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Or as the sage of Baltimore would say — “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

H.L. Mencken

Inside the Deep State

Which of the Presidential Candidates is Trying to Fix This Problem?

Chuck Spinney

Book Review

The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government

Mike Lofgren, Viking, 5 January 2016

Just about everyone knows something is dangerously wrong with our nation’s political system. There is a growing awareness that the United States is drifting blindly into a state of greater inequality, stagnation, oligarchy, and perpetual war, with a ruling establishment that neither responds to the will of the people nor to the problems our nation faces. For evidence of this pervasive sense of unease, look no further than the 2016 presidential election, where a bombastic celebrity billionaire and a crusty grandfatherly democratic socialist are claiming the political system is rigged and are driving the scions of the status quo into the rubber room -- at least for now. In his most recent book, The Deep State, Mike Lofgren has written a timely exegesis of that status quo and its staying power. He makes it easier for any concerned citizen to understand the realities of the political and constitutional crises now facing the United States -- and perhaps even improve the reader’s sense for the madness and anger that now characterizes 2016 presidential election.

Before reading further, be advised, I am biased: the author, Mike Lofgren, is a long time colleague and close friend. Lofgren worked on Capitol Hill while I worked in the Pentagon.  Over the years, beginning in the late 1980s, we discussed and tried to understand the many hidden connections that had evolved insensibly over time to disconnect the money siphoning operations of the Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex from the system of checks and balances designed by the Framers of the Constitution.

Lofgren’s book goes much further. It grew out of a stunning essay -- Anatomy of the Deep State (Feb 2014) — that Lofgren produced at the request of journalist Bill Moyers. Lofgren has written a tour de force that takes the reader on a wild ride through a swamp of confusion and disorder that reeks of corruption. His writing is at once witty and particular, but also general and prescriptive. Making sense out of that mix is no mean feat. To be sure, the story Lofgren weaves is complex, and at times overwhelming and disgusting, but anyone can understand it, if  one takes the time to read and think about what Lofgren is saying.

Lofgren's analysis centers on how the looting operations of three mutually reinforcing “pillars" (my word) of the contemporary American Deep State evolved over time. These “pillars” are themselves self-organizing groupings of coincident interests that work to insensibly co-opt and exploit the fissures in the mechanistic distribution of power designed into the Constitution by James Madison. These emergent groupings form what some essayists have called an “iron triangle” of capitalists in the private sector and professional bureaucrats as well as elected officials in the legislative and executive branches of government, as well as in the menageries inhabited by hangers on, wannabees, journalists, and parasites feeding off the triangular host. These triangles are energized by money flows and influence peddling, and their operations are lubricated by a maze of revolving doors that enable the individual players to climb the greasy pole to power and riches by moving freely back and forth from one corner to another — all the while pumping the money and propaganda needed by the triangle to survive and grow. Lofgren’s discussion of the career trajectory and policy actions of Robert Rubin, President Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury, is a particularly illuminating, if extreme, example of how an adept player games the triangle to accrete fabulous riches and oligarchical power.   

Figure 1 is my simplified schematic outlining the basic features of an iron triangle.

Figure 1

click to enlarge

Lofgren's analysis takes us around three triangles by examining the maze of living relationships making up (1) the triangular money pumping operations of the Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex, as well as the more subtle looting and power grabbing operations of (2) the de-regulating scams of Big Finance and (3) the big-brother spying operations of the pseudo-libertarian hyper capitalists of Silicon Valley. To be sure, there are many other iron triangles Lofgren does not discuss in great detail (e.g., Big Pharma, Big AG and the food supply, etc.), but his story is clear enough and sufficiently broad enough to make the larger argument.

But there is more. Lofgren explains how the more obvious idea of an iron triangle is only the inner core of a far reaching web of interests.  This web includes, inter alia, the machinations of lobbyists, think tanks, political action committees (PACs), universities, pseudo intellectuals and ideologues, establishment promoting pundits in the fourth estate, tax deductible foundations, and behind them, the deep pockets of the secretive billionaire oligarchs, who have had their influence unleashed by the recent decisions of the Supreme Court. The blood giving life to the inner and outer aspects of this pulsating web of non-democratic power and influence is MONEY, which the Supreme Court in its Citizens United Decision legitimated as a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment.

To Lofgren’s argument, I would add the accumulating result of America’s insensible descent into the Deep State is a work in progress.  I also argue that work is being been accompanied by a gradual emergence of  a peculiarly American amalgam of fascist, corporatist, and neoliberal organizational ideologies.  This amalgam is evolving into “winner take all” political economy that subordinates citizens and workers and the state to growing oligarchical powers.  Figure 2 is a kind of thought experiment I designed to explore the ramifications of this possibility. It lists some of the political and economic features of the fascist, corporatist, and laissez faire (aka neoliberal) ideologies.  To be sure, these are murky features, especially in the case of those relating to fascism, but I think most objective readers would agree that the features outlined in Figure 2 are very prominent in each of these forms of political-economic organization.
 

The experiment is to ask yourself if the emergent American political economy exhibits hints of these features.  The boxes checked in red are my affirmative answers to these questions.

Figure 2

click to enlarge

While Lofgren does not say so, I would argue there are growing signs that the emerging American political economy combines many elements of classical fascism and corporatism with neoliberal laissez faire economics into something that is new and peculiarly American — a political economy that exhibits fascist tendencies, but unlike classical fascism, subordinates the state to neoliberal corporatist interests, while it exploits many of fascism’s authoritarian organizing principles to stabilize the emerging status quo.  Don’t take my word for it.  Read Lofgren’s book, then think about how you would check or redefine the boxes in Figure 2 and draw your own conclusions. 

One of the most important aspects of Lofgren's analysis, at least to my thinking, lies in his frequent reminders that the structural aspects of this current state of affairs are not the results of a centrally guided conspiracy hashed out in a smoke filled room. The “structure” of the contemporary American Deep State is more an emergent property triggered by the incremental give and take by thousands of players, whose successes and failures are conditioned by an interplay of chance and necessity, in what is really a cultural evolution. To be sure, there are lots of smoke filled rooms conspiring invisibly to play this game of chance and necessity, but they are competing with each other as well as cooperating -- and it is the evolutionary character of the Deep State that enables it to survive, adapt, and grow on its own terms, and that emergent character is what makes the Deep State so dangerously resistant to change.

Want to know what Sanders and Trump have in common? READ THIS

Two days after his smashing essay in the New York Times, my friend Mike Lofgren has struck again with an even more smashing op-ed in the Guardian (attached herewith).  Bear in mind, these essays are only the tip of the iceberg revealed in his most recent book “The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government.”   If you want to get off the self-destructive evolutionary pathway the United States now finds itself on, Mike's must-read book explains how the destructive shadow government evolved by the political-economic DNA of mutually reinforcing pathologies in (1) the Miltary - Industrial - Congressional Complex, (2) the banking and business oligarchy, and (3) the Silicon Valley “entrepreneurs” who are fueling the domestic spying operations of the national security state are now working collectively, if sometimes insensibly, to destroy the “more perfect union" defined by “we the people” -- see the Preamble to our Constitution.  

A necessary but not sufficient condition for evolving a salutary pathway into the future is to get private money out of the people’s politics — no small order in a nation where the law is based on legal precedent and  where its supreme (and unelected) legal institution has set precedents that equate corporations to people and money to free speech.

Chuck Spinney

An oligarchy has broken our democracy. It must be dislodged

Pro forma elections have camouflaged the true state of our political system. Will that change this year?

Mike Lofgren, The Guardian, 17 January 2016

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/17/oligarchy-broken-our-democracy-must-be-dislodged-election-2016

Each new election year promises change. We will choose a new president and new representatives in Congress; fresh faces will make their appearances in Washington DC, while old ones disappear. But what about the people who stay in power, one election after another, less exposed to the public eye?

The concept of a ‘Deep State’ has been around for a while, but rarely to describe the United States. The term, used in Kemalist Turkey by the political class, referred to an informal grouping of oligarchs, senior military and intelligence operatives and organized crime, who ran the state along anti-democratic lines regardless of who was formally in power.

I define the American Deep State as a hybrid association of elements of government and top-level finance and industry that is able, through campaign financing of elected officials, influence networks and co-option via the promise of lucrative post-government careers, to govern the United States in spite of elections and without reference to the consent of the governed. ... continued.

Inside the US Deep State: An Interview with Mike Lofgren

Attached herewith is an interview with my good friend Mike Lofgren.  The subject is Lofgren’s important and timely new book entitled The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government, which hits the stands today. Mike’s new book builds on his excellent essay, Anatomy of the Deep State, originally posted on Bill Moyers’ website.

Lofgren diagnoses the sorry state of governance in the US democratic system.  This may well be the most serious problem facing our nation since the 1850s during the lead up to the Civil War.  It is, therefore, a problem every serious citizen should make a concentrated effort to understand and act on — our future depends on an informed citizenry rising up to demand change.  That is a tall order, given the sorry state the information produced by the 4th Estate.

Chuck Spinney

[... excerpt ...]

Controlled by shadow government: Mike Lofgren reveals how top U.S. officials are at the mercy of the “deep state” 

A corrupt network of wealthy elites has hijacked our government, ex-GOP staffer and best-selling author tells Salon 

ELIAS ISQUITH, Salon, TUESDAY, JAN 5, 2016 09:40 AM EST 

http://www.salon.com/2016/01/05/controlled_by_shadow_government_mike_lofgren_reveals_how_top_u_s_officials_are_at_the_mercy_of_the_deep_state/ 

One of the predominant themes of the 2016 presidential campaign thus far — and one that is unlikely to lose significance once the primaries give way to the general election — is the American people’s exasperation with a political system they see as corrupt, self-serving, disingenuous and out of touch. 

It is not an especially partisan or ideological sentiment; you can just as easily find it among supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders as among fans of Donald Trump. You can even find those who support paragons of the status quo, like Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush, making similar complaints. It’s about as close to a consensus position as you’re likely to find nowadays in American politics. 

Yet despite the widespread agreement that something is seriously wrong with democracy in the U.S., there’s much less of a consensus as to what that something is — and, crucially, how to fix it. The answers Bernie Sanders offers, for example, are not exactly the same as those proffered by Donald Trump. Is the problem too much government? Not enough government? Too much immigration? Not enough immigration? Too much taxing and regulating? Not enough taxing and regulating? 

Our lack of a systemic analysis of the problem is part of the reason why our answers are so diffuse and ill-fitting. And that’s just one of the reasons why “The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government,” the new book from ex-longtime GOP staffer turned best-selling author Mike Lofgren, is so valuable. Lofgren puts a name and a shape to a problem that has often been only nebulously defined; and while his conclusions are not exactly uplifting, the logic and sophistication of his argument is hard to resist. 

Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Lofgren about his book, the deep state and his read on the current sorry state of American government and politics. Our conversation, which also touched on President Obama’s relationship with the deep state, was edited for clarity and length. ... continued

Scared of Global Warming: Go Nuke!

Chuck Spinney

This essay responds to a short opinion piece (which I urge readers to read before continuing) in the Guardian co-authored by scientist/political activist James Hansen and three colleagues (hereafter referred to as Hansen et al).  They propose to decarbonize electrical power production by replacing all fossil fueled power plants with nuclear power plants by 2050. All four are famous climatologists and very prominent advocates of the CO2 driven catastrophic global warming hypothesis.  All have advanced degrees in physics or meteorology.  None appear to have a background in nuclear engineering, nuclear safety, nuclear waste management, nuclear power plant design, nuclear powerplant maintenance, quality assurance, industrial cost estimating, industrial engineering, or industrial-scale construction/project management. 

If executed, their conversion proposal would be the most massive industrial/economic project in human history. It would also be unprecedented in terms of required international cooperation. Why is this necessary?

The authors state categorically that this crash program is necessary, because it is the “only way” to prevent catastrophic climate change (aka global warming).  Bear in mind, catastrophic climate change is at best a theoretical future possibility premised on the long range predictions of computer models that cannot be validated with reliable empirical data.[1]^⁠

Hansen et al claim without proof or expertise that new reactor designs are so safe and will have so little waste that the risks are small and costs are economical (at least when compared to the catastrophic risks and costs of the climate threat).

Their proposal embodies unstated management assumptions: They assume that an unprecedented crash program can be managed efficiently and safely, and that the pressures of time and the incentives of profits won’t tempt profit-maximizing contractors to cut corners.   They say nothing about the management burden, nothing about the investment and operating costs, and nothing about how those costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of electricity prices and tax subsidies. They do not address the obvious less costly alternatives: For example, the question of whether or not retrofitting/fielding conventional coal plants with modern CO2 scrubbing technologies might produce a sufficient reduction in CO2 to offset the disastrous effects of the warming hypothesis. Nor do they address the alternative of converting from coal to much cleaner natural gas.  Both alternatives would dramatically reduce CO2 emissions, drastically reduce truly dangerous pollutants like CO and black carbon and cost less than the nuc option.[2]^⁠

Together, their assertions make the Pentagon’s reckless predictions of the costs, production schedules, and effectiveness of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a far simpler prediction and management problem, look carefully thought out and conservative — and we all know how those turned out.  As we used to tell senior management in the Pentagon: ‘Mr. Secretary, if you want it bad, you’ll get it bad.’

The extreme nature of their proposal does bring one of the lingering mysteries of the climate debate into sharp relief, however: namely the murky relationships among global warming, nuclear power, and antipathy to coal fueled power plants.  This mystery has been lingering in the ether since Margaret Thatcher, a fan of nuclear power and a vitriolic enemy of unions — particularly the coal miners union — became the first world class politician to flack the dangers of manmade global warming caused of fossil fuel emissions. She later savagely recanted her position on global warming in a memoir written in retirement.

Let’s examine the immense scale and cost of their nuclear proposal.

According to the IAEA PRIS data base, there are 441 nuclear power reactors in the world actively generating electricity; 2 reactors are in long term shut down; and there are 65 new power reactors are under construction in 15 countries (almost 2/3 or which are concentrated in 4 countries: China 24, Russia 9, India 6, US 5).  Worldwide, there are also 156 reactors in permanent shutdown.  These numbers suggest that a world wide total of almost 600 commercial electrical power reactors have been produced since the first commercial reactor was opened for operation in England in 1956, almost 60 years ago.  

Against this level of reactor production and inventory, Hansen and his colleagues want readers to believe the “only” way to prevent the future climate catastrophe is to build 115 new reactors per year for the next 35 years.  That implies a total of 4025 new commercial reactors by 2050, a number that they did not deign to mention. Nor did they say how much this program might cost or how this production would be organized.

Let’s build a notional construction scenario to construct 4025 reactors in 35 years to get a feel for what Hansen et al are calling for.  We can then compare the build rates in that notional program to historical construction rates.  

We begin by making some highly optimistic simplifying assumptions that are biased in such a way as to understate the size and cost the of the task. 

Construction schedule = 4 years. According to the IAEA, the average time for the 59 reactors under construction in 2012 is predicted to be 7.4 years, with at least 18 reactors having encountered “costly and multiyear” construction delays. Two projects have been in construction for 40 years. (see Figure 12 and its discussion).  In the best of circumstances, assuming no schedule slippages, and using the newest designs and modular construction techniques, nuclear power advocates now claim it should take 40-48 months to build a power plant.[3]^⁠  So, for the sake of argument, lets assume optimistically that they are right and that it will take only 4 years (instead of 7+ years) to build each future reactor and there will be no construction delays during the next 35 years.

Reactor cost = $7 billion per reactor. Our notional reactor will be the the Westinghouse AP1000.  This is one of the most advanced reactors currently in the US and Chinese power plants that are now under construction, with possibilities elsewhere: Let’s use the cost estimate of $7 billion per reactor that were used in the original estimates for the AP1000 for reactors #3 and #4 in the Plant Vogtle project in Georgia.  This unit cost is likely to be low, because we are ignoring the additional $900 million adjustment in the Vogtle estimate that was in the works as of 2012 as well as any cost increases associated with the AP1000’s ongoing construction problems in China. The $7 billion per reactor implies and optimistic estimate for a total construction cost of $28 trillion for 4024 reactors over the next 35 years.

Reactor Life = 40 years.  Most of today's nuclear plants which were originally designed for 30 or 40-year operating lives. We will assume the upper end.  This will not effect the production program between 2016 and 2050, but reactors wear out, so we want to set up a construction profile that maintains some capacity for eventual replacement (about 100 reactors per year).

Production Rates: Bear in mind our goal is simply to get a feel for what Hansen et al are proposing. What follows is illustrative construction schedule and is in no way realistic, in that it optimistically assumes no waste, fraud, or abuse in what would be a gigantic surge of construction activity. We will assume construction starts in 2016 by initiating the construction of 70 new reactors (in effect immediately doubling the worldwide total of 65 are in various stages of construction). Production then builds up rapidly to a maximum of 148 new starts per year, holds steady for 4 years, then declines to a steady state of 100 starts per year until 2050. Given the preceding assumption, this schedule would bring 4025 reactors on line by 2054 and maintain capacity to begin replacing reactors scheduled for retirement. The first tranche would come on line in 2020 and the last tranche would come on line in 2054 (four years after the deadline set by Hansen et al).

Figure 1 compares the rate of reactor start ups under this notional program to the worldwide rate of startups between 1956 to 2015. It speaks for itself. Remember, this program is not realistic — but it matches the numbers in Hansen et al; and that brings me to the point: Any notional scenario that matches their numbers will create the same pie in the sky impression.

Figure 1: Hansen et al’s Fantasy Scenario

Sources: 

• http://www.worldnuclearreport.org/The-World-Nuclear-Industry-Status.html#esco (Figure 2 — note this report differs slightly from IAEA totals by 18 reactor startups)
•  https://www.iaea.org/pris/
• Calculations from Hansen et al. notional production

Discussion

Hansen et al justify this immense buildup of nuc power stations by claiming the risks posed by these nucs are small relative to the catastrophic risk of climate change.

So, let’s consider the balance of risks posed by the uncertainties implicit in this portrayal. When one begins to relax the planning assumptions in the name of realism, unit costs will increase, as will total program cost, schedules will stretch out, the reactor buildup (the red bars) will shift to the right, and the age of the existing inventory of reactors will increase. The theoretical date of decarbonization would be pushed ever further into the future, bringing into question the whole rationale for the crash program.

While Hansen et al claim this kind of crash program is needed to prevent a hypothesized climate catastrophe, there is obviously a lot of risk for real human and material screw ups in building and operating so many nuclear power reactors so quickly. They ignored these risks in their oped, but it behooves one to think about them.

Commercial nuclear power has an impressive safety record, with only two major catastrophes in 50 years out of the 600 reactors built to date: one light water graphite modulated reactor (considered by many experts to be a dangerous design) exploded at Chernobyl, and several more modern light water reactors at the Fukushima plant were seriously damaged by the effects of a major earthquake.  Both accidents resulted in terrifying radiation leakages.  While the causes of these catastrophes were very different, each had horrifying environmental and human consequences. The full extent of these consequences will not be known for generations, given the nature of radiation damage to organic tissue and DNA.  The worst incident is US history was the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, fortunately contained. Note how Figure 1 shows that actual world wide nuclear power plant construction slowed to a crawl. That slow down was caused in part because of the quite reasonable fears raised by these incidents.

But there is more to the slow down.  Construction of new reactors has also been slowed by recurring safety issues in existing reactors, including (1) the intractable technical and political problems of radioactive waste disposal; (2) reactor management and operational issues related to poor quality control, deficient inspection and safety procedures, and questionable compliance reporting; and (3) the effects of aging of existing reactors and supporting equipment. 

Yet the primary reasons construction of additional new Reactors in the United States stopped between 1978 and 2009 were related to the huge cost-increases and substantial schedule slippages in construction — i.e. due to management fiascos including poor planning and financing. Because of these fiascos, the taxpayers were made to foot bill on many of these projects. 

Given this management history, coupled with the current neo-liberal business culture’s obsessive focus on short-term goals and profits, the high up-front costs for a new reactor exceeds the loan borrowing capacity of most utilities. Therefore, in the US, investors demand that the government subsidize loans with federal guarantees. How such guarantees will be arranged around the world is yet another subject Hansen et al deigned not to address.  But if past is prologue, the real cost of the world wide program in Figure 1 would be well in excess of $28 trillion and investors will demand guarantees that will ultimately be paid for by consumers.  

There is yet another obvious if subtle risk factor that was totally ignored by Hansen et al: It must be assumed that the dramatic slow down in recent construction has been accompanied by a decrease in skilled nuclear operator labor, as well as engineering and hands-on nuclear program management expertise.  That consideration raises a question how safe and feasible it would be to rapidly expand to a crash program that multiplies total reactor production by a factor of 6.7 in only 70 percent of the time it took to produce all reactors in the world to date.

Conclusion

Perhaps the biggest weakness in Hansen et al, however, is logical. The case for decarbonization of power production has always rested on what environmentalists call the precautionary principle.  This is not a scientific principle but rather an argumentative proposition designed to justify a course of action. It does so by purporting to account for uncertain future risks associated with problems posed by damage to a “commons.”  Garett Hardin brilliantly analyzed the difficulties of coping with this kind of problem in a seminal 1968 paper entitled The Tragedy of the Commons (ironically, his subject was the risk of nuclear war and morality).  

The precautionary “principle” in its current incarnation argues that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of being dangerous to the public or to the environment, and there is no scientific consensus that the action or policy is not dangerous, then the burden of proof that it is not dangerous falls on those taking an action. The conjugation of “suspected” and “not” in this construction means that the person charged with the burden of proof must prove a negative — which is impossible.  The precautionary principle makes for a powerful emotional argument, particularly combined with an exaggerated sense of fear, because it turns the scientific principles of falsifiability and conditional truth on their heads.[4]^⁠  Moreover, invoking the Precautionary Principle places no logical limits on the upper bound for the cost of an ‘ounce of prevention.’ Anyone who doubts the power of this argument should examine how successfully the Pentagon uses the precautionary principle (in the form of inflating future threats) to jack up its budget^⁠.[5]

But even if one accepts the precautionary principle in this case, one must admit that it must also apply to nuclear power.  Hansen and his colleagues are claiming that the theoretical and unprovable danger posed by CO2 [see endnote 1] is more dangerous than the dangers implicit in an unprecedented expansion of nuclear power.  The proof that nuclear power is both costly and very dangerous is far more obvious and far more empirical than any theoretical future dangers posed by global warming: Chernobyl and Fukushima, not to mention the lesser dangers in Rocky Flats, Hanford, etc. are proof of nuclear power’s clear and present danger.  Yet against the social and economic costs of this known danger, Hansen et al would have the reader believe that the cost of a hypothesized catastrophic danger in the future is greater than the known danger.

So while Hansen et al's CO2 argument is based on the precautionary principle, the clear and present danger inherent in their proposal to unleash an unprecedented crash program in nuclear power plant construction makes a mockery of the very principle they rest their case on. And that, dear reader, is a logical absurdity. 

——————

[1] See Professor John Christie’s statement and Professor Judith Curry’s statement to Congress for succinct statements of the some of the problems of these computer models.  The short video of Professor Freeman Dyson’s fascinating critique is also useful for people trying to understand the modeling problem (about 9 minutes into the video) as well as larger issues surrounding the alleged dangers posed by carbon dioxide. All of these critics agree with the physics of CO2 being a greenhouse gas.

[2] Currently, the cost of nuclear power — particularly the capital cost — would be prohibitive without substantial government subsidies (in the form of long term government loan guarantees).  Even if one believes the very unreliable and typically optimistic cost life cycle cost estimates for nuclear power, on average, life cycle costs would as much a 2.6 times coal (w/o co2 scrubbing), 1.05 times coal (with scrubbing that removes up to 90% of the CO2),  and 1.6 times natural gas, in $/MW-hr.

[3] Each plant usually has between 1 and 3 reactors. The US, for example has 61 plants with 99 reactors.  Japan is home to the world’s largest nuclear power plant with 7 reactors.

[4] This video clip from one physicist Richard Feyman’s famed Messenger Lectures is a brilliantly simple and humorous explanation of the scientific principles of falsifiability and conditional truth.

[5] The inmates of Pentagon routinely invoke the precautionary principle plus the politics fear to jack up defense budgets — but it goes by a more straightforward term: Threat Inflation (e.g., the Bomber Gap, the Missile Gap, and the Window of Vulnerability during the Cold War.

Mountain Ambush: Turkish F-16s vs. Russian SU-24s

While circumstances of the recent  shoot-down of the Russian SU-24 by a Turkish F-16 in the border region of Turkey and Syria remain murky, Andrew Cockburn’s interview of Pierre Sprey, attached below, is best analysis that I have seen to date.    Be warned, however: I am biased, both the interviewer and the interviewee are good friends of mine.  

This compound map may help you to follow their discussion.  The shoot-down took place in the vicinity of the southern-most point of Turkey’s Hatay Province, a province with a history contested between Turkey and Syria ever since the demise of the Ottoman Empire. (When I visited the port captain’s office at Latakia harbor Syria (in 2008), the map behind his desk designated Hatay as “Occupied Syria.”)  The Russian SU-24 crashed into Syria and the one surviving pilot landed in Syria in the area just to west of the southernmost point of Hatay, probably in the area enclosed by the blue circle on the compound map below.

The target area was about five miles south of Yayladagi, probably somewhere inside the magenta oval in this Google Earth satellite photo of the border area.  The red line is the Turko-Syrian border. This corner of Hatay province is rugged, forested mountains with few roads (the yellow lines), and it is likely that infiltration routes for refugees into Turkey and jihadis out of Turkey are narrow foot paths through the mountains.  If Sprey’s analysis is correct, the pilot could easily stray briefly across the southernmost tip of the Turkish border on his high altitude (~ 18,000 ft) flight path from the east or south east, and if hit, the pilot would likely land in Syria since his target area was well south of the Turkish border.  This border geometry should help the reader appreciate Sprey’s hypothesis with respect to careful timing and a prepared ambush.

One factor not addressed in most media reports is that the Russian airplanes were sitting ducks for the Turkish F-16s waiting in ambush with IR missiles.  The SU-24 Fencer is a large, lumbering 40 ton, late-sixties Soviet knockoff of our infamously un-maneuverable F-111 Aardvark.  

I urge readers read carefully the entire interview at the link indicated below.

_____________________________

Browsings

The Harper’s Blog

CONVERSATION 

Mountain Ambush

“Looking at the detailed Russian timeline of what happened,” says defense analyst Pierre Sprey, “I’d say the evidence looks pretty strong that the Turks were setting up an ambush.”

By Andrew Cockburn, Harpers, December 4, 2015, 5:57 pm

http://harpers.org/blog/2015/12/mountain-ambush/

On November 24, a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber near the border of Turkey and Syria. In the immediate aftermath, officials from the two countries offered contradictory versions of what transpired: Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed that the plane was flying over Syrian territory when it was downed; Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan countered that it was inside Turkey’s border and had been warned ten times to alter its course. Hours later, President Obama threw his support behind Erdogan. “Turkey,” he said, “has a right to defend its territory and its airspace.”

I asked Pierre Sprey, a longtime defense analyst and member of the team that developed the F-16, to examine what we know about the downing and determine what actually occurred that morning.

The Russians have claimed the November 24 downing of their bomber was a deliberate pre-planned ambush by the Turks. Is there any merit in that argument?

Looking at the detailed Russian timeline of what happened—as well as the much less detailed Turkish radar maps—I’d say the evidence looks pretty strong that the Turks were setting up an ambush. They certainly weren’t doing anything that would point to a routine air patrol along the border. Their actions in no way represented a routine, all day long type of patrol. … continued

What is Terrorism?

The Reign of Absurdiocy 

Uri Avnery, 28/11/15

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1448673709/

[The writer (bio), a former member of the Irgun, a hero of the 1948 Arab Israeli War, and former member of the Knesset, is Israel’s leading peace advocate.]

There is no such thing as "international terrorism".

To declare war on "international terrorism" is nonsense. Politicians who do so are either fools or cynics, and probably both.

Terrorism is a weapon. Like cannon. We would laugh at somebody who declares war on "international artillery". A cannon belongs to an army, and serves the aims of that army. The cannon of one side fire against the cannon of the other.

Terrorism is a method of operation. It is often used by oppressed peoples, including the French Resistance to the Nazis in WW II. We would laugh at anyone who declared war on “international resistance”.

Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military thinker, famously said that "war is the continuation of politics by other means". If he had lived with us today, he might have said: "Terrorism is a continuation of policy by other means."

Terrorism means, literally, to frighten the victims into surrendering to the will of the terrorist.

Terrorism is a weapon. Generally it is the weapon of the weak. Of those who have no atom bombs, like the ones which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which terrorized the Japanese into surrender. Or the aircraft which destroyed Dresden in the (vain) attempt to frighten the Germans into giving up.

Since most of the groups and countries using terrorism have different aims, often contradicting each other, there is nothing "international" about it. Each terrorist campaign has a character of its own. Not to mention the fact that nobody considers himself (or herself) a terrorist, but rather a fighter for God, Freedom or Whatever.

(I cannot restrain myself from boasting that long ago I invented the formula: "One man's terrorist is the other man's freedom fighter".)

MANY ORDINARY Israelis felt deep satisfaction after the Paris events. "Now those bloody Europeans feel for once what we feel all the time!"

Binyamin Netanyahu, a diminutive thinker but a brilliant salesman, has hit on the idea of inventing a direct link between jihadist terrorism in Europe and Palestinian terrorism in Israel and the occupied territories.

It is a stroke of genius: if they are one and the same, knife-wielding Palestinian teenagers and Belgian devotees of ISIS, then there is no Israeli-Palestinian problem, no occupation, no settlements. Just Muslim fanaticism. (Ignoring, by the way, the many Christian Arabs in the secular Palestinian "terrorist" organizations.)

This has nothing to do with reality. Palestinians who want to fight and die for Allah go to Syria. Palestinians – both religious and secular – who shoot, knife or run over Israeli soldiers and civilians these days want freedom from the occupation and a state of their own.

This is such an obvious fact that even a person with the limited IQ of our present cabinet ministers could grasp it. But if they did, they would have to face very unpleasant choices concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So let's stick to the comfortable conclusion: they kill us because they are born terrorists, because they want to meet the promised 72 virgins in paradise, because they are anti-Semites. So, as Netanyahu happily forecasts, we shall "live forever by our sword".

TRAGIC AS the results of each terrorist event may be, there is something absurd about the European reaction to recent events.

The height of absurdiocy was reached in Brussels, when a lone terrorist on the run paralyzed an entire capital city for days without a single shot being fired. It was the ultimate success of terrorism in the most literal sense: using fear as a weapon.

But the reaction in Paris was not much better. The number of victims of the atrocity was large, but similar to the number killed on the roads in France every couple of weeks. It was certainly far smaller than the number of victims of one hour of World War II. But rational thought does not count. Terrorism works on the perception of the victims.

It seems incredible that ten mediocre individuals, with a few primitive weapons, could cause world-wide panic. But it is a fact. Bolstered by the mass media, which thrive on such events, local terrorist acts turn themselves nowadays into world-wide threats. The modern media, by their very nature, are the terrorist's best friend. Terror could not flourish without them.

The next best friend of the terrorist is the politician. It is almost impossible for a politician to resist the temptation to ride on the wave of panic. Panic creates "national unity", the dream of every ruler. Panic creates the longing for a "strong leader". This is a basic human instinct.

Francois Hollande is a typical example. A mediocre yet shrewd politician, he seized the opportunity to pose as a leader. "C'est la guerre!" he declared, and whipped up a national frenzy. Of course this is no "guerre". Not World War III. Just a terrorist attack by a hidden enemy. Indeed, one of the facts disclosed by these events is the incredible foolishness of the political leaders all around. They do not understand the challenge. They react to imagined threats and ignore the real ones. They do not know what to do. So they do what comes naturally: make speeches, convene meetings and bomb somebody (no matter who and what for).

Not understanding the malady, their remedy is worse than the disease itself. Bombing causes destruction, destruction creates new enemies who thirst for revenge. It is a direct collaboration with the terrorists.

It was a sad spectacle to see all these world leaders, the commanders of powerful nations, running around like mice in a maze, meeting, speechifying, uttering nonsensical statements, totally unable to deal with the crisis.

THE PROBLEM is indeed far more complicated than simple minds would believe, because of an unusual fact: the enemy this time is not a nation, not a state, not even a real territory, but an undefined entity: an idea, a state of mind, a movement that does have a territorial base of sorts but is not a real state.

This is not a completely unprecedented phenomenon: more than a hundred years ago, the anarchist movement committed terrorist acts all over the place without having a territorial base at all. And 900 years ago a religious sect without a country, the Assassins (a corruption of the Arabic word for "hashish users"), terrorized the Muslim world.

I don't know how to fight the Islamic State (or rather Non-State) effectively. I strongly believe that nobody knows. Certainly not the nincompoops who man (and woman) the various governments.

I am not sure that even a territorial invasion would destroy this phenomenon. But even such an invasion seems unlikely. The Coalition of the Unwilling put together by the US seems disinclined to put "boots on the ground". The only forces who could try – the Iranians and the Syrian government army – are hated by the US and its local allies.

Indeed, if one is looking for an example of total disorientation, bordering on lunacy, it is the inability of the US and the European powers to choose between the Assad-Iran-Russia axis and the IS-Saudi-Sunni camp. Add the Turkish-Kurdish problem, the Russian-Turkish animosity and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the picture is still far from complete.

(For history-lovers, there is something fascinating about the reemergence of the centuries-old struggle between Russia and Turkey in this new setting. Geography trumps everything else, after all.)

It has been said that war is far too important to leave to the generals. The present situation is far too complicated to leave to the politicians. But who else is there?

ISRAELIS BELIEVE (as usual) that we can teach the world. We know terrorism. We know what to do.

But do we?

For weeks now, Israelis have lived in a panic. For lack of a better name, it is called "the wave of terror". Every day now, two, three, four youngsters, including 13-year old children, attack Israelis with knives or run them over with cars, and are generally shot dead on the spot. Our renowned army tries everything, including draconian reprisals against the families and collective punishment of villages, without avail.

These are individual acts, often quite spontaneous, and therefore it is well-nigh impossible to prevent them. It is not a military problem. The problem is political, psychological.

Netanyahu tries to ride this wave like Hollande and company. He cites the Holocaust (likening a 16-year old boy from Hebron to a hardened SS officer at Auschwitz) and talks endlessly about anti-Semitism.

All in order to obliterate one glaring fact: the occupation with its daily, indeed hourly and minutely, chicanery of the Palestinian population. Some government ministers don't even hide anymore that the aim is to annex the West Bank and eventually drive out the Palestinian people from their homeland.

There is no direct connection between IS terrorism around the world and the Palestinian national struggle for statehood. But if they are not solved, in the end the problems will merge – and a far more powerful IS will unite the Muslim world, as Saladin once did, to confront us, the new Crusaders.

If I were a believer, I would whisper: God forbid.