Entradas populares

martes, 17 de mayo de 2011

Quick message on the German defence review/reform

.

There was a minister with an undersecretary who prepared a defence review. The chancellor's office didn't like the 'concept'. The minister left office because of a scandal, a new minister came, the undersecretary was fired asap, the new minister explained that he needs to look into everything closely and will not make major decisions/announcements till summer at least. Now we have rumours that there wasn't enough money for the old reform idea and the Bundeswehr might need to shrink to about 156k personnel.And now the really short version:
It was a good idea to not pay much attention and to not write much about German defence reform in the last months. Nothing came of it anyway.
S O
.

View the original article here

COINdinistas losing confidence

.
The new fighting season in Afghanistan is beginning and the COINdinistas are losing confidence both in the troops increase and the strategy / doctrine.Here is a blog text that comes close to representing the mood. It also shows the basic errors between its lines.First, the author looks at the worst case scenario, then he writes about how there's no obvious way how to influence that outcome decisively (allowing the antagonists no influence on the outcome) and then he's kind of depressed.The basic - and extremely widespread- errors are

This forces you into a dilemma, for there is usually no risk-free approach offering total success.

Many people have never learnt to be satisfied with their country having some influence on outcomes. They want it to define the outcome by itself, favourably. This greedy behaviour leads to an inability to let the things just flow, to allow others to intervene somewhat in their best interests, which are often rather advantageous for many nations.This greed for decisive influence leads to terribly expensive policies. because it's so damn difficult to force your will on others
The COINdinistas are in my opinion mostly people with a 'we need to win and it's my job to push for victory' fixation. They lost sight of what's important in the greater picture due to this fixation, but eventually the crushing depression of many years with no real success is exacting its toll. We've been almost a decade in Afghanistan, but the situation is worse now than nine years ago.

S O
.


View the original article here