Former Australian Prime Minister says US v China debate is ‘infantile’

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Business leaders need to see beyond the “infantile” debate of a choice between China and the US when mapping Australia’s future economic success, says John Howard, in a view that has won support from senior Obama administration officials.

Yes infantile, and of course business leaders need to see beyond the debate, because, as Howard implies, there is only one choice, and that is North America.

North America, in its pivot towards the Indo-pacific is making sure Australia is making the right choice.

North America has Penetrated northern Australia with an Isolation of Marines and has Subverted the decision making (“Eliminating the dollar in trade will be the focus of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s trip to Beijing next week.“) as the Australians take the promised 1.6 billion dollars needed to orient the US Marines towards an advantage in Australia. That advantage can be seen as a lever against China and Australia’s need to pivot away from American dollars.

Of course the outcome North America is hoping for is a Re-orientation of the Australians towards a more harmonious (Re-harmonise) relationship with the US dollar. This is pretty typical in a PISRR (Penetrate, Isolate, Subvert, Re-orient, and Re-harmonise) movement, as the Obama pivot narrative has become.

The dollar and the financial institutions that are built on the dollar are the main US advantages in the global environment. Not only is there an advantage for a consumer economy, such as the US economy, to be able to command goods in their own dollars, but the dollar is still  tied to the dominant military in the region, the US military. Once China and Australia begin dealing in the Chinese currency, I am sure the Chinese will want to replace the security of the US military with their own.

The dollar’s advantage is especially true in Australia where the Chinese have bought up most of the access to the wealth of Australia, if I am not mistaken, in US dollars.

For Australia to switch to a Chinese currency would be devastating to the US economy.

Like the drug-pusher making the first one free to assure a steady market for his supplies, the US has given China a good deal on those dollars they used to buy access to Australian wealth, with the hope that the Australians will continue to use dollars.

By threatening to cut the supply off, Australia has declared war against the biggest  pusher of US dollars, Wall Street. Lucky for Wall Street they have their own military, ha!

As all war is about economic considerations, and fought by people with little economic considerations, it is not surprising to me that there is much “infantile” debate going on.

via Former Australian Prime Minister says US v China debate is ‘infantile’ | China Daily Mail.

The Missing Operational Level

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CAAT and Red Team

ISAF has a Counter Insurgency Assistance and Advisory Team (CAAT) as an in-theater think tank about the conduct of COIN. This CAAT could provide the vital link between the conduct of the campaign and the appropriate theory and doctrine behind COIN, in order to point out the lack of a cohesive operational plan. Instead, the CAAT conducts courses for low level coalition force commanders in COIN tactics, as noted above. This is no doubt influenced by the conclusion that COIN, in its current conception, is only a tactic, lacking an operational aspect. CAAT thus becomes a lessons learned and teaching center for tactical level COIN.

The red team, of which one is attached to IJC, analyzes operational plans in order to identify critical and decisive points, and to point out those where the risk or the consequence is highest. The analysis of the plan is still based on the soundness of the general plan and concept, not questioning the approach as a whole, but rather identifying the points of severe risk. All analysis is based on the premise that assumptions and facts of the original order are correct. The Red Team can thus not alter or suggest changes and flaws in the overall campaign concept, but only point at individual parts of the plan that are associated with risk or grave consequence at failure. This stays well in line with the rest of IJC focus on singular efforts and tactical level operations.

Where the CAAT and the Red Team effectively could have provided a sanity check to the overall concept, or pointing out the lack of cohesion in plan and the lacking overall operational plan, it becomes, rather as the rest of IJC, predominantly focused on individual, isolated efforts.

Not only a “sanity check”, but the gaming between the CAAT and the Red Team (which is really what the above article is talking about) produces a re-orientation of anyone Observing.

The Destruction, caused by the feed-forward of critical and decisive points not Observed by CAAT, by the Red Team, combines with theConstruction, caused by feed-back of the advantage observed by the Red Team, by CAAT’s Action of  re-orienting to that advantage (the D&C in the OODA loop).

As the above narrative in quotes is telling us that there is no reorientation by CAAT in the environment of the game. My guess is that this is not a mistake, but a tactic.

In other words, the Small Wars Journal isn’t explaining a flaw in the plan, but a tactic in the strategy of those Observing the environment of the war.

For whatever the reason, those observing don’t want the CAAT to reorient. This tactic (of limiting the Destruction and Construction in the processing of the OODA loop) is a way of controlling reorientation in the operation of the war.

via The Missing Operational Level | Small Wars Journal.

The Operational Level Of War Does Not Exist

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Armies are destroyed or defeat by tactics. Wars are won and lost by strategy.

Yes but, all strategy is flawed, so to win at war you always need to keep up with the process, i.e. the OODA loop, and change, i.e. Destruction and Construction (D&C in the quantum movement of energy that the OODA loop represents).

I mean at the same time you are relying so heavily on strategy, one needs to be able to look at the energy not available in the system and compare it to the energy available, and decide, “how healthy are you?”

Hannibal couldn’t do it, neither could Napoleon.

Today’s military commanders can do it, because they not only have access to open-source intelligence (OSI) that are able to Observe the flaws in the narrative, but are able to judge what they are doing, because OSI are able to compare the narrative to a specific time/space in the future/past.

via The Operational Level Of War Does Not Exist.

The Economics of the Indo-Pacific Pivot

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As I have said before, all war is about economic considerations and fought by people with few economic consideration.

Much has been said, in our pivot towards the Asian Pacific, about the people with few economic considerations.

We have heard about the saber-rattling of China in the disputed South China Sea and elsewhere.  This saber-rattling doesn’t really seem to be much about economics. Perhaps now is the time we need to talk about the economic considerations in the Pivot.

Basically, economically we are going to do for those nations under our Indo-Pacific pivot what we did for the Middle East. We are going to use our military to uphold the relevancy of the US dollar.

Perhaps the quip used by one of the characters in the movie “Tinker, Tailor,  Soldier,  Spy” can be used to clarify what I mean by “doing” to the Indo-Pacific what we did for the Middle East.

In the movie there was a change of leadership in the “Circus”. The Circus is where  the odd performers of the British secret service get together and put on a show for everyone else in the Service to see. The new Ringleader, to show his knowledge of how things are in the world made the statement that, “you can rent an Arab, but never buy one.”

I don’t know if that statement is true or not, but by literally throwing billions of dollars into the environment of Iraq, after our invasion,  we “rented” thousands of Arabs. (I know the dollars in my wallet are mainly there for me to rent. They never stay in my wallet long enough to actually own.)

In other words, economics is not just about interest (which collecting interest is not popular in most areas of the Middle East) but a strong economy also depends a great deal on whose hard currency runs the show.

While there were many reason made for going to war in Iraq, strategically it was in the US’s interest to make sure “petrol dollars” also meant the US dollar.

As many experts have said, the Iraq war wasn’t about the US grabbing Iraq’s oil. The US doesn’t get its oil from the Middle East. The oil coming out of the Middle East is mostly going to China and other developing nations.

But what is important,economically for the US is that whoever buys oil in the Middle East uses US dollars. The US economy depends on the fact that they do.

With Turkey threatening to join the EU, France heavily into buying oil from Saddam, and rumors of Russia and China making gold the currency for oil, the relevancy of the US dollar was disappearing. I suggest that is no longer true.

While all strategy is flawed, and there is an on-going civil war throughout the Middle East, in the most part the US currency is still “the” currency of the world.

My guess is that the US dollar is the most relevant it has ever been in the Middle East, but the same cannot be said in the Asian Pacific.

http://www.ibtimes.com/sorry-mates-strictly-business-australia-wants-cut-out-us-dollar-trade-china-1161287#

A 1.6 billion infusion of US dollars and an occupation of US Marines may counteract that train of thought.

Offline

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My online activity has been eating into my time, so I have deleted my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts. I have found no willpower to resist engaging online, so I hope this drastic action will help focus my activity locally.

I am in the process of remodeling our home. I have made my wife live in this shack too long, and now that she is retiring, I hope to give her something more worthy for her to retire in.

But to accomplish this task we basically have to move out, and that is what I am up to. We not only have to pack and move our stuff (read here cherished belongings) and put them mostly in storage, but we also need to find temporary living accommodations. So far these temporary living accommodations have gone from building a home on our bare lot next door to erecting a yurt.

I also placed my web site into private, but have decided to open it again to the public for those of you who like to check in every so often.

Beauty sent my a message on LinkedIn, but because my account is closed I can’t reply.

So far everything is good. Will post changing conditions on this web page if I find the time.

The Strategic Advantage in Fighting on Only One Front

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“It is a concern to me, it’s a concern to any veteran, anybody in the military,” Hagel said during his first appearance on Capitol Hill since being confirmed as defense secretary.

I think it is significant that this is the only news I found coming out of Fox News, but maybe I just didn’t look hard enough. I guess Fox couldn’t find anything more important coming out of the House Armed Service’s committee than this one issue, who deserves a medal more, those with or without “skin” in battle.

Taking medals away from someone that actually might have earned them is not something I imagine Fox wants to be behind of. Fox better hope Hagel doesn’t come to the conclusion that someone fighting in a Nintendo environment needs to be reward with this medal, as someone in the Service that Hagel talks about in this quote did. If they do deserve it, then Fox should ask why.

As it is, anyone getting the “Nintendo Medal” with Hagel as the top administrator will deserve it. Fox should figure out why he/she would deserve such a medal, before they get on the wrong side of  the strategy behind the giving out of this medal.

But then Fox is owned by someone that wasn’t, if I understand correctly, born or raised  as a North America. Apparently their owner wants America to follow the Rightwing Conservative principles of another nation, in another hemisphere.

The nation he was or still is a citizen of has gone from calling China a totalitarian nation to aggressor nation, and now an assertive nation. It kinda makes me wonder what the Fox’s owner thinks of his own nation, as their Conservative principles change.

It doesn’t appear that China has changed all that much, at least in structure. The Right is a structure, not a culture, and China doesn’t appear to be changing its structure anytime soon.

It also appears that China’s culture is going to need more time for change. China is a very complex culture in which change doesn’t culturally seem to happen, unless there is a revolution. China’s structure is geared towards stopping revolutions.

But then, Fox’s owner is not a North American. He is Australia by culture, so what would he know about strategy anyway?

I think North American people’s advantage has always been that they think more strategic. After reading “Empire of the Summer Moon, I think strategy has always been the North’s advantage, as it presents itself to the world historically.

To that end, I never really understood the significance of Lincoln’s strategy, of using people from both sides of the aisle to fill some of the executive positions within his administration. That was until I watched this hearing on CSPAN yesterday.

The strategy that Lincoln used has the advantage of using an executive, such as Hagle, from the opposition  positioned as a handle to a lever that pushes against the force of the opposition and the POTUS forces as well. Kinda of a twofer.

In the House yesterday, Hagel not only tore into the Republican Chairman of the House Armed Service Committee, who wanted Hagle to take something like a 100 billion more dollars, but Hagle also tore into the smug Democrat who thought Hagel was a force pushing Democratic issues as well. The Republicans and Democrats both got their asses kicked.

In politics, the enemy isn’t in front of the POTUS, but positions themselves behind the leader. The people infront represent an image of change, as the image of Hagel in front of the POTUS.

Lincoln’s strategy handles those behind the POTUS (today they are called Democrats) as well as those in front of the POTUS (today they are called Republicans). Hagel with Dempsey at his side, tore up the House yesterday and made mincemeat out of all who were in front of him.

I would like to see him do the same in the Senate.

Really? The Republicans want to come out on the side of spending more money at the expense of our civilian society, while at the same time the Democrats want to come out on the side that says spending cut aren’t hurting our military, as our civil society takes a pass on having to make any sacrifices?

All Hagel and Dempsey are asking for is time to reposition our forces. I mean everyone realizes that Iran is in Asia, right?

When falling back to a defencive position, as our resources go bye-bye, there is some advantage to be had in having to defend only one front, and that front should be “pivoting” across the Pacific.

The Pacific is the position our debt is centered in. This center can be called a pivot point. While Boehner has come out in favor of paying our debt, I am not sure the Red States agree with him.

I mean, if they really want to secede from the US, aren’t they independent of the debt? If the Red States what to take advantage of our nukes and not pay back our debt, who’s to stop them, Obama?

Oh, right! If they did secede it wouldn’t be their decision, but that ain’t going to happen now, is it.

via Hagel Decision on ‘Nintendo Medal’ Expected Next Week – Fox News.

With Friends Like These…

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“Over here, China is doing all it can, trying to erect a stage for a six-party talk; over there, Pyongyang is bombing the stage with a nuclear weapon.”

The thing is, China is losing most of the “six-party” players, because Korea has threatened to bomb them.

I mean, sure, MaCarthur got pulled back from using nukes by his president.  I am not sure we can say the same for any other “leader”.

What’s the budget like for Obama, anyway, Mr. Ryan? Is the war going to come down to China and Korea against everyone else, where we have to use nukes? I don’t think so.

China is going to move to the same side as everyone else, and when that happens North Korea will go ballistic, unless it can join with the South.

In that case, now we can handle them. We don’t have to worry about destroying one side with the other.

via With Friends Like These… – By Helen Gao | Foreign Policy.