary to the overblown commentary on this.  Egypt, which as noted borders Gaza, doesn't want it and doesn't want anything to do with it.  The Palestinian Authority, under Fatah has fought a war itself with Hamas.  Jordan isn't going to its aid, and has fought a war against Fatah when it was the only representative of the Palestinians.  Syria is more or less in a low grade war with Israel all the time and constantly ineffectual in it.

This leaves Israel a semi free hand as long as it doesn't go too far.

May 20, 2021

Hamas v. Israel

I'm not an unqualified admirer of Israel.  Indeed, quite frankly, had I been around in 1948, I'd have been one of the few Americans, seemingly, who would have held the opinion that forming the state of Israel was a mistake.  By 1948 the long Jewish diaspora, the history of the region after 70, meant that it had entirely too many ethnicities in it in order to have a state founded for a single ethnicity which was identified with a single religion a good idea.  Indeed, had I been around in 1918, and if I were British, I wouldn't have accepted a League of Nations mandate over the territory and would have instead proposed that it perpetually be internationally administered, a solution which likely would have been no more successful than the one that was imposed.

Be that as it may, the British did accept the mandate and during their period of governance they presided, reluctantly, over the immigration of the diaspora to the region which added to its native Jewish population, but at the expense of the local Arab one, a solution which caused them to be nervous and made them, quite frankly, susceptible to bigotry, sometimes violent bigotry. When the British threw their hands up and marched out in 1948 the result was inevitable. Israel declared independence, the Arab population refused to accept it, the neighboring Arab states didn't accept it either, and war broke out immediately.  That in turn caused most of the native Arab population, or at least the Muslim Arab population, to flee.

The native Arab population, defining themselves as Palestinians, put up an armed, and sometimes terroristic, resistance to the results of the 1948 war for decades.  Israel, backed by the United States, was able to ride it out.  The Palestinians turned violent against the nations that hosted them on two occasions, those nations being Jordan and Lebanon, and ultimately the remaining Arab states grew tired of them.  Israel grew tired of the war too and ultimately accommodated a small degree of autonomy for  the Palestinians in what had been the West Bank of Jordan and in Gaza.  Of note, you can take from that, that Jordan, which for years claimed the West Bank, was content to give it up to the Palestinians which meant that it didn't have to bother with them and Egypt, which borders Gaza, is basically hostile to Gaza.

The reason that I note this is that demographics change and a territory ultimately belongs to the people who occupy it.

Palestinian claims on Israeli territory today are completely moot in real terms, save for the growing Israeli Arab population.  So Hamas' claims on Israel are not only fanciful, at this point they're deeply lacking in justice.  Very few people in Gaza today ever lived inside of what is now Israel.  Fatah has accepted that, Hamas has not.  

That forms the background for what is now occurring.  Israel acted wrongly during Ramadan in excluding Muslims form a site important to their faith. There's no excuse for that.  And Arab riots in Israel, which got all of this rolling, were therefore to be expected.  But launching rockets from inside a city in reaction is wrong in every way.  It's a gross over reaction and it not only invites, but demands, a response that will kill civilians.  Hamas, by doing that, is murdering its own people.  It knows that.

Gaza only exists as an entity at all as Israel doesn't want it and Egypt doesn't either, and the global community feels that its more just to keep a hopeless city state deep in poverty than admitting its untenable.  

Gaza has 2,000,000 residents.  Israel obviously can't take in the city and doesn't want to.  Egypt could, but it doesn't want to and won't.  If it did, it'd largely clear out quickly.

And it should be cleared out.  There's no way to live there and there's no solution to its existence which makes sense. The government of Gaza doesn't even get along with the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank.  2,000,000 people are a lot of people, but realistically the only solution is to evacuate them and redistribute them to the other Arab states.  Those Arab states, however, won't agree to do that.

Gaza's residents, of course, could aid themselves by being realistic. They chose Hamas, and by choosing Hamas they chose an entity dedicated to deathly conduct and the invitation to rain death down on their own city.  Their situation is tragic, but the tragedy is all the more compounded as they invited it and refuse, even now, to recognize that.

May 21, 2021

Hamas v. Israel

This ended yesterday in a cease fire.

For some odd reason, the Press has declared that both sides could declare victory.  Israel's Iron Dome missile defense held up, with only a few Hamas rockets getting through, whereas Israel hit numerous targets in Gaza about which Hamas could do nothing.  It's hard to see how Hamas achieved anything, other than getting a lot of Gaza destroyed and some of its residents killed.

The details of the agreement are unknown.  It was brokered by Egypt.

A lot of criticism was levied inside the US, inside the US, at a supposed lack of US action to bring about a ceasefire earlier, but its really unclear what influence the US really would have in this instance.  Over Hamas, probably none.  Over Israel, some, but fairly little in this circumstance. Beyond that, a solid reason for the US to act isn't obvious, given the nature of the conflict and its localized nature.  Interestingly American left wing politicians were the most vocal in their views and somewhat with their sympathy with the residents of Gaza.

Those residents do indeed deserve sympathy, but the deserve a level of pitiful scorn as well.  Hamas led the city into the one sided conflict that invited retaliation on them and they should toss Hamas out, which there's no sign that they shall do.  In any event, at the end of the day, an overall solution to this problem is no closer than it ever was by all appearances.

June 7, 2021

Russia v. The United States

The weekend shows were full of discussion about recent cyber attacks on the US and their relationship with Russia, and to a much lesser extent, their relationship with China.  By and large, most of the discussion involved a lot of handwringing and discussions on how to harden American industry from such attacks and what we can do to force our enterprises to take steps to protect themselves and the economy.

Only on This Week, to the extent I listened, did the topic of a military response come up, which wasn't rejected by the administration representative.

I note that for something that should be pretty obvious, but seemingly isn't.  In unconventional asymmetric warfare, which is what this really is, its difficult to win through purely defense measures and only really unpredictable responses stand to succeed.

What is going on is this.

Russia has practically become a criminal organization but is treated by the nations of the world as a serious state, which it isn't.  It's army is large but obsolete.  Compared to its neighbors its population is now small and declining.  What it really has going for it, to the extent it has anything going for it, is a leader who is single minded, doesn't mind corruption at all, and who is willing to destroy his neighbors' economies rather than build a solid, non criminal, one of his nation's own.

We'll end up talking sanctions, but at some point in a war of state sponsored piracy, which is what this is, you have to take steps that are more direct.

The Golden Age of Piracy came to an end when the various nations of the world wouldn't tolerate it, including not tolerating state sponsored piracy.  Increased military action against pirates were part of that.  It should be noted that the era also featured a lot of private, direct, action.  

In other words, Colonial Pipeline's been hit. There's nothing that should keep it from hiring a U.S. company to hit Russian pirates back.  As they're sailing on the seas of the internet, they're vulnerable somehow.  

As Russia is involved, and Russia has assets, simply appropriating them directly and selling them for the benefit of the hit should be considered.  

And then there is military action.  If an electronic communication facility in Russia somewhere is used for this, I'm confident we've long had plans to take such things down and out.  Russia ought to worry about that, and worry about it to the extent that it stops this sort of behavior.  Or maybe a country with thousands of miles of pipeline ought to be made to be giving serious thought on how it would protect all them. . . physically.

Of course, by this point, it maybe can't wrestle itself free from crime.  Nobody really knows what Putin's relationship with anyone is.  He may be as much the slave of criminals as he is their benefactor.  Of course, he also controls the current expression of the KGB, so he can likely act if he wants to.

Anyway its looked at, from Russian interference in recent elections to these campaigns against commerce, this has to be brought to a stop.

June 15, 2021

United States v. Iraq

The Biden Administration is supporting a bill in Congress to repeal the 2002 act authorizing the use of force in Iraq.

As the administration has noted, the authorization is no longer needed as fighting in Iraq has largely concluded and what remains is not of the type requiring this sort of authorization.  

Additionally, bills like this, which shade the question of whether a war exist or not, are questionable in the first place.  The invasion of Iraq was a full scale conventional war which under U.S. law required a declaration of war in order to be legal.  While other post World War Two conflicts involving the US arguably did not legally require that, this fairly obviously did, so the legality of the war itself was called into question by no declaration of war having been issued, or sought.

June 15, 2021

Israel v. Hamas

No sooner did a new Israeli government form which stands to be much less hard line than the previous one than did the misguided bloody agents of Hamas launch, of all the really stupid things, an incendiary balloon attack on the country.

This predictably resulted in Israeli air strikes on Gaza.

June 28, 2021

Taliban v. Afghan Government

In the wake of the American withdrawal/surrender in Afghanistan, the Taliban is now advancing so quickly it's pace has surprised even itself.

Local Afghan militias, a feature of the wars in Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion, are forming once again to defend their local regions.

June 28, 2021, cont.

United States v. Iran.

The United states conducted air strikes on Iranian backed militias today on the Iraqi-Syria border.  These groups have been involved in drone strikes on US sites in Iraq.

July 1, 2021

NATO v. Taliban

During the last week, Poland, Germany and Italy withdrew the last of their troops from Afghanistan.  Like many people, I'd forgotten there were still non US NATO troops in Afghanistan.

July 2, 2021

Afghanistan

The United States has completely departed Afghanistan's Bagram Air Force Base.

As the US races to withdraw by the end of this month the Taliban is rapidly gaining ground and local militias to contest them have been forming.

July 26, 2021

Iraq

Apparently the U.S. military mission to Iraq will now be drawn down and conclude as well. The President is supposed to announce something to this effect today.

July 27, 2021

Iraq

And the President did announce that the US is withdrawing from Iraq.  In reality, 2,000 troops will remain, so there's actually very little that will change.

This is the second time that the US has announced a withdrawal from the country.  The first time was when President Obama did the same.  Events following that reinserted some troops, but they are now back down to a low level and will remain at that fairly low level.  The remaining troops will not have a combat role.

August 5, 2021

Iran v Israel

Iranian backed militias fired rockets from bases in Lebanon into Israel.  Israel has responded with artillery fire.

Related Threads:

Wars and Rumors of Wars

Wars and Rumors of Wars

 A new series, cataloging current conflicts.

In posting this, I realize this could lead to a misimpression that the whole world is aflame.  Not so. We live in the most peaceful period in human history, bar none.

Still, some fighting is going on here and there.  We'll attempt to list conflicts as they come up. And by that, we mean conflicts.  Wars and near wars, as well as some pretty serious international shoving matches.

We're only going to try to catch these, fwiw, as they come up.  I'm not going to try to list every pending conflict, near conflict and the like.

September 29, 2020

Azerbaijan v Armenia.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, which has long been a bone of contention between them.  Turkey is pledging support for Azerbaijan, with that country being a Turkic one culturally.

This outbreak of fighting comes just about one century after the Turkish Armenian War, which we mentioned just the other day.

What it's about:  Essentially this is a long running ethnic war.  And by long running, we mean really long running, dating back 700 or more years and involving the expansion of the Turkic Muslim population into the Christian lands to their West.  Armenia lost lands in that struggle and is substantially smaller than it was 700 years ago, but it managed to not disappear, as opposed to what occured in Anatolia.  Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous Armenian ethnic enclave inside of Azerbaijan.

Who else is involved:  Turkey, predictably, in support of Azerbaijan.  Russia is attempting to broker a peace.

What are the combatants like: I don't really know, but given the locality, both are heirs to Soviet arms and tactics.  Azerbaijan may have some backdoor military aid and advice from Turkey.

Good guys and bad guys?:  This one really depends on your prospective.

China v. India

China and India have been engaging in border skirmishes over their border in the Himalayas. The skirmishes have been unique as they've been hand to hand.  Both countries have adopted the policy of not arming their soldiers on their border out of the fear it will lead to shooting incidents.  The fighting has been severe enough, however, that lives have been lost.  In response China was going to arm their troops with poles, butthe Indians indicated they'd reciprocate by issuing firearms to their troops, so the Chinese did not carry their threat out.

What it's about:  The Indian border with its northern neighbors has never been well defined as the region is largely inaccessible and it largely didn't matter until recent times.  Part of what makes it matter is Chinese aggression, which made China a neighbor of India after its 1950s invasion of Tibet.

Who else is involved:  Nobody, but India has similar problems in regard to its border with Pakistan

What are the combatants like: Both countries have large and modern militaries.

Good guys and bad guys?:  The Chinese are behaving like a 19th Century imperial power and have become international bullies.  Additionally, China shouldn't even be in the area and only is due to illegally occupying Tibet.

North Korea v. South Korea

This entry would seem to violate my comment above about not cataloging every conflict going on in the world, as this one has been going on for seventy years.

But for sixty six of those years its smoldered under an armistice that brought an end to the open fighting but didn't completely stop the hostilities.  From time to time, there's violence, and there was some last week with North Korean soldiers shot and killed a South Korean man who was making a deluded attempt to defect to North Korea.  North Korea is a disaster so why that individual, a South Korean official, would attempt that is beyond me, but he did.

Apparently the North Koreans shot the man as a Coronavirus precaution and then burned his body.  The North Korean government then took the unusual step of apologizing for the incident, and then the South took the unnecessary one of also apologizing for failing to look after its own citizen better, although seeing a real South Korean failure here is hard to do.

What it's about:  As a result of the end of World War Two the US occupied the southern part of the Korean peninsula and the USSR the northern half.  The two halves were supposed to unite under a democratically elected government but didn't, leaving the northern half a Stalinist state that attempted to unite the country by force by way of a 1950 invasion of the south.  That failed, and the subsequent United Nations intervention nearly united the country under the southern government until the Chinese intervened. Ultimately an armistice placed the two halves nearly back where they had started, but left them with a lingering state of conflict which has never resolved.

Who else is involved:  For years following the Korean Conflict the United States remained as a deterrent to northern invasion.  The US still remains in the country today but with the southern government having evolved into being a full democratic one and the south a modern country.

The  north is propped up by China and receives assistance, to a lesser degree, from Russia.

What are the combatants like: South Korea's military is highly modern.  North Korea's is less so, but its  military is large and has some modern weapons.  As an Army of conscripts inside a controlled state, it's really hard to judge the loyalty of North Korea's soldiers.

Good guys and bad guys?: North Korea is run by Stalinist bullies who should step down in the interest of their country and humanity.

October 4, 2020

Azerbaijan v Armenia Update

Protests broke out in Hollywood, California yesterday as Armenian Americans, of which California has the largest number, gathered in front of news outlets to demand coverage of the fighting between the two countries. Protestors also blocked California state highway 101.

At this point, I guess I'll give my opinion on this conflict.

Armenians have occupied the region they are in since time immemorial. The Armenian kingdom was the first nation in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion, with adoption of Christianity as the Armenian religion coming in the year 301.  Christianity itself was present in the country as early as 40AD, which isn't too surprising as Christianity spread miraculously fast after the Resurrection.  That would mean, that Christianity arrived in Armenia just seven years after that event.

Armenia, in the ancient, and modern, world has often been part of somebody else's empire. The Armenians are victims of their geographic location in that their land lies between the Caspian and Black Seas, so its the pathway to the Middle East for invaders. They became autonomous, if not fully independent, in 451.  The region fell to Islamic conquerors early in the Islamic armed expansion, but the region itself resisted Islam enormously and retained its Christian identity.  Following that it was briefly part of the Byzantine Empire, and then fell to the Seljuk Turks, who were driven out in the 1100s.  It fell to the Mongols in 1230, and and endless string of invaders from the east therefore.  It's unfortunate association with the Turks returned in 16th Century, following the Ottoman invasion of Anatolia.  As the Ottoman Empire began to collapse in the early 20th Century, Armenians became a victim of Turkish atrocities.

Armenia was supposed to be given independence following the fall of Ottoman Empire and its entering into a peace treaty with the Allies.  It's borders were drawn by Woodrow Wilson, even though the United States had never entered the war against the Ottomans.  The Allies proved, however, to tired to carry on what seemed to them to be a sideshow with the Turks, and abandoned the country allowing the Young Turks to form a new Turkish nation.  One of the first things that country did was to invade Armenia in a border dispute.

This story was complicated by the fact that the Russian Empire also had expanded into Armenian territory so, by the 20th Century, Armenians were split between two empires, and two empires that did not get along.  World War One, therefore, not only brought terrible atrocities to Armenia, but opportunity as well. The Armenians did not get a state with the border promised to them in the peace treaty, but they did get a state briefly.  Turkish armed action against them combined with Communist subterfuge and Soviet invasion brought that to an end in 1921.  

A small Armenia regained its independence with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Azerbaijan is a country populated by the Azerbaijani Turks.  They came into the area during the period of time of the Muslim armed expansion.  The region itself, in vast antiquity, was populated by Albanians, something that's difficult to imagine given the tiny region occupied by Albania, quite some distance away, today.  Historical evidence indicates that they originally occupied a region in Iran, and are culturally related to the Turks (obviously) but they share the odd invaders history such as other invading people's, such as the English, in that modern genetic evidence suggests that modern Azerbaijanis may have a culture, and religion, derived from the invaders, but most of their DNA is from the invaded.  I.e., they're pretty closely related, genetically, to Armenians and Georgians.

During the rise of modern Turkey the Turks briefly dreamed of uniting Azerbaijan, and other Turkic people to Turkeys' north and east, to a greater Turkey, but British intervention, and the ultimate success of the USSR in that region, put an end to that, at least for the time.  

When the Soviet Union collapsed it left opportunities for all of these people to regain statehood, or acquire it for the first time.  Most ethnic boundaries in the Soviet Union were a mess anyhow, as the Soviets were heirs to the Russian Empire in that fashion, which never had neat ethnological boundaries and which further had no need of them.  Compounding that, the Soviets had encouraged Russian immigration everywhere in its territory as a bulwark against ethnic movements.  This left a situation in regard to Armenia and Azerbaijan in which there exists Nagorno-Karabakh.  Azerbaijan may be over 90% Azerbaijani in ethnicity, but Nagorno-Karabakh is overwhelmingly Armenian.

It ought to belong to Armenia.

In a brief war after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Armenians took it against all odds.  And they deserve to keep it.  They occupy a rump state in comparison to their former domains and didn't receive what they were promised and deserved after World War One. They have no reason to trust the Turks at all, and at this point the Islamist government of Turkey can't be depended upon not to hold old imperial expansionist dreams from the Turkish revolutionary period. The fact, moreover, that Turkey is allowing Syrian mercenaries to enter the fray is a bad sign.

My prediction is, however, that the Armenians will be abandoned once again.

Part of this is compounded, we'd note, by the fact that Armenia is completely landlocked.  It's receiving some aid from Iran, which is ironic but Iran doesn't get along well with Turkey, which is also ironic.  It also receives assistance from Russia, which views the country as part of its old empire as it also does Azerbaijan, but as Russia also views itself as the defender of Christian Orthodoxy, its sympathies are with Armenia. All that assistance, however, is fairly minor  It would take the introduction of very significant weaponry, particularly antiaircraft weapons, to really put Azerbaijan and Turkey on their heels.  Azerbaijan, for its part, receives aid, as previously noted, from Turkey, but it also receives it to some degree from Israel.  There's no good excuse for that whatsoever, although we'd note that Israel and Turkey have traditionally had close relations and the realpolitik element of keeping the Turks away from the Iranians, which ancient antipathy plays into anyway, may serve that as much as anything else.

Western powers could do something but it would mostly be something economic.  No western power would want to send a military mission to Armenia in a time of war, and for that matter, it'd have to cross a neighboring power that wouldn't allow for it.  Economic sanctions against Turkey are in order.  Russia, for its part, probably won't let Armenia lose, but it won't guaranty that it wins in Nagorno-Karabakh either.

October 6, 2020

Azerbaijan v Armenia Update

NATO called  upon NATO member ally to work to mediate the dispute, a thing which is ironic in some ways as Turkey is Azerbaijan's ally in the conflict.  NATO, in doing so, noted Turkey's "regional influence".  Iran stated it is working to mediate the conflict.

October 9, 2020

Azerbaijan v Armenia Update

Armenia called upon NATO to investigate Turkey's role in the conflict. The US, Iran, and France, called upon the warring sides to stop fighting.

Armenians from Lebanon's large Armenian community have been leaving Lebanon to volunteer for the Armenian forces.

Mali v. Mali

Mali is one of France's unstable former colonies in which she retains an interest.  Intertribal strife that breaks out in open fighting has been going on in the country for some time.  Additionally, Islamic extremist are present in the country.

The country recently experienced a coup in which the army seized control of the country and deposed its elected leadership, claiming it did it due to alleged election irregularities.  It was the second coup in eight years.

Members of the military committee formed to rule Mali following the August coup.

This week Islamist extremist released a French aid worker who had been held for nearly four years and a politician.

France has a military mission to Mali, like it does to many of its former colonies.  It's mission to that country is designed to fight offshoots of Al Qaeda in the country.   France has announced that it has no intention to withdraw.

October 10, 2020

Mali v. Mali, update

Islamic terrorist announced that they had killed a Swiss prisoner a month ago.

October 12, 2020

Azerbaijan v Armenia Update

Kim Kardashian West pledged $1,000,000 for Armenian relief.

A ceasefire between the warring parties does not appear to be holding.

October 27, 2020

Israel v Hamas

Earlier this week Israeli aircraft struck targets in Gaza in retaliation for Hamas balloon bomb strikes.

Hamas is a Sunni Islamist fundamentalist Palestinian nationalist organization with a military wing basically dedicated to the destruction of Israel.  The timing of its attack, perhaps purely coincidentally, comes at the same time that a selection of regional states have been entering into peace treaties with Israel and recognizing its legitimacy.

Israel's struggle against Hamas has been long term, and this is only the most recent expression of it.

Syria v Syria

Russia broke a truce that it is one of the parties monitoring, along with Turkey, by launching airstrikes against the Islamist fundamentalist militia Faylaq al-Sham.

This is one of those regional conflict stories that can rapidly get hopelessly confusing.  Basically, Putin's Russia, for reasons of realpolitik, old Soviet ties, and opportunity, are supporters of the Baathist Syrian regime along with Iran.  Ideologically this makes no sense whatsoever, but it's not about ideals. 

Syria is now in year nine of a civil war which pit various forces, many of them hard corps Islamist, against their secular, and facistic, regime.  The noted group attacked by Russian aircraft the other day is an amalgamation of nineteen different Islamist groups.

Russia and Turkey brokered a cease fire in the region, but obviously Russia doesn't mind making use of opportunities when they present themselves.  The targets it hit were training grounds for the noted group.

The Baath regime in the country has effectively won the war, which it was obvious that it was going to do. The more surprising fact is that some militia groups have hung on for the time being.  Russia is working towards ending that in at least some ways.

November 7, 2020

Ethiopia v. the Ethiopian region of Tigray

Ethiopia is slipping into civil war as the central government seeks to control an increasingly independently acting Tigray, a large region in the country which is maintaining its own military structure.  Yesterday the Ethiopian government hit Tigray's military infrastructure with air strikes.

Ethiopia has struggled to be stable ever since the fall of its ancient monarchy to Communism in 1974. The nation has emerged from that episode but it has not been stable.  The current government started with promise and the backing of the political forces in Tigray its now fighting, so obviously a new period of unrest is starting.

What it's about:  The main political party in Tigray has been the dominant party in post Communist Ethiopia and feels threatened by the current government which it views as trying to built a more unitary state. Tigray is a powerful and large area of Ethiopia and doesn't want its power diminished. Also, the current government removed members of the party last year which it resents.

The region held an election in defiance of the central government, which ordered national elections postponed due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Who else is involved:  Nobody.

What are the combatants like: Ethiopia has a small military and Tigray's militia, which is likely comprised of local units of the central military, won't be large either. They'll be roughly equally armed and equipped, but the central government will have an advantage in a conventional war.

Good guys and bad guys?:  Hard to say, but it's hard to argue that a separatist movement that's upset in these conditions has the high side of the argument.

November 10, 2020

Azerbaijan v Armenia Update

Russia has brokered a new ceasefire.

Cont:

And as details of the deal emerge, it's clear that Armenia lost the conflict.

Azerbaijan will keep the territory it acquired in the war.  Armenia will quickly withdraw from more of it.  In the center, a Russian peacekeeping force of 2,000 men will operate to secure the area from further Azerbaijani aggression, as they won't wish to enter into a war with Russia, but the deal could hardly be described as a great one for Armenia which is losing over 50% of the territory it held in the disputed region before the war commenced.

November 12, 2020

United States v. Peoples Republic of China.

This one really doesn't belong here, as there's no shooting war (um, yet?), but China presents a problem for the world and this thread given its aggressive bullying nature that puts it in the category of something resembling a 19th Century imperial power.

The United States just banned Americans from investing in companies that are involved in PRC Chinese military technology.  This move is long overdue.

It's worth noting that the Department of Defense is flat out now preparing for war with China, regarding the strategic risk as fairly high.  The Marine Corps is specifically restructuring itself to revive its 1900 to 1960 type role featuring amphibious assault.  It never abandoned it, but its now the focus once again.

What it's about:  China is an aggressive, and brutal, imperial power that is bent on expanding its influence in any fashion possible.  It's military was primitive until the First Gulf War, at which time its observation of the conflict lead it to the conclusion that it could no longer just rely on a massive military alone.  Additionally, it's become increasingly aggressive as a naval power in recent years.

Who else is involved:  Most of the nations that border China, either by land or sea, are concerned about it, and some have fairly hostile relations with China, creating some ironic situations.  For example, the United States has in recent years started to favor Vietnam, which has a very hostile relationship with its northern neighbor.  Taiwan, which of course is technically part of China but not under the Chinese government as it was the last refuge of the Chinese Nationalist government, is effectively an independent state but has been increasingly threatened by the PRC.  Hong Kong is part of China but the former British Colony has effectively had its "special relationship" which allowed it to have its own government for a prolonged anticipated period of time following reunification with the PRC has seen that massively erode leading to a huge amount of strife there.

It should be noted that Taiwan and the PRC are sometimes claimed to be "technically at war", but they are not, as they were never at war.  Taiwan is the surviving political entity of the Republic of China, with there being some irony in that in that the island itself is not one native to the Chinese but rather its own ethnic groups, although the Chinese have had a presence there for centuries. The island was ruled by the Chinese periodically and then by the Japanese from 1895 to 1945.  It reverted to the Republic of China in 1945 and then was the last refuge of the Nationalist Chinese government following their defeat in the Chinese Civil War.  As a civil war is, technically, not a legal war, the Chinese Communist and the Chinese Nationalist were not therefore in a legal war.  The Republic of China was recognized as the legal Chinese government for some time thereafter, with that definitely changing when the United States recognized the Communist government in 1971, after which the Nationalist government lost its seat at the United Nations.  Following that, and the death of Chiang Kai Shek, the Taiwanese government has taken the position of de facto independence from China and is governed currently by a political party that takes that position, without formerly declaring it.  Taiwan some time ago unilaterally declared hostilities to be over.

Flag of Vietnam.

Flag of Taiwan, the former flag of Nationalist China, or the current one, depending upon how you view it.  Taiwan still styles itself the Republic of China.

Flag of Hong Kong.

What are the combatants like: The United States has the most advanced military in the world.  Taiwan's is advanced but small. Vietnam's is good.  China's is good and getting better, but probably not as adept at sea as military commentators might sometimes suggest.

Good guys and bad guys?:  Everyone but China.

Morocco v Polisario Front

Fighting has broken out in Morocco resulting in at least a temporary end to a thirty year truce with the Polisario Front..  The cause of the fighting was the opening of a highway to Mauritania that runs through territory occupied by the Polisario Front, a group that seeks independence from Morocco in the Western Morocco region of Morocco.  The people living in the eastern portion of the Western Morocco are the Sahrawi and they are ethnically distinct from Moroccans.  The effect of the truce was to effectively make their region a state and it has acquired some recognition and quasi recognition from the United Nations.

As a result of Morocco's action, the Polisario Front declared war upon Morocco.

What it's about:  The immediate cause of the fighting was the opening of a road that had been blocked by the Sahrawi forces which was a source of complaints in the region. The bigger issue is whether the eastern Moroccan desert region of Western Morocco should be its own state.

The area was not part of the the Kingdom of Morocco until 1975 and remained a province of Spain up until that time.  The Kingdom, on the other hand, had been French Morocco.  In 1975, after a civilian unarmed invasion, the Kingdom of Morocco invaded the country in a move that Spain did not oppose.

Who else is involved:  Algeria supplies weapons to the Polisario Front even though Algeria has its own internal problems that have resulted in fighting in the past.

What are the combatants like: Morocco has a good modern army.  The Polisario Front has an army that even includes armor, but it can't be compared to Morocco's.  Having said that, Morocco was not able to defeat it prior to the truce.

Good guys and bad guys?:  Hard to say. The United Nations takes the position that the Sahrawi are entitled to self determination, which is hard to argue with.  And Morocco took the region without weighing in the views of all of the people living there.

Iraq v ISIL

We don't hear much about this war anymore, even though we have approximately 3,000 troops still committed to Iraq.

Generally, the story here is that not much of a war remains, but the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the terrorist group that at one time appeared on the verge of establishing a radical Islamic state in Iraq, does remain as a guerilla combatant.  Much reduced due to earlier fighting, they are not on the verge of anything right now, but they have not completely disappeared.

What it's about:  ISIL is a radical offshoot of Al Qaeda, which says something, which sought to impose an Islamic caliphate starting in Iraq that would rule according to the strictest Sunni interpretations of the Koran.  Iraq's government is Shiia dominated and parliamentarian in nature and it seeks to preserve itself.

Who else is involved:  The United States created the current Iraqi government following its defeat of the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein but, over time, the Iraqi government, dominated by Shiia's, has become an Iranian ally.  This puts us at odds with the government even while supporting it.

To the north, regions of the country are the sole bastions of Kurdish independence, something the Iraqi government opposes.

What are the combatants like: ISIL is a guerilla and terrorist force at this point.  Iraq has a well equipped modern army but internal strife make its overall fighting qualities doubtful.

Good guys and bad guys?:  None of this has turned out the way the UW would have wanted when it first went to war with Iraq, but suffice it to say an ISIL victory, which is now unlikely, would be a disaster.  A totally Iranian dominated Iraq would be as well.

Afghanistan v The Taliban

The long Afghani war brought about by the destabilization of the country under Communism in the 1970s continues on.

The country fell to the Taliban, a radical Islamic group, following the departure of the Soviet Union.  That lead to a civil war in which the United States intervened following the September 11, 2001 attacks as the Taliban was harboring Al Qaeda.  Massive strategic blunders caused by the tactical blundering of Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld meant that a war that could have been rapidly won was not, allowing the war to devolve into a long guerilla war.  A US focus on Iraq also diverted much needed attention from the region.  Under President Barack Obama a "surge" recaptured much lost ground, but since then a gradual draw down of American forces, now only 5,000 in number, leave the situation in the country uncertain.

What it's about:  The root of the war is found in a 1970s Communist take over in the country which lead to a guerilla war that ultimately expelled the Soviets but which did not leave a government in place.  The Taliban filled the gap and imposed a brutal theocratic regime.  It in turn harbored Al Qaeda which ultimately lead to American intervention.  The destruction of the political culture in the country has made restoring a civil government extremely difficult.

Who else is involved:  The United States remains involved.  NATO had a significant military mission but presently its remaining non US contingent is largely committed to training.

What are the combatants like: Afghanistan has a western trained and equipped army, but its internal problems make its fighting qualities doubtful.  Al Qaeda is a guerilla force.

Good guys and bad guys?:  The Afghan government is undoubtedly the "good guys" in this fight and if it falls it will be a Western disaster.

November 30, 2020

Ethiopia v. the Ethiopian region of Tigray Update

Ethiopian forces appear to have taken the capitol of the Tigray region.

The conflict seems to have spilled over into neighboring Eritrea which claims to have sent troops into Tigray at the invitation of Ethiopia, which the Ethiopian government denies.  Tigray admitted targeting Eritrea's capitol in rocket attacks recently and explosions were heard in the city yesterday.

Flag of Eritrea.

Eritrea has been independent from Ethiopia since 1993.  By getting involved in the Ethiopian war its drawing itself closer to the government of a country that's presently not tolerating regional dissent which may prove to be a dangerous move.

Morocco v Polisario Front Update.

The United States has recognized Moroccan claims to the Western Sahara.

This comes, oddly enough, as a byproduct of Moocco agreeing to normalize its relations with Israel, which were announced this past Thursday. Recognition of the Moroccan territorial claim was part of the negotiated deal.

December 20, 2020

Russia v. United States (amongst others), Cyber Warfare

It may seem odd, or not, to see this listed here.  The United States and the Russian Federation are not in a shooting war, but for years and years Russia has been engaged in a cyber campaign against the west.

This past week news developed of a huge cyber attack on U.S. agencies which it is believed it will take years to address.  The attack is truly in the nature of a disaster for the United States.  Earlier this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attributed the attack to Russia.  In response, so far, the US has closed some consulates in Russia.

President Trump, in news that's almost become blasé, later discounted the source of the attacks, Russia, and blamed it on China, and then went on to proclaim that the "fake news industry" was making the attacks out to be much worse than they really are.  At this point in his waning days as President the purpose of the President taking such steps is hard to discern but it adds to the speculation that Russia has something on him.  Indeed, it's so odd that, outside of perhaps just his clear admiration for Boris Putin, it's very difficult to grasp.

What it's about:  What Russia's goals are remain difficult to discern. After the fall of the Soviet Union there was real hope that Russia would join the Western family of nations but its clear that under Putin it will not, even though its in its economic and political advantage to do so.  Putin has created an autocratic government in his country that has echoes of earlier Russian autocratic regimes in numerous ways and this seems to be generally part of it.  At any rate, Russia is clearly hostile to the West.

Who else is involved:  Nearly every Western nation is similarly situated to the United States in this matter.

What are the combatants like: This category doesn't really fit here in the conventional sense as the parties aren't real combatants.

Having said that, it's highly obvious that the Russians have excellent resources in this area.  The West does as well, but has restrained itself from using them and is likely to continue to do so.  It's extremely difficult to tell where this is going.

One thing to remember, however, is that Russia is in the position of going its own on these matters.  That may be part of its basis for attacking other countries in this fashion.  The nation has economic problems and a modern economy tied to petroleum, which is proving problematic as a future economic base. Attacks of this type keep its neighbors who do not engage in them off balance.  Having said that, however, the economies of the western nations are much more advanced than the Russian one and the populations of those nations dwarf Russia.  Even the US alone has a population twice the size of Russia's.

There seems to be low risk that the western nations will reciprocate, but the Russian strategy is risky as the potential cost benefit ratio to it are poor should they start to.

Good guys and bad guys?:  These actions are essentially unprovoked and only serve Russian short term interest.  They're ultimately risky to Russia itself.