An old quote that still worries me

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Germany has sixteen state and one federal secret service for the monitoring of domestic threats to the constitutional order. The literal translation of these agencies' names would sound like "Constitution protector".

They observe far left parties, far right parties and if I remember correctly also some sects and a bit organised crime. I really only care about the observation of extremist parties, though.

There was (admittedly, back in May) an article about the observation of the Linke, the German socialist party (which has few per cent seats in most parliaments here) and how representatives of that party decry this observation as politically motivated. The protest points at the many laws passed by mainstream party state and federal governments in Germany which didn't pass a check of the respective constitutional courts. Their conclusion; the government parties should be observed, for they violate the constitution.

Well, both sides have their point and honestly, I'd like to see whether we couldn't do without such domestic political spying.

The response of a Bavarian politician in an interview was worrying. He said

„Auch die Forderung, Deutschland solle aus der Nato austreten, beweist, dass die Beobachtung weiter sinnvoll ist.“

("The demand that Germany should leave the Nato also proves that the observation stays meaningful.")

source: Welt.de

Sorry, this is no reason for suspecting anti-constitutional tendencies at all.

The German constitution allows for the membership in such an alliance, but it doesn't demand membership in NATO and NATO is actually disposable for Germany's national security due to the Lisbon Treaty.

Germany is a sovereign country that can leave NATO if it wishes and that would not be the tiniest bit counter-constitutional.

I understand that a very right wing party's (in the German spectrum; in the U.S. political spectrum they would at most be a moderate Republicans) representative prefers a far left wing party to be labelled as possibly counter-constitutionalist, but said left-wing party has a point: The CSU itself has its own issues with the constitution, especially the federal one. The NATO-related point on the other hand was nothing but an embarrassment for its user.

Sven Ortmann

P.S.: 31 posts in a 31-day month. Don't expect me to keep this pace, I had a few free weeks this month.

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NATO finally remembers its raison d'être

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IN THE heart of NATO’s military headquarters, SHAPE, near the Belgian city of Mons, an unspoken revolution is taking place: planners are thinking about how to defend eastern European members from Russian attack. For years after the cold war, the orthodoxy was that Russia did not pose a threat, so NATO did not need to draw up contingency plans to protect newer members, such as the Baltic states.

www.economist.com/... (July 29th)

edit: Voices from Norway also expressed their concerns regarding Russia a while ago. The theme was basically that they had to prepare for fighting on their own because many, many allied forces were tied up in Iraq or Afghanistan or simply not (well-)prepared (training!) for a quick deployment to Norway. This is not only about the Baltic nations.

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On defensive power

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People seek security in an uncertain, not exactly safe world. The consequences can be self-defeating.

One such example is an arms race. One state is a bit superior to his neighbour - the neighbour can't stand it and strives for superiority as well. Thus they spiral into an arms race, in worst case till they go beyond the sustainable strength. Inevitably one power realises that its strength isn't sustainable - but probably doesn't dare to accept inferiority. The result may be a war - the attempt to exploit a fleeting moment of unsustainable superiority that promises a better end than inferiority.

The situation in 1912-1914 and especially after the first mobilizations in 1914 was similar.

A theoretical way out is to build up military strength that's not of use in strategic offence. This way one power could be at strength "200" if defending itself and "100" if it's an aggressor - with a similar neighbour. Neither power would need to fear inferiority in war and no arms race would be necessary to feel safe.

Fortifications used to provide exactly this; military utility in strategic defence that's not directly useful for strategic offence. Permanent fortifications have lost their strategic utility, though. Even the fortifications along the Korean border don't come close.

Medieval fortresses are popular among tourists and generally capture the attention and imagination of people. These visitors don't reall understand how bad it really was when fortifications lost their strategic relevance.

Burg Hochosterwitz, photo: Johann Jaritz

There's a general problem on the tactical level that makes it difficult to buy exclusively "defensive" weapons (even anti-tank missiles have offensive uses!) for modern ground warfare: Operational defence neccessitates offensive actions on the tactical level. In fact, even stationary defensive concepts don't work without tactical counter-attacks.

Battlefield air defences are probably the only exclusively defensive combat component of ground forces and even they are of greater use during mobile (potentially offensive) operations than during static phases (= never offensive).

A competent operational defence with mobile forces is usually offensive on the tactical level, too: It's mostly about giving some ground in exchange for a good opportunity to counter-attack.

The power of mobile combined arms operations disqualifies the concept of "slow" (and therefore not much "offensive") ground forces such as infantry-centric forces. A total defence concept is not worth its budget if it cannot withstand a smaller and balanced offensive concept.

Finally, strategic defence is rarely exclusively defensive and successful at once. Successful examples that came close to total defence depended very much on geographic obstacles.

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For clarification; defence is supposed to be the superior form of combat on the tactical level, but only with an at least similar degree of combat readiness. Real warfare tends to be tricky in this regard.

Defence is strong, but it's not decisive. History knows many example of two forces of about equal total strength clashing and the defensive one lost. This tragedy has hit many army commanders on the field of battle and modern European warfare had also several extremely impressive examples.

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The only realm where a total defence concept seems to have the potential of success is the political level. The invention of defensive alliances (where members are not supposed to support an aggression of an ally) was ground-breaking.

The Cold War has taught us that this doesn't suffice to avert wasteful arms races. The problem was that NATO was perceived as one bloc by the Kremlin.

The Kremlin did indeed believe that all important NATO members would participate in a hypothetical aggression, even though they would not have been legally obliged to.

The post-Cold War NATO shows an even worse side-effect: Bored by the peace and relative lack of tensions among members, their attention became focused outward on minimal to ridiculously marginal problems. The defensive alliance became quite extrovert and asserted the right to keep the neighbourhood (not jsut its members) safe.

A focus on tactical to strategic defence was and is enticing for national security planners who want to make do with an affordable or even small budget. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be the right technology to make it work.

The good thing about all this is of course that we Europeans are productive enough to afford a degree of military superiority over our neighbours that discourages even the attempt of an arms race against us. This strategy for preserving peace and providing security does of course only work if your power/alliance can sustain a vastly greater military might.

Asia might not be able to rely on this concept. It might instead depend on geographical barriers (Himalaya, Pacific Ocean). The defensive alliance concept could help Asia as well - but they should avoid NATO's mistake and not appear too united. That is of course one of my rather "twisted" ideas and extremely unlikely to ever gain much ground among pundits ...

Finally, one more remark: The invention of "how to build a defensive army" - be it hardware, tactic or operational art - such an invention would be worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize and easily the greatest thing of the century.

Sven Ortmann

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Defence policy thoughts for (very) small powers

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An acquaintance suggested that I write about the defence of a small country facing a less than very friendly, much larger neighbour.

Most texts here were written because of a spontaneous idea of mine (that may have been old at the time of writing, though). I'm not sure how good a "by request" text may be, but I'll give it a try.

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The first idea is to obviously avoid conflict. The small nation should not only avoid violent conflict; it should also avoid political conflict, maybe even ally with the larger power.

Regrettably, this option is not available in his (Estonian) case.

To seek other, sufficiently powerful, allies is another option. Sadly, even a written alliance treaty may ultimately fail to deter. Nevertheless, such a treaty pretty much ends the political challenge.

Next, the small nation should decide what form of armed resistance it wants to be able to put up. It signed an alliance treaty, after all - and that's a two-way commitment unlike a unilateral guarantee of sovereignty. This means also that even a small ally is supposed to be ready to help others. The minimum commitment would in my opinion be a readiness to deploy rear security troops and troops for handling prisoners of war.

Next, let's think about the military defence strategy and the suitable force structure.

There's a "miniature military" trap; some small armed forces attempt to mimic large ones, with a full set of capabilities ranging from simple infantry to heavy artillery, armoured forces, multi-role fighters, air defences and naval forces.

Israel is probably the only example that really worked well. Many militaries that adopt such a course fail and cannot reach good quality and readiness.

A tailored approach to national defence - coupled with some thought about the potential contribution to alliance defence elsewhere - looks more promising.

The defence of a very small alliance member against a much superior potential invader is quite a challenge without very suitable terrain and without forward deployed allied forces.

The first problem is the budget. Both its likely small size and the necessity of very efficient spending pose some tough challenges. Compromises are necessary - even compromises that say "no" to certain standard capabilities of bigger militaries.

Cost-efficiency is extremely important and this forces the usage of older and used equipment for most purposes. Only very, very influential key equipment can justify high procurement and operating costs.

Examples of such key equipment could be encrypting jam-resisting radios, capable anti-tank missiles, (very) short range air defence systems and possibly also equipment that's necessary for key actions. The latter could for example be some equipment for the destruction of the tunnel that connects South Ossetia with Russia (in the case of Georgia).

The defence of a given area against numerically superior invaders is a tough job. It's especially tricky if no continuous front line can be established for a lack of forces. Even a fortified front line wouldn't hold indefinitely, though. An army needs no overall numerical superiority in order to achieve a local 3:1 or 6:1 superiority. A breakthrough attempt with such a local superiority tends to lead to mobile warfare (just as the case without a continuous front line).

Success in mechanised mobile warfare requires skills and equipment that's unlikely to be found in small armies. There's nevertheless a temptation to add an armour battalion, regiment or brigade to the army.

The biggest advantage of doing so is probably the training effect for those who're supposed to resist enemy armour.

What could an armour brigade be worth? It adds primarily some offensive striking power, gives some headaches to invasion planners.

Those invasion planners would have much more severe headaches in other scenario planning, though. A single armour Bde isn't exactly a large force even by modern standards. NATO has dozens and even Germany's shrunk army has five active armour and mechanised brigades.

The failure of such a expensive and high profile component of the defender's arm would furthermore risk to break all defenders' morale.

It's reasonable to expect that the potential invader will prepare properly and have at least one very good answer for every obvious challenge.

The not-so-obvious, unpredicted obstacles would have less political deterrence value (not that this would make a difference when you're already allied with great powers), but they would cause unanticipated problems for an invader. It would be a good idea to strengthen the defence with something that poses an unmitigated challenge to the invader. Strengths that he doesn't know about, doesn't understand, cannot counter due to his own restrictions or doesn't want to counter due to arrogance might work.

Let's face it; main battle tanks are the last thing that an invader is not prepared to defeat. The necessary air defences alone could furthermore easily double the costs of the tank force.

Air and naval forces are often a waste of budget money as well. A fighter squadron or fighter wing would not stop an invasion. It might be crushed or stuck in its own base - or be defeated by superior air power in the air. Taiwan's air force gets a good share of their national defence budget, but its position is quite hopeless against the only realistic threat, the mainland Chinese air force.

Navies - well, let's recall the utterly irrelevant role played by the Polish navy in September of 1939. Navies are sometimes mere toy ship collections. Some nations really should limit themselves to simply blocking their harbours with some demolition experts in order to prevent their usage by the enemy.

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A quite fine example of a successful defence against a powerful neighbour is the Vietnamese defence against the Red Chinese punitive invasion in 1979. Vietnam - then unified only for a few years - had decided to put an end to the excesses and border violations of the crazy Red Khmer and sent its field army into Cambodia. The PR China was not amused and invaded Vietnam. This invasion got stuck quickly even though it faced only second-rate defence forces.

Invasión de China sobre Vietnam, 1978 - 1979

(Fuente: Nam, Crónica de la guerra de Vietnam)

The Vietnamese did not use high-tech tools, expensive weapons, much ammunition and as far as I know they did not desperately open dams to flood the terrain.

They had instead a kind of militia defence with many local defence networks (including underground networks) and a partially war-experienced light infantry force. The Chinese army on the other hand stumbled in part because of incompetence and previously unknown training deficiencies.

I don't want to suppose that this kind of defence would work in many or most cases world-wide, of course.

Well, I'm not exactly an expert on this particular conflict, but I'd suggest to small army planners to look more closely at it.

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It could also make sense to look at the bigger picture. I consider Estonia to be indefensible against a Russian invasion if the latter is well-prepared. Russia would most likely not want to annex only Estonia, though. A complete grab of the three Baltic countries is a more likely scenario. Estonian defence planners could therefore ask themselves how to spoil such a bigger invasion instead of a small invasion of only their country. (No matter how unlikely the scenarios are; preparing is what they get paid for, after all.)

larger map

Time would be a critical component of any such invasion plan. They would need to create a strong signal that discourages invasion planners by indicating that a quick invasion is too difficult.

This might lead to consider the defence of the Southern neighbour and ally Latvia instead of the own defence. This may sound strange, but waging a war abroad instead of at home does make sense. The French learned this thoroughly during the first World War.

An Estonian readiness to defend Riga (the Latvian capital and traffic node) could improve its own national security more than greater efforts to secure its own border and capital. Just food for thought.

The speed of an invasion could also be hampered by small and large landscape-shaping and infrastructure projects. The terrain can be shaped to be more of a problem to an invader (although trees grow slowly, for example) and the road network could be modified to be more easily blocked along possible invasion routes.

Settlement projects could be located with the creation of defensible closed terrain along invasion routes in mind.

Intra-alliance politics could also be important. NATO could invest in much better road connections between the Baltic states and Poland (to enable a quicker reinforcement and thus cut the invader's time table even more).

The richer, bigger allies could also subsidise Baltic armies in order to create army strengths way beyond the capability of the small countries themselves. That's certainly cheaper than forward deployment of allied brigades.

I do usually prefer to think about peer, 1-on-1 conflicts because these provide the kind of ceteris paribus scenario that allows for rather clear thinking about how to gain advantages purely by military skill.

Nevertheless, the defence policy problems of small alliance partners or even non-allied, isolated countries offer much food for thought as well. It's a much more refreshing case than the budget-busting high technology orgy fantasies that often pass as military thought in the Western World.

There's the case of indefensible nations, though. These nations depend on others and no military skill will ever change that.

Sven Ortmann
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The military spending free riding discussion

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There's again a public discussion about whether allies of the U.S. have a free ride on its military spending. Many comments and contributions in this discussion are charged with faulty logic, ignorance, disinformation, prejudices, domestic partisanship or emotions.

One example of this discussion is here.

Bigger graphic file here. Hat tip to P.a.p.-Blog.

I think the "answers" in this decades-old discussion can be grouped like this:

(1) Yes, they do. They should spend more.

(2) Yes, they do. The U.S. should spend less.

(3) Yes, they do. It's what the U.S. wants; be ahead of all other's military capabilities.

(4) No, they don't. It's no free ride if you pay billions as well.

(5) The greater U.S. expenses are due to its need for greater logistical and forced entry capabilities.

(6) No, the Europeans don't, for there's no problematic threat to them in sight.

(7) It depends. About which ally are we speaking?

Now I'd like to comment on these generic answers:

(1) Yes, they do. They should spend more.

What for should Germany spend more on the military, for example? It could modernise its military a bit quicker, that would feel better for military fans - and few else. There's no present threat we'd need to build our military up against. Equipment shortcomings are more a problem of suboptimal procurement than caused by budget limitations.

The answer may be correct in regard to Japan and Taiwan, but I suspect that Taiwan simply has a different grand strategy than an utterly hopeless arms race with mainland China.

(2) Yes, they do. The U.S. should spend less.

The "Yes, they do" part suffers from the same problem as (1). The "spend less" part makes sense, but it depends of course on the preferences of the U.S. electorate.

(3) Yes, they do. It's what the U.S. wants; be ahead of all other's military capabilities.

Again, same problem as (1) with the "Yes, they do" part. The later part is a reasonable attempt of an explanation in my opinion.

(4) No, they don't. It's no free ride if you pay billions as well.

It's a reasonable perspective, but it doesn't really answer what the critics mean; the different efforts in %GDP.

(5) The greater U.S. expenses are due to its need for greater logistical and forced entry capabilities.

This is again a reasonable explanation for a significant part of the difference in military spending. Let's again take Germany as example; there's simply no reason why we should have a forced entry Marine Corps and a full-fledged amphibious fleet or strategic sea-lift ships. There was a discussion about one amphibious landing ship (enough for a battalion of ground troops) in the 90's and the idea was dismissed.

(6) No, the Europeans don't, for there's no problematic threat to them in sight.

This is a major part of my answer to the question as well. See my explanation in (1).

(7) It depends. About which ally are we speaking?

That's a smart answer - and apparently too smart for many participants of the discussion.

South Korea faces a clear threat and has a strong military (the U.S. forces in South Korea are very small by comparison). It's lacking a modern fighter force to face the PRC's air power, but they have no chance to change this anyway because of their much smaller economy.

Taiwan has a quite 'suboptimal' army and seems to orient its military spending at the scenario of a military air/sea blockade by the mainland Chinese.

Japan could clearly spend more on its military and shape up, especially back in the 90's when it was pouring fortunes into stimulus projects anyway. Japan is on the other hand not in serious conflict with any threat country and might be well-served by a neutrality policy with a defensive military strategy.

The European allies could overpower both the Russian threat and the Arab threat at once. There's no real need for any U.S. military strength for the defence of Europe. It has two nuclear powers, guaranteed air dominance based on European air forces alone, vastly superior ground forces (due to higher quality) and vastly superior naval power. It takes a huge prejudice or ignorance to think that Europe's defence wouldn't be ensured without an unusually high level of U.S. military spending.

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I've sometimes read the opinion that the Europeans would spend more if the U.S. spent less. The opposite may be true.

Some of the European army modernisation efforts are aimed at interoperability; compatibility of communications equipment. Many other costly projects are about buying "modern" equipment ; the old equipment has at times only become outdated due to newer U.S. equipment, not due to threat equipment. The Javelin ATGM with its lock-on infra-red sensor is a good example. TOW could still be considered to be modern and on par with all threats if Javelin wasn't introduced. Some European armies have bought Javelin or the similar Israeli Spike missile.

A U.S. military procurement low tide could contrary to some expectations even reduce European military spending.

The military needs of the East Asian partners of the U.S. are being driven by the increasingly more powerful Chinese military. It's reasonable to say that the latter's growth is at least in part due to the threat posed to China by the U.S.. A great power like China cannot be expected to accept naval and air superiority of a distant great power in its coastal waters. The same can be said about air superiority of the same distant great power over China's territory (in the event of conflict). It's only natural that China invested in a large modern fighter force - and this created the fighter procurement shortfalls of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan in the first place.

A U.S. national defence policy that's more about defence and less about force projection would be less threatening to China and would likely reduce, not increase the military strength needs of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan (although not necessarily their budgets).

The "free ride on U.S. military power" discussion suffers from a U.S. bias. It seems that most voices heard are of American origin. The discussion rarely takes into account that allied and befriended nations often have entirely different expectations for their military, different preferences, different strategies, different threat perceptions ... or the ability to think of threats first and military requirements second.

The ability to deploy 10,000 to 20,000 more troops to Afghanistan, an amphibious invasion fleet or an aerial tanker fleet would have little value to most allies. The idea that they're somehow free riding because the U.S. does things (like the Iraq invasion) that its allies don't want to do is quite fallacious at times. The Iraq invasion was against the political will of most allies, for example. So how would they "free ride" on the U.S. capability to pull off such invasions? The U.S. itself doesn't seem to benefit much of its "force projection" capabilities except some extremely nebulous "global stability" or "dominance" advantages.

It's also noteworthy that the U.S. military spending isn't so high because allied countries asked the U.S. to spend more and more. It's that high due to domestic U.S. political culture and habits. Being "strong on defense" is somehow being regarded as a plus for a national level politician. There's no such (assumption of) preference for military power in most other countries. Republicans boast that they're strong on "defense" and democrats don't dare to be labelled "weak on defense", leading for example to military budget increases under the Obama administration for no other apparent reason.

The reaction to a "I'm strong on defense" statement in a European election campaign would look approximately like this: "Huh? What do you mean? Anyway - what will you do to create more jobs?"

Last but not least, there is a desirable free-riding in regard to non-conventional forces. Taiwan, South Korea and Japan could build up nuclear arsenals if they weren't kinda protected by the nuclear-armed great power USA. The latter doesn't want such nuclear proliferation, so this free ride in terms of nuclear forces is entirely intentional.

It's illogical to accuse others of a "free ride" after raising the own expenditures for domestic reasons to almost half of the global expenditures and without being able to point out against which problem the others should spend more.

Show me a threat that Europe cannot meet on its own or together with a hypothetical 2% GNP military spending U.S. ally and I'll agree that we're not pulling our weight (having a "cheap", albeit not "free" ride).

The greatest concern is Europe's ability to ramp up its military power within 2-6 years in response to the emergence of a real major threat. Demands for more expeditionary capabilities and U.S. forces don't help in this regard. Only U.S. R&D on military tech is helpful, and that's a rather inefficient contribution because U.S. military R&D is extremely cost-inefficient.

Sven Ortmann

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