What Happens After Wars?

 Wise decision making does not need data from another war. Human history already has enough data about the positive and negative results of wars to make additional surveys unnecessary. Marathon runners race 26 miles in the Olympics, because the Greeks defeated the Persians in 490 B.C. But no battle is responsible for Olympic figure skating.

     Clearly, wars have resulted in: disarmament, unemployed military personnel and weapon designers and manufacturers, collective security, land grabs and new borders, displaced populations, inflation, economic collapse, new financing for rebuilding, foreign aid, competing ideologies, independence and self determination for ethnic populations, release of prisoners, and medical advances. The question is: could positive outcomes from wars be achieved without bloodshed?

     Students attend Model UN meetings to discuss current world problems, and each year the Foreign Policy Association (fpa.org) prepares a Great Decisions Briefing Book and DVD to guide group discussions and provide topics for student essays. There also could be summits where students decide what wartime achievements could be gained without wars. (In 2019, the Great Decisions' discussion topics include: nuclear negotiations, cyberwarfare, U.S.-China trade and U.S.-Mexican relations, regional conflict in the Middle East, refugees/migration, European populism.)

     The challenge is to find out how similar subjects have been handled successfully after past wars. Has there ever been a way to incorporate a country's former rebel and military leaders into a productive government? Or could the Kurds who now live in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria break away peacefully and form their own country the way the Czech Republic (Czechia in English) and Slovakia did? Instead, as U.S. troops began pulling out of Syria, President Trump has called on Turkey's government, which is responsible for harsh treatment of its Kurds, to protect the Kurds the U.S. troops fought with in Syria, a questionable idea.

   

2017's Unanswered Security Questions

Information about North Korea, the so-called Hermit Kingdom, is particularly sparse. Who can name any city there besides the capital, Pyongyang? Yet the country seems to have cyber, chemical,  biological, nuclear, and long-range missile warfare capabilities. The West knows how to track strategic materials and components, but it seems international intelligence services have not been paying attention to these dangerous goods reaching North Korea. When the US did pay attention, it spotted ships from China and the Maldives delivering oil and supplies in defiance of UN sanctions. (Also see the later post, "Plain Talk about Nuclear North Korea.")

Can February's Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, avoid becoming another Boston's Patriots Day? Or might North Korea's interest in the Olympics give South Korea an opportunity to deflect Kim Jong un's determination to deploy his nuclear missiles?

Then, there is the question of how Michael Flynn, a U.S. General and Intelligence Officer, became a Russian pawn. Did he give into the temptations of any ambitious, hardworking adviser who lacks the West Point credentials and wealth of those he saw rising to the top in Washington, DC?  If so, there are many such bright, ambitious young men and women whom the U.S. can overlook and fail to compensate at its own peril.

Finally, the nagging question of why President Trump continues to whitewash Vladimir Putin remains. We know Putin uses the technique of quieting his opponents by staging their deaths and ordering their assassinations. In the UK, a former Russian military spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter barely survived their March 4, 2018 poisoning attributed to the Kremlin. Putin also threatens the relatives of opponents. Oleg Navalny is in a penal colony in Russia to punish his brother, Alexei, for using his blog to mobilize anti-corruption rallies. Has Putin won Trump's goodwill by threatening the attractive women in his life?

Modern Deterrents

Watching today's young Japanese students push their desks to the side of the room and hide under them, as teachers pull shades over the windows to deflect flying glass, only reminds us this was a procedure that couldn't protect populations from nuclear attacks in the 1950s. Strategies designed to protect a retaliatory second strike weapon system after an initial surprise bombing in the 1960s are out-of-date as well.

     Nuclear-equipped enemies in the 21st century include minor nations and possible terrorist groups that have nothing to lose. Major players have cyber soldiers that don't move on their stomachs. They keep coming without food or sleep. Not only nuclear fallout can contaminate an environment, but climate change and asteroid collisions with Earth also threaten the world's food supply.

     We are seeing people taking survival into their own hands. One of the characters on "Orange is the New Black" represents those families who prepare their own caves with guns and a stockpile of food and water. Refugees already begin walking or taking to the sea in leaking boats and rafts to escape war-torn areas. Farmers are developing cross-breeding for livestock and hydroponic and aquaponic growing methods to produce food in new ways.

     Computer hacking and nanotechnology offer new defensive options for compromising the performance of all sorts of enemy systems. Enemies know how each others guidance systems work. Besides shooting nuclear ICBMs out of the sky and scattering radioactive particles over the Earth, redirecting ICBMs (and any enemy weapons) to strike whoever launched them has the potential to transform MAD (mutually assured destruction) into SAD (self assured destruction) and cause the most fearsome tyrant to try to scamper for a submarine.

     Programmers already send drones to destroy targets as small as individuals. There are "Hurt Locker" experts who disable bombs on land. Could drones disable nuclear missiles in space? In films, astronauts also keep asteroids from hitting Earth, and furry little forest creatures cause oncoming cyber soldiers to crash by tangling their legs in vines. Meanwhile, high-tech Star Wars airmen penetrate fortresses through air supply vents.

      In the past, shields have blocked arrows, gun powder reduced castle walls to rubble, tanks swept around the Maginot Line, and an armada of fishing boats rescued an army, while prayer and repentance saved Nineveh from destruction. Alliances change from century to century, but the darkness of night, fog, snow, and a blinding sunrise still have the power to deter an effective military response.

     The wise expect an unending race between offense and defense and use their smarts to triumph.

What Moscow Could Learn from History

After college, a friend of mine, who had studied the Russian language, traveled to Moscow. When she visited again fifty years later, she raved about the changes and couldn't wait to show me photos of modern life there. What seems to be happening in Russia today is a grim throwback to yesteryear from which students who wonder why they should study history, as well as world leaders, can learn.

     Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and his oligarchs, who have accumulated great wealth, are a new monarchy that thrives on corruption. Rather than recognize how corruption undermines public support for a government, as China has by prosecuting officials who use their positions for private gain, Moscow has revived a climate of fear and terror to keep its population in check. Dare to confront government lies, as Anna Politkovskaya and Boris Nemtsov did, and you are assassinated. Run Open Russia, an online video operation that informs scattered dissidents of opposition protests, and you suddenly collapse in your office, possibly from poisoning. Blog criticism of the regime and your younger brother, Oleg Navalny, is sentenced to three and a half years in a Russian penal colony. Return from doing Putin's dirty work fighting in Ukraine, and your weapons are confiscated at the border. How long can Moscow keep a lid on a public upheaval? Nicholas II thought, forever.

     By just looking at a map, a young student would expect the vast expanse of Russia to be an economic power house compared to the islands of Japan. Instead, falling oil prices have exposed Russia's less diversified economy which contracted 3.7% in 2015. Oil prices that were expected to improve after an OPEC meeting failed to materialize and remain below $50 a barrel in 2017. When countries, such as Russia and North Korea, focus exclusively on the military, space, and cyber technology, the rest of the economy suffers. Destroy their military and what would they have left to make them a great power? Once Japan and Germany were defeated in World War II, these countries did not make this mistake.

    With nationalism pinned to advanced military weaponry, Moscow has flexed its non-economic strength and expansionary vision in Georgia, Ukraine and now Syria. TIME magazine in October, 2016 recalled the 2013 manifesto of the chief of the Russian general staff, Valery Gerasimov, who wrote, "A perfectly thriving state can, in a matter of months and even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict through political, economic, informational, humanitarian and other nonmilitary measures applied in coordination with the protest potential of the population." Apparently Putin assumes such attacks can be directed only from Russia rather than toward Russia as well. In any case, military demonstrations of power and cyber attacks do nothing to correct Moscow's biggest problem, a failing economy. Sanctions imposed on Russia after its Crimea takeover and low oil prices continue.

     Migrants have fled Syria the way Russians abandoned ground when Napoleon's army marched on Moscow in 1812. To the victor will belong a shell of Syria or the realization that two hundred years later a country's power rests, not only on military strength, but on a strong diversified economy and an ability to negotiate a just and lasting peace in the world.

      To this latter end,  U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Putin agreed to meet at the UN on September 28, 2015. Putin expressed a willingness to discuss a joint effort to remove the threat of ISIS in Syria but then sent fighter planes to prop up Syria's regime by bombing rebels attacking a government that has killed, rather than listened to, protesters. However, once Putin determined ISIS had brought down Russian Flight 9268 over the Sinai peninsula in October, 2015, he pivoted to join the US and France to launch a major attack on terrorist forces. However, Moscow again returned to military support for the Syrian government. In August, 2016, Tehran showed its displeasure, when Moscow bragged about using bases in Iran to bomb Syria, by canceling an agreement permitting such raids. After Russia destroyed a convoy carrying supplies to Syrians during a failed ceasefire, the US broke off talks with Moscow regarding Syria.

   

Answers to post about super heroes in certain countries: A-7, B-9, C-1, D-6, E-8, F-2, G-5, H-10, I-3, J-4.