Doughboys and Drones
It's been a century since the First world War was raging. A century that's been the bloodiest in human history. Losses in The Great War added up to around 18 million at a time when there were under two billion folks on the planet. There are more of us to kill these days - around seven billion - making WWI losses around 70 million dead today. Pretty grim. That immense tragedy started as a giant mistake. Nobody understood what war meant in the age of new technology. Machine guns ate cavalry.
Are we making the same mistakes today?
As we mark the century that has passed since this first modern war occurred, the conflict seems more senseless than ever. It was like a bunch of foppish over-privileged inbred narcissistic Nobles challenged each other to a duel, and then all showed up with five million or so 'seconds.' It was a modern war in the sense that entire nations clashed for the simple reason that they were nations. Previously, only professional career soldiers and mercenaries fought in wars. The British army that defeated Napoleon started at 40,000 and topped out at 250,000. Napoleon never commanded as many as 700,000.
Large numbers, to be sure, but to understand wars of nationalism you have to stick a zero at the back of each figure. Nationalism meant posters of Lord Kitchener pointing at YOU to join the British army. They never wanted the rabble from the streets and pubs before. War was a game and not everyone was invited to play. There was no such thing as 'total war' as we understand it today. After WWII and the Cold War, people generally understand that if the country goes to war against an equal or greater power (not since WWII, but still...), it is total. Food and material goods are going to be rationed for the war effort. Young men will be conscripted to fight and die. The society, in every facet, will be turned immediately to the single purpose of victory.
It's important to understand, too, that WWI was the first great nationalistic war, but it was not ideological. None of the sides were fighting for their particular system of government. Since the primary adversaries were nearly all decrepit empires ruled by monarchs, there weren't a lot of political theories at play. The main outcome of the war - aside from a seven digit figure of unnecessary casualties - was to eliminate feudalism as an organizing principle in Europe.
The Second World War was really a continuation of the First. WWII can be seen as a natural resumption of hostilities after a 20-year hiatus for each side to re-arm. In that time, major government became more representative of the wishes of their people, beyond simple national aspirations. The British, French, and Americans retained their capitalist republics. Germany traded in an artificial empire under the Kaiser for an unsupported democracy, then for the racist genocidal Nazi government they'd been wanting since Bismarck. The Austro-Hungarians fell apart into their more-or-less natural state of being many nations behaving badly toward one another.
And, of course, Russia went from being a backward violent oppressive totalitarian dictatorship under the Czar to a progressive violent oppressive totalitarian dictatorship under the Soviets.
All that took place because the violence of WWI begged for a reason. Why did all those people suffer and die? Was it really because Kaiser Willie didn't want to look like a jerk to the Hapsburgs? Did the Czar not want to hear Emperor Franz-Josef hum "The Coward of The County" when they got together for Emperor-Czar sleepovers? Could a generation of European manhood been tossed into abattoir for absolutely nothing?
Sadly, yes.
But here's the thing: in July 1914 (the month before the tragic hostilities), nobody thought it was an abattoir; most thought it was a simple block of flats.
The graceful movement of brightly uniformed cavalry flowing across the field of honour was the image most thought of when the subject of war came up. The thinking was that in previous (glorious) wars, their chaps took care of what was needed. Even a fiasco like the Crimean War only cost a couple thousand dead. Why should a European war be much different?
Plus, when you build a million-man war machine for the first time, you are inclined to use it. If Wellington (and allies) could beat Napoleon at Waterloo with an army of 118,000 to the French 68,000, war could only get easier when you field 2,000,000 men, right? With the new artillery and machineguns at their disposal, they expected a quick, clean outcome.
And they more or less had a right to. Today, after the century of war we've lived, we know what happens when people line up should-to-shoulder and run at a machinegun nest. But how could they? They had war games, but if it's never happened before, how do you simulate it? You can't account for factors you don't know are factors.
And while there were some examples of the man v. machinegun outcomes in the colonial wars, those factors didn't get through to the incredibly stuffedness of the stuffed shirts in charge of the military forces in 1914. They don't even make shirts like that any more.
So the major European powers were sitting on what should have been a nuclear stand-off. They revelled in their million-man army without understanding that the other guy had a million too. In the same way that nobody could ever win a nuclear war, nobody could possibly 'win' the Great War. There were just different grades of losing. Nuclear war has been deterred from the earliest days of the nuclear age by MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. No first strike could destroy one side but not the other. Any nuclear war is a loss for all sides.
If the decision-makers in 1914 could have been given knowledge of the capabilities of each military on the continent at the time, none would have fought. They all would have realized the impossibility of a long total war. WWI was a MAD war.
Which leads to the question of drones. Today, a handful of decision-makers, mostly in Washington, make daily - hourly, minute-by-minute - decisions about who to kill or not kill. They do this with no oversight, no questions from non-believers. They are the Hapsburg Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria-Hungary, an intelligent octogenarian who two primary advisors constantly lied to him about Serbian attacks on his empire. They got him to approve the quixotic invasion of a Serbian nation which had already agreed to Austrian terms.
What is President Obama approving today? We don't know. A self-styled democracy, in many ways the US is as closed a book as the Hapsburgs or the Romanoff's. We the People don't know how many people are targeted and how many are killed by drones. They are flown in our name but we know nearly nothing about them - and then only by leaks that are savagely prosecuted by the administration.
We're all becoming more used to this type of conflict. We hear about drone 'successes' - the death of unnamed and unnameable "terrorists" ten time zones away. We never hear about failures. We, as the population "protected" by drone activity, have no independent view of drone activity.
Like the power-mad monarchs and republicans who unravelled the lives of 20 million or so human beings, the prosecutors of drone - and commando ("special forces") attacks around the world don't know what they're getting us into.
It was nice for about a decade when the US could fly the hostile skies as the only drone in town. But today? Every industrialized country has drones, and weapons to attach to them. And the less developed countries can afford to buy them. So the world in the foreseeable future will be one in which the skies are filled with expendable intelligent munitions.
Think about it. A drones literally has no 'skin in the game.' There is no threat to sending any number of low-cost drones anywhere to do anything. And now everyone has them.
But why stop at the sky? Certainly, there are lots of smart guided object in orbit. Most of them just look at us. I'm sure there's lots more a smart satellite could do.
What about on the sea or under it? Why put 5,000 sailors on an aircraft carrier when you could run drone strikes from an unmanned barge? Why put 300 sailors in a nuclear sub when the torpedoes can run themselves around the ocean?
The point is not that robots are going to kill us all (they are). The point is that we're playing with a new kind of fire. We're doing things - deadly things - because we can.
What is the endgame of the Drone war? Where does it stop? Because under the current 'rules' that the US more or less follows, there is no point at which we win. Trump says "we don't win anymore" and in this sense he's right. It's not that there's somebody we can't beat militarily. It's that we have no defined place to declare victory. We will continue to indiscriminately blow up bunches of people we can't actually name, using munitions that each cost the annual income of any 10 Yemini villages, until what? Until they love us enough to stop joining ISIS and AQAP?
This approach to war has no logical conclusion, and that should scare the hell out of us. Since we started drone attacks, we've only increased the frequency and ferocity of the strikes. The trend line goes up and up with no downward arch in site. And our chief politicians either ignore it or call for major increases. We perceive it as 'low-intensity warfare' - it's not the British Army going 'over the top.' Sure.
But that's because right now we're the only ones doing it. And I'm not just talking about the drones - what about the Special Forces attacks - in 168 countries world-wide? There are more US troops and Apache attack helicopters going to fight in Iraq today. There is a massive war effort ramping back up using a new generation of weapons and we have zero democratic control over it.
We're in August 1914 again, and we're just as blind.
Are we making the same mistakes today?
As we mark the century that has passed since this first modern war occurred, the conflict seems more senseless than ever. It was like a bunch of foppish over-privileged inbred narcissistic Nobles challenged each other to a duel, and then all showed up with five million or so 'seconds.' It was a modern war in the sense that entire nations clashed for the simple reason that they were nations. Previously, only professional career soldiers and mercenaries fought in wars. The British army that defeated Napoleon started at 40,000 and topped out at 250,000. Napoleon never commanded as many as 700,000.
Large numbers, to be sure, but to understand wars of nationalism you have to stick a zero at the back of each figure. Nationalism meant posters of Lord Kitchener pointing at YOU to join the British army. They never wanted the rabble from the streets and pubs before. War was a game and not everyone was invited to play. There was no such thing as 'total war' as we understand it today. After WWII and the Cold War, people generally understand that if the country goes to war against an equal or greater power (not since WWII, but still...), it is total. Food and material goods are going to be rationed for the war effort. Young men will be conscripted to fight and die. The society, in every facet, will be turned immediately to the single purpose of victory.
It's important to understand, too, that WWI was the first great nationalistic war, but it was not ideological. None of the sides were fighting for their particular system of government. Since the primary adversaries were nearly all decrepit empires ruled by monarchs, there weren't a lot of political theories at play. The main outcome of the war - aside from a seven digit figure of unnecessary casualties - was to eliminate feudalism as an organizing principle in Europe.
The Second World War was really a continuation of the First. WWII can be seen as a natural resumption of hostilities after a 20-year hiatus for each side to re-arm. In that time, major government became more representative of the wishes of their people, beyond simple national aspirations. The British, French, and Americans retained their capitalist republics. Germany traded in an artificial empire under the Kaiser for an unsupported democracy, then for the racist genocidal Nazi government they'd been wanting since Bismarck. The Austro-Hungarians fell apart into their more-or-less natural state of being many nations behaving badly toward one another.
And, of course, Russia went from being a backward violent oppressive totalitarian dictatorship under the Czar to a progressive violent oppressive totalitarian dictatorship under the Soviets.
All that took place because the violence of WWI begged for a reason. Why did all those people suffer and die? Was it really because Kaiser Willie didn't want to look like a jerk to the Hapsburgs? Did the Czar not want to hear Emperor Franz-Josef hum "The Coward of The County" when they got together for Emperor-Czar sleepovers? Could a generation of European manhood been tossed into abattoir for absolutely nothing?
Sadly, yes.
But here's the thing: in July 1914 (the month before the tragic hostilities), nobody thought it was an abattoir; most thought it was a simple block of flats.
The graceful movement of brightly uniformed cavalry flowing across the field of honour was the image most thought of when the subject of war came up. The thinking was that in previous (glorious) wars, their chaps took care of what was needed. Even a fiasco like the Crimean War only cost a couple thousand dead. Why should a European war be much different?
Plus, when you build a million-man war machine for the first time, you are inclined to use it. If Wellington (and allies) could beat Napoleon at Waterloo with an army of 118,000 to the French 68,000, war could only get easier when you field 2,000,000 men, right? With the new artillery and machineguns at their disposal, they expected a quick, clean outcome.
And they more or less had a right to. Today, after the century of war we've lived, we know what happens when people line up should-to-shoulder and run at a machinegun nest. But how could they? They had war games, but if it's never happened before, how do you simulate it? You can't account for factors you don't know are factors.
And while there were some examples of the man v. machinegun outcomes in the colonial wars, those factors didn't get through to the incredibly stuffedness of the stuffed shirts in charge of the military forces in 1914. They don't even make shirts like that any more.
So the major European powers were sitting on what should have been a nuclear stand-off. They revelled in their million-man army without understanding that the other guy had a million too. In the same way that nobody could ever win a nuclear war, nobody could possibly 'win' the Great War. There were just different grades of losing. Nuclear war has been deterred from the earliest days of the nuclear age by MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. No first strike could destroy one side but not the other. Any nuclear war is a loss for all sides.
If the decision-makers in 1914 could have been given knowledge of the capabilities of each military on the continent at the time, none would have fought. They all would have realized the impossibility of a long total war. WWI was a MAD war.
Which leads to the question of drones. Today, a handful of decision-makers, mostly in Washington, make daily - hourly, minute-by-minute - decisions about who to kill or not kill. They do this with no oversight, no questions from non-believers. They are the Hapsburg Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria-Hungary, an intelligent octogenarian who two primary advisors constantly lied to him about Serbian attacks on his empire. They got him to approve the quixotic invasion of a Serbian nation which had already agreed to Austrian terms.
What is President Obama approving today? We don't know. A self-styled democracy, in many ways the US is as closed a book as the Hapsburgs or the Romanoff's. We the People don't know how many people are targeted and how many are killed by drones. They are flown in our name but we know nearly nothing about them - and then only by leaks that are savagely prosecuted by the administration.
We're all becoming more used to this type of conflict. We hear about drone 'successes' - the death of unnamed and unnameable "terrorists" ten time zones away. We never hear about failures. We, as the population "protected" by drone activity, have no independent view of drone activity.
Like the power-mad monarchs and republicans who unravelled the lives of 20 million or so human beings, the prosecutors of drone - and commando ("special forces") attacks around the world don't know what they're getting us into.
It was nice for about a decade when the US could fly the hostile skies as the only drone in town. But today? Every industrialized country has drones, and weapons to attach to them. And the less developed countries can afford to buy them. So the world in the foreseeable future will be one in which the skies are filled with expendable intelligent munitions.
Think about it. A drones literally has no 'skin in the game.' There is no threat to sending any number of low-cost drones anywhere to do anything. And now everyone has them.
But why stop at the sky? Certainly, there are lots of smart guided object in orbit. Most of them just look at us. I'm sure there's lots more a smart satellite could do.
What about on the sea or under it? Why put 5,000 sailors on an aircraft carrier when you could run drone strikes from an unmanned barge? Why put 300 sailors in a nuclear sub when the torpedoes can run themselves around the ocean?
The point is not that robots are going to kill us all (they are). The point is that we're playing with a new kind of fire. We're doing things - deadly things - because we can.
What is the endgame of the Drone war? Where does it stop? Because under the current 'rules' that the US more or less follows, there is no point at which we win. Trump says "we don't win anymore" and in this sense he's right. It's not that there's somebody we can't beat militarily. It's that we have no defined place to declare victory. We will continue to indiscriminately blow up bunches of people we can't actually name, using munitions that each cost the annual income of any 10 Yemini villages, until what? Until they love us enough to stop joining ISIS and AQAP?
This approach to war has no logical conclusion, and that should scare the hell out of us. Since we started drone attacks, we've only increased the frequency and ferocity of the strikes. The trend line goes up and up with no downward arch in site. And our chief politicians either ignore it or call for major increases. We perceive it as 'low-intensity warfare' - it's not the British Army going 'over the top.' Sure.
But that's because right now we're the only ones doing it. And I'm not just talking about the drones - what about the Special Forces attacks - in 168 countries world-wide? There are more US troops and Apache attack helicopters going to fight in Iraq today. There is a massive war effort ramping back up using a new generation of weapons and we have zero democratic control over it.
We're in August 1914 again, and we're just as blind.
posted by fiduciary at 3:05 PM
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