Posts Tagged ‘Predator Drone’

Russia’s Decline And Existential Crisis

Monday, May 9th, 2022

The Russian May Day parade has come and gone without Putin announcing either and end to the invasion of Ukraine, or a mass mobilization. So expect more of the same for the immediate future.

Lots of people have speculated on why Russia invaded Ukraine when it did. One reason floated is that they had to act now before the demographic crash makes such action impossible.

“One hundred and forty-six million [people] for such a vast territory is insufficient,” said Vladimir Putin at the end of last year. Russians haven’t been having enough children to replace themselves since the early Sixties. Birth rates are also stagnant in the West, but in Russia the problem is compounded by excess deaths: Russians die almost a decade earlier than Brits. Their President is clearly worried that he’s running out of subjects.

It’s a humiliating state of affairs because Russian power has always been built on the foundation of demography. Back in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw that Russia would become a world power, because “Russia is of all the nations of the Old World the one whose population is increasing most rapidly”. The only other country with its population potential was the United States. De Tocqueville prophesised that, “Each one of them seems called by a secret design of Providence to hold in its hands one day the destinies of half the world.” A century later, they were the world’s two uncontested superpowers.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia’s population was 136 million, and was still booming, just as those of other European powers started to slow. Germany’s population was 56 million, excluding its colonies, and the threat of ever-larger cohorts of Russian recruits into the Tsar’s ranks haunted Germany’s leadership; historian and public intellectual Friedrich Meinecke fretted over the “almost inexhaustible fertility” of the Slavs while Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg complained that “Russia grows and grows and lies on us like an ever-heavier nightmare”. This pressure was probably the decisive factor in Germany’s 1914 leap in the dark. German Secretary of State Gottlieb von Jagow wrote to the German ambassador in London as the storm was gathering that “in a few years, Russia will be ready … Then she will crush us on land by weight of numbers.”

n the First World War, it turned out, numbers were not enough to compensate for Russian industrial and organisational inferiority. But by the Second World War, Russia’s numeric superiority had exploded. Despite the horrors of Civil War and Bolshevism, the nation’s population grew at about three times the speed of Germany’s in the opening decades of the century. The army had an endless supply of soldiers, the military infrastructure an endless supply of workers, giving the country a decisive edge in the Forties. Vast spaces and appalling weather helped, but ultimately it was the endlessness of Russian manpower which ground down the Wehrmacht in what was perhaps the most epic military struggle of all time. Field Marshall Erich von Manstein complained as he faced Russia’s armies: “We confronted a hydra: for every head cut off, two new ones appeared to grow.”

But if demographic prowess buttressed Russian power then, population decline has undermined it in the years since. Most nations have developed out of the high birth and death rates seen throughout most of human history: as mortality and then fertility falls, first the population expands, then it flattens; eventually, it may contract. But in Russia this process has taken place with a vengeance.

At the time of its dissolution, the Soviet Union was the home of 290 million people, 50 million more than the USA. Today, the Russian Federation has less than half that number — and less than half of the USA’s current total. In large part, this is the result of the loss of non-Russian republics, including Ukraine (which at the outbreak of the current conflict had a population of 43 million). But in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet period, the country also collapsed into an orgy of suicide and alcoholism, particularly affecting the country’s men.

One journalist in Russia at the time wrote about how “the deaths kept piling up. People … were falling or perhaps jumping, off trains and out of windows; asphyxiating in country houses with faulty wood stoves or in apartment with jammed front door locks … drowning as a result of driving drunk into a lake … poisoning themselves with too much alcohol … dropping dead at absurdly early ages from heart attacks and strokes”. By the early years of this century, life expectancy for Russian men was on par with countries such as Madagascar and Sudan.

It’s hard to fight for the future when you’re unwilling to show up for it.

Peter Zeihan (yeah, that guy again) argues that, despite their numerous setbacks, the Russians aren’t going to give up.

A few takeaways:

  • Russia has always suffered from inferior technology, which is why they were humiliated in the Crimean War.
  • “But they will never stop until they have to, or they are forced to.”
  • “The Russians see this as an existential crisis. They will fight until they can’t.”
  • “This is going to last months, probably years.”
  • Russia’s current goal: “The complete obliteration of all civilian infrastructure” in Ukraine.
  • Russians consider anyone that doesn’t flee a fighter to be shot on sight.
  • They’ve killed at least 50,000, probably closer to 100,000.
  • Zeihan asserts that Russians are trying to plug traditional invasion corridors into Russia. “There are two of those corridors on the other side of Ukraine, one that goes SW into Romania, and one that goes NW into Poland.”
  • Since we know that the Russians intention is not to stop in Ukraine and is to go into multiple NATO countries, we know that that fight between American and Russian forces is destined to happen, and we now know how it will end: The Russians will be obliterated and they’ll be faced with a simple choice: A strategic retreat across the entire line of contact all the way back to Russia, maybe even further, or escalate to involve nukes, since the Russians see this as an existential crisis, that’s a fight we have to prevent. And so the United States specifically, and NATO in general is sending any weapon system that we possibly can that can be carried or put in a truck.

  • “If we can’t kill Russia in Ukraine, nukes come into play.”
  • “If you’re Poland and you’re Romania, you know ultimately the Russians are coming for you that changes your math and that changes the risks you’re willing to take, and if you border Poland or Romania, same general thing.”
  • “If we can get Predators and Reapers into the Ukrainians hands, they can blow up the Kirch Strait bridge, and then all of a sudden the Crimea is completely cut off. And from a war point of view, that would be fantastic because most of the gains the Russians have made have been out of Crimea.”
  • Russia has to win in Ukraine because “This is their last chance.”
  • I have significant doubts that Zeihan’s “plugging historical invasion gaps” is the driver for this conflict, mainly because such terrain gaps came be overcome in a more modern, dynamic geospatial war envelope by use of air, land, heliborn and remote-piloted combatants. Tactically still very significant, strategically less so. I think Russian chauvinism despises the very idea of a free and independent Ukraine, and lot of Putin decisions seem to be driven by ego. Pro-natalist policies like tax and welfare incentives seem a much better way to deal with their looming population crash than a risky invasion. But Putin makes all sorts of stupid calculations. And seeing his army’s performance in Ukraine would cause a sane man to back away from open conflict with NATO.

    But Zeihan’s theory that the U.S. and NATO see this as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to defang Russia short of a direct conflict with NATO countries strikes me as correct.

    Venezuela Socialist President Nicolas Maduro Target of Drone Attack

    Sunday, August 5th, 2018

    The only thing surprising about this story is that it didn’t happen two years ago.

    Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said in a live broadcast Saturday that several dronelike devices armed with explosives detonated near Maduro during his appearance at a military event, according to AP.

    It quoted Rodriguez as saying Maduro was safe and unharmed. According to Reuters, seven National Guard soldiers were hurt.

    Just think how much better off Venezuela might be if someone had taken out Maduro before he admitted socialism was a failure, or even before people started eating their dogs and children started dying because his socialist paradise can’t afford antibiotics?

    Here’s footage of the attack. You can’t see the drone attack itself, but you can see reactions to it and people running from it.

    It’s actually surprising we haven’t seen more drone assassination attempts. The technology is mature and the strike can be carried out from several blocks away, even out of line-of-sight with an onboard video camera. Get a medium-sized quadcopter, pack it full of Semtex and roofing nails, and detonate a few feet from your target.

    Not only have we been using Predator drones since 1994, the Predator has actually been retired in favor of the much larger and faster MQ-9A Reaper…

    Droning On and On

    Wednesday, March 6th, 2013

    Senator Rand Paul has launched an old-fashioned filibuster against Obama’s CIA nominee John Brennan to protest the Obama Administration’s refusal to rule out drone strikes against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.

    Under questioning by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Eric Holder admitted that he thought Obama could indeed launch a drone strike against American citizens on American soil.

    Funny how far you can stretch unlimited power when the Constitution is a living document.

    Hell, even some liberals are appalled.

    Here’s the first hour of Rand Paul’s filibuster:

    And here’s Cruz getting in on the filibuster action:

    This is potentially even a bigger story than it’s being made out to be (and it’s already plenty big). There’s lots of support for Rand and Cruz coming from some unusual quarters. I don’t have time to go into all the ramifications now, but this could be the issue on which finally the vast majority of Americans look at the unchecked growth of federal power under Obama and finally yells “Enough!”

    Syria Finally Ready to Blow?

    Sunday, November 13th, 2011

    Maybe. News that the Arab league has suspended Syria indicates Bashar Assad may be on even shakier ground than previously thought. Getting suspended by the Arab League for oppressing your own people is only a couple of steps above getting kicked out of the Klu Klux Klan for being too racist.

    And unlike Libya, even a hardline Islamist government would be a slight improvement on Assad, especially in Lebanon, if only because the Sunnis would break with Iran and cut off funding for the Shia Hezbollah.

    But it’s hard to tell. When Syrian generals defected at the end of July, that looked like it might have been the final push, but wasn’t. never underestimate a cornered dictator willing to do anything to stay in power.

    Frontline does a report from inside the Syrian uprising.

    Here’s an interactive map.

    Will Obama decide to roll out drone strikes in Syria? Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it, as Obama hasn’t seemed terribly interested in Syria, even by the lax standards of his foreign policy engagement. Also, the geography is more daunting than in Libya; to be effective, they’d have to come in over Lebanon or Israel to hit targets in Damascus, each of which presents (different) political problems.

    Stay tuned…