Comments on: Eureka

By: Ron Snyder

Ron Snyder — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:47:36 +0000

Was listening to some Artie Shaw on my way to work. Lord he was good.

By: Paul L. Quandt

Paul L. Quandt — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:03:16 +0000

The thing that NaCly Dog may not understand about the PRC is that 1) the Chinese tend to think/plan long-term, and 2) the PRC leadership tends to collective, not individual. Mao aside, they are not Hitlers or Stalins. It is entirely possible that they are planning for a confrontation with us 40 or 50 years from now.

By: Justthisguy

Justthisguy — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:21:33 +0000

I’m glad to see that the fifth comment quoted Pournelle’s Iron Law. And, yup, there’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s amuse ourselves instead with sailor-homo jokes. Or bandsman-homo jokes. Hey, I was a clarinetist! Have at it!

By: David Curp

David Curp — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:18:30 +0000

Mike,

The problem is however, if China (like Nazi Germany) takes a less rational course of action and decides to divert attention from internal problems by foreign adventures abroad (for Hitler one of the key fears was his own personal mortality – he was completely convinced he was THE ONLY MAN OF DESTINY who could secure Lebensraum for Germany) then we win. They simply are not ready to sustain a real bid for global hegemony. The concern really is the horse race between China’s expanding economic and technological capability (as well as our own slide into a quasi-European nanny-state unwilling to pay for its own defense) and the socio-political pathologies of one-party rule/one-child policy/regional tensions and all the hidden problems that a dictatorship like China has that we won’t know about till it collapses. Will the Chinese leadership be able to play chess internally and externally and wait the 50 years necessary to grow their own organic capabilities so that they can make a truly dangerous bid for global hegemony? If so, we will be lucky if the PC gambit works and the USN can maintain enough institutional cohesion and technical edge to be ready for that fight (and we needs remember that we have as a country never have had to fight someone our own size or bigger – we’ve had the luxury of a continental size space and always outnumbering/overbearing our enemies without ever having to fight too smart – with a mature China we would have a very different kind of fight). If China made a premature bid for hegemony however, it could not only give us the chance to take them down before they become really dangerous AND perhaps even change the political dynamics in this country as well.

By: SJPONeill

SJPONeill — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:56:22 +0000

An important discussion that needs to be taken up in other fora as well…a couple of years back my day job involved developing a doctrinal framework for the complex COE i.e. the mess we are in now…the application of doctrine in individual and collective training was pretty simple, essentially, you teach what we tell you to teach. Defining the application of doctrine ‘with judgement’ on operations, and then we broadened the question to any real-time decision-making was more problematic until one day we were having a Q&A session with a warrant officers course. One of the WOs stood and said “Sirs, you can wave that code of military justice and lock me up for the rest of my life if you want but when the heat is on, what defines how we make decisons is what’s in the heart, not the head.” If we don’t embed and maintain a culture of the highest ethos and values from Day One when a recruit or a cadet steps off the bus, we can hardly be surprised when they don’t uphold our traditions when the pressure comes on…

By: claudio

claudio — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 12:36:15 +0000

QM, easy on the spy shooting…a few of us around here…and remember, we now HAS GPS. No need for Celestial, paper charts or anyone trained to use them. We’s all technical now.