Seven unexpected figures are already on the air. They are moving quickly to the forefront of the geopolitical picture.
Behind the stage, some more disturbing figures lay still in the dark, but must be seen as future nightmares for those who still rely on the hyper-American power, as the former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine once coined it.
Seven major and unexpected figures
1) The surface-to-air missile system “S 400” developed by the Russian forces is selling well all over the world, for instance in Turkey, Serbia, Iran, China, etc. Within the limits of the number of missiles and their availability, the S 400 surface-to-air missile system put an end to the western ability to easily win and keep total superiority in the air. Any attack from the sky will come at a cost; as they know perfectly well, this is the end of impunity for Israeli forces striking at will Lebanon, Syria, etc., for American forces everywhere else, and so on for the NATO’s allied forces. The Iranian territory is mainly out of reach of air strikes.
Maybe the Devil is in the detail and that it comes from Turkey. During the attempted “coup” against him, President Erdoğan realized an uncomfortable fact; these costly American surface-to-air missile systems do not fight American aircraft and some backdoors forbid any strike of US systems against NATO’s systems. In fact, those who buy American military stuff are not owners of fighters, missiles or detection systems, as they legitimately think they are; they just pay the right to use them against enemies designated by the American forces. This is not exactly the way to enforce national sovereignty. And this is not exactly the way to feel safe, when an American Empire so deeply divided from the inside becomes unpredictable outside, unreliable, and dangerous for its best allies.
2) Quantic radars developed by the Chinese experts with some supposed Russian help, relies on massive calculators—the speediest in the entire world. In terms of space war, this means a strategic advantage. The Chinese air and space control systems rely on a new way to collect, treat, analyze and modelise big datas. Fully operational right now, they put an end to the stealth fighters and long-range bombers invisibility. In fact, even the so-called “stealth” F 35 appears clearly on the screens illuminated by these quantic radars (except maybe when entirely reshaped by Israelis engineers…). Put together S 400 and quantic radar are powerful tools of air denial. They seem to works quite well against any flying device from the west. The costly F 35 is of no use against such radars and the area they protect. It should be interesting to know something about those European Nations which choose the unchained F-35 against the French Rafale; from Belgium to Poland, do they feel comfortable with a luxury plane of no military use?
3) The hypersonic missiles supposed to reach operational speed of some Mach 8 to March 12 are developed by the Russian army and are now deployed on the battlefield. They outreach by far any other missile system and especially any existing defense surface to air or air-to-air systems. So, they reshape the map of opportunities for first strikes. Hypersonic missiles are a real game changer for old nuclear doctrine. First, they will put the Chinese coasts out of reach of an American first strike. The US Navy will be cautious to stay at arm’s length out of these missiles’ range. Then they will put an end to the nuclear approach of a “first strike” reality because of mutual assured destruction (MAD), and renew the “second shock” doctrine. NATO must think twice; hypersonic nuclear missiles invalid any traditional approach of nuclear confrontation. The Russian answer to the US unilateral exit of nuclear treaties (about mid-range nuclear missiles) is a powerful deterrent of any new NATO’s force aggressive stance. NATO will pay the price for its provocative stance in Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic States.
4) The 100 mph Russian torpedoes outreach any other submarine system. Developed at a heavy cost (fifteen years ago, one of these torpedoes exploded and drowned the Kursk submarine with its 250 + crew), this torpedo achieve a complete revolution in the submarine systems, because it avoids the great water resistance. These torpedoes are unique in creating their own atmosphere under water, which makes them a game changer for naval operations. They bring a complete reverse in the war at sea, a break-through in favor of Russian submarines and their clients—and once again, they will sell well. They allow submarines equipped with these torpedoes to find, hit and destroy any target before being detected, and are able to quit before any retaliation.
5) Space was an US strategic area; Barack Obama pointed the domain of Space as an American strategic field, a sort of 21st’ century New Frontier. No more room for others in a self-proclaimed American space! He just forgot Indian tribes, as always. We can count three components of a breakthrough just coming:
- Chinese ability to destroy satellites,
- Chinese ability to calculate and manage huge amounts of space engines and
- Chinese mounting superiority in high-speed computers. The US are no more the leading occupant of the outside world, they attained in the past a global superiority that did not last. This is the third dimension of the “Belt and Road Initiative”: a great deal of data monitoring for space control from satellites, improving efficiency and providing safety along railways and sea-lanes. This will come from an extended Chinese satellite system. Name it as you wish, space is no longer the US private property in the way that Americans designed it to be.
6) The drones are other game changers on the field. Multi-million dollars systems have been proven of no use against drones’ flotilla. In addition, they were doing their job; when the US launched an attack against “Assad’s Syria”, they attain about 65% of their targets with a precision of 2 meters to 10 meters. When the Houthis launched their attacks against Saudi Arabia, the first dozens of drones illuminate the target, with no recognition during their complex positioning flight patterns, and then came more drones launching missiles.
They have attained 80% of their targets, with an average precision better than 2 meters. The fact is appealing for a complete renewal of protecting targets and life systems—even in France. They did not need Special Forces on the surface to illuminate the target, and they do not need costly engines, missiles, detection and guiding systems to find, fix and destroy their targets. What do you think of near nuclear centrals, near gas and refinery terminals, in Israel or southern Europe as well? The perspective of thousands of armed drones used to paralyses the opponent’s defense. One of the most disturbing perspectives that Pentagon’s gurus have to face is clear and simple; how can an intelligent but very cheap device do harm or even destroy the most powerful and expensive systems on earth?
7) Russians and Chinese moved forward with their work about climate change. Not the way Greta Thunberg is doing vocal but by facts. How to produce extreme events, how to change climate conditions, to destroy or disorganize foes? Some astonishing results could have been achieved on this non-conventional way of “war off limits”. One example? The command and control systems does not face Northern Lights. When Northern Lights happens, no radio or Global Positioning System, no electronic command or Internet network works.
American ships and other systems are just simply contemplating to the Russian ability to paralyses radio communication like the northern lights does. During a close encounter with Russian fighters or Russian fishing boats, they were deaf and mute. How does it work in a real war confrontation is yet to be known—and feared. Some voices still remind what happened when US Navy vessels collided in the China Sea (the admiral commanding the 6th fleet resigned soon after). Some other voices remind the way to put them out of order when cruising the Black Sea just under Russian fighters. Frightening somehow!!
A number of other factors can explain military superiority on the battlefield. During the Korean War or during the Israeli War (1967), the superiority of Russian airplanes was overtaken by a far better training of the US and Israeli pilots. History talks about which consequences this had over the power of the Soviet army—or led to the fall of the Red Empire. The gap is growing between US forces, their allies and their foes. They face the inability to fight on the surfaces; inability to overpass aerial denial; vulnerability of big engines like aircraft carriers; vulnerability of vital infrastructures; etc. This gap relates to Russian or Chinese extraordinary new findings, and speaks volumes on the American decay.
Four uncomfortable truths
There is plenty more to come. The most disturbing figures concerning NATO’s military abilities to fight lies on some serious fundamental issues. They take the spotlight and they do explain a large number of current failures and mistakes.
Quoted by “American Affairs”, strongly illustrated by the massive failure of Boeing to manage its new supply chain, the demise of American engineering is a major issue. The decline in US R&D investment is in line with the well-documented retreat of patented innovations from the US companies and universities. To this, we can add the growing inability to understand the rest of the world from an US intelligence perspective, and the tremendous level of corruption around the US military system—what means that, for ten dollars financing the US Army, eight or nine are wasted in an administration turned insane.
The old Europe will not survive either without a deep understanding of the outside world! Worse, the internal fight between national conservatives and globalists, the “anywhere” and the “somewhere” (David Goodhart), those who believe “The world is flat” and those who live as “Prisoners of Geography” turned radical. The same phenomenon is spreading around the military, the Washington-based “Deep State” destroying diplomacy, intelligence, alliances and treaties on a whole range. And the worst is to happen. When big ideas are the substitute for the reality, when morality replaces intelligence, the worst is to happen.
What is happening to American engineering?
First of all, what is happening to American engineering? Once quoted as the best in the world, mainly because of a high level operational efficiency (from Henry Ford’s factories to Procter and Gamble or General Electric), the chain between innovation and mass production seems to have been broken. The “brand new” F-35 bought by Poland, Belgium, etc., is the milk-cow of the US military system, an engineering failure, and the most irrelevant fighter ever built.
The huge cost of a fighter without a cause are not alone. The hundreds of Boeing 737 S grounded, the call from different crews (from American Airline, for instance) not to fly them give a harsh view of the current extent of a growing problem. The results of American military strikes in Syria were far away from being bright, and this is also the case with the performance of hundreds billion missile shields called “Patriot” in Saudi Arabia or even in Israel. When Iran launches its retaliation attack after the killing of Gal Souleymani, none of the 16 Iranian missiles were stopped by the US anti-missile system from the Ayn-al-Assad base, in South Irak!
Two things are at stake; the obsessive run to the lower costs (and the rise of dividends for owners of the members of the military industrial complex), and the continuous break of established relations between the industry and its suppliers. The externalization means loss of control. Indefinite extension of the supply chain means geopolitical exposure and multiplies the risks of misunderstanding. It destroys the fundamental link between mass production and innovation. Russian industry encounters similar problems to transfer technology from the military industry to possible civil applications.
Continuous pressure against any public requirements means loss of public safety. Benign neglect of social welfare, human rights, workers’ safety and environmental issues are coming at a cost; and nobody cares about the final result, especially those workers who never dream of using the devices they produce, or to meet their customers. Cost killers are killing customer trust, user safety and resilience as well as they cut costs. And they also kill any innovation capabilities, meaning try, fail, and try again. There is quite a waste of time and money! Creative destruction and the disruptive management model works well, as far as security is not traded at cheap price. Some of the multi-billion-dollar programs are well known to have been damaged by terrible failures, but nobody will be charged for.
And the question is; do Japan and South Korea really must pay four or five times the price for an US shield, as requested by President Trump, whereas so many obvious failures? Do Poland, the Baltic States and other countries feel comfortable with such an umbrella above their heads?
Where can we still find the famous big game hunters of the US intelligence?
The loss of so many experts on the fields of comprehensive intelligence is another severe blow to the US defense system, and our own safety. The conventional and non-conventional intelligence capital seems to have vanished at fast pace the last twenty years. Where are James Baker boys, Kissinger old students, and the unending talks with M6 or French intelligence community members? Where are “kremlinologues” who knew the Soviet history better than their Russian counterparts? Where are those American experts who knew not only the gap between Shiites and Sunnis, but were able to analyze different Sunni communities, who met the Hezbollah leaders and the Alawites as well, and respect their logic and values?
Reuters/Adrees Latif
The Clinton’s and Georges W. Bush administration, with its wide bunch of war criminals, from David Rumsfeld to Madeleine Albright and Wesley Clark, never put an interest in understanding any of those details—but preferred to bomb them, to kill them, and to take their loot away. It is how it works nowadays in Afghanistan, in Irak, in Libya, without any successful results—except the one thousand billions of dollars wasted (just see The Washington Post, 9 December 2019, and the devastating paper from General Doug Hute). The US spoiled the countries they have destroyed, they try to keep control on natural resources and capital flows (as in Syria for now, in Iraq for the next future), they left behind no State, no institutions, no infrastructure, nothing but anarchy and despair. They ruined any form of progressive, socialist regimes in the Arab world; what is the goal?
Diversity comes to be the first geopolitical force on the move, and its target is mainly the American-led system. In the long run, spreading anarchy is far more dangerous than former Arab socialism and nationalism; the religious and fundamentalist answer, under the Islamic form, is spreading at a fast pace all over Africa and Europe as well. The lesson here is not to forget; the former regimes have been destroyed after they have resigned any try to get the nukes, as did both Irak and Libya, as did also Iran, and they were attacked after they have accepted the peace conditions from the US-led alliance.
What is the American answer to those who said; if they have got the nukes, or at least, arms of mass destruction, they had not been bombed or killed? North Korea is not the only one to ask the question—and to give the only relevant answer, the same Israel gave fifty years ago, with some French friends to help. As for engineering capacities, US strategic intelligence is in great need for help—just ask for it!
Fight between Pro & Counter Trump
The political fight between pro- and counter-Trump took a strange path since the testimonies of diplomats, members of the intelligence community and from the military, are flooding the impeachment process. No doubt about that; for any non-partisan observer, there is an attempted coup against the elected president. It is unconstitutional, undemocratic, and it is carefully cooked in some globalist’s kitchens. All these so-called American diplomats who have sided with so many “coups”, from Brazil to Bolivia, are now turning their lethal knowledge against their own country, because they can’t bear an US President dealing with their own profitable business, like those coming from Biden’s and Clinton’s associated mafias which spoiled Ukraine, Romania, South America, etc.
This because it puts an end to the insane claim of those who think of themselves as God’s representatives—from the former CEO of Goldman Sachs! There are so many to recycle on an old idea: “Our billions of dollars commit us to do God’s work”! More confusing, however, is the statement from two CIA’s former directors; they consciously claim themselves in charge of the future of the US, against the president elected!
What kind of democracy are we facing? When members of intelligence community and security forces like John Brennan or James Comey are claiming political power on their own, something is getting the wrong way. It is far more against the US constitution than any supposed wrongdoing by President Trump! And when they come to consider useful and democratic the fact of using any means to put the President’s agenda and his phone calls under their control, perhaps with the help of Russians asked for by the Obama friends, the famous “United” States are in danger. So are their allies. European Nations cannot easily get rid of that situation. The US doesn’t need any foreign enemy; they got plenty of them inside! And when an empire fails, it is dangerous for all those allies around!
World of moral pretensions
Last, but worse, is the confusing world of moral pretensions. To speak honestly; capabilities, talent, or genius have nothing to see with personal moral values. When the military spends time, money and energy to gender, parity, and LGBT things, it means that this time it is not spent to know the enemies, to train and fight them.
When candidates are submitted to endless reports on personal wealth, moral values, private life and family behavior, they are rejected more often on the basis of personal judgments that on their political program and abilities to lead. The current moral exhibition of best intentions drives the West to both inefficiency and injustice. Just try to have a look at the permanent contest of moral values in the European Parliament, and it’s proved inability to achieve anything anywhere in the existing world! Moral pretensions gave those who can proclaim themselves legitimate censors an undemocratic and unbalanced power. It is the fastest way to return to black ages. And this is the end of political life as it shapes democracy; the open, infinite and uncensored confrontation of ideas, programs and policies—while laws protecting free speech are supposed to guarantee.
Those great leaders we admired, from Theodore Roosevelt to J. F. Kennedy, from Jefferson with his nice black slave as a mistress, to the obsessional womanizer Benjamin Franklin, were both political geniuses and self-centered individuals—and was it any problem?
They shape the future of their country, and they make it strong and safe. The mix of political choices and moral judgment is the most dangerous threat our democracies are facing for now. Some geniuses were also criminals. We cherished their works, not their behavior. Who really cares? At the same moment, Chinese leaders have no other concerns that the continuous increase of power and reach by the Chinese empire.
Russia has no other project that the return to Russia at the top of the world’s powers, as a reliable ally and a positive game changer for its clients. The European Union has for only concern that the world should turn out to be a planet-wide Sweden. And the United States of America seems to have no other concern than to fight a war against themselves, globalists against nationalists and conservatives against progressives. Can we really talk here about the way to make the USA and Europe safe again?
We are not yet moving from a feared US hyper power to an endangered US and NATO under power. But we are on the right track not far off. The still unresolved 2008 crisis was paid by a complete loss of credibility from the West. The rest considered with a growing discomfort the results of confusing doctrines as “le devoir d’ingérence” (the duty to interfere) or “the Duty to protect”! So many victims, so many civilians killed, so many Nations destroyed, for the moral comfort of a few “God’s envoys”! And the Rest, as the Shanghai organization expressed it, now represents near half the world’s economy, two third of the world’s population, and is at par for the military budget (on PPA) with the West. Was it the reason for the provocative words of M. Emmanuel Macron, when he spoke about the state of NATO’s “mental death”, the European Union being on the edge of collapse? The sovereignty of any European Nations is at stake, and only sovereign Nations make good allies and strong fighters.
Is there a conclusion? The uncomfortable truth is that the USA actually need England, France, Italy or Russia to help them understand and manage the coming world, a real world which has never been so far away from Washington DC. The world is not flat. And, yes, we are prisoners of geography. They need a friendly confrontation with the world as it goes, with its inconvenient facts and figures.
They need to face the coming back of religious faith, of ethnic identities, after a period in which the citizenship of Nations was denied by globalists. They need to face the coming back of diversity as the true proof of civilization; as Claude Levi-Strauss once wrote, “There is no civilization if there are not civilizations.” They need to rebuild their university and research system, to promote interdisciplinary studies, classic culture, and to face uncomfortable truths. And they need to face their own truth; the US will decline and die as an Empire, they will last and live as a Nation between the Nations.
On this difficult struggle to survive, the USA has a lot to do, to share and to learn from their European counterparts.
First, they have to recognize them as full-scale allies, neither mercenaries nor slaves. The submission of so many European Nations to NATO does not augur well, and it represents a hidden threat to the USA.
Secondly, they have to agree with this Westphalian truce; there is no good or evil in international relations, just people and Nations seeking sovereignty and legitimately pursuing their own interests..
Thirdly, they have to fear the path from hyper power to under power, a path opened by hubris, false claim of universal values, and lies about vested interests. The time is no longer for “the city upon a hill”. Can someone really guess which new dream will renew the old America and come up to a strong alliance with the new Nations of the future Europe?
Hervé Juvin, 8 janvier 2020
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