Canadian Cincinnatus

The phoniness of the pro-Putin charge that the invasion of Georgia was Georgia’s fault.

Yesterday’s post about the Russian-Georgian conflict got me thinking about something that has bugged me for a while: the line circulated in pro-Putin circles, the appeasing western left and even some right-wing bloggers of the isolationist bent, that Georgia attacked Russia!

Anybody with even the tiniest amount of military knowledge recognizes the absurdity of this claim. Even though the invasion was executed incompetently, the military action that transpired require many months of planning and preparation. It is militarily impossible to do something like that on the spur of the moment. In addition, that it started on the opening day of the Beijing Olympics – a huge event guaranteed to use up the media oxygen – raises, or should raise, extreme suspicion.

As usual, my expert on Georgian affairs, Tom M, put it best:

“First off, Russia was never attacked.  But Russian Forces in Georgia were fired upon by Georgian forces.  What amazes me is that anyone could think Russia was attacked, when everything happened well within Georgia... not even a "cross-border" incident.

As far as I know, nobody has articulated things this way... i.e. that Georgian forces never were even close to the Georgia-Russia border... not a single shot was fired into Russian territory.”

He also offered this analogy (that I don’t think is weak): 

“I've been thinking about what kind of analogy to present to Canadian friends about the 2008 Russo-Georgian war...

An obviously weak one would go as follows:

1) Canada and Quebec start hostilities

2) The US grants all in Quebec US citizenship (i.e. issues them US Passports)

3) A skirmish erupts on the Ont-Que border

4) The US then sends massive numbers of troops into Que to protect their newly minted US Citizens from Canada and bombs Ottawa

5) Open war breaks out... Canada loses.”

How to solve the Somali piracy problem – part 2

Now that the hijacking of the American cargo ship and the capture of its captain has been successfully resolved, now is perhaps a good time to revisit an article I wrote on Nov 17, 2008 about the Somali piracy situation. In it, I posited a simple, cost effective solution to this scourge. While my solution is more applicable today than it was back when I originally proposed it, my proscriptions have nevertheless been ignored, no doubt because policymakers have been too squeamish to get their hands dirty implementing the necessary measures. What they don’t realize is that sooner or later, they will have to spill blood but the sooner they do it, the less they will spill. The problem will only escalate until the pirates are finally put in their place.

Meanwhile, over at the Telegraph, noted military historian John Keegan channels the spirit of Stephen Decatur.

Over at the American Spectator site, Jeffrey Lord provides a helpful history of past presidents and how they handled ship hijackings – with widely varying results. (Hint – the ones who were tough on the hijackers were more successful.)

Royal Navy kills pirates off Somali coast

By  all accounts, maritime piracy is a serious and growing phenomenon and failed states such as Somalia are a great place for them. Nobody is going to bring them to justice there. Heck, they are probably treated like local celebrities.

The West’s response has been to patrol the Gulf of Aden with large naval vessels such as the HMS Cumberland. There are two problems with this approach. First, it is expensive. To adequately patrol the entire Somali coast, all the time requires a lot of vessels, and operating them ain’t cheap.

Second, these big ships can be seen a mile away. All the pirates have to do is to sit tight and wait for the ship to sail away before attacking a lone, unescorted freighter. Looking at this from a game theoretic perspective, unless the pirates are as stupid as the ones who chose to operate in the vicinity of the HMS Cumberland, they are in a no-lose situation. When naval ships aren’t around, they do what they want; when they are in view, the pirates take a professional development day; life is good. Which is why the navy can only secure that part of the sea where they are physically present in.

Directly after 9/11, it became fashionable to talk about thinking out-of-the-box. The idea was that without unconventional tactics, you couldn’t hope to defeat an asymmetrical opponent like Osama Bin Laden, who has the luxury to wait for you to drop your guard while you spend billions to secure every single vulnerable point.

I know all this war on terror stuff has gone out of fashion these days, with the election of sunny Obama, but still, I think this is one problem that would benefit from some out-of-the-box strategery.

In this spirit I have a suggestion: why don’t we defeat these pirates the same way Alexander the Great defeated the Scythian raiders north of the Syr Daria River (the Jaxartes) – you bait them. What I have in mind is this. You take a luxury yacht, sail it slowly up and down the Somali coast and wait for the pirates. When they get close and their intentions are obvious, a platoon of commandoes rushes up to the deck and opens fire with everything they got until all the pirates are dead.

Pretty soon the pirates will learn to stay away from luxury yachts. Then you start putting commando teams on small freighters. When the pirates become wary these, you move up to large freighters. It will not take long for incidents of piracy to dry up to a manageable trickle.

I know, I know, the lose-at-any-cost crowd will go nuts. But let them. This plan, while it sounds barbaric when presented in this way, is on much firmer legal ground than it appears. First, the law of the sea gives every ship the right to do whatever it takes to survive on the high seas. And ships are the sovereign territory of the nation under whose flag they fly. Attacking a ship is an act of war. Secondly, who says you aren’t trying to take prisoners? It can be reasonably argued that trying to do so would imperil the safety of your ship so you can’t try very hard.

Of course, this kind of thing is passé these days. And will remain so... until the next big terrorist attack.

The Taliban calls out the Canadians

According to strategypage.com,

“A Taliban spokesman has announced that they are concentrating their attacks on Canadian troops in order to persuade Canadian voters to elect a government willing and eager to get out of Afghanistan. This had long been suspected, as captured Taliban communications had mentioned this tactic before. Al Qaeda had made much of the way the 2004 al Qaeda attack in Spain caused an anti-American government to be elected, and Spanish troops shortly thereafter withdrawn from Iraq.”

We should always remember that just because they are living in a third world hell-hole and hate free society, it doesn’t mean that Islamofascist groups (and the communist movements before them) are naïve about the workings of democracy. They have had plenty of experience playing off different factions of western democracies against each other for their own ends, starting with the Tet offensive in the Vietnam War through Mogadishu on down to today. This is especially true these days when they can count on their diaspora living in western countries for advice.

Of course, if Canadians made a point of standing together in the face of provocation then the Taliban couldn’t succeed. And if they knew that they couldn’t succeed, they wouldn’t try to intimidate us. And if they didn’t try to intimidate us, our casualty rate would be much lower than it currently is.

But try telling this to ‘Taliban’ Jack Layton…