Category Archives: Essays

Russia’s Strategic Vulnerability To Long Range Precision Fires

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It annoys me when people bounce around from thinking Ukraine is losing to thinking that Ukraine is winning based on short term factors. But my last post on the “One New Aspect of Warfare That The War In Ukraine Has Revealed” could have appeared to fall into the same trap of group think and going with the prevailing winds. Currently it is quite fashionable to be pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances due to short term issues and my post on long range fires (a military term I am appropriating and using to cover more systems then the US military typically does) could be seen as contributing to it. So to correct that unbalance let me elaborate on a throwaway line in my last post where I said “The West can easily give the long range tools to Ukraine to cause Russia a lot of pain but then they have to worry about Russia going to nukes.”

In absolute terms, the Russian strategic position is extremely weak. To be sure, if you measure Ukraine alone against Russia, Russia has the advantage. But Ukraine was a basket case before Russia invaded so saying they have the advantage does not mean much. I predicated that Russia would fall apart years back and nothing that has occurred since then has caused me to think that prediction was wrong. It remains one of my biggest fears.

People who are gloomy about the future of the West as I am often seem to fall into the trap of thinking that the West’s enemies are better off. But that just goes to show how much their view of the world is based on mood affiliation and not on facts. Some enemies of the West are worst off then the West is and Russia is certainly in this category. One of my biggest fears in the near term is what the collapse of Russia would mean for me and those I care about. In this fear, the ruling class of the West and I have a lot in common and that is why they don’t really want to see Ukraine win.

I am not going to go into detail in this post about all the long time term factors that make me expect the collapse of the Russian state (although I will note that in Russia’s case it is even worse than the lack of babies). Instead, I want to make a simple point about how the logic of my post about the new nature of long term precision fires means that Russia is a hair’s breadth from losing this war overnight. The only thing that is keeping them in the game is the West’s fear of their nuclear weapons. But West’s calculations about what they can get away with are constantly changing. All that has to happen is for their perspective to change slightly and Russia will have face the choice of complete collapse or getting out the big bombs.
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A Reminder

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As Keynes observed, in the long run, we are all dead. This uniformity in long term results tends to focus our minds on the short term. But that does not change the fact that most of the news stories that we pay attention to will be hardly matter in 10 years. Meanwhile, things that we ignore will have profound impact on the world for a long time to come. What follows is a few things that caught my attention over the last week that did not make the headlines but that I think will matter for a long time to come.

1. Roughly 2.7 million children were born in the US in 2023 compared to roughly 1.7 million children being born in Egypt. Population of the US in 20230 was 339,996,563. Population of Egypt in 2023 is 112,716, 598. With about a third the population of the US, Egypt is producing almost two thirds the amount of babies. This is to a certain extent offset higher child mortally in Egypt but not enough to make a significant difference in the long term outcomes.

2. In Latin America, for instance, fertility rates are coming in much lower than had been expected. Uruguay, Costa Rica, Chile, Jamaica and Cuba all have fertility rates of about 1.3. In one decade, Mexico had a 24% drop in births. Brazil, by far the region’s most populous nation, has a fertility rate of about 1.65, and those are likely to fall further. The UN had predicted Brazil’s population to be 216 million this year, but it turns out to be only 203 million. Over time, most Latin American countries can expect shrinking populations.

3. Official figures released Wednesday showed that China had fewer than half the number of births in 2023 than the country did in 2016. The latest number points to a fertility rate that is close to 1.0.

In the short run these things mean nothing. In the long run though, these figures will change the world.

Egypt is continuing its trend of being one of the world’s biggest time bombs. The idea that Latin America will continue to supply an endless supply of young people to America is one of the biggest fears of American nationalist and the biggest comfort for those who see a bright future for American demographically. Yet the data from the sending countries does not support the idea that this tread will last for very much longer. And China is continuing to track the worst case scenarios of its demographic decline. If this continues much longer, the formally pessimistic forecasts of China’s demographic future will turn into an optimistic pipe dream. A fertility rate of 1 becomes devastating very quickly.

The One New Aspect Of Warfare That The War In Ukraine Has Revealed.

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An often remarked aspect of the War in Ukraine has been how much the battlefield looks like World War 1. Trenches and mines have been revealed to be very effective just as they have always been. They are effective not because they can’t be beat, but because the cost of beating them is all out of proportion to the cost of making them. It cost next to nothing dig a trench or make a mine, but to defeat a trench or remove a mine is a very expensive deal.

From what I can tell, short range consumer grade drones have only reinforced that logic. I think this is because the attackers have to move away from their electronic warfare assets and towards the enemies electronic warfare assets. Since range impacts how effective electronic warfare is, this means the attacker is moving to a place where his drones are less effective and the enemies drones are more effective. When you add that to the fact that people and equipment on the move are more vulnerable to drone attacks and the defenders advantage is only reinforced.

That is why I don’t think all the talk about short range drones changing warfare is really correct. It has been a truism in military thought that the defenders have the advantage since at least von Clausewitz wrote “On War”. All short range consumer type drones are doing is reinforcing something about war that we all take for granted. The defender has an advantage.

But all the talk about stalemate and how World War 1 has come again has obscured the big change in warfare that has made it so that the attacker has the clear advantage. Continue reading →

A World Without A Future

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This is the second part of a thought process that was started with The 80 Year Crisis Cycle of The United States. While the core argument will stand on its own without any need to reference what came before it, there are things taken for granted in this essay that will seem bizarre if you have not read the previous essay.

It would also be helpful if you have read the following essays but all of them will only serve to provide more depth to the below argument and are not strictly necessary.

A Rant On Japan’s Demographics.

Why you should panic about the US Deficit

The Ukraine Conflict And The Coming End Of Pax Americana

Now on to the essay proper…….

An 80 year crisis pattern has been the rule of the United States since it began as a nation. As we start a new year, it has been almost 80 years since the ending of the last crisis that the US faced. If this pattern holds, we should be entering another major crisis any day now. But is there any reason for thinking that American is soon to be faced with another crisis other then superstitious numerology?

If we review the past crisis America has faced, we see that they had demographic and technological antecedents that were observed by contemporaries even prior to the crisis. As a general rule, it was the demographic element that was most evident to those about to go through a major crisis. Long before the American Revolution, it was obvious that American Colonies were growing much faster than the mother country. The rapid growth in slavery and the fact that the population in the North was on track to overwhelm the South was widely known prior to the Civil War. And the rapid urbanization of America prior to Great Depression was known to everyone at the time. In all these cases, the nature of the crisis was a surprise, but the demographic forces leading to them were plain to all.

A common factor in all these crises is that they anticipated a demographic reality whose culmination was long after the time of the crisis. America did not equal the United Kingdoms in terms of population until just before the Civil War even though it was known that this was likely to happen at the time of the American Revolution. The culmination of the demographic submergence of the South into a larger America did not reach its fullest extent until about 80 years after the Civil War. And the widespread destruction of American small family farms did not take place until long after the Great Depression even though it was obvious that America was moving away from small farms long before that. If this pattern holds in the present time, America today should be heading towards another crisis whose demographic culmination we would have reason to believe is still a ways into the future. So does this pattern hold true today?

If we look at the world as whole, the answer to this question is simple. We know the modern world does not have a future. Continue reading →

You Want It Darker

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Normally artists are like anyone else. As they get older their output degrades and their best work is in the past.

But to everything there are exceptions. Leonard Cohen wrote “You Want It Darker” while he was in 80s and dying of cancer (he died 17 days after the album came out). The entire album would have been an achievement for anyone, much less someone in their 80s whose bones are breaking down under cancer. But I think that the title poem (I don’t think calling it a song accurate even though that it what everyone else calls it) is better then anything else the Cohen wrote when he was younger. It is as rich in imagery as his best work when he was younger but it is lot more disciplined and focused then the work he wrote as a younger man. As a result, it hits like a truck without seeming like it is trying to manipulate your emotions.

I think anyone can listen to this without knowing anything and find it very powerful. But if you want to get more out of this you need to remember that this is a very Jewish poem (the background chorus comes from his childhood synagogue). Perhaps the best thing people could do to improve their understanding of it would be to read this on the Jewish prayer Hineni and this on the Mourner’s Kaddish. I also think it is important to remember what lighting the candles on Hanukkah is remembering.

But I suspect (and I could be wrong as it is not as clear as the references above) that the most important reference in understanding this poem is the last part of Isaiah Chapter 50 which reads….

Who among you fears the Lord
and obeys the word of his servant?
Let the one who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the Lord
and rely on their God.
But now, all you who light fires
and provide yourselves with flaming torches,
go, walk in the light of your fires
and of the torches you have set ablaze.
This is what you shall receive from my hand:
You will lie down in torment.

Regardless of the validity or lack therefore of my own understanding, you should listen to “You want it Darker” if you have not heard it yourself. It is the preeminent modern example of what good spoken poetry sounds like.

The Ukraine Conflict And The Coming End Of Pax Americana

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Slovakia has a government that no longer supports giving aid to Ukraine. The largest party in the Dutch parliament does not support funding Ukraine. Significant portions of the Republican Party don’t want to give any more money to Ukraine and the support that is slipping away from the Democrats (largely African Americans and Hispanics) is composed of people who have no interest in Ukraine. There is increasing talk about how Ukraine needs to negotiate.

These things are not definitive. This trend towards looking for a way out of the Ukraine conflict was going strong on the part of Western Powers until the Kharkiv counteroffensive and subsequent taking back of Kherson city. These events gave the allies of Ukraine hope that just a little more military aid and Ukraine could win this thing. Perhaps a sudden Ukrainian victory will appear out of nowhere and once more the Western Powers will think that if they give the Ukraine just a little more money, this thing could be all over.

But the history of the West post World War II has been a history of half measures and perpetually frozen conflicts that never end. Korea is still sore spot ever since UN forces accepted a draw with the Chinese. Vietnam is resolved but only because the US decisively lost and Vietnam is too worried by China to hold a grudge. The former Yugoslavia is a powder keg held together by the threat of US air power. Iraq still has US troops in it and they are still conducting strikes in country. Syria has US troops in it who are still doing things that occasionally make for small articles hidden away from the front page. Libya is a frozen mess that nobody wants to put back together nor do they want to the wrong people to put it back together and so it is preserved in perpetual disastrous state.

The point is that only a fool would bet on the West having the staying power to see Ukraine through to the end. Ukraine’s only hope is that Russia is such a mess of demographic disaster and institutional dysfunction that maybe they will fail before the West does. But Ukraine’s own demographic disaster and institutional issues prevent them from having much agency in how this plays out. Their only card was that significant amounts of people were willing to fight for a Ukraine that was not under the thumb of Russia. But those people are a finite resource and there are indications that they are running out.

This realization is starting to creep into some Ukrainian channels. Continue reading →

China has a College Problem

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If you read certain conservative sources, you will often read allegations that China is secretly supporting this or that ideology in order to weaken America. But there is one idea that is as American as apple pie that is doing its bit to destroy China. And that is the idea that every good little boy or girl will go to college and get a white collar job. This insidious American idea (you could argue it is more an Anglo-Saxon one but I think America should take credit) is making China’s demographic problems a lot worse.

The basic demographic problem that China faces is that its working age population is dropping like a rock while the number of retirees soars. China’s work force has shrunk by 40 million in the last 3 years. That is like losing the entire population of Canada if Canada was solely populated by people 16 to 59 years old.

With people falling out of the work force at an accelerating rate, you would think that it would be a great time to be a young person in China looking for a job. But you would be wrong. In June of this year, the youth unemployment rate in China hit a record high of 21.3%. China promptly fixed this problem by no longer reporting this number so we have no idea how bad it is now.

How is it that China can have a demographic crisis that is crashing their working age population while at the same time having a high youth unemployment rate? The answer is simple. All those only children born as result of the one child policy were pushed to go to college by the same government that mandated that parents only have one child.

From the Council On Foreign Relations…….

For decades now, the Chinese government has encouraged university enrollment, pushing the number of students in higher education from 22 million in 1990 to 383 million in 2021. During the pandemic, it pressed even harder, expanding graduate-school capacity. Master’s-degree candidates rose by 25 percent in 2021. China’s Ministry of Education estimated that 10.76 million college students would graduate in 2022, 1.67 million more than in 2021—and it expects a further large rise in 2023.

383 million collage students currently enrolled in higher education is greater than entire population of the United States. Even for a nation as big as China, that is massive share of its young people to push through higher education. And for what? Do you need a collage degree to work on factory floor? Do you need a college degree to build a building? The point is, China is not producing near enough jobs that need college degrees (even taking an American HR departments view of what jobs “need” a college degree) to absorb all those college graduates.

The result is predicable. As the South China Morning Post delicately puts it….

Manufacturers and others are pointing to a growing mismatch between the jobs young people are looking for and the jobs that are in dire demand.

So the bottom line is that people with skills that China desperately needs can’t be found while at the same time a bunch of young people educated to sit at a desk can’t find a desk to sit at.

Anecdotally this problem is made worse by China’s culture. In America, it is common for young people to get a worthless degree and then go get a job in something that has nothing to do with that degree. They are not happy about it, but that is what they do. But in China it seems that going to school and being the first one in your family line to get a college degree makes it very shameful to then go work in a factory. So China’s collage graduates (often with the support of their families) seem very reluctant to face the fact that the degrees they got have no economic value and they have to look at jobs that they thought would be “beneath” them.

As was noted in the beginning, a lot of people focus on the bad things being imported from China to America. But it is a two way street and lot of bad ideas in America work their way into China and it seems like ideas that are bad in American seem to have an even worse impact in other countries. Overinvestment in higher education certainly seems to be an example of this. It is a big problem in America but it seems like an even worse problem in China.

But the more you look at China, the more this seems to be the rule rather than the exception. A lot of China’s problems stem from looking at what “success” looks like in other countries and deciding to copy that at an insanely rapid pace. They are now reaping the results of that in everything from demographics to skills gaps to overinvestment in real estate.

Looking back at my first “internet” essay

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When I was in my early 20s and bored out of my mind, I created an essay website. The first essay that I put up on the website was called “Pondering the Battle of Bicocca” in which I noted how success lead to overspecialization and speculated a little bit on how that might apply to the US Air Force. I thought it might be interesting to revisit that essay now in light of the Ukraine war.

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Scho-Ka-Kola

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Lately, my source of caffeine at work has been Scho-Ka-Kola. Half a tin of this stuff gives you a little more caffeine then a cup of coffee. If taken first thing in the morning, it can make a bad day a lot better. Since I try not to get too hooked on caffeine, I limit myself to two times a week (i.e. one tin). I am a little ashamed of this given the cost but I have not got up the willpower to kick the habit yet.

I first discovered this heavily caffeinated dark barely sweetened (the description calls it bitter but I think that is over-selling it) while searching for a source of contingency caffeine. The idea was to find something that I could take when I had been dragged through 20 miles of the high peaks by people younger and in better shape then me only to leave long past bedtime with nobody in my vehicle who could stay awake enough to drive. Being a history nerd, I thought that chocolate that the Germans issued as part of their “Iron Ration” might fit the bill but who still made that?

A quick internet search indicated that the stuff was still made but at first my research indicated that it is way to expensive for anything other then a novelty. On Amazon it sells for $9.96 a can. But for some reason Varusteleka (a company in Finland of all places and the link at the start of this post takes you there) can sell it for $3 a can if you buy 10 at time. At first the goal was only to try some to see if it was worth keeping around for contingencies but I got hooked on it and so now it has become a twice weekly habit. The primary advantage for me stems around how lazy I am and the fact that I don’t like coffee.

What would happen before Scho-Ka-Kola is that I would try to make myself a cup of tea. Odds are, I would not be able to do that first thing in the morning because I would be too busy. Then I would get some time to heat up some tea in the microwave and then I would get busy again. The microwave would be forlornly beeping at me and annoying the office assistant who was closer to the microwave then I was. Eventually I would get the tea and work on it between crisis. Most of the time I would drink the bulk of my tea cold and often later then when I wanted to get my caffeine in me.

With the Scho-Ka-Kola, I can wolf down half a tin down while reading emails and in a few hours my whole day will be better (I don’t metabolize anything fast). Varusteleka will tell you that it is “Not recommended for children, pregnant women, or those with a high sensitivity to caffeine” and I normally consider myself highly sensitive to caffeine. But if you drill down into the numbers, a tin of Scho-Ka-Kola has 200mg of caffeine in it. According to my sources, an average cup of coffee has 95 mg of caffeine in it. So if you only eat half a tin per day you are barely getting more caffeine then by drinking 8 fluid ounces of coffee. In other words, Varusteleka is overselling the caffeine just like they oversell the bitterness of the chocolate. That is all right for me. I don’t need it any stronger then it is. But I suspect that people who drink a couple of cups of coffee a day would find that it is pretty lame fare.

For my purposes, Scho-Ka-Kola is pretty much perfect except for the price and the tins. At a $1.50 a day, there are much cheaper ways of getting the same amount of caffeine. As for the tins, they are awesome but it seems like a shame to throw them out. And if you use a can a week, soon you have so many cans you don’t have much choice. I would rather it come in a cardboard box and be cheaper over all then come in the tin. But these issues have not been a deal breaker for me so far and I suspect that I will keep buying it until it gets so expensive I can’t stomach it or the supply dries up. It just works so much better for my life and tastes buds then all the alternatives that I am aware of.

Some Thoughts On Hezbollah’s Problem

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1. There are three things that separate a great general from a poor one. The first and most important is that a great general will want to win above all else, a poor general will want to avoid losing above all else. The second is that a great general will know when time is on his side and when it is not where as a poor general is governed by the mood of the crowd and not by the favor of time. And the lastly, the great general will work well with allies and talented subordinates where is the poor general will be a micromanager who does not understand how to bring people to his side.
2. If Hezbollah has a great general, the current situation in Israel must be giving him a headache. All of his choices are bad. By my definition of a good general, he will choose the path that offers victory no matter how dangerous and ignore any path that merely puts off defeat no matter how safe it seems in the short term. But what path offers victory?
3. If we look purely through the lens of what would give Hezbollah the most power, the victory for Hezbollah must be the destruction of Israeli military power. Currently no other regional actor has the power to constrain Hezbollah. The Lebanon’s government is no match for it. The Syrian government is too weak to counter it even if it wanted to. Jordan would be hard pressed to take on Hezbollah alone if it ever came to that. Only Israel could credibly threaten Hezbollah. In other words, even if you throw ideology aside and imagine that institutions are at their core guided by the desire to maximize their own power, Hezbollah has every reason to want to see Israel severely weakened or destroyed.
4. Granting point #3, is this the right time for Hezbollah to try to weaken or destroy Israel? This is not a question of whether Hezbollah “can” destroy Israel or not. Great generals always go for victory even it if seems impossible. Rather, the question if time is on Hezbollah side or not. If Hezbollah will be stronger in a year or two then a great general would wait a year or two. But if Israel will be stronger in a year or two then a great general would strike now regardless of the risks.
5. In the abstract it would be better for Hezbollah to wait for a year or two. Hezbollah has put a lot of work (and rumor has it, suffered a lot of causalities) ensuring that Syria remains ruled by an ally. For the most part it appears that it has succeeded in this goal but Syria is still a wreck. It would benefit Hezbollah if the Syrian state could be given a chance to grow back into a semblance of its former power. Much has been made of Hezbollah’s growing strength but this has been counterbalanced by the great fall in Syria’s power. Back when Hezbollah was weaker, it could count on Syrian help. Now Hezbollah is mighty and has more effective power then Syria but it can’t count on any effective help from Syria. It would benefit Hezbollah to have a stronger Syria to help out Hezbollah.
6. But now Hamas has made its play, can Hezbollah afford to let Israel destroy Hamas? There is always the risk that a newly paranoid Israel will turn on Hezbollah after destroying Hamas. If this is a possibility maybe it would be better attack Israel while Hamas is still in the game.
7. A deeper problem for Hezbollah stems from the nature of its power. Hezbollah’s core strength stems from the fact that it can rally lots of people who are willing to die for it. This is why Hezbollah’s enemies fear them and why their allies give them lots of weapons and money. But this is a double edge sword. Groups whose source of power is money or great numbers can withstand a loss of respect because money and numbers are a source of power all by themselves. But if Hezbollah loses respect, will people still be willing to die for it?
8. In other words, losing respect is an existential threat for Hezbollah. And if Hezbollah does nothing while Hamas is destroyed, it is hard to see how they will not lose respect.
9. Another problem is that Hamas attack has temporarily rallied Israel’s allies. There is a chance that full on Hezbollah attack would bring the US into the fight on Israel side. Is the pain of fighting Israel and the US worth saving Hamas for (who after all are similar in ideology to the people that Hezbollah has been fighting in Syria)?
10. But what is more deadly to Hezbollah, US bombs or losing respect? All of its prestige and support is based around being an effective counter to Israel (or at least, more effective then all the alternatives). Whatever the US does to Hezbollah, it will only increase the respect that Hezbollah has. On the other hand, respect does not do you any good if you no longer have a functioning organization. So can Hezbollah survive the wrath of the US and Israel in enough of functional form to take advantage of this respect?
11. It is true that the US might join in if Hezbollah attacks Israel. But it is unlikely that they will do anything beyond bomb. Hezbollah is used to getting bombed by Israel and what is the US likely to do that Israel has not already done in that regard? Is it really possible for Israel to occupy southern Lebanon and Gaza at the same time like it has in the past? Demographics have been marching on and not in Israel’s favor. That said, a desperate Israel with US support would be deadly. It is an Israel that is off the leash that is more likely to inflict real damage then American air power. But Israel has already tried to take on Hezbollah twice and Hezbollah has only grown stronger. Why should this time be any different?
12. The fundamental problem for Hezbollah is that the fundamentals of good generalship are all mixed up in this fight. There are lots of good reasons for them to want to wait (need to rebuild Syria, the fact that demographics are on their side, the fact that the US is waiting in the wings) but lots of reasons for them to feel compelled to join in (the fact that they can’t rule out that Israel would turn on them after Hamas regardless of what they do and the fact that even if Israel did not do that they would lose respect for sitting the fighting out). A good general does not let the crowd tell him what to do but the respect of the crowds is the core of Hezbollah’s strength and a good general does not disregard the pillars of his strength. So since a good general desires victory above all else, what would a good general do with these conflicting demands?
13. On the balance, I think that a great Hezbollah general would wait until Israel seems maximally committed to Gaza before attacking with full strength. This would make it harder for Israel to just contain Gaza and focus on Hezbollah and it would ensure that there was maximum reason for the world at large to be horrified by what happens when you send a conscript army into an urban area. The goal would be to inflict so much economic damage on Israel that it would not be able to recover from it. At the same time the hope would be that the prestige and support for such an act would help Hezbollah repair its own damage in record time after the war was over.
14. The above presumes that Hezbollah is an independent actor and has a good general. As for the independent actor part, I think it has about as much independence from Iran as Israel does from the US. That is to say, Iran has a lot of influence but is not as controlling as many think. As for Hezbollah having a great general, I don’t know. But throughout my life time it has been growing in power compared to Israel. Hezbollah’s main set back has been Israel’s other enemies have been getting steadily weaker. Syria is no longer a threat to Israel and Egypt is dependent on charity to avoid descending into mass starvation. This means that even though Hezbollah is stronger than it has ever been, it has less chance of anyone coming to its aid than ever before. The one small bright spot has been the fact that Hamas has been growing more effective. That only sharpens the question if Hezbollah can afford to watch them get knocked out.
15. On the other paw, Hezbollah’s leaders are human. And they have to know whatever the abstract calculations are; there is a good chance they or people they care about will die if they take war to Israel. The gloves will come off and it will be very bloody on both sides. Maybe this human fear for their own lives will keep them out of the conflict. But if it does, and Israel succeeds in more or less wiping out Hamas then Hezbollah will be weakened by the resulting loss of respect. And so the question will be, can an organization like Hezbollah that depends on people being willing to give up their lives for it survive a loss of respect?