Thread: The Global Power Shift

Sir,can I say it was a very interesting,well thought and wonderfully presented resume of what was talked in Wabbitville the last couple of years?

A few observations.The fact that we are connected is obvious.Doesn't mean we share a common destiny.Maybe the cycle of periods with common goals alternating with periods of not so common goals moves faster,leading to the perception of some sort of continuum.
The world becoming multipolar is no surprise to us huntingtonians.That the big show of the next couple of decades will be in the Pacific is also nothing new.But something that makes me put little trust in the alliance with America,at least during the soon to begin new cycle.Still,I say GO,GO USN&USMC.
Also a multipolar system is multipolar only for a while.That while is turbulent,but after the fireworks are over a hegemon arises(or at least a lead puppeteer).England was the one in Europe.It took centuries for that to happen.Maybe we'll se it in the next couple of decades,things moving faster these days.Or maybe not.

Networks making the current governance system obsolete?Duhh!! We're back in the Athenian Agora,where everybody knew everybody,could debate,argue,vote,elect,be elected,make elections in such a way everyone served in public office at least once in a lifetime.We just don't realize it,yet.Arab Spring,OWS& similar movements showed the potential and they're only the beginning.Long live (direct)democracy.Anyway nobody trusts politicos and bureaucrats anymore,anywhere.From this pov we're ready for a revolution.I say good riddance to the useless bastards,especially since I haven't seen a real stateman coming from this class.Just unworthy midgets.

Nice reply. Just the right touch of vitriol that one can only expect from a quaint Huntingtonian. I sympathize. As a long-disgruntled neo-con I've come to realize the best laid plans of (mainly) mice and men are left to, in the end, the unworthy midgets for implementation.

Always a recipe for failure.

It was interesting that the old references to a uni, bi and multi-polar world remain in play. I recall the same arguments in my political science classes of 1973/74. Fact is the world has never been more multi-polar but it was NEVER uni or bi-polar. Everybody has a voice and even the smallest can, at times, become the largest and loudest when events coalesce to render giants to dwarfs. Happens all the time.

Oh well...more coffee. Less idle chatter from ol' S-2.

The only example I can bring to this is the 19thC shift to the 20thC and the shift was noticeable BUT NOT THE POWER STRUCTURES! The US had the most powerful army on earth at the end the ACW but not less than 30 years later, they were eclipsed by the Boer War ... though not completely - WWI had more in common with the ACW than the Boer War ... and frankly, the Boer War reaffiarmed American experience. Kitchener ignored the raids and pushed on with a heavy force.

But this being said, there's nothing coming out of Asia or anywhere else to suggest that our view is wrong. We may very well be wrong but I don't see it. I might be blind but this cyber warfare crap, I cannot envisioned stopping a tank column anytime soon.

Someone please enlighten me.

mihais,

Also a multipolar system is multipolar only for a while.That while is turbulent,but after the fireworks are over a hegemon arises(or at least a lead puppeteer).England was the one in Europe.It took centuries for that to happen.Maybe we'll se it in the next couple of decades,things moving faster these days.Or maybe not.

note the UK was -never- a hegemon in europe. the UK probably reached her zenith of european influence when leading the Allied powers against Nappy, and that largely required france to be beat down, germany to be divided, and russia in considerable chaos.

i agree it is a cycle, but absent a truly apocalyptic event i do not see the increasingly multipolar world reversing trend.

Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers

But this being said, there's nothing coming out of Asia or anywhere else to suggest that our view is wrong. We may very well be wrong but I don't see it. I might be blind but this cyber warfare crap, I cannot envisioned stopping a tank column anytime soon.

Someone please enlighten me.

Sir,I can't hold you a candle wrt China.
I'm quite sure no cyber warfare expert can survive a hand to hand confrontation with the likes of some around,let alone surviving a bullet in the head.
I'm sort of comparing the rise of Asia with the rise of Europe 3-400 years ago.China,India,the Ottomans and even the steppe khanates were still major civilizations,perfectly able to defend themselves in head on fight with any European power.But they strength was starting to become irrelevant in the wake of Europeans controlling the trade,industry,innovation,various choke points and resource suppliers like America and later Africa.
In theory one could lay a pipeline or a railway from Shanghai to Casablanca or Capetown.If all these resources can fuel growth,innovation will follow etc... Europe and America can be turned into the periphery of the world,instead of its center.No major war needed.Just a few shakehands and maybe a little banging of heads if some tribe wants a too high passing toll.It worked for European colonial empires,so the recipe is proven.

I had to think about this ... and the result was ... military adventures did not depend on trade. It depended upon who is hungry. Those hungry enough will develop the means to take the wealth. Since I'm a China watcher, the historic example was the Mongols.

Originally Posted by astralis

mihais,

note the UK was -never- a hegemon in europe. the UK probably reached her zenith of european influence when leading the Allied powers against Nappy, and that largely required france to be beat down, germany to be divided, and russia in considerable chaos.

I would tend to agree - its position as a colonial power and a European power are to a great degree separate. The former not necessarily transforming into the latter.

Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers

I had to think about this ... and the result was ... military adventures did not depend on trade. It depended upon who is hungry. Those hungry enough will develop the means to take the wealth. Since I'm a China watcher, the historic example was the Mongols.

Majority of Russians were hungry for all of their history.

So the global power shift has Mihais talking about direct democracy among other things. Sure. Why not? Information moves that quickly now. Isn't it reasonable that, increasingly, all which stands between a man and his choices are impediments to that realization?

So too, perhaps, with combat. Does our size impede our actions? Are we made less agile by systemic centralized authority that's fed inputs before rendering decisions?

Here are some thoughts on the evolving nature of 21st Century warfare and the man, possibly, necessary to constitute our first line of defense-

Swarming: The Art Of 21st Century Warfare

i'm always a bit wary when sun tzu is quoted in the first paragraph!

Originally Posted by astralis

i'm always a bit wary when sun tzu is quoted in the first paragraph!

It's in the second, so nothing to worry

"i'm always a bit wary when sun tzu is quoted in the first paragraph!"

And so you stopped reading?

nah, if that was my attitude going in, i wouldn't have even gotten past the BLUF...

I've no problem with Sun Tzu,but I'm not Asian

-I'm now starting to get a bit deeper in the Arquilla school of thought,but right now looks like another case of old ideas packaged with modern fancy talking.Swarming isn't invented yesterday.It exists since man hunted mammoth.It was the way to go for any nomad army based on horse archery.And since it happened before,there's also an antidote:isolation of various elements and taking them out before the rest can concentrate and that's better done with a decision making structure that resembles a pyramid.There are of course a few subtleties here.One advantage is that a top-down decision moves faster.The drawback is that the center can be destroyed.Both the pyramid and the network can have equally solid communications,being a matter of redundancy.And more importantly,the pyramid doesn't exclude the network.All great armies put a great emphasis and valued highly individual initiative and sharing of information horizontally.

-I'll respectfully ask the Colonel to talk about the supposed ''autonomous Asian tactics''.I've met this idea before while reading H.John Poole's Last Hundred Yards .There is some truth about them,considering the Mosaic Doctrine adopted by Iran,but I guess they mean China.

-I notice with boredom that military theorists already prepare to fight the last war.Last war isn't formally over yet(there are still standing embassies in Baghdad and Kabul).But is a lot more to warfare than CT.Granted,this war could have been fought colonial style.Oops,my bad,no war.Contingency ops over sea,nation building and in other cases ''deployments in the theaters of operations''. Again,the last 200 years had a ton of colonial wars between Western powers and non-Western tribes,largely won by the fair skinned blue, eyed devils using proper.But while armies gained valuable experience,that was more relevant for small unit action(being shot by the Kabyles or the Germans sucks the same). Looking a bit at the comments on the article,people have about the same concern.CT ain't the alfa and omega in this sport.It will happen of course.But its a niche.

-I do have doubts about the so called surgical nature of modern war.I see it two ways.One is strictly the technical aspect.Better not to waste time and ammo taking out targets.That's fine.The other is more dubious,because it was also mentioned in the past,in the context of making war more humane.The bigger the search for a more humane way of war in peacetime,the nastier the subsequent war.

-S2 @ Sir,direct democracy has advantages and drawbacks.My belief is the +'s outnumber the -'s.But the -'s deserve a look,in this particular context.DD allows people to decide,same people that will actually go to war.Wars might become rarer,but if the people decide to fight,than it's something serious and it won't get over fast.Athenians voted to form an empire(oops,League) and they voted to go to war with Sparta until the end.19&20th century wars that had people more or less convinced to support the war effort were much nastier affairs than the 18th century wars that had limited objectives and were carried with very limited means and with no questions asked. If one would asked the Americans about the way to go after 9/11 the overwhelming response would have been to bomb A-stan until nothing was left standing and get the heck out. Some might be horrified by it,but it might have been a sounder strategic decision in the long run.
Sun Tzu said that an army is not run following the courts manners.Direct democracy is the way of the future,IMO,but it's still a dream in a few nutters heads(unless it happens to be Swiss).Meanwhile,auftragstaktik is about a century old.