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EurAsia and the New Nature of War
Roger Boyd
December 18, 2024
The nature of war is constantly changing due to new technologies; new weapon systems and/or new ways of organizing the war makers. The Mongol hordes stopped by scorched earth tactics and impregnable castles, only impregnable until the arrival of gunpowder and the cannons to use them, the superiority of the heavy cavalry charge challenged with the longbow, the noble-lead yeoman armies sent into the dustbin of history by the Prussian professional army, the colossal battleships rendered useless by the aircraft, submarines and torpedoes. The list is endless over the vastness of history and geography. There is a saying that generals tend to ready their militaries “to fight the last war”. The great mistake made by many military leaders prior to WW1 was not to understand the effects of machine guns, barbed wire and massed artillery upon the battlefield.
Another mistake is to see victories through rose-coloured glasses that reinforce the view that one's own forces are far superior to any other. In World War 2, the most well trained and committed armies were those of the Germans and Japanese. But the vast majority of these armies were engaged in the vast battle scape of the Soviet Union and China; the Western Allies never faced more than a minority of the German and Japanese militaries and generally not the best units. As the Western
Allies slogged their way through North Africa, Sicily, mainland Italy and then Normandy they faced at most 15% of the German army; and
many of those units were resting from the hell of the Eastern front.
As the Western Allies were island hopping through the Pacific facing the Japanese in the tens of thousands each time, the Chinese fought 2.8 million (1.5 million of which were either wounded or killed); at the same time as the British were failing pathetically against the small Japanese forces in Burma.
Then very late in the war, the Soviets moved a huge force thousands of miles eastwards to utterly crush the million-strong Japanese Manchurian Army in a month, while also occupying the northern island of Sakhalin. It was the Soviets who were ready to invade Japan, through the island of Hokkaido, in early August 1945; and it was the thought of this which drove the Japanese to surrender to the Western Allies.
WW2 is remembered and celebrated in the West as a war won by the Western Allies, when in fact they played a relatively small role; most especially in Europe. Quite probably, the Soviet forces would have liberated all of Europe without the D-Day landings; which is quite possibly why those landings took place after so much delay. The Germans considered that the US Army only won when they had overwhelming superiority in firepower, something that they will not have in a peer conflict.
Let us also remember that WW1 was ending in a stalemate that would have probably led to a balanced peace settlement without the late intervention of the US (and the one-sided nature of the vast US aid to Britain and France while the blockade on Germany was respected by the US). Let us also remember the huge numbers of American soldiers needlessly killed by the efficient Germans as the US General Pershing refused to have his troops trained by the war-hardened and experienced British and French officers. His experience was from the imperial encounters along the southern border, and he fought the Germans in
France as if he was fighting the Mexicans in very different terrain. His men paid for his arrogance and obstinacy with their lives as they repeated all the mistakes that the British and French had experienced, and learnt from, over 3 years of war; with the only ameliorating factor being the utter exhaustion of the German army.
At the end of WW2, the power of the German and Japanese states and militaries had been broken and subjugated so that they could no longer threaten Anglo-American power. As with the defeat of Napoleon by Russia, the defeat of the Nazis by the Soviets had created a new great power in the East; to be joined by China. Hence the need for a new war, a Cold War given the advent of nuclear weapons, for the collective West against their new Soviet and Chinese competitors.
The hot wars of Korea and Vietnam, both fought by the West to stop the people of those nations from liberating themselves, were abject failures. In both nations, the West forced an unnatural national division and then installed their own brutal dictatorships in the south (in the case of Korea, the leaders that had collaborated and fought for the previous Japanese occupiers). In both, the true freedom fighters were slaughtered and tortured (over 200,000 in South Korea prior to the war breaking out). Then for all the Western huffing and puffing they could not blow the citizens’ house down, although they did their best to obliterate and poison that house; with the communist China and Soviet Union playing very important roles in keeping the colonial West at bay. After that, two decades of the “Vietnam Syndrome” until a weak enemy (Iraq) could be found to be “thrown against the wall”. And then the dismembering of Yugoslavia and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, then the destruction of Libya while Russia and China were still weak.
The invasion of Iraq (second Iraq War) involved overwhelming military advantage against a country that had been under crippling sanctions, with many of its generals paid off by the US. The first Iraq War included
the infamous “highway of death” as the US air force mercilessly slaughtered the retreating and undefended Iraqi army.
The destruction of Libya was carried out through an overwhelming air campaign against an extremely weak power, in support of insurgent forces, in contravention of the UN conditions of engagement. With Libya having previously given up its weapons of mass destruction. The reality is that the Western militaries, especially those of the UK, France and US have not won a war against a large-scale professional modern military for at least the past century. In World War 1, it was much more the brutal blockade of Germany (fully respected by a “neutral” US which lent aid to the British to break the German U-boat blockade) that lead to its defeat. In WW2, it was the Soviets who broke the German army and the Chinese that fought the vast majority of the Japanese army. Even the celebrated Waterloo was a defeat against the ageing Napoleon with a relatively small army until the Prussians arrived to save the British. The French army at Waterloo was but a shadow of the one destroyed by Russia only three years earlier. In 2024, we are in a totally new geopolitical, geo-economic and technological reality.
China is now the workshop of the world, charging ahead of a heavily deindustrialized US in so many areas, in scale, scope and technology. Allied with Russia which has re-found some of its industrial strength with the challenges of Western sanctions and the needs of war. Russia now possesses a massive military that has been provided extensive live experience of war fighting in the new reality. Around the two nations are the aligned hinterlands of the Stans of Central Asia, together with Belarus, Iran, Iraq and a heavily under-estimated North Korea (still seen through the lens of its collapsed state in the 1990s; as is Russia). Connected to this is a neutral ASEAN (excluding the StockholmSyndrome suffering US vassal Filipino elites) and India, Turkey and even now Georgia which strongly defend their own independence. To the west we can even add Hungary, Slovakia and Serbia. This collection of states represents the majority of humanity, the fastest growing
economic regions in the world and a vast cornucopia of mineral and agricultural riches. Soon to be joined by vast swathes of what used to be known as Ukraine. The '“loss” of Syria is but a pin prick upon such a vast EurAsian anti-colonial mass.
At the same time, the vast and hugely expensive US navy and network of bases has been rendered even more obsolete than before. It made some sense to surround China with bases when the latter’s military capabilities were much less advanced, but now those bases simply become day one targets to be destroyed, crippling US capabilities from the outset of a war. Even Hawaii is vulnerable to long range missiles launched from Chinese submarines. The US plan seems to be to waste vast sums of money on building more and more dispersed bases, when each one will cost much more than the cost of the extra Chinese missiles required to destroy it, and such dispersal will create a logistics and coordination nightmare. But great news for the US MIC and its construction companies.
With the advent of the nuclear submarine, aircraft carrying anti-ship missiles, and land-based long range anti-ship missiles, the eleven US carrier task forces (only one third at best of which are active at any time given maintenance, refitting and rest needs) already looked as out of their time as the famed Yamamoto (sent to the bottom of the ocean by air power) did in 1945.
Made even worse by the short range and slow speed (problems have been found when running at supersonic speeds for any length of time) of the US F35s, especially when compared to Russian and Chinese equivalent aircraft; and that’s ignoring the extreme “hanger queen” nature of the F35. The Russian and Chinese aircraft have twice the range, can fly for lengthy periods at supersonic speeds, and carry air-toair missiles that out-distance those of the F35. In addition, the “stealth” of the F35 has been significantly countered during its long gestation. As
the oligopolized US Military Industrial Complex (MIC) has driven prices rapidly upwards and profiteering showed good design and quality the door, the US surface fleet has rapidly shrunk while its cost keep rising. The greatest shrinkage has been in the escort vessels required to protect the massive number of ship journeys required to supply the task forces and the US bases, let alone replace war time losses.
The once great British Navy is now a laughing stock, hardly able to stock two toy aircraft carriers that make old Jaguar cars look reliable. The British spent so much on these dry-dock Queens that it is having difficulty funding the escort vessels and even the aircraft for them. The British navy is currently only one half the size that it was during the Falklands War.
The same for the celebrated French navy which is about the same size as that of the UK, and would be chewed up by the Russians or Chinese as an aperitif. The Chinese have understood this reality, and have focused their efforts on long range land-based and air based anti-ship missiles, surface to surface missiles (for the US bases in South Korea, Japan and the Philippines etc.), air defences, submarines, and large numbers of anti-submarine capable and surface to surface missile equipped destroyers. A US trying to fight China in the latter’s back yard from a home base nearly 7,000 miles away, with its local bases wiped out in days if not hours, would be utterly delusional. And risking nuclear war as the US reacted to the reality of overwhelming defeat. Of course, the usual gung-ho head of the Marine Corp still revels in delusions of grandeur; his psychological health would not deal well with a rendezvous with reality. Nor the sales of his future post-retirement MIC employers.
As for the Russians, they possess an even more advanced arsenal of surface-to-surface and anti-ship missiles, as well as many hunter-killer
submarines. The Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the North Sea, the Indian Ocean - nowhere would be safe from Russian (and Iranian) missiles and Russian submarines. As the Yemenis have shown, sea power is rendered significantly obsolete by modern drones and missiles. With the European bases being rendered unusable at the very start of a European war, with Western stocks of ammunition etc, being depleted within hours and days, and no way to safely resupply Europe, the only outcome of a European war would be a quick trip to the edge of nuclear annihilation. That is why the Ukraine war will remain a localized one, no matter how much President Micron wants to ape Napoleon and the European vassal oligarchy writhes in psychic pain at their very obvious defeat by the “eastern hordes”.
Even though the US is rated as the #1 global military power with a rating of 0.0699 (zero is the highest rating), the gap to Russia at #2 (0.0702) and China at #3 (0.0706) is very small. The former has global commitments whereas the latter two only have regional commitments, and any conflicts would be on their doorsteps not near to the US. The next rated Western power is a UK which has a hardly functioning navy and an army of only 74,000 regulars (it has been estimated that it would last all of five days in a major peer level war). The US is already stretched between Ukraine, the Middle East and the Asian theatres.
The EurAsian collective opposition and neutrals also possess vast resources that can be transported across ever increasing land and river based logistical routes, while China’s increasingly electrified public and private transport options are reducing its dependence on seaborne supplies of fossil fuels that would need to be replaced with the use of its large strategic oil reserve. In addition, the US sanctions and export restrictions have driven both Russia and China to rapidly reduce their dependency upon Western suppliers in general. Any attempt at a seaborne blockade of China (irrelevant to a Russia that possesses such a vast cornucopia of natural resources) may have to last for a number of years for it to become significantly impactful, while the US economy
will be immediately affected by the cut off of so many direct and indirect Chinese imports, and the other nations of the world rebel against the effects of the blockade upon themselves.
This leaves the new great power conflict as a new Cold War, fought with economics, technology, proxies, coups and colour revolutions. China is easily winning the first two types of Cold War, and together with Russia starting to gain great advantage in Africa and even increasingly in South America. Even in food production, China is moving away from dependency upon the West through greater domestic production and imports from Russia and Brazil. In many ways the Chinese companies just seem to be hungrier for business than the hollowed out extraction and rentier orientation US and European ones.
The latter three types of Cold War (proxies, coups and colour revolutions) are no match for the former two (economics and technology), they may throw up surprising tactical victories but they will not change the strategic reality. They may also be undone, as in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and now Georgia as well as turning otherwise neutral elites against the West. As has the West’s open support for the Zionist genocide of the Palestinians.
As it is politically suicidal to criticize the US military for its vast waste, Peter-principle and corrupt top-heavy bureaucracy, and its utter inability to viably fight a real peer such as China or Russia (and even Iran without utterly unacceptable levels of losses), we will still tend to hear much huffing and puffing about “US military might”. But at the same time, the objective reality will be understood by many within the US military, as an over-muscled, not too flexible fighter with a glass jaw. A China which is winning the economic and technological war, and a Russia that has found new strength through the Ukraine war, will not trigger a wider conflict when they are so obviously winning. There is a possibility of a US direct conflict with Iran, given the ISIS-like
extremism of the Zionist regime and its population together with the Zionist crazies within the US administration, but President Trump does not seem so infected with the ideological blindness to risk the destruction of the myth of the US military at the least, and the destruction of humanity at the worst.
The West is to all intents and purposes in a position of military impasse with respect to China and Russia, and even possibly Iran. Its attempts to use sanctions to restrain and destroy its enemies' economies have failed and in many cases even spectacularly blown back. Its only avenue for its continued multi-hundred year colonial aggression is to flail at the enemy that it cannot defeat, which unfortunately will lead to much unneeded death and destruction. But the West will be slowly, and then perhaps more quickly, subdued by the patient leadership of China, Russia and Iran. Patience and restraint is a virtue when you are winning, and your enemy is imploding from within, but always needs to be backed up with a strong defensive big stick.
Many Western commentators, even those that are critical of the West, do not understand the above reality, and their analyses are fundamentally undermined by that lack of understanding.