Why it’s too late to stop World War 3 – according to one of Britain’s greatest military historians
Can Iran create nukes? Will China invade Taiwan? As the world tilts towards global conflict, we are asking the wrong questions
Richard Overy 23 June 2024
Apocalypse now: a nuclear test in French Polynesia, 1970 Credit: Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo
Imagine, for a moment, that the Iranian government announces it has developed a nuclear bomb and threatens to use it on Israel. The United States reacts with the threat of military intervention, as it did in 1991 and 2003 in Iraq. Iran signals that it will not tolerate a third Gulf war and looks for allies. American forces mass to enter Iran, which orders national mobilisation. Russia, China and North Korea express their support for Iran, and Washington expands its intervention force, bringing in a British contingent. Russia enters the game, raising the stakes in the expectation that the West will back down. A nuclear standoff follows, but with tense and itchy fingers on both sides, as leaders gamble on the risk of not striking first, it all ends in disaster. The Third World War begins with an exchange of nuclear fire, and the rest, as they say, is history. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/world-war-three-too-late-history-violence/)
What follows are excerpts from a rather long, but interesting and informative, article from the Military Review, which was published prior to the pandemic.
We use metaphors and analogies to help us connect the dots and uncover hidden patterns of thought. They provide us with a way to go far beyond the meaning of words and are tools guiding the manner in which we think and act. Gen. David Perkins describes how the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command is preparing the Army for the future of warfare in “Big Picture, Not Details, Key When Eyeing Future.” Perkins uses metaphors as he compares warfare to checkers and chess:
Checkers and chess are played on the same style board but the games are far from similar. For a long time, the Army has designed forces based on a “checkers-based” world outlook. Today, we’re switching to a “chess-based” appreciation of the world. In this world, there are many paths to victory; few events allow for linear extrapolation. Victory no longer comes from wiping out an opponent’s pieces, but by removing all his options. By employing pieces with varying capabilities in a concerted manner, one creates multiple dilemmas that over time, erode a challenger’s will to continue.
Perkins is attempting to use an argument from analogy; however, this is a false analogy. He is attempting to compare the U.S. Army’s contemporary outlook on war to that of the board game checkers and compares the future outlook to chess. I argue that the U.S. military already designs forces using a chess-based outlook, not checkers. The U.S. military and Western way of war is a theoretical expression of Carl von Clausewitz
and Antoine-Henri Jomini. Taking a Clausewitzian approach is similar to chess, whereby you focus the energy of your forces on a center of gravity (COG). The fixation on COG has led to a number of costly disasters for the U.S. military. Examples include conflicts in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Examining the “Strange model” for conflicts in Iraq (1991 and 2003), Robert Dixon writes,
The fixation on the Republican Guard (operational COG) and Baghdad (the strategic COG) led leaders to ignore the emergence of something that did not fit their template. This is the true danger of the term: while looking for Clausewitz’s focal point (something central, the source of all power, the hub, etc.) leaders forget that they are not observing a static system. Dynamic systems do not have centers, and if they did it would constantly move.
Perkins is actually moving strategy back to the chess-based outlook used by Gen. William Westmoreland
in Vietnam. Evidence of this can be found in the new Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations. FM 3-0 signals a shift in military strategy and a focus back to that of large-scale ground combat operations against near-peer threats, where belligerents possess technology and capabilities similar to the U.S. military. Gen. Mark Milley,
Adversaries including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have spent nearly two decades studying the U.S. military’s strengths and vulnerabilities as it has fought terrorist groups. Those nations have invested in modernizing their forces and preparing them to exploit vulnerabilities developed while the United States focused on fighting insurgents.
The U.S. military, just as in chess, focuses on the centrality of physical force and maintaining an edge in capabilities; yet, it is weak in regards to strategy and stratagem. I argue that, to truly understand threats such as North Korea and China, we must shift from a chess-based approach to a wei-chi approach; this is where we will find a true understanding of complexity. Where chess is a game of power-based competition representing the American way of war, wei-chi is a skill-based game representing the Chinese way of war. Furthermore, an understanding of wei-chi will help us bridge the gap between how the U.S. Army perceives conflict and how our threats perceive conflict. It is only through a deep metaphorical understanding of this topic that we can uncover our hidden patterns of thought in war.
The U.S. military seeks a strategy for complex problems, and chess deals with complicated issues. Evidence of this is within the game itself. As we initiate a game of chess, we first start with all the pieces on the board; hence, we have the information, just not the correct answer. Compare this to the game of wei-chi, where we start a game with no pieces on the board; the information is out there somewhere, we just do not know what we are looking for.
Chess—Center of Gravity
In chess, the underlying philosophy is winning through decisive victory with a clear objective in capturing the enemy king and destroying enemy forces. Chess is a linear game with a simple center of gravity (COG)—the king. We initiate a game of chess with all the pieces on the board, seeking then to move forward linearly in a war of attrition. As described in table, chess is typically divided into three distinct phases: opening, middlegame, and endgame.
The strategic, operational, and tactical approaches identified in FM 3-0 resemble Westmoreland’s approach in Vietnam, where he used a strategy of attrition warfare. He sought victory by winning a head-to-head war through the collapse and defeat of the enemy by “grinding it down.” He saw the battlefield like a game of chess and wanted to destroy as many pieces as possible. Westmoreland was predictable and placed his pieces on the table. In contrast, the North Vietnamese did not.
Wei-Chi board showing a game in progress. (Photo courtesy of Goban1 via Wikipedia)
Westmoreland Strategy in Vietnam
“You know you never defeated us on the battlefield,” said the American colonel.
The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark a moment. “That may be so,” he replied, “but it is also irrelevant.”
—Conversation in Hanoi, April 1975
Wei-chi—Understanding North Korea and China
Figure 3. Chess Board and Maneuver Graphics (Chessboard graphic courtesy of ILA-boy via Wikimedia Commons; maneuver graphic from Field Manual 3-0, Operations; composite graphic by author)
Wei-chi (otherwise known as Go in Japan and Baduk in Korea) is an abstract strategy board game. Having its origin in China roughly four thousand years ago (making it the oldest board game in the world), it is an abstract way to examine the Chinese way of war and diplomacy. David Lai writes in Learning from the Stones: A Go Approach to Mastering China’s Strategic Concept, Shi,
The game board is conceived to be the earth. The board is square representing stability. The four corners represent the four seasons, indicating the cyclical change of time. The game pieces, the stones, are round, hence mobile. The spread of stones on the board reflect activities on earth. The shape of the stone engagements on the board is like the flow of water, an echo in Sun Tzu’s view that the positioning of troops be likened to water.
In The Protracted Game: A Wei-Chi Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy, Scott Boorman remarks, “The structure of the game [wei-chi] and in particular, its abstractness makes possible a depth of analogy which has no parallel in the relatively superficial comparisons of Western forms of military strategy to chess or poker.” Boorman compares wei-chi to the writings of Mao Tse-tung, for which Mao wrote in a 1938 essay, “Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War against Japan,”
Thus there are two forms of encirclement by the enemy forces and two forms of encirclement by our own—rather like a game of wei-chi. Campaigns and battles fought by the two sides resemble the capturing of each other’s pieces, and the establishment of strongholds by the enemy and of guerrilla base areas by us resembles moves to dominate spaces on the board. It is in the matter of dominating the spaces that the great strategic role of guerrilla base areas in the rear of the enemy is revealed.
Table 4. Characteristics and Descriptions of Wei-Chi (Descriptions from Scott Boorman, The Protracted Game; table by author)
Table 4 describes some of the characteristics of the game of wei-chi. A key definition Boorman provides us is the tactic of encirclement, which he describes as, “First, encirclement should be roughly outlined in such a manner that the enemy group cannot conduct an effective breakout to safety. Next, the encirclement should be tightened, and attempts made to prevent creation by the opponent of an invincible position.” Moreover, Boorman provides a description of successful strategies for wei-chi (see table 5).
Lastly, there is an old Chinese saying, “When you kill 10,000 enemy soldiers, you are likely to lose 3,000 lives as well.” If we enter into conflict with North Korea and/or China, we will discover (just as we did in the Korean War and the Vietnam War) that we will not be able to sustain a war of attrition with an enemy poised to throw an endless number of soldiers at us. We cannot plan for war by playing chess when our enemy is playing wei-chi. If we identify North Korea and China as our next threats, we must start doing our homework and start learning Chinese strategic thought. As Sun Tzu wrote, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/November-December-2018/Schwandt-Wei-Chi/
The world famous Georgia Guidestones in Elberton, Georgia, were destroyed earlier this summer.
The Georgia Guidestones Explained 9 February 2021
The origin of this strange monument is shrouded in mystery because no one knows the true identity of the man, or men, who commissioned its construction in Elbert County, Georgia, in the United States.
All that is known for certain is that in June 1979, a well-dressed, articulate stranger visited the office of the Elberton Granite Finishing Company and announced that he wanted to build an edifice to transmit a message to mankind. The Message of The Georgia Guidestones
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.
What is the true significance of the American Stonehenge, and why is its covert message important? Because it confirms the fact that there is a covert group intent on:
(1) Dramatically reducing the population of the world – Eugenics, chemtrails, GMO food, etc, etc (2) Promoting environmentalism. (3) Establishing a one world government, one world economy and one world religion lead by the Antichrist, DEAD pope John Paul ll.. (4) Promoting a new spirituality – “New Age” and “religions” not Biblical Truth that is found only in the King James bible.
Certainly the group that commissioned the Georgia Guidestones is one of many similar groups working together toward a New World Order, a new world economic system, and a new world spirituality. Behind those groups, however, are dark spiritual forces, spiritual wickedness in high places. Without understanding the nature of those dark forces it is impossible to understand the unfolding of world events in these Bible times.
The fact that most Americans have never heard of the Georgia Guidestones or their message to humanity reflects the degree of control that exists today over what the American people think. We ignore that message at our peril. https://www.thevoid.uk/void-post/the-georgia-guidestones-explained/
The Guidestones were a curiosity for four decades, and from the above, obviously thought provoking. Here at the Armchair Warrior blog all almost all viewpoints are given, even if only short shrift. They were a tourist attraction, bringing people from all over the world to visit the Great State of Georgia. The Georgia Guidestones have been featured in countless television shows, and talked about on myriad radio stations. Much has been written about the Guidestones. I would like to see them replaced. For them to be removed for all time would mean the destroyers got what they wanted and could be considered “winners,” when they are, in fact, LOSERS! This is their “hero”:
Elberton is located east of Athens, Georgia, home of the University of Georgia, and near the state line of the Great State of South Carolina. It is south of Interstate 85, virtually in the middle of farm land. The nearest city would be the small town of Bowman, due south of Royston, Georgia, home of one of the most famous Georgians of all time, Major League Baseball Hall of Famer, Ty Cobb.
Some years ago I lived in Lavonia, Georgia, which is north of Royston, and it is on Interstate 85. Politically speaking, most of the people in the area are very conservative. They do not ‘lean’ Republican, they are the very backbone of the Republican political party. Most of the folks in the area do not “cotton to change” as can be heard from the locals. Coming from the Atlanta area meant I already had one strike against me. When spoken about it was invariably said, “He’s from Atlanta, you know.” Those listening would nod in agreement. To the locals someone like me brought the dreaded word, “change.” The last thing most of those people wanted was change in any form, which is the problem with conservatism, and the Republican party, because change is a part of life. Things change every second; nothing remains the same, yet there are those who wish only to stop change, as if that is ever going to happen. An example would be what happened at the local grocery store after first moving to Lavonia. The Presidential election, stolen by the Trumpster by using information provided by the nefarious Russians (How, exactly, did the Trumpster return the favor?), was only a few months away. A fellow Senior began talking to me and thinking I was “one of them” invited me outside to show me something. I had promised Patricia not to discuss politics with anyone, so as we walked toward his vehicle covered in Trumpster I thought about what she had said. The dude tried to recruit me, but stopped in his tracks when informed I was a Democrat. Dude looked like he had just been punched in the gut… To the people there I was about as out of place as the Georgia Guidestones. The nicest person to me was the local librarian, who oversaw not only the Lavonia library, but the one in Royston as well. We talked about my teaching a class on Chess for the children. She was honest enough to inform me that the parents did not want my “Putting new ideas into the heads of their children,” so there was no Chess for the area. Therefore I kept to myself and we traveled to other cities to shop, like Royston, where long time friends of Patricia lived, and the much larger Anderson, South Carolina.
I thought about this recently after being transported to Emory Hospital in an ambulance, as I was unable to walk, or even stand, without extreme pain. The young female doctor who admitted me was talking with the ambulance drivers and when I mentioned having been transported by ambulance to the hospital, St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital,
in Lavonia, some years before, she said, “Really? That’s where I live. Where did you live?” After telling her about Gus Whiting Road she said, “I know exactly where that is! Were you near the red house?” The answer was, “Yeah, I lived in that house.” She exclaimed, “I don’t believe it! It was the talk of the town when improvements were being made.”
28 Gus Whiting Road, Lavonia, Georgia before renovations
Then one of the ambulance drivers, the one I thought maybe had an interest beyond medicine with the young, attractive doctor, spoke up, saying, “You mean you live up there? Why don’t you work there?” She said, “Because they don’t pay enough.” He was incredulous, saying, “You mean you make that drive twice a day?” That is the way it is in Atlanta these daze… A couple of weeks ago someone had to come to the apartment to make repairs. He drove in from Birmingham, Alabama. Atlanta is the engine that drives the Great State of Georgia, yet those who do not live in Atlanta have controlled the state, politically speaking, for far too long, to the detriment of all of the state. Most of the people residing outside of the metropolitan Atlanta area consider Atlanta to be akin to Sodom and Gomorrah. Those that do not change are left behind.
This blog has reached into all but five countries on the planet, all but four countries in the middle of Africa, and North Korea. This has been written in order to give readers at least partial understanding of what could have possibly driven low life people of little intelligence to destroy what has been called ‘America’s Stonehenge’. In order to give you an idea of why some nefarious scumbag(s) would destroy something iconic to Georgia please read this:
“The Georgia Guidestones have been a source of considerable speculation among conspiracy theorists since they were first unveiled in Elberton back in 1980. Created by an anonymous individual, the elaborate monument consists of four stone slabs which feature ten ‘guiding principles’ written in eight different languages and ostensibly aimed at steering humanity towards a better future. While some of these tenets, such as “protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts,” appear to be fairly benign, there are other ‘guidelines’ which have caused some consternation, including a call to keep humanity’s population “under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”
“As one might imagine, that particular ‘suggestion’ has fueled rumors that the Guidestones are the work of nefarious forces associated with the proverbial New World Order and that they wish to enact some kind of population control by any means necessary. The possibly nefarious nature of the moment was in the news earlier this year when Georgia gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor pledged to have the piece, which she called Satanic, destroyed if she were elected. While her campaign came to an end when she finished third in the GOP primary back in May, her call to action may have inspired the misguided individuals who targeted the monument on Wednesday morning.” (https://www.coasttocoastam.com/article/video-sizeable-portion-of-georgia-guidestones-destroyed-by-explosion/)
Georgia Guidestones go to EGA museum By News Staff on Friday, August 12, 2022 by Rose Scoggins
CNI News Service
The remnants of the Georgia Guidestones will have a new home as they were donated to the Elberton Granite Association (EGA) Museum after a vote from the Elbert County Board of Commissioners during Monday night’s meeting. The vote came after hesitancy from the board as they lagged to make a motion. “If we do not donate them, what are we going to do with them?” Chairman Lee Vaughn asked. Commissioner Casey Freeman said the board had previously discussed options on what to do with the stones and said he’d hoped that a foundation would have been created that the remnants could be donated to. “That hasn’t happened yet,” Freeman said. “I’ll make the motion that we go ahead and donate those things to EGA.” After a second from commissioner Kenneth Ashworth, the board voted 4-0 to approve the donation. EGA Executive Vice President Chris Kubas said Tuesday that EGA doesn’t currently have a timeline or specific plan for the pieces, but wanted to make sure that they were properly preserved. “The county was making it clear that they literally did not want them at all and, if left up to them, they could’ve just been destroyed and crushed up into gravel and that would’ve been the end of them,” Kubas said. “From the granite industry perspective, we didn’t want to see that happen. They are a testament to the type of work we do and a lot of people feel really connected to them. It was quite a monumental undertaking to create that. I don’t know if all the pieces are going to be utilized, but there are some larger pieces that could be incorporated into some sort of display at the museum in the future. Until we can study that, we said ‘We’ll take them and take charge of them’ just so they stay preserved until we can figure out what to do with them.’ I will probably talk to Mayor [Daniel] Graves and we’ll [see] how we can best do something in the future that would promote tourism from the Guidestones.” The board added the donation to the agenda after discussing the video surveillance system still at the monument during the Aug. 4 work session. Emergency Services Director Chuck Almond asked the board to consider disconnecting the system in order to use the fiber cables that connect the surveillance system to their emergency operations center on Mahoney Drive for a telephone system connecting the center, the fire administration building and the new fire building. “We’re paying $150 per month for the fiber that runs from our office to Guidestones Road,” Almond said Thursday. “We’ve been monitoring it. We’ve had to send the sheriff’s department out there a couple of times. We saw a couple of people with rakes and shovels. As far as what we’re doing for that property, I think it’s time to disconnect…Those cameras are our property and we’ve been paying a security camera to do maintenance. We should separate from that if its possible.” Elbert County Attorney Bill Daughtry said last week that the county is waiting to hear back from their insurance company before moving forward with reverting the Guidestones property back to its original owner. “Our insurance company has never dealt with the bombing of a monument. It’s taking them a little longer than a normal insurance claim,” Daughtry said. “If we have claims-made policy, we find out there’s coverage and we make a claim but we no longer own the property, that could potentially be grounds for denying our claim. We’re still waiting on an answer from the [Association of Georgia County Commissioners] about insurance coverage. I think that the bulk of the work was donated, but emergency services had a lot of overtime, the sheriff’s office had three or four days of overtime. We’d like to reimburse that through our insurance company if we can.” https://www.thenortheastgeorgian.com/local-news/georgia-guidestones-go-ega-museum
Trump did it and he’s going down for a host of crimes, and some of them have nothing to do with Russia
Lucian K. Truscott IV
May 19, 2018
I’ve been “covering” the Trump story for over a year now, and I’m sick and tired of stacking up the details of his treachery day after day, week after week. What more do you need to know? He’s a lying, thieving, incompetent, ignorant traitor who conspired with the Russian government to steal the election of 2016 and illegally defeat a candidate who won the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots. His presidency is illegitimate, and his occupation of the White House is a stain on our nation’s honor and a threat to our democracy. History will cast him into the same sewer in which float the putrid remains of Benedict Arnold, Jefferson Davis and Richard Nixon. Impeachment would be too kind an end for him. He belongs behind bars, broken, bankrupt and disgraced.
Every day the front pages of the newspapers and the headlines of the cable news shows are filled with evidence of Trump’s lies and thievery. Look at what happened this week alone.
Trump started out denying that he even knew Stormy Daniels, then he denied having a sexual relationship with her, then he said he didn’t know about any payoffs to her. Monday, he filed his required federal financial disclosure form in which he effectively admitted making the $130,000 payment to shut her up just before the election in 2016.
He did an about-face on trade restrictions on China, announcing that he would seek to help the Chinese communications giant ZTE, which paid a $1.2 billion fine last year for violating sanctions against trade with North Korea and Iran. Three days previously, China had issued a half-billion dollar loan to a development project in Singapore that includes Trump-branded hotels, golf courses and condos.
He opened the American embassy in Jerusalem, a move he had been warned would result in fighting and deaths in the Middle East — and sure enough, dozens of Palestinians were killed on the day the embassy opened during demonstrations in the Gaza Strip.
The Trump White House refused to apologize for a sick joke made about John McCain by one of his aides.
Trump’s former secretary of state gave a commencement speech at VMI in which he made repeated veiled criticisms of Trump’s lying and warned gravely “If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom.”
Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued a subpoena to a former aide of Trump’s long-time consultant Roger Stone, who has admitted being in touch during the campaign of 2016 with a Russian intelligence agent involved in the hacking of the Democratic Party emails.
A major story in Buzzfeed on Thursday detailed work by Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen on a 100-story Trump skyscraper in Moscow during 2015 right through the Republican National Convention in 2016. It was revealed that Trump signed a “Letter of Intent” on the Moscow project on the day of the third Republican primary debate on Oct. 28, 2015, in Boulder, Colorado. ABC News reported last week that Trump has denied having deals in Russia “hundreds of times in the past 18 months.” Just before the inauguration in 2017, for example, Trump tweeted:
Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017
A Qatar deal was announced. The revelation follows a report that during the transition in 2016, a Qatari diplomat was asked by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen for a $1 million “fee” in return for arranging connections to the Trump family. The government of Qatar bought a $6.5 million apartment in Trump World Tower on the east side of Manhattan recently.
The news of last week was a perfect mix of lies, thievery, buffoonery and malice that have characterized the entirety of Trump’s presidency.
He promised to get rid of Obamacare “on day one.” He failed. Obamacare is alive and well and enjoyed record registrations last year.
His executive orders on everything from immigration to environmental regulations have ignored requirements for public comments and simple federal paperwork and face lawsuits from one end of the country to the other.
He claimed that “nobody has been tougher on Russia than I have.” He has refused to enact most of the sanctions on Russia passed by Congress.
He appointed a hatchet man who had sued the EPA over a dozen times to head up the agency and that man, Scott Pruitt, currently faces no less than 14 investigations of his tenure there, including allegations that he broke federal laws on office renovations and accepting gifts from lobbyists when he rented a room at below-market rates from a lobbyist with business before his agency.
Last week he claimed he raised military pay for “the first time in 10 years.” President Obama raised military pay in every year of his presidency.
Trump has claimed repeatedly that his White House “is running like a fine-tuned machine.” He filled it with wife beaters, worn-out Wall Street bucket shop shysters and half-baked neo-Nazi flacks. At this point, more than 40 top White House officials and aides have either resigned or been fired over the last 18 months. The place leaks like a shredded fish net.
The Washington Post recently reported that the lies he has told in office now number more than 3,000.
But it’s his lies about Russia that really ring a bell. Trump and his White House surrogates began by claiming that the Trump campaign never met with any Russians and had nothing to do with Russia. Revelation after revelation about contacts between Trump people and Russians followed. Then they claimed they had met with only a few Russians. More revelations about more Russians. Then they claimed they had not met with any Russians “about the campaign.” The Trump Tower meeting was revealed. Meets between George Papadopoulos and Russians in London came to light. Trump suddenly started claiming that there was “no collusion.” Evidence of collusion emerged. Then Trump began claiming that even if there was collusion, it was not illegal. Indictments came down. Now Rudy Giuliani is out there telling the world that even if Trump did something wrong, he can’t be indicted as a sitting president.
Wow. Watching Trump revisions on the Russia story is like watching a Slinky descend a staircase, flipping over and over and over and over.
But every set of stairs has a bottom and in Trump’s case, it’s the law. His lies and dissembling about Stormy Daniels came up against the law this week when he had to file his financial disclosure form. Lying or omitting information on a federal form is a felony, which is why Trump was forced to include the repayment of his debt to Michael Cohen which covered the $130,000 that had been paid out to silence Stormy Daniels in October of 2016. He lied about her and he lied about that payment until he came up against the law and then he was forced to tell the truth.
He has reached the ground floor with Russia and everything else. You can lie at rallies, you can lie to the media, you can lie to voters, but lies don’t work when they come up against laws. That’s where Trump finds himself today. He’s a lying, thieving traitor who conspired with a hostile nation to steal the presidential election of 2016 and he got caught. Not even his bone spurs will get him a deferment this time. He’s going to be drafted for the farm team at Leavenworth. He’s going down.
Lucian K. Truscott IV
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives on the East End of Long Island and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better. He can be followed on Facebook at The Rabbit Hole and on Twitter @LucianKTruscott.
The United States is preparing for a war with North Korea that it hopes never to have to fight, says Senator Tammy Duckworth.
Uri Friedman Jan 28, 2018
When Senator Tammy Duckworth returned from a recent trip to South Korea and Japan, she brought back a sobering message: “Americans simply are not in touch with just how close we are to war on the Korean peninsula.” In a speech at Georgetown University, she laid out the U.S. military maneuvers over the past several months—including a nuclear-powered submarine heading to South Korea, the movement of three aircraft carriers to the Western Pacific, and the Army testing out “mobilization centers” for deploying troops and training soldiers to fight in tunnels like those beneath North Korea—that inform this worry. In an interview with me, she said the U.S. military seems to be operating with the attitude that a conflict “‘will probably happen, and we better be ready to go.’”
Duckworth, a retired lieutenant colonel who lost her legs during the Iraq War when insurgents downed her helicopter, took the trip along with Ruben Gallego, a Democratic congressman from Arizona and a fellow Iraq War veteran, earlier this month. The two met with top South Korean and Japanese diplomats and defense officials as well as commanders of U.S. forces in South Korea. Duckworth said that she found “all three of the major military actors—American, Korean, and Japanese—…more ready [for war] than they’ve ever been.”
The drums of war are not booming; there have been no major U.S. military movements or public-messaging campaigns by the Trump administration or new advisories to American civilians or companies, for instance. And Duckworth thinks there are ways the country should be more prepared—in particular that Congress should create a dedicated stream of funding for U.S. forces to rehearse and carry out evacuations of non-combatants in the event of a conflict.
But, as Duckworth sees it, the drumbeats are growing louder—even as the administration has stayed comparatively silent about what war would look like and whether the benefits would warrant the costs.
“We have some great plans should, as we say, ‘the balloon go up’ in Korea,” Gallego, a former Marine, told me. “I know what happens with plans when the first bullet goes flying. … What I fear is that someone like Donald Trump
will look at these great plans, look at our great military, which it is, look at their great capability, which we have, and not understand that these are not superhumans—that if we do something wrong, we will potentially kill hundreds of thousands of people, including some of our own troops, and potentially disrupt a good portion of the world’s economy for years to come.” And that’s considering only the early stages of battle and assuming the conflict doesn’t go nuclear.
“You’re basing policy and military action on hopes instead of on reality and sound reasoning,” Gallego said. “Does this sound familiar? For me it does, as somebody who ended up serving on the front lines of the Iraq War, where I was supposed to be greeted as a liberator. Instead I basically got shot at every day.”
Robert Neller, the commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, acknowledged the limitations of military plans during an appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Thursday. “If [a U.S. conflict with North Korea] were to go down, I’m not now so sure it’s going to go down the way we planned. It never does,” he said.
As the World War I historian Margaret MacMillan told me not long ago, “Once you get into a countdown situation, once people begin to think of war as likely, then it becomes that much more likely”—whether as a result of deliberate decisions, tragic miscalculation, or mere mistake.
This is my first post in a while because of a nasty summer cold. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? Yeah, me too…There was a lady on WSB-TV here in Atlanta some years ago named Bebe Emmerman. Bebe had a segment called, “Don’t you just hate it when…” As I was walking up the stairs at the downtown public library in the 80’s I noticed Bebe on a computer, or maybe it was a microfilm machine. As I walked by I said, “You’re Bebe Emmerman.” She ignored me, continuing her work, so I added, “Don’t you just hate it when you are trying to work and someone comes up and says, ‘Hey, you’re Bebe Emmerman!'” She broke into a big smile, laughed and nodded her head, but she did not look at me, diligently keeping her eyes on the screen.
I have been meaning to write this post for awhile now, but the USO, and chess politics, intervened. I have a statistics page for the blog which I check out periodically. Some time ago I counted the number of countries and was amazed to see the total approaching one hundred. I continued to count each day after that until reaching 100, then stopped counting. For some reason we humans attach significance to the zero on the end. Maybe we chess people should consider the number 64 a milestone.
A color coded map is also provided which shows the number of readers from every country. It will be no surprise that first on the list is the US, followed by our neighbors to the north, Canada. The map of the world is almost completely covered now with white showing only for China, North Korea, and a few countries in Africa.
One day I checked the stats to find a new country had appeared, which happens rarely now. Someone in Togo had read the Armchair Warrior! “Togo,” I thought. “Imagine that…”
This caused me to research the country of Togo. It is officially the Togolese Republic, which “is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, where its capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately 57,000 square kilometres (22,000 sq mi) with a population of approximately 6.7 million.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Togo) On my map Togo is a small sliver that one would not find unless looking.
I checked out Togo on the FIDE website, learning little (http://www.fide.com/component/fidedirectory/?task=country&fid=212). I clicked on the link to the Togo chess website, but could not read it (http://togo-echecs.forumactif.org/). Next I tried the Chess Drum (http://www.thechessdrum.net/), the excellent, award winning chess blog of Dr. Daaim Shabazz, and finding success. Surf on over and check out the article, “Chess in Togo!” (http://www.thechessdrum.net/blog/2013/02/22/chess-in-togo/)
Togo is not listed on the page at Chess-Results.com showing the top 150 teams of the 2014 Olympiad, but if one clicks on “show complete list” (http://www.chess-results.com/tnr140380.aspx?lan=1&art=0&rd=7&flag=30&wi=821&zeilen=99999) one finds Togo listed as #159 out of 177 teams.
There is a fine tradition in this country of pulling for the underdog; ask any Cub fan. I am pulling for the Togolese team. You go, Togo!
Armchair Warrior 