Link this, sucker!

What is NATO good for? Well, pretty much nothing, at least right now. As I wrote in 2008,  "What has NATO ever done for us?" The answer is also pretty much nothing (since the fall of the USSR) and I do not take back a word of it.

America is moving rapidly to tribalism, pushed hard on purpose by the Marxist, America-hating revolutionary vanguard. And the very concept of "citizen" is vanishing. Because "Pre- & post-citizens" was written by VDH, you automatically should read it. My own relevant essays are here.

With Soleimani blown to smithereens, what to make of Iran's threats to retaliate? Oh, they will do something, but if they were capable of doing worse, they would have already done it. And with Soleimani dead, they have a huge blank in their murderous-imagination planning because, "Top commander's assassination leaves Iran with very few options to retaliate."

Then read Hussain Abdul-Hussain's thread on why "reporting in the main news outlets NYT and Wash Post is so misinformed (either on purpose or because of incompetence)... ."

Oh, when Trump blew up Soleimani, the Left was unanimous that it was an act of war that was going to start World War 3! Oh, how we long for the good old days when Obama launched 2,800 strikes on Iraq, Syria without congressional approval. And how fondly we remember "Obama's Breathtaking Expansion of a President's Power To Make War." Good times, eh? Good times!

Speaking of war, why was this an act of war:

Remains of the car Qassem Soleimani was riding it. 

... but this was not?

Smoke rises from the reception room of the U.S. embassy that was burned by Pro-Iranian militiamen and their supporters, in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2020 (Link)

But the chickens come home to roost, even if to a new coop: "Obama official thinks Trump's strategy worked."

My take on Syria, Turkey, and the Kurds

Link to article

I worked with Petraeus when we were both at the Pentagon. He was a major then, promoted to Lt. Col. not long after I came to know him. I respect him immensely. He and Gen. Mattis were the key, essential players in redirecting US strategy in Iraq away from the disastrous Rumsfeld model. I have never met Mattis, but have nothing but greatest respect for him. Marines I have known who worked with him are in awe, and that says a lot. 

So when Petraeus and Mattis both sharply disagree with the administration's decision, I have no choice but to pay attention. 

But having said that, I would say their view is very solidly an establishment one. Senior military officers prosper very well. They gain their rank and status not only because of the military skills, but their political skills as well. They retire as comfortable members of the country's political class and often wind up with lucrative corporate consultancies and defense-related boards. I have seen this play out with three- and four-star generals I worked for. I do not blame them, actually, but we need to understand that they are far too invested in the status quo to try to change it. It what got them their rank and positions in the first place. Their incentives to change it are exactly zero. (This also applies to senior diplomatic personnel.)

I wrote a long essay in 2008 on why the US should exit NATO but of course, with both the outgoing Bush and incoming Obama administrations, there was so much Old Guardism at work that there was (and is) no chance. Petraeus and Mattis (and I, for that matter) were raised militarily and strategically with a Cold War, organizational mind-think that has not significantly subsided. They still think that what G. Washington warned against, "entangling alliances," should be normative and are simply the MO for how things get done. 

Fourteen years ago Petraeus and Mattis were the Young Turks. Now they are the Old Guard. And that should temper how we assess what they say. None of this is to say that all will turn out well today. In fact, it would be insane to say so. Things never work out well in the Middle East! 

But it is also a real error to assume that had a mere 50 US troops been left in place, than everything would now be unicorns and rainbows. Turkey did not ask our permission to incur. They simply announced they were doing it. Turkey did not ask Trump to withdraw the troops; Trump just got them the heck out of the way. It would be nice for Petraeus and others to say how they would have responded to Turkey's announcement that it was coming, instead of just clutching their pearls in protest. They know better because they many times had to think through questions such those as I pose later in this essay. They know how to do it, but now they do not need to do it because the media will smile kindly upon them if they don't. And that is a problem.

My take: 

There is no solution to the problem of the Kurds. The Kurds have been screwed, they are being screwed, and they will continue to be screwed, because only Iraq, Turkey, and Syria (and Iran, as if...) can resolve the issue and all of them see the Kurds as tools to be used for their own purposes against the others. No Western nation can possibly have any effective role - not the USA, not Britain, not NATO, not nobody.

The Kurdish PKK is Turkey's main target. The PKK, Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, is a Marxist faction that has been launching cross-border raids into Turkey since 1984 - as have other Kurdish factions. The PKK is classified as a terrorist organization by the Turks. And also by the US, the EU, NATO, and even Japan.

Turkey did not ask Trump to move 50 US soldiers out of their way. (Yes, 50.) Turkey simply announced that they were coming in. Would you rather those US troops stay there and resist the Turks by force of arms?

Anyone who is denouncing the withdrawal of a few dozen US troops from the affected area of Turkish operations, insisting they should not have been withdrawn, should first answer one basic question:

If you were president, would you have ordered US troops to resist the Turkish incursion by force of arms? 

Then proceed to these:

• If you would have given that order:
• What is your strategic goal?
• How many US troops are you are willing to have killed to attain that goal? 
• Once US troops are killed, what would be your response? 
• How many Turks are you willing to kill to attain the strategic goal? 
• Would you escalate the violence if the Turks do not withdraw? If so, would you restrict US combat strikes to only the incursion area, or would you strike Turkish forces still inside Turkey proper? For either answer, explain why.
• How will you ensure the safety of thousands of US Air Force personnel, aircraft, special weapons, and family members at the Turkish air base at Incirlik, Turkey? There are also large numbers British and Spanish military personnel there. 
• Would you ask for a congressional authorization of use of military force against Turkey? 
• If yes, are you really willing to go to war with a decades-long, US-ally member of NATO? 
• If not, why not? Would you wage war against Turkey anyway?
    
• If you would not have given that order:
• What is your strategic goal?
• Why would you leave the troops in place rather than withdraw them, if they are not to fight?
• What would you have done specifically different from what the administration has done, and why?

Anyone who will not address those topics before slamming the administration is not thinking about this seriously at all. And yes, that includes congressional members of both parties and, sadly, many of my ministry colleagues who have posted about this topic.

Democrats: Trump must never use US troops to secure America's border with Mexico!

Also Democrats: Trump must use US troops to secure Syria's border with Turkey!

Update: This article is pretty well balanced and explains why Trump did not sell out the Kurds while also pointing out that Erdogan is pretty much a thug himself. (But we knew that.)

Update: "Missing the Bigger Picture in Kurdish Syria," by Lt. Col. (ret.) Bob Maginnis, is an instructor at the Army War College. "He oversees a team of national security experts in the Pentagon and has more than 800 published articles on national security and geopolitical issues."

Secretary of Defense James Mattis on Europe's children

US Secretary of Defense James Mattis addressed NATO's defense ministers today and laid down the law: "Defense Secretary Mattis Tells NATO Allies to Spend More, or Else"

BRUSSELS — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, echoing his boss in Washington, warned on Wednesday that the amount of American support for NATO could depend on whether other countries meet their own spending commitments.

“Americans cannot care more for your children’s future security than you do,” Mr. Mattis said in his first speech to NATO allies since becoming defense secretary. “I owe it to you to give you clarity on the political reality in the United States and to state the fair demand from my country’s people in concrete terms.”

“America will meet its responsibilities,” he said, but he made clear that American support had its limits.

“Americans cannot care more for your children’s future security than you do."

In 2008, I posted, "What has NATO done for us?" and the answer then, as now, is pretty much zip, nada, null set.

NATO was founded in 1949 to form a bulwark against Soviet invasion of western Europe. ...

So just what does this mean today? Pretty much nothing. ... Who is there to attack either North America or Europe? There are really only two threats reasonably imaginable - Russia and Islamist terrorists. Let's consider them seriatim. 

I explained in some detail why NATO can't stop Russian moves against Georgia (which was going on at the time), Ukraine (which events proved me correct) or the NATO-member Baltic states.

In summary: Russia is no military threat to western Europe. And though its threat to the Baltics and Ukraine is more realizable, there is not much NATO can do about it in the event, anyway.

As for terrorism, that's obviously a real and in fact ongoing threat in Europe.

But let us imagine that al Qaeda [ISIS didn't exist then, but include it] mounts a truly devastating attack against a NATO capital city, killing thousands. Just how can NATO respond? It can't, certainly not for any response that would require self-lifting across strategic distances. The strategic transportation of NATO has always been oriented one way: US and Canadian forces flowing into Europe to defend it from the USSR, not forces flowing out of Europe to somewhere else in the world. NATO forces cannot go anywhere in the world in substantial force without the US Air Force or Navy carrying them.

Let us then ask the pointed question: Just how does continued NATO membership actually benefit that United States? I can think of only one way - forward stationing of US forces as a deployment point to locales farther east or toward the Middle East.

That's it. Is that worth the cost of national treasure and aggravation we have with the alliance, and which show no sign of abating?

And this relates directly to what Mattis said today:

Georgia's birth rate has tanked more than practically any other country in the world. In fact, by 2050 there will be only 100,000 Georgian women of childbearing age, if current trends continue. So, he said, if Georgians won't have children to grow up to defend Georgia, why should Americans have children to grow up to defend Georgia? I can't think of any good reason.

And the same question can be asked of every other European NATO member, except perhaps Britain and France. The birth rates of Germany, Spain, Italy and every other NATO country except Turkey are below the stable replacement rate of 2.1 average births per woman, most far below. Italy’s rate is 1.23 births per woman , for example, meaning that Italy’s population could shrink by one-third by mid-century. (Turkey’s birth rate is about twice as high as Italy's.)

Again the question for NATO’s countries: if you will not have enough children to preserve your country, why should the US make up your deficit?

Update, 28 Feb., 

Spanish women between 18-49 reportedly had an average of 1.3 children in 2015 - below the European Union’s (EU) figure of 1.58. Spain’s birthrate has fallen by 18 percent since 2008, according to figures from Eurostat.

And between 1977 and 2015, the number of childless couples tripled from 1.5 to 4.4 million... .

All NATO members agreed many years ago to spend at least two percent of the GDPs on defense. Today, only five nations do:  the UK, Poland, Estonia, Greece and the United States. The other countries are all significantly below that benchmark, many very steeply below (Canada spend less than one percent).

Bluntly, NATO countries won't bear enough children to defend their countries in the 2020s and even less so in the decades following, and they won't spend enough on their military to equip them anyway. I said nine years ago,

I think the United States should reassess whether the NATO alliance really is serving American interests. I don't think it is, and I don't think it will do better in years to come.

It certainly has not since then. I cannot think of a reason not to kiss NATO goodbye right now.

Update, 28 Feb: See also, "Europe has simply given up," with an up-to-date look at European nations' birth rates and their implications.

The coming World War Hillary?

First, Green Party candidate Jill Stein said that a President Hillary Clinton will likely start a war with Russia that will go nuclear.

Now The Independent chimes in: "Could Hillary Clinton start a World War? Sure as [snip] she could – and here’s how."

Basically, the paper says that Hillary Clinton is fundamentally aggressive while Trump is not. This is not an endorsement of Trump at all; in fact the essay points out the real problems with Trump's potential in facing Russia, mainly,

You can condemn that semi-isolationist “America First” mind-set if you want, but the easiest way to prevent the next world war is simply to let the Russians have what they want, provided it makes no difference to you. Trump has almost said as much about American intentions; smaller Nato allies, if they don’t pay their way, can go hang if they want American men and women to lay down their lives for them. The Russians can have Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania if they want. We’re not taking about giving them Rhode Island, or Alaska, are we?

Well, I have written for at least eight years now that NATO was finished a long time ago:

What has NATO done for us?

No Action, Talk Only

What has NATO done for us redux

The pointlessness of NATO

NATO: Broke, Leaderless and Pointless

NATO continues to pretend it matters

And finally, George Friedman making the same points.

The coming European civil wars

Giles Kepel, one of the foremost scholars of Islam in the Western world, has said Europe better get ready for war:

According to German newspaper Die Welt, Kepel said the terror group’s [ISIS] aim is to incite hatred towards Muslims from the rest of the society which would eventually radicalise others to the point that Europe could enter into full-blown civil war.

Kepel, who is a specialist on Islamic and contemporary Arab world, added these ISIS fanatics not only want to destroy Europe, but to eliminate more moderate Islamic opposition.

“The terrorism is above all an expression of a war within Islam,” he explained. “The long-term goal of the Jihad Generation is to destroy Europe through civil war and then build an Islamic society from the ashes.

See also my 2005 series, "The Forever Jihad."

And from January, "Europe's coming civil war," in which Swiss

Lieutenant-General André Blattmann has issued a warning to the Swiss people that society is dangerously close to collapse and advised those not already armed as part of the Swiss Army reserve to take steps to arm themselves.

Putin is Biff and Obama is Marty McFly

So Putin is playing Biff from the Back the Future movie series and President Obama is playing Marty McFly - an analogy I wish I could take credit for but which belongs to Ralph Peters.

Putin sent two Sukhoi Su-24 attack jets to buzz the USS Donald Cook this week, which was conducting combined training with Polish helicopters in the Baltic Sea. One of the jets came within a mere 30 feet of the ship, according to the US Navy.

I laughed aloud when TV anchors (FNC, anyone?) said the Sukhois were flying "simulated attack profiles."

If they had really been simulating an attack the crew of Donald Cook would never have seen them. They would have "launched" their anti-ship missiles from beyond visual range.



Here is a US Navy still photo taken from the stern of  Donald Cook. Yeah, that's close.

Putin also sent a patrol helicopter to harass the Polish helicopter crews operating off the landing deck of the Cook.

An analysis by a retired US Navy captain is here.

So what was Putin really up to?




Here is a short, close look at the Su-24:

Europe’s non-European future

reposted from Feb 17, 2006, at my previous site (no longer online)

Don't say no one foresaw what was going to happen to Europe once the Middle East figured out that the continent - or at least its political class - was not really interested in remaining European.

With the demographics of ethnic Europeans apparently at the cusp of an irreversible death spiral because 17 countries of the continent have birth rates of 1.3 or lower, here’s a peek inside one of Europe’s chief problems by Bruce Bawer, author of the forthcoming book, While Europe Slept : How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. Writing in the Hudson Review last fall after living in Europe for several years, Bawer observed:

Living in Europe, I gradually came to appreciate American virtues I’d always taken for granted, or even disdained—among them a lack of self-seriousness, a grasp of irony and self-deprecating humor, a friendly informality with strangers, an unashamed curiosity, an openness to new experience, an innate optimism, a willingness to think for oneself and speak one’s mind and question the accepted way of doing things. (One reason why Europeans view Americans as ignorant is that when we don’t know something, we’re more likely to admit it freely and ask questions.) While Americans, I saw, cherished liberty, Europeans tended to take it for granted or dismiss it as a naïve or cynical, and somehow vaguely embarrassing, American fiction. I found myself toting up words that begin with i: individuality, imagination, initiative, inventiveness, independence of mind. Americans, it seemed to me, were more likely to think for themselves and trust their own judgments, and less easily cowed by authorities or bossed around by “experts”; they believed in their own ability to make things better. No wonder so many smart, ambitious young Europeans look for inspiration to the United States, which has a dynamism their own countries lack, and which communicates the idea that life can be an adventure and that there’s important, exciting work to be done. Reagan-style “morning in America” clichés may make some of us wince, but they reflect something genuine and valuable in the American air. Europeans may or may not have more of a “sense of history” than Americans do (in fact, in a recent study comparing students’ historical knowledge, the results were pretty much a draw), but America has something else that matters—a belief in the future.

 This is the continent that is the very front line against Islamism. Whatever one might say about Osaama bin Laden, et. al., that they lack faith in the future isn’t it. They are convinced to the marrow of their bones that Islam is mere years away from dominating not just Europe, but the entire planet.

Will Europeans succumb without a fight? Well, their governments certainly will, but that the people will is not at all certain. After the brutal, Islamist murder of Theo van Gogh in Holland, some ethnic Dutch torched some mosques, which was decried as a terrible thing at the time but which we realize from the cartoon protests is actually a valid response to being made angry. In The West’s Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?, Tony Blankley speculates that the coming years in Europe may be bloody as ethnic Europeans (my term, not his) realize that their governments are determined to surrender to the Islamists. The masses, he says, may suddenly decide not to stand for it and the prospect of open battles in the streets of major cities may become reality. Or maybe not, Blankley says, because it’s far from certain as well that the masses of Europe have that kind of energy or fight left in them.

But even if they do, they will still lose. The death spiral is real, not speculative. Unless the European masses decide to accept 20 years of a dramatically lower economy so that women can leave the work force to have 2-3 babies apiece, Europe, as a European continent, is done for. What do you think the odds of the masses deciding to do that are?

NATO continues to pretend it matters

Well, this sure will have Putin quaking in his boots:

WASHINGTON — As Ukrainian leaders warned on Monday of “a great war” with Russia, NATO leaders meeting in Wales this week were expected to endorse their most concrete response yet to increased Russian military intervention in Ukraine: establishing a rapid-reaction force capable of deploying quickly to Eastern Europe, officials of the alliance said.

The new force of some 4,000 troops, capable of moving on 48 hours’ notice ... .

And you can just stop reading there because:

1. Four thousand troops is not even a decent speed bump against Russia or most any other potential enemy. Of the 4,000, probably no more than 800 are trigger pullers.

2. There is nothing to back them up. NATO has no strategic "throw" apart from the US Air Force or Navy, except for (believe it or not) Canada. The Royal Air Force has a few new C-17s, but not many. That's the capability to sustain major operations an extended distance away through supply and troop reinforcements or rotations. NATO just doesn't have it.

3. That means that the RRF will actually never be deployed into combat and that this is simply a symbolic gesture.

4. "Capable of moving on 48 hours notice" is in fact not rapid. The US 82d Airborne Division with its USAF support gets a battalion in the air within 18 hours of the go order, with additional battalions following quickly.

5. Remember the "NATO Response Force?" Neither do I.

Six years ago I asked, "What has NATO done for us?" discussing the usefulness of NATO to the United States in confronting the Russian threat (Russia had just invaded Georgia) to Ukraine or Islamist terrorism. Except for the date, I wouldn't change a word. For example:

Ukraine? Not a NATO member, and Russia could easily march in. But Ukraine is hardly defensible by NATO. From the west, NATO forces would have a very long ground journey, across NATO-member Poland, then another 300 miles just to reach Ukraine's capital, Kiev. The logistics problem would be immense, especially for ammunition and spare parts.

Ukraine’s sea approach, from the Black Sea, has a natural choke point at the Bosporus straits. The sea approach to the Bosporus has its own choke points, the Dardanelles strait which empties into the Sea of Mamara, between the Aegean Sea and the Bosporus straits. Fortunately, Turkey is a NATO member whose forces have been focused for decades on keeping the sea lanes open. Of course, Russia has worked the opposite problems for decades, too. So there would almost certainly be a battle royal there between NATO and Russian air and naval forces.

Finally, Ukraine is a big country, almost 800 miles east to west, 233,000 square miles, and NATO's manpower commitment would have to be correspondingly large, probably too large for NATO's existing forces, even under mobilization, since substantial forces would need to be retained in Poland and points west to deter Russian moves in that direction.

As well, western Europe's standing forces are too few to offer substantial, long-lasting reinforcements to deployed units. Many of their regular brigades are permanently staffed by regulars at a fraction of full strength, with the rest (usually one-third or even more) of the troops being reservists whose readiness level is substantially lower. If you use your reserves to man up your regular battalions, who exactly is manning the reserves? In all, since the dissolution of the USSR, Europe's defense planning has been focused on economy rather than war readiness.

In 2009 I asked, "Is NATO approaching its end game?" to which the answer is perpetually yes. Without any clear sense of mission and purpose remaining, NATO has become a fiefdom of typical Euro-Buro nature, existing for prolonging the job security of its massively bloated staffs.

NATO is actually rather pointless and they know it.

It's telling that the French are complaining about NATO's bureaucratic inefficiency. Man, when the French complain about unwieldy bureaucracies, you know there's a problem! And here is Exhibit A:

This is NATO's new, $1.38 billion headquarters sitting on 100 acres near Brussels, under construction now. This for an organization that has essentially no purpose.

And NATO's European nations are broke, or at least unwilling to spend money on the military. In 2000, the US provided 50 percent of NATO's funding. By 2011, it was 75 percent. NATO is broke, leaderless and pointless.

As Richard Perle, an assistant defense secretary under Reagan, said about NATO, "If it didn't already exist, you couldn't start it today. It's living on its legacy."

"If the cradles are empty, the future is bleak"

The Z Blog › Empty Cradles:

Is Putin moving on Ukraine in a bid to get Russians to bear more children? Hmmm....

And here is a handy little "List of sovereign states and dependent territories by fertility rate," although its data are five or more years old by now.

Ukraine has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. It hit a low in 2001 of 1.08 live births per woman, and even though it had rebounded to 1.53 in 2012, that is still very much below mere replacement rate.

Most of the rest of Europe is no higher or not much higher, and of the major European NATO powers, only the UK and France are higher. Germany and Italy are in a race for the bottom of all Europe. Poland, which would be key terrain in defending either Ukraine or the NATO-member Baltic states, has a birth rate only marginally higher.

So my question to anyone proposing such military action by the United States: if the European nations threatened by Russia will not have children to grow up to defend their own nations, why should we ask American women to bear children to go defend those nations? It seems to me that they have already decided that their country is not worth dying for. I do not see why we should.

HT: American Digest

And yet the irony is lost on them

The WaPo picked up the dripping irony up front:

MUNICH — In an unusual joint appearance overseas, Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told European allies Saturday that Washington would depend more heavily on them to tackle a litany of political and security crises, even as the two pushed back against concerns that the Obama administration was abdicating leadership on the same issues.

That's not "leading from the rear," it's running to the rear! So it's time for a caption contest!

"I don't know, John, I think that hitting five beer cellars tonight might be a
little too ambitious. But you're paying, right?"

NATO: Broke, Leaderless and Pointless

NATO, The Existential Question

BRUSSELS - It is a profound problem, which may evolve into a true existential crisis. It is prompted by a question that organizations must sometimes confront: “What purpose do we serve?”

This is the question that is starting to be asked at the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Meetings in Brussels without any real agenda, that lead to summits without decisions, the organization gets by actively trying to “redefine” itself. In reality, the end of the organization’s mission in Afghanistan in 2014, and its economic uncertainty due to the crisis that itsEuropean members are facing, puts it in a very difficult situation.

An outward sign of just how delicate the situation is for NATO's General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen and his associates was the recent cancellation of the governmental summit because US President Barack Obama’s presence could not be assured.

Since 2010-2011, the Europeans have all exhausted their military budgets, an easy enough target for cuts. Public opinion in member countries is a bit less sensitive to these measures than to others that concern individuals on a more direct daily basis. The continent dedicates today to its defense a total of 15% less than in 2001. Neither France nor Britain any longer reach the NATO standard of 2% of the GDP that should be dedicated to the military. The French share is expected to drop to around 1% in 2025. Even though Germany, in terms of conventional weapons, disposes of the same budget as France, it still hesitates to take the step forward necessary to move to a status of a military power, as well as an economic one.

I have written a lot about the obsolescence of NATO and why it is no longer much obvious why the old alliance serves United States interests, beginning at least back in 2008 in "What has NATO done for us?"

I think the United States should reassess whether the NATO alliance really is serving American interests. I don't think it is, and I don't think it will do better in years to come. Though we must stay politically engaged, I think we'd be better off withdrawing from the military alliance, and work toward building an Anglosphere military alliance in its stead.

What has NATO done for us redux

No Action, Talk Only

The Pointlessness of NATO

Europe’s free ride on the back of NATO is over

 

Turkey vs. Russia and market speculators

Last night the Turkish air force sent two F-16s to intercept a Syrian Airlines passenger jet, forcing it to land near Ankara.



This is what caused oil prices to spike overnight in Europe. Day traders love these kinds of incidents since they cause rapid and very-short-term predictable moves in prices of oil-related funds and contracts. When institutional traders are buying hundreds of thousands (or more) of dollars of stocks or exchange-traded funds in one trade, they can make enormous sums of money is very small price movements.

One popular ETF, for example, is USO on the New York exchange. It opened at 34.05 this morning and has a day high (so far) of 34.44. Consider a day trader buying only $100,000 worth at open. If sold at 34.44, he would have made a return of $1,145 in less than two hours. If that doesn't sound like much, just carry the compounding out for a year's worth of trading days.

More risky is a double-leveraged fund such as UCO, which opened at 30.92 and hit a high, so far, of 31.61. That would have been a profit of $2,231 and the day isn't over.

In fact, though, computer-program-assisted day traders will buy and sell within seconds, repeating profits of very small margins dozens or hundreds of times throughout the day. Large traders will be quite happy to go long or short for moves of only one cent (or sometimes less than that).

But for Joe Dokes guys or gals like you and me, the old saying applies in force: If you want to make a small fortune day trading, start with a large fortune. Disclosure - no, I don't do this.

Stay out of Syria!

Blackfive has an excellent post entitled simply, "THERE IS NO US NATIONAL SECURITY INTEREST IN A SYRIAN INTERVENTION."

Which is exactly right. As I have mentioned before, the Syrian rebels are not Jeffersonian wanna-bes and the Syrian rebellion is not about freedom.

As usual, Walter Russell Mead cuts to the heart of the matter about The Real News From Syria:

[R]adical and Salafist sheikhs and organizations in the Gulf are getting into the weapons delivery act. For many jihadis, the fight against Assad is first and foremost a struggle against Alawite “heretics”, and the goal is to build a radical Islamic state on the ruins of Ba’athist, secular Syria.

If the rebels win, expect a bloodbath of non-Sunnis, especially the Alawites and Christians.

Now over to Blackfive:

Now the backstory, so you at least understand why this presents a possibility of NATO, and thus the US, being pulled into such an intervention (possibly willingly, I’ll get to that later).  It comes from Andrew McCarty at PJ Media:

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a Sunni Islamic supremacist with longstanding ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s most influential Sunni supremacist organization. The Brotherhood isleading the mujahideen (called the “opposition” or the “rebels” by the mainstream media) that seeks to oust the Assad regime in Syria — dominated by the Alawites, a minority Shiite sect. Unsurprisingly, then, Turkey’s government has taken a very active role in abetting the Brotherhood’s operations against the Syrian regime, which have also been joined by al-Qaeda and other Sunni militants. 

On Friday, a Turkish air force jet entered Syrian air space, and Assad regime forces shot it down. Turkey claims the jet “mistakenly” cruised over Syria, and that, by the time it was taken down, it was in international air space over the Mediterranean. One need carry no brief for Assad to conclude that, given the interventionist drum-beat for no-fly zones and direct military and logistical aid to the “opposition,” Syria rationally took the presence of a Turkish military aircraft in its air space as a provocation. Turkey insists it was not “spying” — that this was just an accident to which Syria overreacted. That would be a good argument if the regime were not under siege and if the Syrian and Turkish governments had not been exchanging hostile words (mostly, threats from Erdogan) for months. That, of course, is not the case.

Confused?  Well don’t be.  This is just another chapter in the eternal war between the Sunnis and Shiites and between the religious and secular.

But the movement of forces on the ground or in the air are not the real point. This is:

Point: This is not a NATO or US fight.  This is something that we should stay as far from as we can.  

Politics, however, will be integral to any decision made at this point, at least in the US. Domestic electoral politics.  What scares me is the possibility the Obama administration may conclude it is a good idea politically to use NATO to “change the subject” and make Obama a “war time President” hoping the advantages of that situation will make the difference in November.  And it wouldn’t be a unilateral decision, but instead receive bi-partisan support as Sen. McCain and other GOP members have been outspoken in their desire to intervene. 

Call me paranoid but I find nothing in my analysis that’s at all infeasible or improbable.  In fact, having watched this administration at work, I consider it to be a completely possible scenario.

Fortunately, NATO is toothless and broke. But Blackfive is right: this is completely plausible. However, I would rate it as unlikely for the following two reasons.

1. The NATO nations, except Canada (!), are broke. With the very possible imminent collapse of the Euro, NATO nations have every incentive to avoid expeditionary expenditures. I this reason alone obviates the possibility of Chapter 5 being successfully invoked by Turkey.

2. Angela Merkel and most of the rest of NATO's heads of state are more than aware of the basic facts of the Sunni/al-Qaeda grab for power in Syria, and are not going to bring down Assad to bring up the Islamists. They are also well aware that the bloody aftermath in Libya is not even an opening act for that would follow in Syria if the "resistance" topples Assad. NATO's countries are also much closer, literally and figuratively, to Russia; the weight of the Russian Bear's opposition will press much more heavily on Eur-NATO than us.

I would add that NATO's Euro nations have almost no strategic "throw" to bring effective forces against Assad. At the minimum they would have to rail through Turkey while also forming naval forces off Syria (where only two Russian cruisers would form a no-cross line that not one Eur-NATO head of state would dare cross).

The problem is that it is not implausible that our current president would be more than satisfied to see Assad replaced by Sunnis in Syria. If you think that makes no sense, then I would say you have the basic grasp of the essentials of Obama's foreign policy.

All this is all more the reason for the United States to quit NATO's military pact. 

We must stay out of Syria, militarily.

Romney prepares for the last war

Mitt Romney on NATO: "Reinforcing alliance's military might is vital"

This piece is hopelessly backward looking. We need to de-link our national security from NATO starting, oh, six years ago. While I find almost nothing to commend Obama on concerning defense, that he has started moving our security concerns' locus toward Asia is exactly right.

The problems is that Europe faces no credible threat for which NATO is the answer.

See my explanation here.

Furthermore, Europe's native birth rate has fallen off a cliff so that many Euro countries are well into what demographers call a demographic death spiral, where the birth rate is so low that it is effectively impossible for it to recover. See here. So the question is begged (and the Europeans have no answer): If Europeans won't have children who will grow up to be soldiers to defend their countries, why should American women bear children to grow up to defend Europe?

NATO is literally pointless militarily and the USA should withdraw from the military alliance, though intelligence sharing and the like will still do us well.

Europe’s free ride on the back of Nato is over - Telegraph

Europe’s free ride on the back of Nato is over - Telegraph

Time for NATO's countries to start to look inward and prepare for a post-American alliance.

... In 2000, America’s share of Nato defence spending was around 50 per cent. Today, it has risen to 75 per cent. With peace at home, many European nations have redirected spending towards other priorities, free-riding off the US when it comes to threats overseas. And this problem is set to get worse, since every European Nato member is set for severe defence cuts – including France, whose own equivalent of Britain’s defence review begins next year.

This decline in capability has come about not just because we are spending less, but because we continue to spend badly. Military funding is channelled through dozens of separate national programmes and structures, creating enormous duplication and failing to achieve economies of scale. While Europe has half a million more military personnel than America, it can deploy just a fraction of them overseas.

Nato is also being weakened by changes in US foreign policy: as the then defence secretary, Robert Gates, said earlier this year, his country is starting to look west as much as east. What America sees in Nato is yesterday’s vision of the future: allies with declining capabilities, reluctant to put troops in harm’s way, and an institution ill-suited to addressing US interests – especially with defence cuts looming in Washington as well.

NATO has become militarily worthless not only to the United States but to itself. And it is past time to ask ourselves, "What has NATO done for us?" Well, not much.

And this should make the Brits sleep well at night: The Royal Navy has not even one warship to spare for emergency response within Britain's territorial waters.

Reasons for optimism in Libya

The fall of Gaddafi — War in Context

Steve Negus says there are three main things that bode well for Libya's future (uncertain though that future is).

• The West has leverage because the rebel alliance knows it could not have prevailed without NATO's airstrikes, but the rebels' honor is intact because they did the hard fighting and bleeding.
• Qaddafi's ruling party was not much bigger than him. There are not large numbers of "dead enders" to oppose the transitional government as there were in Iraq when Saddam was deposed.
• Libya is highly tribal but pretty homogenously Sunni and conservative. There really aren't any heretics, political or religious, that provides easy planting for Islamist radicalism. My comment: that one we will wait and see most of all. 

DOD & Justice told Obama that Libya war was subject to War Powers Act

2 Top Lawyers Lost to Obama in Libya War Policy Debate - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.

But those lawyers didn't understand what the real purpose of the Libya adventure is. Hint: success in the theater of operations isn't it.

Where our defense money goes

Most of the countries in the embedded essay below are NATO members. They spend a pittance on their defense budgets. Instead, we pick up their tab. You can't understand the true costs of the US defense budget without understanding how much of other countries' defense budgets are actually being paid for inside ours - without reimbursement and, for that matter, without any reason.

As I have written before, NATO is obsolete and purposeless. It's past time for the US to disengage from NATO. See:

What has NATO does for us?

The pointlessness of NATO

France And Britain Call For Expanded NATO Role In Libya

France And Britain Call For Expanded NATO Role In Libya.

Meaning that Britain and France want the United States to take charge again and go Roman on Qaddafi. Well, otherwise, this war could spell the end of NATO. And I say good riddance.

Belmont Club offers insights.

The end of NATO?

The only air arms operating in a combat role over Libya are the Brits and the French. The other air forces are merely voting "present." But they are not doing anything, you know, military. So, the question:
Will the Libya intervention bring the end of NATO?

In truth, the Libyan expedition is an Anglo-French project and has been from the beginning. Yet neither Britain nor France wants responsibility for the operation — and neither feels comfortable relying on the other. ...

And NATO — an organization that, I repeat, did not plan for, prepare for or even vote for the Libyan operation — will shoulder most of the blame. The use of NATO’s name, in Libya, is a fiction. But the weakening of NATO’s reputation in Libya’s wake might become horribly real.

Well, that might be, but NATO has been pointless for more than 20 years now.