Categoría: Ideological Conflicts

THE WAR BETWEEN ISRAEL AND IRAN. An apocalyptic war? First Part.

Introduction.

We have before us, face to face, the two most dangerous and extraordinary rivals that exist on Earth. They are the Jews or Israelites and the Shiite Islamists.

What gives them similarity? Both have a strong religiosity, resistant to anything, which is part of their identity and the essence of their life.

The Jews or Israelites.

The Jews are a small people, who have survived the vicissitudes of History in a truly unique and special way: persecutions, pogroms, genocides, collective exiles, attempts at religious assimilation, collective guilt received, deportations.

According to their ideology, they are the people Chosen by God to guard and carry through History the Plan of Yaweh for Humanity. They hold, treasure the promises of God to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses. This is where their merit, stamp and superiority are consecrated.

The Israelites have deviated from this many times, but Yahweh‘s anger has always been appeased. Among other things, because God needs them to complete his plan for men. Yahweh has been sending his warners, messengers or prophets to correct them, and he has punished them collectively with exiles, famines, nomadism, a sign that it was the people who had turned away from Him.

For the sons of Israel, God is not a Father. This is implausible. God is a “Great and Powerful Creator Lord”, with all the characteristics in superlative. He leads them along his paths, rewards and punishes them. He made them at his image and likeness; but that does not mean that God has eyes, ears, legs and hands. And, He is Loving with all his creatures.

Only Christians see and feel in God a Father, in Jesus a Brother Redeemer and in the Spirit, the Guide and Consoler of their earthly life, gently and serenely.

This belonging gives the Israelites a reassuring security. They are not proselytizers, they do not seek to spread their religion to others, even to their foreign cohabitants. The others do not belong to the people of God and have nothing to do with Salvation. This is the marrow, the central essence and the core of everything.

This gives the Israelites an unprecedented, solid and secure courage in the face of a terrifying Nuclear War. Which Israel, from the start, does not seek, nor desire. They advance in the battles, without worrying about the greater number of enemies, because Jahweh Fights at their Side.

If God wants it will happen and they will be taken by the angels to Jahweh, at the culmination of History.

The Shiite Muslims.

There is a great ideological and practical difference between Sunnism and Shiism.

The latter feels persecuted, because of the dynastic orthodoxies (it defends the rights of the Prophet’s family to lead Islam) and ideological orthodoxies (it admits fewer sources of revelation, limiting the Hadiths, the sayings and deeds of the Prophet, by their origin – who communicated them- and line of transmission), which the Shiites proclaim and defend.

A’isha, the third and most cultured of the Prophet’s wives, would have been a caliph if she were a man, and Ali, cousin, son-in-law, husband of Fatima, the favorite daughter of Mohammed, are the two main and reputable creators of Hadith for Sunnis and Shiites. They begin like this: I saw…; I heard…; I knew… and the successive transmitters are also added. This chain guarantees the traceability of the hadith.

Omar, the second caliph after Abu Bakr, worked to purify and organize the Hadiths and the texts of the Khoran.

The schism of Islam was consolidated on October 10, 680, when the troops of Yazid, the second Umayyad caliph, defeated and killed Hussein Ben Ali, grandson of Mohammed, in the battle of Kerbala, in Iraq. The total number of casualties on both sides in the decisive battle of Kerbala was seventy.

The supporters of Hussein “son of Ali” (that is, Ben Ali, pronounced in English as Bin Ali. And then we call him as we hear his name, Bin Ali), were called in Arabic shi’at Ali, in short, Shi’is.

Everyone knows, from the displays on the news, the rituals of self-flagellation that devout men practice on certain Iraqi Shiite holidays.

A powerful reason for this sense of sorrow and suffering may be the great demographic inferiority of the Shiites. 90% of Muslims are Sunnis, who occupy the Holy Places of Islam and are spread throughout the world. Of the remaining 10%, the vast majority is Shiite, more than 86%, and the rest corresponds to small fractions, such as the Alawites of Syria, the Turkish dervishes. All of the latter are “heresy within the heresy” for Sunni Muslims.

In effect, the Shiites are like an island (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, which are bordering and with a majority only in Iran and Iraq) surrounded on all sides by the ocean of the Sunnis.

(To be continued)

Military and National Intelligence, failures and results.

Introduction and Development.

The intelligence services of large countries are often correct in their opinions and forecasts.

The specific intelligence tasks to which a few modern agents are dedicated usually end with partial or total success.

Complex works with ramifications and developments, which hide an estimable but not certain future, fail miserably. Because of this complex and future peculiarity. And, because the ability to observe and measure a parameter of the human soul is something elusive, doubtful and uncomfortable. Next we will see several specific cases.

The reasons for the divergence of successes between singular cases and the projection into the future (foreseen solution) of complex issues, transcending time, are partly in the difficulty of their conception, in the risk that is run in venturing and in the non contrasted exposure to the commands. Obviously, there is a dialectic here between the concealment carried out and the cognitive and intuitive process of its imagination, development and projection (estimated solution).

Only analysts freed from Scholasticism and field manuals are capable of placing themselves in the free, impartial and lucid mental state or position. To capture anomalous, complex and difficult enemy situations. Since they are paid for results and speed, which are contradictory variables, the luxury of putting an analyst agent in a “quiet position” for an unpredictable, indefinite period of time is not usually acceptable.

The new techniques for detecting, observing and tracking targets should not be underestimated. Based on computers, electronic sensors, Artificial Intelligence. But, the presence of field agents should not be suppressed, but rather supported and increased. Cyber monitoring can specify for our spy the precise area of investigation and study.

BRIEFING OF A FIELD AGENT

The field agent is an infiltrator in a neutral or hostile environment. Able to approach and penetrate the government, business or social media of the rival. And capture relevant, important information in a consistent and sustained manner. The field agent gives a seal of verisimilitude or even reality to the information captured from the enemy.

It is not easy to recruit, train and insert your own field agent. Hence, in an era of haste, superficiality and intellectual complexity, technological means have been favored over field agents for espionage work.

Afghanistan 2021.

We all remember the moments of the change of government in Afghanistan in August 2021.

During almost 20 years of staying there, the United States had spent enormous sums of money on said stay, providing various support to the Afghan State and to choosing, training and equipping the Afghan National Army. The Americans even boasted in their public communications, especially from the Defense Department, that they were making progress in the anti-terrorist fight against the Taliban.

MARINES GUARDING KABUL AIRPORT

This turned out to be like the “Potemkin villages.” That the Russian minister of that name prepared in the path that Tsarina Catherine the Great would follow on a trip. So that her trashy inhabitants would appear happy and shiny as her Imperial Majesty passed by.

As soon as the last American troops had to withdraw, the Afghan soldiers, who also turned out to be shoddy, began to surrender their weapons and escape the feared wrath of the Taliban. US forces were only able to secure a defensive perimeter of the Kabul airport. But, the “friendly Afghans” and their families had to get there to board a flight. Fleeing the tidal wave of the barbarity of the Taliban (scholars of the Koran).

As it had been negotiated with the Taliban to accept control of the airport by Western soldiers for a few days, this was not enough for many «collaborators» of the Westerners (translators, drivers, cleaners, etc.) and their families. Many had to make a painful journey to Pakistan to gain their freedom and their lives.

Vietnam War. American stage,

In the United States, during the Vietnam War, the “Igloo White” program was established, endowed with 1.7 billion US dollars, between 1966 and 1971, for the tasks of collecting information on the North Vietnamese and Vietcong supply routes in South Vietnam. The route started from North Vietnam, entering Laos, near the common border, and was the line of all kinds of supplies for the aforementioned forces, operating in South Vietnam. The route was strewn with devices that simulated a plant and were transmitters of information for US intelligence. They measured 1.2 ms. and their battery lasted 50 days. Many times an unmanned flying object, a drone, was used, which collected information from the ground and transmitted it via television to a distant plane.

A SECTION OF THE HO CHI MINH ROUTE

With the data collected from traffic on the roads, the Americans decided on interdiction bombing actions, carried out by their different aerial devices, including the invisible, inaudible and precise B-52 strategic bombers. In early 1971, data from aerial photos after the bombings, taken from planes flying after the attack formations, allowed analysts to assume that the “truck war” was causing a very severe strain on the industrial capacity of North Vietnamese suppliers (China and the USSR).

Historia Desterrada: La ruta Ho Chi Minh: Eje logístico clave en la Guerra de Vietnam

But, if it was true that so many trucks and equipment were destroyed, how was it possible that the communists maintained the initiative in South Vietnam? On the other hand, where were the tens of thousands of remains of trucks and other materials that literally plagued many of the roads and logistics parks on the Ho Chi Minh Route? Who bothered to remove them?

A more primitive stretch of the Ho Chi Minh Route

Another embarrassing issue was that the total number of vehicles counted by the US aviation as destroyed, exceeded several times the total number of cargo transport vehicles that North Vietnam had, according to Intelligency.

The answer to this essential mystery was soon given by the young American officers (juniors): they were eaten by a monster called the “Great Laotian Truck Eater”; a horrendous scavenger that rose towards dawn and devoured the vehicles destroyed by aviation during the night, after the required photographs for the “wreck count”, the count of debris achieved. Because Americans are very scrupulous with statistics and consider lying a «social sin» that is almost unforgivable for officials.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

AL-ZAWAHIRI, A FANATICAL DOCTOR AT THE COMMAND OF AL-QAEDA

Presentation.

On July 31, 2022, at 06:16 Kabul time, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the well-known visible head of the “The Network», the Sunni Islamic terrorist organization” (al-Qaeda), was eliminated by the US Air Force.

Together with Osama bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, now 71 years old, participated directly in planning and deciding on the «multiple irregular aerial attack» on the United States on 9/11. Less charismatic than Obama, after the latter’s death, al-Zawahiri occupied the effective command of the Network.

In this role, he stood up the attempts by Abu Baker al-Baghdadi to break away from the Network and found the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq. Until some time ago, this last supremacist terrorist organization reached a great extent and power in the lands of Southwest Asia, particularly Iraq and Syria.

Today, the ISSI resists disappearing, and survives as a guerrilla organization in the first stages of the irregular political-military process. Touching his followers in many times and places, the difficult and painful situation defined by Mao Zedong as «wandering insurgents«. Those whose bases are not secure, do not offer rest and shelter to the irregulars and, when they are known, offer the military men an affordable, hard and ideal target.

Ayman al-Zawahiri‘s command was decentralized, strategic, giving lines of action to the different local groups and confirming only important blows.

His radical conversion.

The organization of the Muslim Brothers, one of the sources of the modern islamist salafist, has suffered throughout the 85 years lived from his foundation by Hassan al-Banna, all kinds of vicissitudes, worries and pursuit. He and his followers tried to create an Islamic network, which was using as counterweight nothing less than to the Egyptian State. In 1948, counting the Brothers with near 3 million members and active sympathizers, began a State pursuit against them. Al-Banna died in a street attempt at the beginning of 1949, transforming he in the «Martyr Imam» for the Muslim Brothers. The live and path of the confraternity has hidden itself of the alien sights during long and intermittent periods. One of the politicians tics or mantras of the Brotherhood says: «Nasser killed us, Sadat pardoned us, Mubarak silenced us». And now they can add «Abdul Fatah al-Sisi disillusioned us».

The ideology, the organization and his action, cohesion their community in a «unit of general action» motivated, effective and resistant. That is of very difficult repetition or reply for the laymen, the not communist atheists, the democrats and other potential enemies.

The islamists not recognize neither the states, nor the nations. Nor, certainly, they do not even accept the liberal western democracy. Only Allah is Legislator of the men. The phrase used by the Western Chanceries, asking for a «Democratic legitimization of the elect president Mohamed Mursi» is really a blasphemy for them. Theocracy and democracy are essentially excluded and are actively rejected in the fundamentalist Islamic ideas. The Islam does not admit a political modernity, far from it a religious one. Everything is already legislated and given to the men, through Mohamed, for his personal and in the Believers Community or Umma «submissive fulfillment«. The Egyptian Liberty and Justice party, which won the presidential elections, is a political «appearance«, as food for the international gallery, created by the Muslim Brothers, using the infidels political jargon.

As a college student, al-Zawahiri joined the Muslim Brotherhood. After the deadly attack on Egyptian President Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat, carried out by a group of soldiers during a parade on October 6, 1981, the Muslim Brothers were blamed for their participation in the assassination plot. Al-Zawahiri was arrested and spent several years in jail, during which he suffered beatings and torture. This radicalized his views on the need for practical and violent action to achieve the liberation and purification of Muslims from Western influences.

The End.

After the fall of Kabul in hands of the Taliban movement in August 2021, al-Zawahiri‘s family moved to the city. Despite the Taliban verbally assuring the Americans that they would not house terrorists on their soil.

Fleeing bloodshed and useless collateral damage, Ayman was attacked at a moment when he was alone on the balcony of his house. To do this, the family behavior and customs were detected and analyzed by the aerial teams of Exploration and Attack Unmanned Aircraft of the U.S., located far beyond the horizon… Probably, his first presence was detected and communicated by a silent collaborator of the security services on enemy land. That thereby ensured his economic future.

At least a couple of Hellfire R9X missiles were launched against Ayman. In the jargon, it is also called flying ginsu, in honor of that Japanese knife.

Once launched by the US drone and within striking distance, the missile arms itself, spreading out 6 large knives around its central axis. With them, it effectively attacks its human target. Its great operational precision was the reason that decided the high commands to use this attacking means in the drones.

Ayman‘s family was unharmed, as were the other residents of the building.

The Tactical or Operational Success. Its Signs. 2nd. Part.

(CONTINUATION)

The Signs of Tactical or Operational Success related to the Physical and Environmental Support:

Land transitability will be neutral or favorable to the operation.

Transitability is the geographical (superficial or spatial) dimension where military actions take place. It is principally framed by the superficial capacity of an area to support certain means or military capacities and their movements. It is completed today in a spatial dimension, by the range of heavy fire and aircrafts.

It has independent and absolute functions, as are the passing of specific points during a period of time, the time it takes to travel the distance between them and the not superficial simultaneity of military means. These refer on the transitability, related to how the Nature and obstacles interact with operations. Transitability also has relative functions that are generally dependent on geography. These are more concretely determined by the availability and quality of roads, railways and fluvial nets (urbanized geography), the climate, the hydrology, the orography, the season and meteorology and the hour of the day (physical geography). These functions change with different national and regional surfaces.

Transitability determines the facility or physical difficulty for rapidly maneuvering and, in consequence, determines the total time of an operation, in the phases of execution through the successive «cycles of action«. Roads and railroad networks are the most suitable physical support to obtain low times of execution in operations or high «tempos». Their transitability characteristics will be their availability in the operations zone, the road surface resistance, the traffic saturation conditions and the “narrow or critical” points existing in the ways networks and their “continuity traveling cuts”.

Roads that support a good advance pace are problematic, as outside of developed countries pave roads are uncommon. More often it is the case that a terrain is untransitable as an operational element and will require units to physically struggle in order to going on. The channels, the rivers, as continuity cuts, constitute another relative conditioner of the transitability of a zone. On one hand, they constitute an almost inevitable restraint of the impulse of maneuver. In effect, in almost any direction that follows an operational route during sufficient Kilometers, it ended up confronting the crossing of a natural or artificial water obstacle. The bridges that surpass them, as part of a road network, not always will exist or be at hand. Given the present amphibious means, the main obstacle to the transit will be offered by the water flows banks. It will be necessary to consider the slope of both banks and the characteristics of resistance, adherence, consistency, etc. of them and of their immediate approach grounds.

Resultado de imagen de MILITAR traveling grounds

One can try to use the superficial dimension, or even the spatial one, to improve transitability in different cases when good conditions do not exist. The first leads to employ a cross country mechanized formation, supported logistically. This was the imagined ideal of strategists and tacticians in the 1930s. On one hand, the best all-field or tracked vehicle moves better along a highway than across a field. For a given useful load weight, all-field or tracked vehicles have more tare than wheels vehicles. For total given weights, vehicles on tracks and on wheels that advance cross country have greater wears, more breakdowns and more fuel consumption than those that travel on highways.

Resultado de imagen de MILITAR river fording

This raises a double economic and logistic inconvenience, whose solution is very difficult. For this reason, it is ideal to operate along steady surfaces and using the railroad up to a bit more than one hundred kilometers to the front or the enemy. And to fight cross-country, taking advantage of shooting cover sectors, concealment and so on. Using the tactical characteristics of the field. Specially, rolling grounds that favor the mechanized fighting.

The spatial dimension also encompasses the impossibility, like that of saturated ground roads, of the simultaneous arrival of numerous aircraft at a given point. Or the airships fly in row, arriving at the same time, but laterally extended or they go in line to unload or arrive successively in a «single» operations point. The helicopters give more concentrated results than those of the airplanes, but these have more lifting and ordnance capacity.

Resultado de imagen de Military airborne falling

The effects of climate, season, hour, and hemisphere are superposed on these conditions, worsening or mitigating them. Orography affects transitability when it make difficult the construction of a road layout and when it increases the slope that military marches must cross. The cross-sectional passing of “height lines” can become impassable, except by defiles or mountain ports. Which create bottlenecks that collapse the maneuver impulse and prevent the deployments of the units that cross them. Fights at heights have a generic “gravity center” in order to control these passages.

Resultado de imagen de urban warfare city A RESOLUTE ENEMY  IS STILL WAITING YOU OVER THERE…

When “height gradient” diminishes there exists a less evident, but more frequent and very important factor, which is the «drop». “Drop» refers to height variations of a few meters up to dozens of meters in relation to the surroundings. It appears in cross-country running, in areas of more or less waviness, in broken areas and even in roadways sections. It has also an expression in urban zones, both residential and industrial. As well as buildings, houses and facilities form «relative concealing heights«. These generate protection and danger, opportunities and risks. And are the urban expression of the «drop». The forest is a special variant of this case, with obstacles and shorts views for both enemy forces.

Urbanized or industrial zones shape numerous parallel, transverse and interweaving «drop» lines. They channel all military effort in the mentioned zones, generating innumerable «interfaces of action» with the enemy. That are frequently determined under surprise conditions. These zones definitively paralyze the impulse of the units and generate attrition (in military means) and wear (in logistical terms) disproportionate to the results obtainable by their occupation.

THE END.

Reflections about Spain and Catalonia.

Introduction.

The nation is one and unique by essence. And it arises from the commitment of the citizens to live in community. And it is kept and preserves in the defense of this union, which is loved, against his enemies of inside and outside. A nation is provided with one social politics selfconsciousness. And collaborate to create and support it the history, the tradition and the customs, and the own language and moral sense. And contribute secondly to it the own ethnia and the territory, that not always exist, specially the first one. This way, the territory of a country is not a nation. Nor it is not the inarticulate population of a territory under an only one government.

Resultado de imagen de nacion fuerte «The Nation is stronger with the unity of his sons and the members of the families than by the military power».

Though the territory that occupies is necessary to give a nation the possibility of supporting a social administrative structure, that guarantees the exercise of his sovereignty. In spite of the «civilized» current times, all we know the problems and the discomforts that suffers the Kurdish people, deprived of a national own territory and «distributed» between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. One of the essential problems of the Kurds is that they form a part of despotic countries and, even, ethnically exclusive. This way, in these countries, they are considered to be citizens of secondclass, different, and, even, potentially dangerous, on having been always national minorities. But, endowed with a strong social cultural identity, which prevents his absorption by the rest of the national populations to whom they belong.

In a nation fit several not antagonists ethnias. Because his base is the life together conviviality, the respect and the rights and duties for all. And so long as they love this «harmonic set» of persons and his well-being, peace and jointly progress destinies.

When the nation is loved by his components and there exists in them the desire to serve and defend her in community, the concept of the motherland appears. Both ideas are interrelated essentially. And, the absence of the patriotism or the shame to practise it by members of a «social political community», leads to the defenselessness and the dismemberment of his nation, in major or minor degree. Being formed then «groups of associate individuals» with dissolvent ideas and interests of the naional group.

Resultado de imagen de fuerzas armadas símbolo patriotismo GUARANTOR OF THE UNITY AND SYMBOL OF THE PATRIOTISM.

It is not of surprising that the Defense Forces of a nation are, as institutions and in his members, which hoist, teach and practise the patriotism, as one of his essential virtues. Because it is possible only to die for what is loved. The Defense Forces of a nation are the specialized set of the «nationals or patriots» for the belligerent and complete Defense of his «national country«.

The common historical flow of live in unity, progress and peace.

In the XIVth and XVth century, the Castilian turns into the language of the State, entering in struggle with the educated Latin, to which it displaces. The «toledan dialect» will contribute the linguistic procedure to the Castilian. The Castilian prose spreads and puts the finished touches in the extensive literature of the High Middle Age. The advance of the Reconquest in the whole Andalusian territory, with his 4 small kingdoms of culture and Islamic religion, drived by the «unevenness in the centrifugal impulse» of the Christians, incorporated numerous words of Arabic root into the Castilian. Following a process of enrichment and idiomatic definition, progressive and extensive, similar to the already seen in previous stages. There appears Antonio Nebrija’s Grammar, which defines the new Spanish language.

During the 16th century, the Castilian, which happens to be the Spanish, turns into universal language. The Spanish is taking the role of literary language of the whole Spanish nation. Aragon, Valencia, Majorca, Catalonia and Navarre (incorporated in Castile in 1512), will keep an administrative autonomies tied to the Crown of Spain. The Spanish presence in Europe, for his character of great world power, and his expansion in the Americas, take to the incorporation in the Spanish of numerous European and indigenous words.In this final epoch, the Spanish acquires the essential of his current structure.

Reconstrucción del primer estandarte de España. /Hugo Vázquez Bravo y Ramón Vega Piniella. A reconstruction of the first known Spanish national flag carried by Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, the Great Captain, in Naples.

In this multiethnic and polycultural Nation that emerges with an immense vital force, all the Hispanic peoples made themselves big. In the 16th century all the inhabitants wanted to belong and to follow the paths of the Spains. Nation that arose in the desire of the royal subjects to coexist in her. And that was kept with his commitment to defend her in his concept and integrity.

There were not easy for Catalonia and Spain the times of Philip IV and the Count Duke of Olivares, Gaspar of Guzman, the favorite minister of the king from 1621. This had proposed to reform and stimulate the idea of Spain in the whole Kingdom and to recreate the Empire of Philip II. Spain had an enormous and long task ahead. But the capacities and the means were not at the needed height.

Philip IV was an apathetic and pusillanumous person. The program hit with a conformist and slow bureaucracy, called to realize it, and with the national oligarchies, called to follow it. Spain had wars and armed conflicts in all the Western Europe: in Germany, France, the Netherlands or Flanders, Italy and in the east and west parts of Spain. The soldiers, not always with good controls, were not fighting well. The Thirty Years War was continuing and in France, the cardinal Richelieu was arising as intelligent, tough and shrewd enemy of Spain.

The revolts of 1640 in Catalonia and Portugal (in December, the uprising of his oligarchies led to his final separation of Spain) were disastrous for the plans of Olivares. The revolt and Catalan secession or «war of the peasants» extended until 1652. It developed with the reforms of the Count Duke, to distribute and confirm the efforts of the peninsular regions in favor of the common interest. Till then, Castile had paid in a disproportionate way the expenses of the external commitments of the Habsburgs. The immediate reason of the rejection to these plans was that the Catalan oligarchy saw them as a threat to his historical freedoms. That actually were an administrative privileges of the medioevo, centred on that they forbid the Catalan troops to serve out of the Principality.

Resultado de imagen de 1640 rebelión Cataluña The beginning of the «Peasants Revolt» on the Corpus Day.

The frictions between the population and the exiguous forces quartered in Barcelona took to the raising of June, 7 (day of the Corpus Christi), that was generalized and extended by the whole Catalonia. This derived in a revolution of the poor and peasants against the nobles and the rich ones or Catalan oligarchy. Soon, this one recovered part of the control and asked for help and protection to France. Richelieu did not lose the opportunity to debilitate Spain and supported the seditious.

But, the Frenchmen, with his protectorate, made themselves immediately more onerous and greedy for the Catalans that Spain. For example, flooding the region of French highly rival products. This way, the Catalan oligarchy, which without a few clear and pondered aims, proposed to damage the Spanish Empire, harmed, with his senseless action and without the minor consideration, the Catalan people and his Principality. The cooling of the shock with France and the end of the Thirty Years War, allowed to send a Hispanic army who occupied easily Barcelona, in 1651.

In the Succession War of Spain of 1714, Catalonia fighting close to Spain, supported the Habsburg candidate, who was the dynastic line of succession. If was reigning the Borbon, of the royal French dynasty, a new dynasty was accepted and imposed in the royal Spanish throne. This would join us to France for temporal «family agreements», which not always would be favorable or neutral for the Spanish nation. We have the case of Carlos III, with very useful prime ministers for the Kingdom and with a personal behavior that, for discreet, was good. Which, before, when he was king of Naples, was humiliated by the Royal Navy. And that immediately of ascending to the throne, established a family agreement with France, which took us in 1763 to an unnecessary and bad war with England.

Gained the civil war by Philip V, whose troops had access by our ground borders, Catalonia was occupied by his troops. But, again, Catalonia received the treatment that his importance was deserving in the Spanish nation. And, prompt, the Decrees of New Plant and other administrative dispositions were favoring it in the flow of life of the Hispanic peoples.

Resultado de imagen de 1714 Cataluña lucha contra Borbones Catalonia fights in 1714 for the dynastic continuity in Spain.

The Fathers of the Motherland are not his owners.

To believe themselves is a common perception of the despots and «modern national liberators«. It has his origin in the conduct of the satraps and absolute ancient monarches. And it is reinforced furthermore when, as in the Islam, the religion consolidates and sustains also the political power that they exercise.

The dynastic corruption of the Pujol family, implicitly accepted by his followers and extras, for being the visible promoter of the modern «Catalan sovereignty», is one of the parasitic ivies that took possesion of the Catalan public moneys.

The commissions of even more than the famous 3% indicated by Pascual Maragall in the Parlament, gathered methodically by Convergence and Union, the party of the Catalan bourgeoises, has managed to cover with mud the Palace of the Lyceum. Party that was dissolved in 2016, with his impeded headquarters, and it re-turned in the PdeCat.

And a provincial institution of State condition, as is the Deputation of Barcelona, destined to help in his management the small municipalities with minor structures, turned aside around 12 million Euros, assigned by the National budget, to the members of the PdeCat party. Of which, the last 2 millions were destined to the aims of the international cooperation and development (operation Estela of the Spanish National Police, on May 25).

(TO BE CONTINUED)

The Tactical or Operational Military Success. Its Signs.

Introduction.

It is not a question of defining how to act, thing that already we try to do in other published articles or that they will be in a future. But that, perceiving in the operations development certain facts, guidelines or behaviors of the conflicting parts and of the objective conditions (of the ground, etc.), we will be able to diagnose a very probable forecast for the culmination of those operations.

This way, we will be able to trust in and to rest on these favorable forecasts. And to reinforce mental and physically our signs of the Tactical and Operational Military Success. To control better the fears, worries, assignments of the scanty forces, uncertainties, endless lacks, unexpected bad understanding, recoverable frustrations and the partial crises. Which will arise inevitably during the operations development.

The main Signs of the Tactical or Operational Military Success to look for:

The Signs of Tactical or Operational Success about Us:

The operational military plans will be simple, flexible and with capacities of alternative developments. They must be capable of adjusting to the unforeseen and the contingencies. And endlessly incorporating intelligence updates about the intentions and possibilities of the enemy and ground reconnaissance. This is specially important in maneuver operations.

There will exist an operational own initiative, that will allow us to develop our plans. Always using us the activity, even in the defense. And keeping endlessly the action freedom and given priority to its recovery, in case of its loss.

The own exploration and intelligence are fundamental, the more creative and risky is the operation to realizing. Reciprocally, the enemy exploration and his perceptions will be pushed back and/or be disturbed systematically. Will be included in this repulse and mixtify, the security of the units, false positions, advanced detachments and combat patrols, fogs and smokes, the combat for the wireless communications, etc.

The knowledge of the enemy and his actions will be always incomplete and imperfect. And will be extended with the evolution of the situation in relation to him. They will not be known temporarily, even positions, movements, combat readiness, deployments or fundamental units. But not those that affect us direct and tactically in our operation under way. On those we will place the gravity center of our exploration. That will be even “in force” against certain enemy hard objectives.

The own combat capacity for the propose operation will be sufficient and will be equipped, distributed and protected. Considering the friction and inevitable minor errors, derivatives of our own military activity in the hyperfunctional chaotic environment, and the necessary reserves. Our security will inexorably be kept during the operation and in the consolidation of occupied terrain. And specially defending, with combat detachments, the advance sectors of our “mobile groups” operating in the enemy operational rear.

Decisions on which tactical battle areas will be engaged, will consider: accessibility (whether they offer neutral or favorable transitability); vulnerability, whether one’s forces can apply sufficient combat capacity against an enemy, in an area that had not attracted much of his attention; transcendent, the action will produce the decision or will contribute decisively to her and the tactical result will have operational efficiency.

One example is the operational counterattack of the German Armies Group Don of Marshal Von Manstein. That was carried out between February and March of 1943 in the Donbass river basin and around the city of Kharkov. Let us remember the development of this counterattack, its tactical combats and their effect on the “sui generis” Tanks Army of General Lieutenant Popov (Group Popov), the Infantry Armies and both Tank Corps as the mobile reserve of the Southwest Front of General Vatutin and, apart and also, the 3rd Tanks Army of Lieutenant General Ribalko.

The logistics is an essential piece of the victory. When the armies are modern, mechanized and technical. And they are, this way, highly dependent on the fuels, the spares, the supplies of all kinds and on the rotation or reinstatement of units. It is supposed tactic and operationally that the means of all kinds are available and more or less nearby. To support the impulse, the fire and the operative efficiency of all the “units of action”, it is necessary to guarantee them a constant and sufficient flow of the mentioned means. Therefore, the commands must take the actions to defend the «physical support» of the logistic structure. Specially against assaults from the enemy depth or in sensitive and critical points or in the routes most far from our units. Constituted by all the “supplying routes”, from the units up to our operational rear. And that are still more important that the so called “retreat routes”. Though they could coincide in some sections. Among other things, because the modern forces must count with remaining isolated for a certain time. And keeping in this period their tasks, in agreement with the entrusted missions.

The Signs of our Tactical or Operational Military Success about the Enemy:

There will be a passiveness or operational delay in the enemy. Generally he will act with an intention that is not convergent with our own. And, at least, not harmful for our operation, especially in the first stages of the process. When she develops her impetus or push or movement quantity (combat capacity X average sustainable speed, in every stage). This sign of the tactical or operative success is a «pear in sweet», that not always will give itself so clearly, as in the following example.

It is worth to remember the development of the Blitzkrieg in the West and invasion of France by Germany in the spring of 1940. The main part of the French maneuver troops, their three more modern armies, and the British Expeditionary Force rushed toward Holland and Belgium to stop the German scythe-like advance. That was supposed directed at the interior of France and the rear of her Maginot line. The Allied High Commands, whose doctrine had not evolved, were thinking that in May 1940 Germany would repeat their “Schlieffen modified plan” of 1914 in their new invasion of France.

Resultado de imagen de INVASION francia 1940 THE OPERATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.

Resultado de imagen de INVASION francia 1940 ITS RESULT…

In agreement with the new plan of General Erich Von Manstein, really the “blow of scythe” was given by the Armies Group A of colonel general Von Rundstedt. Which was possessing as spear lance the Panzer Group of general Von Kleist. His five Panzer and five Motorized divisions, integrated in three Panzer Corps, were going to cross the Ardennes and to carry on a wide break in the French line around Sedan. Turning then rapidly towards the west and pressing finally on the flank and the rear of the Allied forces in Belgium. Which would find operationally isolated, with their line of communications, support of their logistics of supply, cut off.

The tactical enemy activity is inevitable. It will be permanent, harmful and even it will be unexpected and will partially affect us. But it will not be fundamental for our plans. Remember that we are looking for signs of our success, not those of the enemy. The best sign of maturity will be that it does not worry excessively to our tactical or operational commands. If this activity did not exist, it would be because the enemy was not there. To overcome and to get used to these tactical accessory crises and not be left to drag by them, harming our principal operation, is the touchstone of the serenity of the commands. Always we must bear in mind the possibility that the enemy appears tactically in «the moment and in the zone» more inconvenient and difficult for us. If it does it operatively it is that we have incurred a mistake of intelligence or of the valuation of the correlation of forces and of the enemy capacities or intentions.

Napoleon, without getting to exhaust the reserves, but without they were exceeding, attended to the different local tactical crises that appeared in Austerlitz’s battle. After the occupation of Pratzen’s heights by two infantry divisions of the Army Corp of marshal Soult. This sealed the destruction of the joint Russian Austrian army and his Austerlitz’s victory.

Resultado de imagen de Napoleon Austerlitz CREATED THE CONDITIONS FOR THE MILITARY DECISION: AUSTERLITZ.

Let’s see the process of development of the tactical containment of the Allied enemy. With the enemy forces concentration attacking the supposed tactical and operative (without protecting the line of retreat towards Vienna) Frenchmen deployment weakness. The grenadiers of Oudinot were sent from the Zurland hill to support the south flank, where the principal battle was getting away. Bernadotte advanced up to Blaswitz village, to cover the Soult’s north flank. The Murat’s cavalry reserve, in the Santon hill, the left flank (at north) of the French deployment, had to fight against Liechtenstein’s cavalry, to support the novices of Lannes’s Corp who were defending it. Kutusov managed to bring towards Pratzen part of the forces of his left wing (at south). And Soult, attacked by three sides, had to employ part of the general artillery reserve to contain the enemy with its wearing fire. Around 1 p. m. Constantine and the imperial Russian Guard counter-attacked the already tired Frenchmen in Pratzen. Their first line yielded. The cavalry of the French Imperial Guard, who had been advanced by Napoleon, supervised by marshal Béssiers and general Rapp, attacked the Russians and put them in escape. And Bernadotte, from Blauswitz, sent a division in support of the center of the punished French deployment.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

THE SPANISH NACIONAL POLITICS.

A STERILE AND INEFFECTIVE INSTRUMENT

Introduction.

The dispersion and inefficiency that the authorities show in the complex labor of uniting the popular wills and in implementing clear policies of reinforcement of the national unity and of control of the hackneyed and unsuccessful ideas of dissolution and substitution of that one, have different original reasons.

A nation does not congregate and galvanize, re-joins and advances with procedure, laws and regulations. Called to juridically confine the public thing. A nation is not governed in times of dangers and incipient decadences only by the economic and accounting ideas and policies. That only serve to create and preserve the material wealth. But that at least nowadays can not avoid the hardness and the cruelty of the phases of crisis and decadence of the economic successive cycles. That literally can crush the collaboration between the social strata and deepen their differences. And these policies are bored, affected and pissquiets. Because the action of the money, which is his essence, has these natural qualities.

Resultado de imagen de montoro  SECRETARY MR. MONTORO.

This makes and defines a rachitic, defensive politics and without worthy horizons of the best efforts. And, also, serious and reliable of the duty. As serious and reliable were Cervera’s, when they sank his fleet in Santiago de Cuba and Montojo’s, when the same thing happened to him in Manila to his Spanish fleet of the Pacífico, presences.

The lack of virtues in the exercise and the example of the power and the leaders, have drained and withered the right of the country, as political national instrument.

The attempts of social politician secession.

In the secessionist case that we have opposite to the face and at this point of his process of break with the Spanish nation, there present several incognitos on what we would have to make or be doing. Would an effective preventive action be useful or counter-productive? The parsimony and uselessness, rested on the fulfillment of the procedure, which the national authorities exhibit, will allow us to take, at least, in exchange future profitable decisions?

The president has said to his party, that already there is no economic crisis to arrange. And the surveys are discounting them voters, who do not seem to want to reward indefinitely the past results. The memory that feeds the collective gratefulness is fragile, interested and changeable.

Then, the Spanish have to be convinced by the ideas and actudes in the PP, that they must vote also for the party when the things are OK. But it will be if they perceive a PP radically different from the one that has governed till now. Capable of credibly exciting and stimulating them, in unit and cooperation, towards the social immediate future in peace and prosperity.

Resultado de imagen de politica nacional española

That it is not said only that in these moments, using as protection, resting and covering in the law and his possibilities, the government is taking already legal measurements against the secessionists. Because those who are applying the law are the courts and district attorneys, since it corresponds to the Judicial Power. And the government, as Executive Power, executes very little, in trying his fulfillment and dispersing the hostile actions against the law. Also on November 1, 2014 the Catalan secessionists realized actions against the unit of Spain and the sovereignty of the Spanish, which were of equal separatist and illegal quality that these of now. And the attitude and the action of the Administration against the popular Catalan consultation of that day, was deplorable, scanty and ineffective. The lenience, the tolerance and the delay in opposite the rebels by the national executives, makes these also partial responsible and necessary, but not sufficient, cooperators, in the crimes of «nation, motherland and sovereignty» attacked and damaged by those villains.

The prudence, the aplomb and the position characterizing the public thing.

The saying «pissquiety, shits small«, indicates that you should not ask the troubled long, big or important doings. To those who look with fruition at the meters and the details of the court, do not lead them to walk many kilometres of trip.

The pissquietism has the prudence and the patience as protective shield and supposed banner of valor. But rarely a pissquiet will hurl himself or take the initiative, because he will want to cover all the bets or possibilities. The necessary and present risk in almost all the actions and enterprises is his essential distaste. And his intimate disability is the absence of charisma and leadership, fundamental for the drivers or leaders in the times of crisis that we live. But this, for shame, he will never accept it, nor will speak about it. The pissquiety is comfortable with the bridle of a society well controlled by laws and regulations. That facilitates him to walk for sure rails towards definite goals.

The professional public vocation of the pissquieties is not that of politician, though often they are. His temperamental aspirations are that of civil servants without major responsibilities, good executors of the written thing and of the ordered by their superiors. To defend his position and to use his arguments, the pissquiety is usually a good talker or announcer. He knows that all the positions are, at least, moderately defensible. And, using the word, as his instrument in the dialectics of wills with his competitors, he can impose them. In the vicissitudes of such a ruled and definite society, which does not admit improper remarks, blows in the table, suden accelerations or brusqueness.

The social and political Nation.

A nation is a society of individuals provided with one social political selfconscience. Collaborate to creating and to arrange it the history, the tradition and the customs, and the own language and moral sense. And secondly contribute to it the etnia and the own territory, that not always exist, specially the first one. This way, the territory of a country is not a nation. Nor it is not even the inarticulate population of a territory under an only government. When the nation is loved by his components and there exists in them the desire to serve it and to defend her in community, the concept of the mother land appears. Both ideas are interrelated essentially. And, the absence of the patriotism or the shame practise it by members of a «social politicalcommunity», leads to the defenselessness and to the dismemberment of their nation, in major or minor degree, forming then «groups of associate individuals». So, it is not of surprising that are the Defense Forces of a nation, as institutions and in his members, which hoist, teach and practise the patriotism as one of his essential virtues. The Forces of Defense of a nation are the specialized set of the «citizens or patriots» for the belligerent and complete Defense of his «motherland nation«.

Resultado de imagen de bandera española

Our ideologics and socials fortitudes.

The attacks of ideological external agents, far from crowding us together concerning the threatened motherland, face us and, even, divide more us. Because our Politics is mediocre, envious and shortseeing in aims. And our invertebrate society is a sum of beings and isolated groups, without a common north and many of them sorrowful of the foreign good.

Our majority civilization coexists with others in the same soil. But it does not want to say that we could not have several social common virtues. And, together with the beliefs that are practised, they are the definers parameters of a society. This way, his unanimous observance and respect promote largely the creation and the integration of the social group.

Of the social crises it is only possible to go out fortifying in the values and virtues. These are the «actions and qualities» of human reference, regarded and valued permanently by the human societies. The virtues are very stable in the time. The values are the human «qualities and actions», estimated only temporary and/or locally by some societies. And, principally, by virtue of his idiosyncrasy, living conditions and pressures received from the exterior. The cultural and social values are usually being evolving with the contingencies, the displacements and the fortunes of the human societies.

The virtues are provided principally by the elaborated religions, and by Cicero’s Speeches and Plato’s Dialogs, within our extensive western ideology. We mention the principal ones, which are absorbed and assumed in the human soul:

Appreciation of the family, the social group and the motherland and the friendship and the nice and curious strangers who come to our environment. It is the “vital environment” that sustains us, our «social humus» fertile and indispensable.

Need of punishment of the conducts that are separated sufficiently of the social rules. To avoid the free, excessive or untied revenge, to dissuade the possible infringer, to satisfy in justice the damages and the hurts and to reform the mistaken conducts. Cuando esta “virtud” es complaciente o deficiente, se abre inevitablemente el camino a la injuria personal o colectiva y a la necesidad imperiosa y vital de tomar venganza. Venganza que, por tender a los máximos (como diría Karl von Clausewitz) y estar alimentada por la injusticia y la cólera, se apoyará y seguirá la Ley del Talión.

Need of the education, as mark and seal of the good doing and of the social citizenship. And the formation as set of the knowledge and professional skills, necessary for the service to the family and the society, with the exercise of a way of life decent and sufficient.

Appreciation of the respect and the worship to the divinity, as recognition and veneration of the Necessary Being who creates and supports us, and, in some cases, helps us frankly and directly. And it makes concrete according to the ideology and the social environment lived.

Valuation of the different duties to fulfill as necessary, vital and social counterpart, of the several rights to receive. Valuation of the sobriety, the effort, the saving, the commitment, the study and formation and the work, as necessary factors and means for the progressive and just attainment of the personal and collective aims.

And are our values and virtues recognized, taken again and reaffirmed those who can give us the force and the illusion to overcome the decadence times.

And let’s not forget the essential function of «command, management, impulse and example» of the social leaders of all kinds, present in the homes, the schools, the churches, the political parties, the barracks, the trade unions, the working centers, the associations in general, etc. These are the cores of the collective activity of the society. Where the indispensable “illusion and enthusiasm» will settle themselves and bloom later.

In the hard times, those leaders must accentuate their example. Because, the values and the virtues cannot be seen and felt as something artificial and/or remote, without real connection with a practical and lived code. And they are not acceptable as impositions of “cold rules and regulations», dictated from a «supposed moral and intellectual apex» of the society.

Our commands manage, but the impulse that we receive from them is weak and ineffective. They give the orders weakly, deciding for it everything that collectivly can. And his example is not estimated, not taken as deserving of the emulation and the follow-up. Without biology there is no family, far from it society will exist. Are fertile and solid the families of the social chiefs?

Exemplary leaders separated themselves from their public positions.

We will speak about leaders of the right, withdrawn from the public life for ideological disagreements with his companions. Or for estimating that did not exist then the sociopolítics conditions that were allowing them to carry out his beliefs and ideals. In the Spanish left, we think that to his commans only the chronic or serious disease and the unavoidable age have separated them from the duties of his post.

We only remember Gerardo Iglesias‘s case, which was elected general secretary of the Spanish Communist Party in November, 1982, defending then the reinnovating ideas of the comrades newly purged. For it, he faced the so called Eurocommunists of Santiago Carrillo, looking for the integration of the different communist existing groups. He took part in the creation of Left Joined in 1986, being chosen his general coordinator. In 1988, he resigned all his charges in the XII congress of the SCP, being progressively replaced in them by Julio Anguita. Iglesias, which was in extended leave for absence, joined later to his former miner’s work.

This selection, extracted of what we can detect and glimpse, is an example and summary. It represents what would be a rocky outcrop, the part not plunged of the iceberg, of all the innumerable persons who in politics strain for keep and show a coherent position with an exemplary and complete ideology.

Resultado de imagen de mayor oreja politico  MR. MAYOR OREJA.

Jaime Mayor Oreja is probably the paradigm of all the leaders that in the right have withdrawn from the public palaestra. His category are given by his characteristics: knowledge, exemplary and moral baggage, positions occupied in the public life, relations and age. Major Oreja has a solid political formation from Christian roots. Always he indicated and condemned ETA’S solvent, secessionist and communist strategy. That was acting, according to him, getting accommodated tactically to the changes of power in Madrid and using diverse attitudes and images.

Without never facing the power of the PP, he has supported a clear and serious political path. Condemning, this way, for example, the abortion, since «something proper of the Bolsheviks», and the euthanasia, which «is an old recipe of the totalitarisms that destroyed Europe in the first half of the 20th century». He never condemned the Franco’s regime in its entirety and on the occasion of the law of the Historical Memory, in the crisis of 2008, he alerted of the risks that already were threatening the concord and the unity of Spain. His ideology inspired the ideology of Maria San Gil, his companion of the Basque PP.

Alejo Vidal Quadras was president of the PP of Catalonia from 1991. In the autonomous elections of 1995 his formation obtained 17 deputies and the major number of popular suffrages up to today. By the agreement of the Majestic, in Barcelona between Convergence and Union and the PP, which allowed Aznar’s investiture as Prime minister of Spain (in the VI legislature of the current democracy, 1996 to 2000), he was immolated by the PP of his positions in Catalonia. Vidal Quadras was relocated as Eurodeputy of the PP. And he was a vice-president of the European Parliament. Nowadays is a militant of the small regeneracionist party VOX.

Maria San Gil initiates his political activity in 1991 in the of Guipuzcoan PP. When she was eating with Gregorio Ordóñez, the first lieutenant of mayor in San Sebastían, on January 23, 1995, she witnessed his murder by an ETA’S command in a restaurant of this capital. At the end of 2004, she was the chairwoman of the PP in the Basque provinces. In May, 2008, after the internal crisis of the PP on having lost the general elections, she presents her resignation as chairwoman and deputy of the PP in the Basque provinces. The motives were the strong discrepancies with the ideas and forms of Mariano Rajoy’s PP.

Jose Antonio Ortega Lara was a civil servant of prisons in the penitentiary center of Logroño. At the beginning of 1996, he was kidnapped in his house of Burgos by ETA. And he remained like that, in deplorable conditions, for more than 500 days. Until he was liberated in the last minute by the Spanish Civil Guard. He retired early at the end of 1997, initiating a political career in the PP. Always, he kept a line of defense of the democratic values of the family, the unity of Spain and of his strength and of fight against the terrorists of ETA. In the crisis of the PP in spring of 2008, he announced his march from the party for his ideological differences with him. In 2014, he joined the VOX party.

THE MANEUVER WARFARE. THE CONCEPT OF THE MODERN AIRLAND BATTLE. (SECOND PART).

AN INTERPRETATION BY FIELDMARSCHAL ERICH VON MANSTEIN.

 

(CONTINUATION)

 

Results of the German counterattack and its trascendence.

Nevertheless, the booty gained was scanty. Von Manstein declared that there were approximately 23,000 dead Soviet soldiers and 9,000 captured Soviet soldiers. The materiel captured were approximately 615 tanks (probably largely recovered), 354 campaign guns, 69 anti-aircraft pieces and more than 600 machine guns and mortars. It was not possible to encircle the enemy and Soviet soldiers took advantage of this by leaving the heavy equipment and retreating. Von Manstein said that, because the extreme cold, his soldiers were bunched into small, tight groups, leaving wide spaces and lines in his rearguard, without effective cover. This partly happened because they were elite troops and because the war was without mercy.

COLONEL JOHN BOYD, AN AMERICAN TEORIST OF ITS MANEUVER THEORY.

At the beginning of March, 48th panzer Corps pressed toward the east of Kharkov and the SS panzer corps of General Halder was entrusted with recovering the long-suffering city for the Germans.

At the middle of the month, the Germans had a defensive resistant front from Tangarov to Belgorod, supported on the Mius and the Donetz. They also possessed in the south of Russia sufficient mobile reserves to push back possible Soviet operational breaks in the zone.

As late as 1944, the Soviets had 26 tanks Corps and 11 mechanized Corps. Part of them joined together to form 6 tanks Armies. Each of which had two tanks corps and a mechanized corps (bigger and more balanced inn infantry and artillery). Some mechanized Corps joined a cavalry Corps, forming a great unit similar in capacity to the tanks Army but with fewer armored vehicles and more mobility in areas of difficult transitability (marshes, mountains, woods). These were used to exploit the break in the swampy areas of the south of the Soviet Union, as that of the Pripet river in the north of Ucrania. Although never coexisted more than two or three in the order of battle of the Soviet Army.

WILLIAM LIND, A CIVIL TEORIST.

The destruction of 6 tanks Corps of the Southwest Front (especially equipped with mobile forces) and dismantled them from their “support masses”, was an especially prominent, profitable and low cost operation for the Germans.

In addition, in its advance toward Kharkov between March 1st and 5th, the SS and 48º panzer Corps smashed from its flank and rearguard the Soviet 3rd tanks Army, led by general Pavel Semjonovic Ribalko. This Army was launched to relieve the forces of 6th infantry Army and had continued advancing toward Kharkov. This city that was by then, attracting all the attention and efforts from both sides.

As poor results and large losses mounted for the mobile Soviet forces, pessimism also grew in Stalin, who asked Sweden to mediate in seeking a solution to the war with Germany.

Nevertheless, the advance on Belgorod, outlining Kursk’s projection inside the territory occupied by Germany, sealed the aim for Germany’s strategic summer Campaign. After all these events had passed, the strategic initiative returned to the Germans at the level of the theatre of operations.

But, beginning on July 5, delayed in relation with the victories of Von Manstein, their action gave the Soviets time to extensively strengthen themselves, to establish “fortified regions” at the front level, and to assemble and organize a powerful counterattack force in the north and south of the projection. The allied landing in Sicily on the 10th of July, aborted the Wehrmacht’s already disastrous Operation Citadel. The Germans would never recover the strategic initiative on the Eastern Front.

GENERAL DONN STARRY, HIGH COMMAND OF THE U.S. ARMY’S TRADOC.

Was it possible to avoid what happened to the Popov group and, thus, to the Soviet’s strategic plans for its 1942 winter campaign and to the Soviet’s strategic initiative, at least in the Southern theatre of the Soviet Union?

It was possible.

We have observed, in parallel and in a very second plane with some key facts, the getting absorbed (to get very much in …), the delight (to be delighted with …) and the fixation (to do without other rational arguments) of Stalin, in relation with the results that he promised himself with the impelled operations by the mobile corps of the Southwest Front of general Vatutin.

General Vatutin, one of the best field chiefs of the Soviet army, died before his time at hands of Ukrainian (anti-Soviet) guerrillas, only participated in this in a minor degree. Still, the delegate of the Stavka in charge of these crucial operations (Zhukov, Vasilevsky?) remembered him the transcendence that for the Supreme Commander and for the Soviet people they had.

A little time ago, Hitler also fixated on Stalingrad. This fixation led him to squander the capacity of his best Great Unit (the 6th infantry Army of general Paulus—yes, without the aristocratic Von) in a street struggle and a force-to-force confrontation. Their enemies were arranged on a static defense. A position that they were better able to defend and maintain than were the Germans, in the gigantic steel and cement fortress that was Stalingrad.Fight in which was not counting the German superb capacity of operational movement, which reduced the effort done to a confrontation between man vs. man and machine against machine. And, thus, causing a terrible attrition to the combat and movement capacities.

We can discuss about the strategic mistakes of high chiefs. As the line of communications (branched out) is so crucial, it is necessary to protect it adequately. But this fact is obscured and blurred by the desires of commanders.

What are the possibilities of defense for the advance sector that contains the communications line?

Independently of the advance deployment of mobile groups and their support mass (which must include the securities elements adapted for marches in enemy areas), «advanced detachments» must be brought forward.

These will be integrated by 15-30 % of the forces that bring them forward and will possess sufficient operational movement and combat capacities. The time it takes for the main group to join them is a function of the transitability of the terrain and of the capacities and intentions of the enemy in the operations zone. Its mission in defensive operations is to be used as “stable hinges” between the deployments of Great units, facilitating and protecting the movement of forces and supplies between them.

If the mass of support is too slow for the mobile group to continue advancing at a reasonable rate, it will end up lengthening dangerously the distance between the units and their support. This situation is very vulnerable to a mobile assault by the enemy from the depth of his zone and the sector of advance would be under threat of being cut, depending on the means and intentions of the enemy. This probability would require that a “mechanized group” be placed between the mass of support and the mobile group to reduce the distance between all three deployments and reducing reaction times to respond to a crisis. This would reasonably stabilize the sector of advance after the mobile group.

The mission of the mechanized group, which has less capacity for operational movement than the mobile group, will be to carried out the “sector mobile defense”. And will last until the forces of the mass of support arrive to relieve it. The anti-aircraft and antitank defense plan, the centralization of reserves and the defense of key points of the area, by means of “delay positions” and together with necessary heavy fire support, will be characteristic of the fight to stabilize the sector.

That is to say, it is necessary to sacrifice speed for safety to consolidate the stability of the sector of advance in enemy territory. A territory that does not need to be all occupied in force. Because would be defended by a mobile defense for a limited period of time. Taking disproportionate risks would be reckless and would put men, materiel and the operation in danger.

But, men (in this case, Hitler and Stalin are two examples) continue to make mistakes when faced with such circumstances…

THE END.

REASONS AGAINST A WAR WITH NORTH COREA.

Being afraid of an imperialistic aggression, the authorities of the Party of the Workers of North Korea (or Choson Rodongdang) and of his Armed Forces (or Inmun Gun), can perceive as the only escape from his chronic evils, to undertake a «revolutionary war of national unification«. What possibilities are of this happens? We examine afterwards the parameters of the «North Korean problem» and his “ways of develpoment» of his conflicts.

Introduction.

On June 25, 1950, Kim il Sung’s North Korean troops invaded South Korea, with Stalin’s approval, to realize by the force the reunification of the peninsula of Korea. That was divided in two countries with faced ideological regimes from the end of the World War II. The United States surprised in the first moment, came rapidly to help the South Koreans. The support of the People’s Republic of China, which sent trained forces in his recent civil war, and the military systems and equipments delivered by the USSR to the communists, allowed to reach a stalemate without victors by 1953. In July of this year, a truce was signed in Panmunjong, that not an end of the war. And the 38º north parallel was established as the border between both nations. A blood river of was spilt by all the actors only to keep the prewar situation.

Resultado de imagen de kim il sung KIM IL SUNG, THE FOUNDER OF THE DYNASTY.

To celebrate on Saturday, the 15th of April, the 105 º anniversary of the birth of il Sung, the «Father of the Mother land», Kim Jong-un prepared a great cake. That was luminous, shining, with his 105 «rockets candles» ignited. Jong-un does not want to be unworthy in anything to his dynasty and is playing like thunderer Jupiter, threatening with his atomic weapon and ballistic missiles of the first generation. With them he would have to face unfavorably and without possibilities of victory the modern combined weapon systems of the United States. It might damage very much South Korea. But it would not give him the victory and would affect all the Koreans.

The ideology and his Practice in North Korea.

To foresee the seemingly capricious and erratic behavior of the North Korean elites, it is necessary to know the ideological and psychological parameters of such catechized, closed and organized into a hierarchy society. And these parameters stem from the Marxist Leninist postulates. According to the interpretation and the applications realized during the Stalinist regime in the USSR. Finally, the most mellow communist ideology put in scene by the North Koreans, leads them to the use of expressions and linguistic turns, unusual and inexplicable, according to our forms of expression and formation of the thought.

Resultado de imagen de kim jong un

The North Korean direction aspires to the absolute unit of his strategies, his doctrine, his organization and his plans. In the North Korean terminology, the “Monolithism” represents a social politician structure as the granite, with absolute internal homogeneity and external unity of action. A «Structure» lacking fissures, across which the enemy could penetrate and damage it. There does not exist a significant or radical distinction between the peace and the war in the national North Korean strategy. Both are «phases» of the national politics, with different participations of the Inmun Gun. This is the Korean name in of the Armed Forces of North Korea. This way, the political, economic and military strategies are ways of the total North Korean strategy.

The leaders of North Korea consider, deriving it from the Soviet Stalinist strategy, that the North Korean strategy possesses an orientation and a style of exposition and formation for his plans and decisions. His foundation is the «supposedly sensible and scientific» calculation of the «correlation of forces» between the North Koreans and his enemies. This forces relation or ratio is a deliberate and calculated check of the potential relative capacities between both rivals, for the different conflict situations.

The North Koreans prefer obtaining his aims by pacific means. But the determinism of the dialectical materialism leads them to believe that the wars are inevitable, while the social classes, the existing oppressions between them and the imperialistic countries. Or, since in the last 65 years, they are surrounded with capitalist States, subject to the successive phases of growth and decadence in his economic cycles. The North Korean elites, with his special and distinctive psychology as mental vital substratum and with their ideology and the whole resounding paraphernalia where it expresses, do not wonder if they will have or not an external conflict. But, what kinds of conflict is it more profitable for us to destroy the enemy? And, in addition, who can triumph over whom in every case?

And they consider that, in agreement with the premises and the development of the dialectical materialism, that the successive clashes of the social antagonic oposites (those who are incompatible and/or not complementary). That are arising progressively and successively, as the historical materialism describes, finally will give them the reason. And they will obtain the victory over the stupid and decadent Yankee and Japanese imperialisms. To facilitate the things and as shallow and pale approximation, we can say that the historical materialism is as a Marxist description of the events or general History and that the dialectical one is as a scientific theory of the creation, development and solution of the social conflicts (that are all).

Resultado de imagen de kim jong un

We believe that the nuclear weapon is not more than a North Korean bet for covering all the «fissures», before a hypothetical imperialistic threat (of the hostile foreigners) against his regime.

Exposition and Development of the Situation.

Several are the reasons that dissuade the North Koreans from the preventive or initial use of a military assault.

The first in practice is the nearness of China, his principal support and mentor, that embraces the whole north border of the country. Though China does not be affected directly by the scanty atomic fires that cross the Korean peninsula, the radioactive clouds can reach his territory. And to damage his industrial factories and his external and internal sales, so much if pollutions take place, as if are rumors on them. Also China, as the only ground border, would receive a chaotic and important flow of Korean refugees.

China is today a state controled democracy of manufacturers and merchants. China has a modern dictatorial political system (of an only party); that is controlled and directed by an elite that supposes 10% of his population. China is one of the principal world economies: it has around 4$ trillions (million of millions) in American debt, with what he finances his principal world importer. The Chinese middle class is increasing, prosperous and forceful and is overwhelming affiliated to the Chinese Communist party. Very expressively, these elites of any economic system, also add up 135 million Chinese, around 10% of his population. There are not far ago the times of the cannibalism and of the successive famines and penuries in the lands of the Middle Kingdom. But, already many Chinese have known and enjoyed the innumerable goods that the modern capitalism and the industrial system produce. And, though their distribution between the population classes and the exports is yet very asymmetric and deficient, the Chinese do not want to risk getting lost them.

Resultado de imagen de nivel de vida China ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA.

And let’s remember that, in spite of the proliferation of the atomic and thermonuclear weapon during the 40 years of the cold war, no country of the so called Socialists or Popular democracies used them ever.

A psychological basic reason is that the Leninist Marxists look for the paradise in this Earth. That only will bring them a society without classes and without oppressive State, at the end of the times. After many, many, many generations of the «new man». Mao Ze Dong calculated that «there would be necessary more than ninety». «Long you entrust me it, Sancho». And if they lose this survival opportunity by a devastating war, they get totally bemused. And they are kidding themselves.

To any normal or delirious, even primitive religion, has never guessed to offer the paradise here. There are two cases in which the nuclear weapon can be used without ideological obstacles or preventions. The islamist jihadists offer the Paradise to the martyrs of the Yihad. With which they give the security to his believers in the future and solve their problems in this » tears valley». The Israelites consider themselves to be the people chosen by Jehova. And this has not changed opened and directly by Him. For them, the Christianity is a religious diversion, a blasphemous schism. They have the security of Jehova’s promises to Abraham, to Jacob and to Moses. In this exclusivity of the God’s favors, is based his void proselytizing interest. This way, it is not important for them to face a nuclear holocaust. If the existence of his nation, always threatened by his anxious and not democratic neighbors, meets irreversibly threatened. For example, losing a conventional war against the always surronding Muslims.

Resultado de imagen de Consejo Defensa Corea del Norte THEY FAIL TOO MUCH…

A total war with crossing of nuclear volleys with the enemy, would be hiper asymmetric against the elites of North Korea. That would lose everything what they possess and wish: the life, the exercise of the almost all-embracing power and a top living standard, in quality and variety, to that of their compatriots. Of future life, nothing. Therefore, it would go against the natural existing drives in all the men to tackle it in these lamentable conditions and with these apocalyptic perspectives. This one should be the principal reason to remove the adventurous deviationist, initiating this war, from the leaders of North Korea. So, largely, the Initiative, at his level and perspective, would continue in hands of the Maximum Leader of the Revolution of the United Workers and Peasants. The «Dearest Fatty» and his National Defense Council.

Orography of the conventional ground Conflict.

Korea is a mountainous peninsula. A central mountain chain crosses it from north to south, with its maximum heights overcoming 2000 ms. And forming, specially in the north, numerous and narrow valleys. These are orientated principally from north or northeast to southwest. The plains spread in the west of the peninsula, up to the coasts of the Yellow Sea. North Korea, therefore, does not present many favorable areas for the maneuvers of the mechanized forces. These can be easily canalized by broken areas and with short or half sight domain.

Resultado de imagen de Consejo Defensa Corea del Norte A FORMER NATIONAL DEFENSE COUNCIL…

The natural obstacles can be reinforced by abatis, vertical cuts, numerous and small minefields, etc. They are natural areas for the employment of the antitank rejection, based on the hollow load missiles with varied effective shooting distances, got ready with a defense at charge of light infantry units. In support, a well protected and camouflaged artillery, with the enemy approximation avenues and the important or singular points of the area registered before. The flanks of the defense positions can rest on the compartments of the area that form the heights lines.

The Russia of Putin.

Russia reappears after the Dismemberment of the URRS.

The new Russia of Putin, after the difficult and undifferentiated parenthesis of Boris Yeltsin, is waking up from a traumatic transition to a formalist democracy. Not reflected yet in his structures of power and administration. After Yeltsin, the authorities had to be liberated of the «neocapitalist mafia oligarchy«. Which was looking for a political amorphous and of wide apex, specific «form», which was governing the country and was controlling the alternation of the parties, in more or less free elections. Into these ad hoc structures is transmuting the whole superviser and bureaucratic apparatus of the USSR, created throughout 70 years of ferreous dictatorship of the CP. For what it is not chance the professional origin and the mega presidentials manners of Vladimir Putin.

But that give to the new Russia an international creativity and an operational flexibility, that do not have his competitors more «calmed, formal and super regulated». He is what we would say of a good stylist boxer: «he has a great waist». Only to remember the «day of prayer and fasting for the peace in Syria», that proclaimed the Pope Francisco for September, 7, 2013. He accompanying for 4 hours the prayer in the Saint Peter Square that Saturday. Within a few hours, Putin proposed to the international Powers (including the inoperative UNO, which in the international conflicts only serves to give a hypocritical stamp of legality to the public things) the destruction «in situ» of the chemical arsenal of the Syrians of Bashar al-Assad and not his air bombardment. This took France and the USA with the changed foot. And to the Nobel prize of the Peace Mr. Obama, which had asked the support of the Congress for his Air Raid («necessary for the brutality of the Syrian Government with his population»), looking in anguish for supports between the legislators. Because he saw that they would rejecting up even his more moderate plans of intervention.

Resultado de imagen de putin helps al-Assad PUTIN HELPS AL-ASSAD’S REGIME…

The loss of his «controlled allies» of the Warsaw Pact and the COMECON, after the cold war, only left Russia to a geographically look for «new influences» towards the Asia Central, from Syria to the India and Vietnam. Turkey is a proverbial enemy of the Russians. Though now Erdogan, after knocking down a Russian ground attack plane on the northwest of Syria, has become a very friend of Putin. But this is relating to the moment, for not saying only anecdotal. China is a «partner, competitor and rival (not enemy)» of Russia, if serves this polyvalent definition, which does that none of the expressions are in fullness. In Afghanistan, the Russians could never have settled from the Modern Age. Also the Russians try to win and keep in his «political and commercial sphere» the new central Asiatic Islamic Turkman republics and the ex-Soviets Slavonic Republics. Till now, the Customs Union created by Russia includes only the White Russia and Kazajistan.

Resultado de imagen de putin xi jinpingCHINA IS A «PARTNER, COMPETITOR AND RIVAL» OF RUSSIA.

Following his direct, imperious and operating manners, in the middle of December, 2013, Putin threw a strong argument to Ukraine. In order that she was happening to form part of this Russian Turkoman «sphere of coprosperity»: he offered her to lower 33% the price of transfer of the Russian gas, of which Ukraine is recipient and reseller. And, to save Ukraine from the financial bankruptcy and did not have to be thrown for it in hands of the European Community Troika, he would give her up to $15 billion in soft credits. While, in Ukraine the newly arisen social politic problems have led to a strongest polarization of the country. Two almost antagonistic halves being formed: where the part at the west of Crimea, wants to move away from Moscow and the half at the east of this peninsula seeks to grow the bonds with Russia.

Ukraine is for history and for demography a part of the Europe limited at the East by the Urals. And Ukraine is for political opportunity and historical moment part of the democratic and liberal Center Western Europe. That forms together with the United States, which operates as the other fundamental «vibrant pole» placed at the West side of the Atlantic Ocean, the «Western Civilization». A great problem appears now, not only to Ukraine, but to his neighbors in its eastern and western frontiers. And it is to obtain that the today antagonists and irreconcilable forces, that face in Ukraine, crushing his motherland, turn into complementary and necessary forces between them. And it is a great joint, disinterested labor, with broad-mindedness and directed by statesmen. Which is necessary to develop to achieve it and to remove the scarecrows that glimpse in his political social horizons. If there not be obtaining this «merger of interests», which is the mission of the Politics, the alternative would be bad for all, natives and nearby and distant neighbors. And the wound only would be falsely closed up and for an unforseeable time.

Resultado de imagen de novarrusia soldiersUKRAINE’S INFANTRY FORCES.

For Russia, Ukraine is something more than a strategic ally. As would be the Japanese Empire, the Western Europe or the Great Britain for the USA. Ukraine is a part of the national Russian essence. In Ukraine was born many hundreds of years ago, the strong and promising germ of the Russian nation, the Rus. From the fall of the USSR in 1989, Russia did not face a major disruptor cataclysm, potentially rupturist, that the Orange Revolution of Julie Timoshenko in 2004. Russia must have digested and neutralized or assimilated it, slowly and pacifically. But, the Ukrainian natives and his Russian allies chose to contain and to extinguish it.

It was the easiest thing, but they left a powerful embers under the cap of ashes. And the latent problem has re-arisen now, virulent and almost out of control. The «irresistible offers» of the European Union to Ukraine neither make concrete, certainly, they nor materialize. Beyond the reports and briefings of the European bureaucracy of Brussels and other cities, paralyzed, without imagination, or moral courage, which is selfprotected and automanages. By February 19 or 20, 2014 was generalized the use of “free shooters” or snipers of the police and the special security forces against the most uncontrollable demonstrators or emphasized from the popular revolts, specially in Kiev.

Resultado de imagen de novarrusia soldiers EAST UKRAINE IS IN DANGER…

Since then, the armed opposition of the Novarussia (this way the prorussians separatists autoname their territory in the Donbass’ basin and adjacent zones), supported by the Russians with military equipments (intermingled with convoy of supposed humanitarian help for the civil population of the region) and «groups» of voluntary internationalists, even veteran prorussians Chechenian; and the central government of Kiev, with the president Petro Poroshenko at its head, have followed an operational politic strategy of the “give and take”, of the cachumbambé or balancing pole. Where everything is enough measured and reasonably controlled, to be advancing each part by few and measured steps. Without they irreversibly get run away the animal of the open warfare between nations and alliances. And this way we are and we will continue for long time…

After realizing the armed manly act in Ukraine, the popularity of Putin raised in Russia. And it is kept consistently since then over 80 %… This is not normal in the democracies, if do not exist exceptional situations. Which are those in Russia? Putin has turned into a political social vibrant hub for the Russian people. To which he has recovered the national honor and the category of world power. At less, that is what Russians feel and caught… And though it would not be such, according his demographic and macroeconomic dates, if he was lacking the nuclear arsenal inherited from the USSR. But the emotions and then the feelings are those that create and send out the psychic energy. And they are capable of overcoming the dismay and the vulgarity of a little hard and gray life. And the Russian people wishes and bets for it. And Putin is now his leader, commander, great chief and guardian.

The National Strategy of Putin.

But, not all are kindness and advantages in a super presidentialist regime. The concentrated and decisive power has to be administered in small doses, to not abuse, nor damage, nor to fall down in the temptation of looking for his indefinite continuity. The despotism (that arises from the rotten conviction of the controls from which «they» have «saved» «their» Motherland), the corruption and the clientelism spread over the circles of the power and his outskirts. And they become manifest and customary in the society.

The political and ideological opposition, with his critiques, parliamentary actions and street protests, can become almost unbearable for those who center in planning, deciding and executing in altars of the people, but not with the people. The jail and the confiscation of goods are reprisals of all the life. Which origin gets lost in the times night, in the prehistory, for the dissidents, uncontrollable and disobedient and for all the potential (imagined or not) and real enemies of the regime.

Another «appearance» of democracy that the Russian government exhibits: when the exercised power is almost all-embracing, it is not balanced or compensated by other public independent powers and is held during too much time, turns out to be almost inevitable the appearance of the self-complacency, the corruption, the indifference and the arrogance in many controls that were originally correct.

Russia, at least during a time, will try to recover his rights, traditions and influences. Or it will have to content with turning into a “nation State», without dependent, participative and profitable for all partners «coprosperity spheres”. That «regional or second-class power», as Obama named her at the beginnings of this crisis at the beginning of 2014.

Russia, once known himself as the Second Rome, follows a national, centrifugal, expansive strategy towards the exterior, from her «vibrant European space«. Leaving from that great «national center of the Slavonic etnia» and acting in “waves of communication, influence and domain”, in this order, Russia is straining in extending his presence and ascendancy all over the world, going towards all the possible countries.

Resultado de imagen de russia the second Rome A BUST OF THE PRESIDENT AS CAESAR, ROME EMPEROR OR CZAR, RECEIVES THE SALUTE…

One of the first national exterior aim of Putin is to promote the «multipolarity in the world structure» of the great powers and his allies. Looking that does not exist a world hegemonic power as the USA, which hinders him in the extension of his influence and power from his «core center». For it, Russia will create alliances and will establish agreements and treaties with third parties in detriment or in substitution of that hegemonic power. And he will be a «intransigent obstructionist actor» in all the actions that that one unilaterally promotes in the international forums (UNO, Atomic International Energy Agency). This way, the actions of the western nations in the Syrian conflict are frustrated and limited by the systematic veto of Russia to its approval in the Security Council of the UNO.

Another great strategic preference of Putin is to extend his influence and enlarge the economic and diplomatic bonds with the nations in development, specially those who have «natural resources and primary crops», that are necessary for the manufacturing production, the supply and the general development of the nations. This has taken them and will take them even far beyond of his geographical borders of political or strategically military influences. Using the economy, one of the forces of the national strategy or great strategy of a country, helped by the diplomacy, another one of her potentials, Russia tries to create with the emergent countries «cores of action and shared prosperity». Initiated or cultivated in a world that Russia wishes and search that is «multipolarized» in diverse «cores and centers of geopolitical power». That reduce this way necessarily, by his mere existence, the influence of the great western powers, today «depending of the world trade «.

This national and civilizer geocentrism places Russia as central piece of the Eurasia megacontinent. Where only China might hinder him in his plans of recovery of the lost influences. At the west of China, next with his Sinkiang’s immense region (Xinjiang), in the Eastern Turkestan, is a rosary of ancient Socialist Soviet Republics of 2 thousand Kms of length, which reaches up to the oriental shore of the Caspian Sea. They are, from east to west, Kazajistan, Kirguistan, Tadzikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. And these countries form a monolithic set of several etnias, picked up in their names, but extended simultaneously over several countries, of Turkoman origin, of the central steppes of Asia, and also agglutinated by his belonging to the sunni Islam. All this forms a multinational defensive and refractory shield to the expansive activity and to the significant presence of the Chinese in his internal matters or in his exterior trade, that have political guardianship effects. These Turkoman Muslims are rather a potentials allied of the Great Russia. In all that he puts a bit of dedication and neatnessI in attract and attend them.

Resultado de imagen de Putin xI jINPING sign gas dealPUTIN AND XI JINPING SIGN THEIR NATURAL GAS DEAL IN PEKING.

With his habitual opportunity and operational agility, Putin signed with the president Xi Ji Ping on Wednesday, the 21st of May, 2014 a strategic contract (30 years of validity) to supply China with 38 billions of ms3 of Russian natural gas each year. Certain is that the negotiations of this transcendental contract have extended during a decade, but the opportunity of his signature for both partners is undeniable. Russia has determined his signature lowering a little the price of transfer, which has not leaked out, and that was the principal obstacle for the agreement between the Russian state entity Gazprom and the National Corporation of the Oil of China. It will be begun immediately the installation of a new gas pipeline between Siberia and China, which will cost $ 55 billion and which will be operative in 4 years. China obtains this way a stable supply of part of his energetic primary needs (about 25 %). Which will allow him to be reducing his strategic dependence of his national coal. Whose combustion is the principal generating one of the massive pollution that suffer nowadays the great cities and the industrialized coast of China. It is calculated, according to the official estimations, that China will need 400 billions of ms3 of gas by 2020, doubling the current consumption of gas. Which opens the possibility for new extensions of the Russian supply in the frame of this agreement. For his part, looking for alternative markets for his primary energy, Putin reduces transcendency and efficiency with this commercial operation to the stuttering actions of the European Union, to replace part of the supply of the Russian gas, using other hypothetical suppliers of across the seas. And, in addition, any strangulation of the current service to his buyers, will force the EU to increase his help to Ukraine, to compensate his «reduced income» for the passage of the gas along his territory.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

THE WAR AGAINST THE ISLAMIC TERRORISTS. Second Part.

(CONTINUATION)

 

Operational Characteristics of the Attacks with Elite Ground Forces.

Units and small units that attack with limited aims (a deep incursion, the temporal capture of a critical position, an ambush) constitute a military closed «system». This condition imposes specific characteristics on the “interfaces of action” with the enemy, which are sometimes different to those of great units, especially in the theme of available means and the time of action.

Attacks with limited aims have been operationally used along large fronts. Where the enemy’s defense lacked depth and enough reserves and was looking to minimize own wear and make use of the multiplier effect of the set’s efforts. This occurred with notable success when the forces of the 9th German infantry Army of General Model sought to reform and consolidate its fronts in the Sychevka’s southwest zone between January and April of 1942.

The definitive characteristic of his use, adapted in these tasks, is that is used with criterion unity, by a kept and «concentric» in the result of his impulses “operational gravity center”. So that the limited efforts do not vanish in reconnaissance in force actions, in not suitable or out of opportunity sectors. It is to say, usiing unduly.

The field of action is the secret for applying freedom of action. By extending or decreasing the field of action, or by changing the field of action on the enemy, one can keep or recover the necessary freedom of action to act favorably and not simply reacting to the enemy.

«Field of action» is any «spatial-temporary-circumstantial» situation that allows for the suitable employment of an Army’s means and capacities in accordance or as part of that army’s intention. The field of action is formed by one or several «interfaces of action«, which are the very small sectors where direct contact occurs between the small units of action of each rival. Examples are when a deployed platoon attacks an enemy section, when a tank attacks infantry heavy weapons, when a section attacks by firing on an enemy’s strong position, when an engineering section opens a path in a minefield, etc.

The task is to find an optimal way in which, through successive «periods of action» applied in «fields or interfaces of action», one can gain the relative freedom of action to act and to carry out «quantum» or elementary units of the general intention. In addition, a general action can be divided into numerous partial actions to achieve in stages, momentary or minor «periods of action»; acting this way in the same «field», divided in minor interfaces of action.

Interaction in stages and situations suitable to advance one’s military means guided by the superior intention or orders is the general mechanism for applying, recovering and maintaining freedom of action in one’s favor.

A characteristic of the freedom of action is that is interactive with the enemy in the «interface of action» and is played out in fields of action that chosen by or imposed on an army. Passiveness means that freedom of action is not taken advantage of through lack of initiative. Thus, freedom of action can also have a result opposite to its intention and this can happen regardless of the type of fight engaged in, whether it is offensive or defensive.

The units had to gain combat superiority over the enemy, since obtaining a local and temporary supremacy would allow them to achieve their aims.

Essential to the mission’s conception are intelligence and simplicity. Essential to its preparation are security and training. The characteristics of the mission in action are surprise, tempo and the commitment of all the mission participants.

Simplicity allows the force to concentrate on a few related aims, using a limited number of men and means in the military closed system. If new tactics or different technologies are used, both the simplicity of the mission’s conception and the surprise of its execution will be enhanced.

On September 12, 1943, the captain of the S. S. Otto Skorzeny carried out the rescue of the Duce from his prison in the high mountain hotel Great Sasso located in the Apennines. Gliders were used to assault the position, fighting against the difficult cold draughts (these produced a delay in the arrival, as they landed at midday) and scarce sites for landing. That such a difficult assault would be attempted, higly surprised the on duty «carabinieri». The attackers took advantage of this by gaining access to the principal building while. At the same time, an acquaintance general of the «carabinieri» friendly landed with Skorzeny. Combat supremacy was rapidly achieved.

Intelligence supposes complete, up-to-date and timely knowledge of the circumstances and characteristics of the mission. Here, with so limited employing means, intelligence is facilitated by different agencies and units that intervene with the mission, even those at the level of the state. Specially the CIA, the National Security Agency or NSA, the Central Security Service or CSS, that links with the NSA, and the FBI.

Security refers principally to the stages of planning, preparation, training and, if appropriate, stage of transport or insertion. It has active and passive aspects. Giving off misleading information and concealing the force’s real intentions up until the stage of action on the objective. Each person must only know what is necessary for his actuation.

Training must be generic for actions and tactics and specific for those actions required for the mission. Independently of this, training is necessary to achieve coordinated actions among units taking part simultaneously in some part of the mission. A general rehearsal of the mission is also necessary, including its planning duration and margins for mistakes. It is also good to include some variant that represents a mistake, an unforeseen event or a loss of combat or movement capacity. And that the men train in correcting them or, at least, in neutralizing them with his effort. For example, a part of the helicopters is knocked down or lands at major distance of the foreseen in the theoretical disembarkation zone.

The final «training area» must be similar in general characteristics to the «target area». And it must be placed at safe of detections and filtrations of information (security), which onlookers and interested persons can catch. The independent variable of «time» introduces sometimes unexpected and not always welcome effects. For example, a vehicle presents problems after a number of hours of hard use, that was not foreseen in tests of «at scale» time.

Surprise supposes attacking an enemy (even if arranged in prepared defense) at a point or flank that is neglected by him at the moment, giving the attacker a favorable «interface of action» on him. It must suppose a “tactical innovation”. Though it could also contain technical differential or new elements. Examples of such “innovations” in the past are hollow load bullets or charges and flame-throwers.

The surprise is the sufficient and necessary multiplier of the combat capacity of the «small incursion force». That will allow him to compensate the scanty military resources that it has on the area. To it joins his inconsiderate and carefully applied with rapidity employment. To provoke an overwhelming effect on the enemy, achieving the temporary local superiority. As being an «isolated military system», the incursion force of will receive neither reinforcements, nor supplies. For its part, the time is not neutral, here is an enemy: because there is not more operation time. From his depletion, the unit will confront the pursuit and his annihilation…

Speed consists in firmnessly acting, ahead of the enemy, in the successive elementary «cycles of action» that define a performance or process. It also presupposes acting with opportunities and with pace (adapted speed, relative to the enemy). Remember that an action cycle includes a phase of observation, a phase of determining the situation, the decision phase and the accomplishment phase. If one’s speed is greater than that of the enemy, his actions will be in response to situations that have already just passed.

Speed also implies rapidly reaching a situation of active supremacy in combat capacity. The enemy’s reaction speed is initially very slow as he is in a stupor, trying to verify what is happening. This means his phase of determining the situation will be lengthened. Deceptive action in these moments will lengthen the time that passes and fog the determination of the situation. Ways of doing this include utilizing some of the enemy’s uniforms, equipment or language by certain parts or subunits involved in the action. Once supremacy over the enemy is attained, it must always be kept. As scanty resources make its recovery very difficult. Once supremacy in combat capacity is reached, the probability of a mission’s success increases exponentially and the vulnerabilities of one’s forces are dramatically diminished.

The commitment of men and officers and their selection qualities, lend moral and physical courage to the actions they undertake. This is necessary to overcome uncertainty, stress, mistakes, diversions, enemy actions, and to take advantage of the always fleeting opportunities. Commitment supposes full knowledge of the mission and the full, voluntary and enthusiastic support of all participants.

Execution is carried out by establishing at the level of the regiment, battalion or company a center of gravity for the common effort, which harmonizes and consolidates the «missions» of its subunits.

THE END.