Book Reviews

Azerbaijan Taught a Crucial Military Lesson, But Russia Skipped Class

Failed prophets are a dime-a-dozen. If I had a nickel for every time I had been told the world was on the brink of collapse for reasons ranging from oceanic methane deposits to credit default swaps, I might not be a billionaire, but I would drive a nicer car. How refreshing, then, to come upon a book of successful prophecy, Colonel John Antal’s 7 Seconds to Die: A Military Analysis of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the Future of Warfighting.

Antal’s analysis of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War was published on February 3, 2022, so it provides an interesting historical picture of what Western military thinkers were pondering in the months and weeks prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a region of the South Causcasus (a region which has been perpetually soaked in blood as far back as we have records) which lies on the border of Azerbaijan and Armenia; the Soviets assigned the region to Azerbaijan in the 1920s despite it being majority Armenian, and as the USSR fell apart in the 1980s, the Armenians attempted to effect their secession from Azerbaijan and a union with Armenia. The first goal was accomplished, and after a bloody, Yugoslav-style war, the Armenian Republic of Artsakh was established (with no international recognition). Although Armenia never formally annexed Artsakh, it was understood that Artsakh was Armenian. The Azeris, naturally, did not find this state of affairs to their liking, and resolved to rectify it.

Now, I must register a complaint: Colonel Antal is not a very good writer. There is no way around it. Every terrible rhetorical cliché of the national security professional is in evidence, from the unnecessary quotes from Clausewitz and Sun Tzu to the overly didactic “historical examples” cribbed from the classics as though he is writing a school textbook, all written in excruciating Pentagonese. The mere fact that, in a book whose readers are going to be almost exclusively ‘National Security Professionals,’ Antal feels the need to engage in a disquisition on “what war is,” while saying nothing that couldn’t have been cribbed from a Wikipedia article is a shameless (and very DC) attempt to prove his erudition.

Perhaps the most egregious example is when he uses the defeat of Crassus at Carrhae to illustrate the fatal effects of a military failing to adapt to a new technology (in this case the Parthian recurve bow and mounted archery). I am neither a classicist nor a military historian by trade, but there are dozens of better examples of technology changing the shape of warfare and I can only think that he chose this example to let you, the reader, know that he has heard of Carrhae and that he has read Plutarch. This is the national security striver at his most intolerable, and it actually obscures Antal’s incisive analysis.

For example, he notes that while loitering munitions and UAS systems might be able to change the face of war, it would require the suppression of enemy air defense systems and cUAS systems to work. The Azeris did this by buying a number of old Soviet biplanes and either turning them into remote-control drones or by having pilots fly them to the appropriate altitude and bail, depending on whose accounts you believe, and once the Armenian air defense network had revealed itself, the Azeris then targeted their emplacements with Israeli and Turkish unmanned systems.

The unrecognized story of the invasion of Ukraine—what explains the stagnation of the conflict into the seeming rerun of Passchendaele we are seeing—is the impotence of Russian airpower. This seems (from news reports) to have largely been achieved because the Ukrainians were sparing in their use of anti-air systems, holding them back from the frontline, disguising their radar, and in general accepting the potential threat of their air defense systems to high-value Russian targets means that their resources, military and civilian, must take occasional hits from Russian missiles. The ability to threaten high-value air assets is more important than stopping every missile, because without close air support the Russians must rely on tube and missile artillery, which despite Russian’s numerical superiority appears to be of more limited effectiveness.

Similarly, Antal suggests that the tank is not dead, but that it does require a new generation of active protection systems and sensors to prevent its destruction by both drones and long-range precision fires, another concept which I think the Ukraine conflict has empirically validated. The need for power, maneuverability, and speed is such that (per Antal) the tank may even grow more important in maneuver warfare, as anything without armor and the spare electric capacity to power EW and cUAS systems is going to be blown up by $50 autonomous Israeli suicide drones.

This was a war the Azeris had been planning to fight for two decades and they ended up fighting it essentially flawlessly. The Armenian plan for a second war in the disputed territory relied on frontline Artsakhian and Armenian troops holding well-prepared fortified lines while the rest of the Armenian army mobilized in order to turn the tide (not unlike the Israeli’s prewar plans in 1973). However, the Armenians did not detect the Azeri mobilization prior to the beginning of the conflict, and thus were not prepared to fight when the Azeri offensive began. This catastrophic intelligence failure on the part of the Armenians (which seems especially inexcusable in light of the several months of successful diplomatic maneuvering by Azerbaijan to separate Russia and Armenia) scuttled their plan on day one of the war, and they never seem to have devised a coherent Plan B.

Once the Azeris cracked the Armenian defensive lines along the crucial passes leading to Shusha, Artsakh’s second city, the Armenians seem to have been powerless to resist. While the Armenians were able to hold on in the north, this ultimately proved irrelevant, as the Azeris shattered the Armenian and Artsakhian forces in the flat and open plains of the south and in a little over a month reached firing  positions overlooking the most populous areas of Artsakh. Of course at that point Russia stepped in and forced a ceasefire, preserving the nucleus of Armenian Artsakh despite the cession of about two-thirds of prewar Nagorno-Karabakh.

So what do we learn from all this? Well for me, Antal’s book helped explain the Russian operations in Ukraine far better than the popular media theory at the time, which was that our Humiliating Withdrawal from Afghanistan™ signaled that the Death of the American Empire© was at hand and the time was ripe to strike. What you see in this war is much more informative viz. what the Russkies were actually considering as they planned their operations. The Azeris destroyed Armenia’s air defenses early in the war, rolled across the flat plains of southern Artsakh once they had suppressed Armenian anti-tank capabilities (with drones and drone-directed artillery strikes), and placed themselves on commanding positions to fire for effect on major Armenian population centers, at which point the Armenians agreed to a humiliating ceasefire.

That doesn’t sound terribly different from what the Russians appear to have been trying to do with their assaults on Kiev and Kharkov early in the war. The Russians seem to have hoped that some combination of shock-and-awe and threats of missile barrages would cow the Ukrainians into submission relatively bloodlessly. (They also appear to have catastrophically misread the internal political situation in Ukraine). That this didn’t work out should be obvious, but I think the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict persuaded the Russians that it might.

Part of the problem for the Russians, I suspect, was population and distance; instead of advancing about fifty miles under good air cover through relatively depopulated country to their destination, even the Russian spearhead which began closest to Kiev had to travel almost 150 miles and pass through or around the relatively large city of Chernigov. Worse than that, from the Russian perspective, they were unable to cripple the Ukrainian air defenses early in the war, meaning that close air support was subject to interdiction and thus frequently the Russians were unable or unwilling to commit expensive air assets to force a decision in the battles around Kiev.

As the invaluable Riley Waggaman has documented, internally Russia’s military seems to have had almost no interest in the sort of small drones that proved so critical for Azerbaijan until long after the conflict had begun. In December 2021, when the lessons of this conflict must have already been well-enough digested in the West that Antal was working on this book, Russian military hardware manufacturers were claiming to have designed a new drone which Russian internet users quickly noted could be purchased on AliExpress.

It’s also notable that Armenia was (beyond the Russians, who were lukewarm) essentially friendless internationally, and being a poor country had not armed up in the same way that Azerbaijan, loaded with Turkish and Israeli weapons, very much had. This was not the situation in Ukraine. Instead of being able to stunt on a minor, poorly-armed power with no friends, Russia has found itself pulled into a proxy war, fighting a secondary power being supported by the industrial and intelligence systems of NATO. Even if they do manage to grind out a win, you would hate to think they planned this.

My suspicion, and this book reinforces it, is that the Russians and the Americans were thinking along largely the same lines when it came to the lessons of Nagorno-Karabakh, and NATO actually worked out what the Russians were doing and countered it prior to the Kremlin executing its putative master stroke.

Despite the book’s frequently abysmal prose, I think Seven Seconds to Die is a compelling testament to the acuity of NATO intelligence and war planning. From the perspective of about fifteen months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it appears the Russians had no such perspicacity or foresight. Instead, they relied on breezy assurances that their troops would be greeted as liberators and that their technology and special forces would overawe their opponents. At least Paul Wolfowitz was right about one of those assumptions.

What is the White Pill? Ep. 245 with Keith Knight

Patrick joins Keith Knight to discuss Michael Malice’s The White Pill. 

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Ryan McMaken Sells Secessionism in ‘Indispensable’ New Book

Breaking Away: The Case for Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities
by Ryan McMaken
Mises Institute, 2022, 230 pp.

Those of us who think that there should be no state at all, or at most a very limited one, must view all existing states with dissatisfaction, though some are better than others. In assessing how good or bad a state is, does the extent of the territory it controls matter? Offhand, you might think it doesn’t. Isn’t the only relevant dimension by which to judge states the nature and degree of control they have over their people? The United States in the nineteenth century was far better than Cambodia under Pol Pot, though vastly larger. In his superb new book, the gifted historian Ryan McMaken argues that the size of a state does indeed matter, and he makes a powerful case for secession from existing states and for decentralization within them.

It’s much harder, he says, to establish totalitarian rule in a small state than in a large one, because it is easier for people to leave.

Because of their physical size, large states are able to exercise more state-like power than geographically smaller states—and thus exercise a greater deal of control over residents. This is in part because larger states benefit from higher barriers to emigration than smaller states. Large states can therefore better avoid one of the most significant barriers to expanding state power: the ability of residents to move away. (p. 27, emphasis in original)

McMaken cites the eminent political philosopher Hannah Arendt in support: “In her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt examines a number of nontotalitarian dictatorships that sprang up in Europe before the Second World War…In many of these cases, Arendt contends the regimes attempted to turn themselves into totalitarian regimes, but failed. This was largely due to their lack of size” (p. 49, emphasis in original).

On the other side, though, don’t a large number of small states make trade barriers more likely? McMaken does not think so, and in responding to this contention he uses an argument parallel to the one about totalitarianism. Because small states have little control over the world’s economy, it is difficult for them to insulate themselves from international commerce: “After all, an autarkic small country that lacks a diverse economy or a large agricultural sector will quickly find itself running out of food, skilled labor, and raw materials. Moreover, a small country without close economic ties to other nations will also soon find itself in a very dangerous geopolitical position” (p. 91). In this connection, it’s interesting to note that the oft-repeated claim of American centralizers that a strong central government was needed to cope with trade barriers under the Articles of Confederation has no basis, as Merrill Jensen and Murray Rothbard, following him, have pointed out.

McMaken is alert to the objection that however desirable small states may be, they cannot in practice defend themselves against large states that wish to take them over. Not so, he says: small states can band together to repel invasion, and in any case, conquest of an obdurate population is no easy task, as Russia found out to its cost in Afghanistan and earlier in Finland. Further, “pundits and scholars who comment on international relations have too long relied on crude aggregate measures which suggest far higher levels of relative military power than is likely in cases like Russia or China … it is not the case that large, populous states hold all the cards. Economic development—which, we know, tends to be more developed in smaller and more decentralized states—is likely a more critical factor.”(p.122)

But wouldn’t a large number of small states make nuclear proliferation more likely? Perhaps it would, but McMaken maintains that this may make war less frequent. He cites in this regard a famous contention of the political scientist Kenneth Waltz. “The first influential theorist to express doubts about the established non-proliferation narrative was Kenneth Waltz,” who, “as George Perkovich put it … ‘has been the most illustrious proponent’ of the view that ‘The major benefit of nuclear proliferation conceivably would be to create deterrence relationships that lower or eliminate the risk of war between a certain set of adversaries’” (pp. 124–25).

The author tells us that “this book is not primarily theoretical in nature” but it does have a “philosophical component” (p. 12), and this is a strong one. Large states often contain within them disaffected minority groups, subjected to ill treatment by the dominant majority. Democratic voting offers no adequate remedy for this sad state of affairs, since minority votes will usually be swamped.

In any case, democracy offers no solution in addressing profound cultural differences among the residents of a single political jurisdiction. When populations with sharply differing world views must exist under a single regime, voting resolves nothing, and one side will ultimately impose its preferred policies on the other side. Noncompliance will bring down the full weight of the law, the police, and all the coercive institutions the state frequently employs. (p. 133)

In these circumstances, secession is clearly indicated, and this is something Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard fully recognized. As McMaken points out, Mises said that “the right of self-determination … is not the right of self-determination of nations, but rather the right of self-determination of the inhabitants of every territory large enough to form an independent administrative unit. If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done” (p. 66). Rothbard “went the extra mile” and favored secession at the individual level. “Rothbard pushed secession for two main reasons. First, he regarded it as a useful tactic in moving toward his ideal of individual freedom. Second, even when this ideal is not achieved, decentralization is valuable because smaller states are less able to exercise monopoly power than large states” (p. 66, emphasis in original).

I have been able to discuss only a few of the many areas McMaken covers. Breaking Away is indispensable for understanding the political realities of the present day and a discerning guide to the past.

This article was originally featured at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and is republished with permission.

‘Fletch’ Lives in the Courageous Pen of Reporters

“I must follow the journalistic instinct of being skeptical of everything until I personally have proved it true.”- Irwin Fletcher

In the post-Watergate world, fiction was full of lone wolf reporters, the courageous typewriter and camera that pointed where it was unwelcome. When author Gregory McDonald wrote his first “Fletch” novel in 1974 about reporter and former marine Iriwn M. Fletcher (AKA “Fletch” or “Jane Doe”), it would develop into a series of books, two movies starring Chevy Chase, and a remake to be released this year.

In the first book and movie, a world of police corruption is unravelled after a man approaches Fletch, requesting that the undercover reporter murder him so that he can claim insurance for his family. The man alleges to be dying of bone cancer. This request stirs a curiosity in Fletch which unravels a plot of double cross, fraud, and a police supplied drug epidemic.

Written in a time when even the highest office was no longer above investigation and condemnation, Fletch followed his instincts, writing on what he discovered while undercover risking reputation, income, and his life. Though for a time it was celebrated, when Daniel Ellsberg endured similar risk when he turned over the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times then published the information, revealing the hubris and depth of deception that the U.S. government possessed in its war on South East Asia. The editorial staff of the Times could have sat on the information and participated with the government, and perhaps in the twenty-first century they may very well have done so. Actions like Ellsberg’s, once celebrated, landed Julian Assange of Wikileaks in prison awaiting extradition.

Do not confuse courage and integrity for truth with moral character. The book version of Fletch is not a good man. In the first novel he uses a fifteen-year old addict, including having sex with her. His empathy for her was related to what information she could provide. She was not a human being, only a source. When she dies, he loses the information that she carried with her. The singular pursuit of revealing information can easily be romanced and seem noble. It can also come at a cost to human dignity and the human ability to compromise to the greater good. One teenage junkie can be sacrificial beneath a greater story. Fletch even takes the money and runs after exposing the corruption, only to return where he almost began in the subsequent novels. Fletch is cynical and written from the purgatory of distrust and numbness. Maybe that is where we are now.

The 1980s would celebrate the tradition of the rogue reporter, romancing them with an adventurer’s avatar who dodges bullets, suffers torture, and conducts espionage like James Bond in order to find the facts and reveal evil. They were champions of the innocent, heroic untouchables who were incorruptible and fearless. Whether it was James Woods in Salvador or Nick Nolte in Under Fire, these were individuals of courage. The media did not have to be a propaganda mouth piece for the regime of rules or advertising copy announcers. The relationship between the suffering and the general public required a conduit of reporters to weaken the powerful, shame them, and even over throw them. It was the aftermath of Bernstein and Woodward, names of now journalistic fame thanks to their efforts in breaking the Watergate scandal.

The massacre of innocent civilians in My Lai, Vietnam was a sobering reality for those who were able to read about it. The rape and murder of women and children by U.S. soldiers could have been another event of unmarked graves if it was not for the investigative curiosity of journalist Seymour Hersh. The U.S. government had been keeping details of the massacre concealed when Hersh heard rumors about the court martial of Lieutenant William Calley for his role in the murders. Once Hersh had interviewed and investigated, he reported on a dangerous event that undermined the U.S. government’s policy in Vietnam. Sparking criticism and reactions all the way up the White House, the courageous pen of a reporter challenged the highest authority again and reported the truth.

Men like Robert Fisk lived this life, though he would die at a time when reporters like him became a rarer species. He was a man not seduced by becoming embedded with “friendly forces” or those loyal to a particular side in a war.

We are fortunate to have many who still continue this legacy, risking themselves for the pursuit of truth. In the case of Shireen Abu Aqleh who was likely assassinated by the Israeli military while she was covering an IDF raid in occupied Palestine, or the brutal murder-torture of Jamal Shashoggi by the Saudi government, not to mention the many reporters murdered in horrific manners and numbers by cartels in Mexico, terrorists, criminals, and governments alike often target journalists and reporters for the words that they write. Failing that as a threat, censorship and professional practices within media organisations act as another deterrent to ensure a bias and loyal media towards the government or a particular regime.

Modern technology and access to the internet has given many of us the ability to seek out those who report the truth for us. They exist (if one is willing to look for them). They may specialize in certain subjects or they may be broad with a curiosity for information. They may focus on corporate corruption and misconduct, or to the crimes of specific national governments. As the reader and distant voyeur we have the ability to hear and read them, to witness from afar the horrible things being done by those who are powerful and have so much control against the lives on others. Many of them are independent and rely upon the private donations and support of their readership, free of the editorial interests of corporate or government regulations.

So as the new Fletch movie comes out, perhaps we can celebrate the tradition of the past by championing Julian Assange, who in decades past would have been considered a hero. He is a champion for free information and truth, no matter how hideous or dangerous it may be. But with more access to media and information the mainstream culture has turned away from a desire to be informed from as many sources as possible. Instead, it prefers generating a digital realm of bias and comfort input. It’s undesirable to be challenged, to read or hear the truth even (especially) when it goes against the grain. Instead such a media culture keeps men like Jimmy Saville protected until his death and a man like Julian Assange behind bars because he published the facts about war crimes and corruption. A good journalist puts a mirror to the face of power, evil, and society itself. How we react to that reflection says more about us than those who hold up the mirror.

“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets…”- Napoleon Bonaparte

Lessons From the Rape of Nanking

The “Rape of Nanking” is a high watermark of imperial savagery, even in the context of the violent and brutal Japanese Empire. This frenzy of rape and genocide was committed against a Chinese populace after their government abandoned the city and the international community watched in impotent horror as a proud Japanese military conducted itself with dishonor. But courageous individuals defied gangs of Japanese soldiers, exhibiting bravery and moral dignity. In her book The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang concentrates on the eight weeks of terror which in 1937 took the lives of hundreds of thousands.

Iris Chang faced both academic criticism and hate mail when The Rape of Nanking was published in 1997. The aggressive critics did not offer credible refutation to her conclusions and what she presented in her book. It was widely known that the Japanese government had committed atrocities during its imperial phase, including the months of misery that it spent terrorizing civilians and prisoners of war in Nanking. But the true extent and details of the atrocity had never been properly recorded until the publication of Chang’s book. Japanese nationalists immediately and shamelessly attacked the author, desperate to protect the legacy of an ugly empire.

Many of the sources in the book came from eye witness accounts including those who had survived rape and maiming, not to mention a series of confessions from Japanese soldiers who expressed regret after the ejaculation of defeat had allowed remorse to sober their minds. Contemporary news pieces also contributed to her research along with evidence in the many unmarked graves.

It was a crime scene of such a magnitude that only a government could commit, so terrible that it required thousands of willing participants, each using the uniform they wore as a shield from any moral culpability. A crime where Japanese soldiers used their penis and bayonet with such painful and deadly ferocity against babies to the elderly while boasting a Bushido code of honor. It was one of the many crimes against humanity that twentieth century governments inflicted on the world and its innocent. And Chang successfully compiled the evidence against the criminals of Nanking.

Outside of Japan many know that the Japanese Empire was terrible. It was marked with savagery and acts of cowardly violence against the unarmed and innocent. But today many Japanese barely know the details of the savagery their government committed. They understand that they were defeated and see the fire bombing and atomic devastation of cities as punishment for such.

While it’s acknowledged that bad things were done by some people in the Empire, the details and scale are often omitted. This is the pretense of all governments, especially from cultures steeped in pride. Iris Chang’s book is cold water down the spine of Japanese nationalists who cling to the romantic delusions of a better time.  A better time for their ancestors perhaps, but not for their victims.

Chang captures the many human stories of courage. An unlikely savior, humanitarian Nazi John Rabe, used his status and position to protect and shelter Chinese civilians from the savage clutches of the Japanese soldiers. At times he risked his own life as he stood between armed Japanese soldiers and the innocent prey that they were seeking to defile and murder. In general the Westerners who bore witness to the savagery reported upon it and did their best to save as many lives that they could. In all approximately twenty foreigners managed to rescue as many as 200,000 Chinese from the Japanese military.

The book covers the military incompetence of the Chinese army that led to the sacrifice of the city, with soldiers dressing as civilians in the hopes of fleeing as refugees. Japanese soldiers showed no mercy to the Chinese army once captured, murdering them in such a large scale that the nearby Yangtze river was full of corpses. With a perverse fetish for murder the Japanese soldiers ran a competition between officers to see who could behead the most Chinese prisoners while others were used for bayonet practice.

The photos inside the book reveal frozen moments of horror, a morbid memento of vulgar savagery as young women lay splayed naked, having been raped and then mutilated to death by the soldiers of Japan. One photo shows a bayonet still deeply embedded inside a dead victim’s vagina along with an image of many severed heads. Another photo is of Chinese civilians bound and coiled in fear as Japanese soldiers, under the guise of training, plunge bayonets into them with sadistic malice. Others of children who had their heads doused in gasoline and then set alight. Chang no doubt came across scores of other photos (many taken by official Japanese government photographers), though the ones contained in the book only add a sickening weight to the written accounts, a frozen reminder of what men are capable of.

Acts of individual courage were exhibited by those like Li Xuuyin, a pregnant eighteen-year-old who fought off several Japanese soldiers with her bare hands. Determined not to be raped, she suffered thirty-seven bayonet wounds before she was left for dead by her tormentors. It would take several months for Li to recover but she would go on to live a long life as a grandmother. And Dr. Robert Wilson, the lone surgeon in the city at the time, fought tirelessly to save lives with his volunteers and minimal resources.

The book includes the comptemporary Japanese critics of the atrocity, including from official photojournalists reporting what they witnessed with revulsion and numbness, unable to stop events only to record them with cold honesty.

Japanese General Iwane Matsui was the initial commander in the operations around Nanking, and once reports of murder, rape, and looting had reached him did his best to scold those involved. He would then go on to tell anyone that would listen about the ill-disciplined atrocities of the soldiers in his charge. “My men have done something very wrong and extremely regrettable,” Matsui said in a dinner toast to a Japanese diplomat. Retiring from the army in 1938, he would go on to be tried and executed for war crimes by the Allies.

To curb the rape frenzy and prevent venereal diseases, the military hierarchy created the “comfort women” system whereby females, most against their will, were recruited to serve as pleasure slaves for the soldiers of empire. So as a means of reward and to control the deadly lust of its men, the Japanese government provided them with girls and women to rape.

As a book it is well written and edited, not just a compilation of statistics and facts, but a narrative that gives the reader space to digest information. Chang is a talented researcher and interviewer whose work gives a degree of intimate revelation to the lives of the victims which only makes the subject matter harder to swallow. You do not read this book to enjoy it or to be entertained but to pay respect to those who suffered and to learn about the shared history of the world.

The Rape of Nanking is a reminder that even when humanity can be terrible and cruel there are individuals who will stand up with courage and risk everything to help strangers. In her own way Iris Chang did that herself, a young woman undertaking the task to tell the many stories of a horrible history. Facing scorn and death threats, along with the brutal reality of the subject matter, Chang slipped into depression and took her own life in 2004. Her book is a testament to her willingness to tell the truth, to champion the lost victims of history, and to put faces on the forgotten many who remain lost and decomposed in unmarked graves.

The rape of Nanking is a crime committed by the Japanese government and the individuals who were responsible for the atrocities. But what occurred isn’t unique to the Japanese, and applies to all of humanity.

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