Military Corruption

Strategy Page has an important article on a form of military corruption that is growing in the US. Unfortunately, some people don't seem to intuitively get how the phenomenon of micromanagement on the field of battle is corrupt and the article doesn't lay out its "j'accuse" thesis clearly enough to make it clear to all. Senior military officials and politicians are offloading their career risk of something bad happening in the field by stretching out the OODA loop of combat troops. This increases the chance that people die and a given combat mission fails. Protecting the career of a president or a flag rank officer with the blood of some private out in the field is corrupt, offensively so. Even if nobody dies and the cost is merely extending a firefight by half an hour, that is half an hour extra that the team is playing the PTSD game of russian roulette. There is no cost free way to micromanage. There are just ways to do it that are visibly cost free for the people in DC.

Here's the comment I put at the article:

We know that delays getting wounded to medical care increase deaths beyond what is unavoidable. The "golden hour" is something that has been identified as a metric that is important and that's right and proper. But micromanagement kills too and that appears not to be as universally recognized with no metrics to track it and blame to apportion when it happens. It is stretching out the combatants OODA loop which increases the chance we lose or at least take greater casualties than otherwise necessary. 

We need to measure the phenomenon and attach consequences to the abuse. The computing power needed to do this is available. When command knows that there is a timer going on every time they stick their nose in and that their names will attach to casualties caused by their intervention, the problem of micromanagement will shrink because we will have a feedback loop to punish those who engage in inappropriate intervention. 

The fact that we have not embedded this feedback loop and are increasing the risk enlisted and junior officers take unnecessarily is a corrupt offloading of risk from seniors who are engaging in career protection to juniors who bleed for it.

HT: Instapundit

An Idiot's Guide to Distinguishing the Baga attack from the Paris attack

It seems someone needs to write this because some writers have exposed themselves as idiots who can't tell the difference between the attacks in Baga and Paris without making ugly racist accusations. 

1. Paris is a world capital in a country that generally believed itself not at war on its own territory. Combat breaking out in such a capital is big news. When capitals fall, regimes fall. Baga is a remote border town that is not even the capital of its local state. It has come under attack within the past two years and it's likely to happen again during the next two years as things go. 

2. Boko Haram is a significant military force that at least sort of fits within the standard framework of how people go to war in the modern age. The irregulars attacking in Paris are an example of a systemic threat to the Westphalian system that has undergirded how nations interact with each other since the peace of Westphalia in 1648. If Westphalia goes, a lot of things change. If Boko Haram takes even a province or two, nothing systemic changes. 

3. Nigeria's rulers have decided that it is in their interest to minimize the tragedy of Baga. France's rulers have decided that it is in their interests to play up the tragedy of Paris. The rest of the world's leadership rightfully take cues from the leader of the country in which the attack has taken place. 

4. There is a political affinity between France's governing party (socialist) and the marxists that put out Charlie Hebdo. There is a political rivalry between the muslim north (where Baga is) and the christian south (where the current government is drawn from). This naturally leads to different treatment. While it's unfortunate, race has nothing to do with it in either case. 

Is China in need of a short, victorious war?

In 1904, Russia's Interior Minister, Vyacheslav Plehve wrote "To avert a revolution, we need a small victorious war." In the face of growing economic troubles from slowing growth to a credit bubble to a real estate bubble, is the People's Republic of China cribbing notes from Plehve?

No sane military planner in the neighborhood of east Asia has neglected to plan for the collapse of North Korea. It's been clear for decades that the communist monarchy has past the point where peaceful reform without a disruptive revolution was likely to succeed. But it's only now that China's plans for such an event have seen the light of day. The plans, leaked to Japanese media, lay out how and what China would do in case of North Korean regime collapse.

Speculation that this is a signal to the world that China is planning regime change is provocative but well within the realm of possibility. The question is why? The DPRK could suffer forever without the prospect of a humanitarian intervention by the PRC. What is China's interest to create such a crisis? And that question brings us back to Plehve. Russia's attempt to create that small victorious war failed, and revolution followed soon thereafter.

If China feels a need for a patriotic release valve, where can it get its war with the least amount of negative consequences? Who is least likely to have friends, raise the least amount of fuss when their natural resources are exploited for the benefit of China, and generally provide a distracting soap opera to give Beijing time? All signs point to Korea for a location. With the current US administration in retreat over Russia's moves in Ukraine, the likelihood of US action in Korea is as low as it has ever been, and perhaps lower.

What if Putin Weren't Lying?

There are a number of people in military clothing but no unit or national insignia running around the Ukraine and interfering with public order. Everybody has jumped to the conclusion that they're Russian military operating under a fiction. What if they weren't?

Would we have a better result in the Ukraine if we formally believed Vladimir Putin and treated these people like they weren't part of the Russian army? What if, miracle of miracles, he isn't actually lying? If they were mercenaries operating under the direction of non-state forces, how would their actions look different? If a Russian oligarch spent some of his pile to hire Russian veterans and take Crimea like Leopold II took the Congo Free State, what would our obligation be? Wouldn't air cover and drone operations to relieve besieged Ukrainian military bases from a private army be a treaty obligation?

Russia should not be sending their military out of the country when they're out of uniform. But they seem to be counting on us calling them liars and treating them as if they were Russian troops anyway. Why do they deserve that consideration?