Kinetic War Roundup 3/25/23

As opposed to the monetary war.

The big story today is in Syria, where forces presumably supporting the Syrian government have launched strikes against US forces engaged in looting Syria’s oil fields. Remember how this all started? Something about an “Arab Spring”, I think. It turned out that meant something like, the US armed and trained some pretty nasty terrorists to overthrow governments that we didn’t like. Spreading “peace”, which means something very like “humanitarian crises”. The Syrian government had different ideas and, with a little help from some friends (Iran, Hezbollah, Russia), gamely fought back. And won. The US coalition has largely collapsed and has mostly come to terms with the Assad government—Turkey is the last holdout, but is coming to terms through talks mediated by Russia. US forces entered Syria to prevent the complete collapse of that coalition, but that position is increasingly isolated with Iran and Saudi Arabia reconciling, while Russian diplomacy goes from strength to strength in the region.

So why are US troops in Syria? The US is never going to say it’s to loot the country. Instead we’re asked to believe this:

In separate statement on Thursday's events, US Central Command said, "Our troops remain in Syria to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS, which benefits the security and stability of not only Syria, but the entire region." 

So we’re in Syria to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS—which we armed and trained—and to make Syria stable. Makes sense—or, not. What’s our problem with the Syrian government accomplishing that, and why do we insist on occupying parts of a country that demands that we leave? Here’s an alternative view for the US presence:

Scott Horton @scotthortonshow

@missanarkissed To keep the wheat and oil out of the hands of the government and its allies. Oh, I mean protect our allies the Kurds from our allies the Turks and fight ISIS and their enemies, Iran.

Got that?

You can read about what little is actually known about the fighting around the US base—which appears to be heavier than previous attacks—at Zerohedge:

Iran-Backed & US Occupation Forces Currently Battling In Eastern Syria, Reports Of Casualties

Here’s one aspect that I found particularly interesting:

Two U.S. officials said the main air defense system at the base was “not fully operational” at the time, raising questions about whether the attackers had detected that vulnerability and exploited it, or just happened to send the drone at that time, according to people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.

The changing regional dynamics made this inevitable because the US bases in Syria are increasingly isolated and vulnerable as the weaponry used to target them becomes more sophisticated—with the help of Russian intelligence. Simplicius the Thinker pointed this out last night:

On the other hand, Russia continues to respond asymmetrically to these provocations [over the Black Sea]. In March, the US claims that Russia ‘violated their airspace’ by directly overflying US bases in Syria on almost every single day of the month:

So it seems the Russians know a thing or two about proxy wars. Worse could be yet to come, as Andrei Martyanov maintains:

this event is a great testament to a military fallacy of the American bases around the world, because not only they will continue to lose the "power projection" value but will continue to increase their value as fat and mostly indefensible targets against modern battlefield delivery systems. Nobody in their own mind would believe that US air defense systems such as Patriot PAC3 can handle a serious salvo of even relatively unsophisticated subsonic means of delivery.

Tom Luongo gets the last word, as this was one of his predictions for 2023:

Tom Luongo (Head Sneetch) @TFL1728

tomluongo.me/2023/01/07/goa… /2

Finally, two notes relating to Simplicius the Thinker’s most recent post, linked above.

There’s been a fair amount of talk lately about some impending major Ukrainian offensive. I haven’t said anything about it because I’ll believe it when I see it. However, Simplicius addresses the topic and basically debunks it. It appears that much of the talk has been generated by Wagner PMC’s Prigozhin, who enjoys exaggerating at times. Until something solid develops I won’t buy into that. The idea that scores of thousands of troops, hundreds of tanks and many more hundreds of armored vehicles are invisibly prepared to attack seems difficult to believe.

The other note concerns a favorite topic among a certain class of Russians and a certain class of amateur geopoliticians in the West. That topic is the idea that Poland is going to seek a partition of Ukraine, whether by unilaterally invading Western Ukraine or by a negotiated deal with Russia. My view is that this is never going to happen. The reason is simple. The whole rationale for Russia’s SMO is to enforce its demand that NATO should not advance one step further east from its current borders. But for Poland to incorporate Western Ukraine would represent a huge NATO advance eastward of hundreds of miles. For that to happen would represent a defeat of Russia, and Russia will never accept that.

As for all the talk by Polish officials that they are going to develop the largest European NATO armed forces in preparation for combat with Russia, well, “largest” is pretty relative. As matters stand now, the entire Polish military numbers ~164,000. The army currently comprises about 63,000 combat personnel.

To double that size will take years, and will still represent a very small number of combat personnel, relative to the Russian military. Moreover, fielding a modern military is about a lot more than simply acquiring military hardware, weapons systems, planes and tanks. Poland is still way behind the curve with respect to fully integrated combined arms operations and relies on the US to make up for its deficiencies. Poland seems to be putting all its eggs in the basket of indefinite US support. Good luck with that.