| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <plotd@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Another Dead Judge |
| Date: | Tue, 4 Aug 1998 22:26:54 +0100 |
Jameson <erikj@****.COM> writes
>At 12:07 AM 8/4/98 +0100, you wrote:
>>We're supposed to believe that the UCAS is going to buy the sinews of
>>its national defence from a foreign power that says "By the way, we can
>>crush you tomorrow if we feel like it"?
>
>Ares is considered a "friendly" power. True or not, that's how the
>congresscritters and many of the citizens see Ares.
Of course, it then needs to maintain that image.
There's a case to be made (not decisive, but it's not out of the
question) that Ares sees close linkage with the UCAS as a long-term
survival advantage: perhaps, over time, making Ares/UCAS equivalent to
Aztechnology/Aztlan.
But an adversarial relationship would scupper that quickly.
>And by your same argument, why would a small nation, like Saudi Arabia, buy
>it's arms from us, when we could crush them if we so chose?
Because attacking Saudi Arabia causes economic damage that seriously
affects the United States' trading partners, and thus the US. And it
also risks someone - in the old days the USSR, nowadays regional powers
like Iraq - wading in to support Saudi Arabia. It alienates other US
allies, and deters anyone else from forming alliance with a provably
untrustworthy power.
The Saudis are fully aware of that: the US needs Saudi more than vice
versa, which is why the Saudis buy a mix of systems from various
suppliers to ensure they are not wholly dependent on any foreign ally.
Israel might be a better example for your case: buying largely US
equipment where it doesn't produce indigenously, paying for it with US
loan guarantees and military aid, controlling no key resources.
Or, better yet, the Japan-United States axis: Japan makes many of the
subcomponents and wields considerable economic power, but is grossly
outmatched militarily and is entirely dependent on US military hardware
(though Mitsubishi produce tanks and fighters and warships, they are
licenced US designs or very close derivatives thereof).
>Under that
>reasoning, I'd expect them to buy Saab fighters, since Sweden isn't likely
>to be rolling troops anywhere anytime soon.
The US has a vested interest in a strong, stable and prosperous Saudi
Arabia, both as an arms market and because the less US export customers
spend on oil, the more they have available to spend on US goods. And the
Saudis _do_ buy British fighters and AFVs, and French frigates,
helicopters and tanks, mixing and matching to prevent dependence.
The US does use arms as leverage, since control of the supply of spare
parts is powerful muscle (it's been used on Israel a few times), but
then doesn't that suggest the UCAS - with that experience - would opt
for the Saudi solution?
Observe Malaysia, for instance, which went for a split purchase of
Russian MiG-29s and American F/A-18s in protest at what they percieved
to be excessive limitations on and costs of the US hardware. When they
showed they were serious about buying from non-US sources, suddenly
those constraints evaporated.
>>Ares can make no profit without sales, and yet to make sales of major
>>military equipment it _must_ present as a stable, long-term ally.
>
>Which is what they've done!
Of course, if they then abuse that relationship, their sales will suffer
massively, to the point they risk creating a competitor (cf. Israel,
North Korea and South Africa for the effect of arms embargoes: the
nation concerned becomes self-sufficient, then a net arms exporter)
Observe Israel's near-total dependence on French arms, especially ships
and aircraft, prior to 1967: yet when France cut them off as punishment
for initiating hostilities in the Six-Day War, the Israelis managed to
keep their forces operational, found a new supplier and sponsor (from
operating French Mystieres and Mirages they moved to US Skyhawks and
Phantoms) and did enough reverse engineering that their copies of the
Mirage III (sold as the Dagger) displaced Dassault (as we found in 1982,
since Argentina had bought Daggers from Israel and used them on us)
>>Who's paying that cost? And if the answer's "nobody" then where's the
>>return for Ares?
>
>Where's the return? It's called protecting their current investments.
Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to not go to war in the first place?
If operating in or trading in the UCAS is too onerous, then
megacorporations will simply decline to do so. Capital is extremely
mobile. If a megacorp doesn't like trading conditions... it'll leave.
>>Remember, their sourcebooks are written as files generated by anonymous
>>neo-Anarchists and held on a corporate-owned server (read Shadowplay for
>>some speculation as to who _really_ controls Shadowland). What "a neo-
>>anarchist believes" in a sourcebook and what the truth is, may be very
>>different things.
>
>But what the hell are we supposed to judge upon then?
Reality, Erik?
>>Likely force levels - about 400,000 active duty, made up of 150,000
>>Navy, 50,000 Marine Corps, 200,000 Army and 100,000 Air Force.
>
>Are we talking total troops, or only front line combatants? I was talking
>about around 100K frontline combatants. Don't know at all how those ratios
>would work out with REMFs and such.
Total force. A _long_ way down from today, but still formidable. There
would IMO be sizeable reserve forces, mostly land troops (Army/Marine
Reserve and Metroplex Guard) taking the total well past a million in
full mobilisation, but that would impose serious economic problems if
sustained.
>>In your version, the UCAS has fewer armed forces than the UK today,
>>while being surrounded by real or potential enemies and still
>>maintaining a division in attrition warfare over years. Not really
>>credible.
>
>Let's not also forget that the UCAS lost much of it's territory and a fair
>amount of it's citizenry too (not all of it, but a fair portion).
The UCAS still has around 173 million citizens (NAGNA). They can afford
an active MPR of 0.25%, considering it's nearer 0.75% today.
>>_That_ is the reality of unrestricted submarine warfare against
>>commerce. If FASA and the "neo-anarchists" who write the sourcebooks
>>have forgotten it, the UCAS Navy has not, and they've yet to produce a
>>sourcebook of their own.
>
>BTW, the whole neo-a thing is long since gone. Mike axed that concept a
>while ago.
Whatever, the neo-A routine is what the earlier books were using.
And unrestricted commerce warfare is still both historical and current
fact, and nothing yet presented by FASA changes it.
>>Just suggest a better alternative. Too many friends have been in the
>>position you describe: it's a little bit personal.
>
>Again, I don't *have* to. I just have to make you justify your own.
Not true. I would have been, and my friends are, sworn servants of the
Crown, obeying the _lawful_ orders of Her Majesty or her elected
representatives. (Note emphasis). We didn't pick the missions or make
the policy.
Talk to the politicians, not to their footsoldiers, if you want to
change policy. Ranting at the troops... is just grandstanding. Achieves
nothing except to alienate and annoy them.
>>Remember, the military does _not_ make policy. The military carries out
>>the orders it receives from the Government. Same in the UK as it is in
>>the US, and as it ends up in the UCAS: elected officials say "Go!" and
>>the soldiers go.
>
>True. But I think Clausewitz would agree that politics and war go hand in
>hand. Can't have one without the other, and both influence and affect the
>other.
Clausewitz is much misquoted and much misunderstood. "War is the
continuation of political intercourse (des politischen Verkehrs) with
the intermixture of other means (mit Einmischung anderer Mittel)".
Yet that statement depends on the existence of nation-states and
political dialogue. Where does a conflict like Somalia fit into that
analysis? To the troops on the ground it's a war, since they're taking
and returning fire from armed enemies, yet there is no "enemy leader" to
negotiate with, intimidate, or surrender to, no political process in
place.
Remember, this is a man who rejected the entire concept of "irregular"
warfare in his horror at the conduct of the Cossacks, whose behaviour
was utterly antithetical to his education and training. A veteran of the
slaughters at Jena, Borodino and Waterloo, he still found the hit-and-
run cruelty of the Cossacks outrageous: there was no place for them in
his analysis. That alone greatly weakens his applicability.
The First World War is the nearest we've come to the Clausewitzian "true
war": a headlong rush towards ever-greater military power led to mile-
long railway stations designed to unload entire divisions in minutes, to
dreadnought building races, and eventually to a massive exercise in
slow, grinding attrition warfare, in which politics was entirely absent
once hostilities were joined.
Clausewitz' analysis of warfare is useful, but as idealised as his
contemporary Marx's examination of economics.
>*sigh*
>
>In the end, I return back to my original statement, as voiced by the
>Marketeer, that it's all one big giant balancing act, where no one faction
>has any clear cut advantage over the other. It's a massive intertangled
>web and it would be suicide for either side to take on the other.
Actually (perhaps I misread it) you presented as advocating corporate
dominance.
My position is further to one side, but not by much: the UCAS, Britain,
Japan, the CAS, other major nations, could defeat a single
megacorporation by mostly military means. The combined might of the AAA
megas could overwhelm any nation by economic means... and with all eight
solidly against you, who do you fight?
Between those extremes there's a huge grey area.
Both sides have a vested interest in not disturbing that balance. Which
might make many of 2059's captains of industry and national leaders very
nervous, as Ares snuggles close to the UCAS: that combination of
economic and military might would be a very potent force.
Though, again, it's a counterweight to Aztlan/Aztechnology, who might be
expected to be making some folk nervous...
Perhaps FASA intend to move towards a bipolar world? Certainly human
nature is happier when it has a bad guy to demonise.
--
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and
praiseworthy...
Paul J. Adam paul@********.demon.co.uk
