This is another exercise in speculation regarding intentions. It may inform. At least no one wants Silesia back.
I have good reason to understand that the world is been sorted out. WWIII is presently underway and the good guys have won. This sounds absurd, but be calm and relaxed.
A best outcome would include an United States of Europe led by founding president Putin. It would include an United States of China led by XI as founding president. Each would support an expanded confederacy if general influence as well to handle real economic disparacy.
India and the USA are already there and t6he vfuture must see an United States of Brazil and an United States of Nigeria as well. Perhaps we will even see an United States of Israel and also Iran.
That is the big future. None of this needs a war and that wil not happen.
Central is that the large body provides economic efficency of scale while confederation allows local protection and cultural security. These objectives need to stop been in conflict.
Shift in World Balance of Power Coming || David Lifschultz
Operation Disclosure | By David Lifschultz, Contributing Writer September 3, 2020 SHIFT IN WORLD BALANCE OF POWER COMING "A spec...
Operation Disclosure | By David Lifschultz, Contributing Writer
September 3, 2020
https://operationdisclosure1.blogspot.com/2020/09/shift-in-world-balance-of-power-coming.html
SHIFT IN WORLD BALANCE OF POWER COMING
"A special Bundeswehr laboratory brought final certainty: Putin critic Alexej Navalny, who is currently being treated at the Berlin Charité, was poisoned with the nerve agent Novitschok. With that, the Russian ex-agent Sergej Skripal and his daughter Julia were poisoned in Great Britain in 2018. Numerous western states then expelled the respective Russian ambassadors in their country."
This looks like an obvious setup. Navalny was essentially a nothing in Russia with less than a 2% approval rating and was not a threat at all. Second, if Russia committed the first poisoning which is equally illogical as we will point out below in Footnote One, why would they use the same poison a second time which would clearly implicate them. While we recognize that the SVR and FSB are nowhere near the level of sophistication of Stalin's KGB reflected by the calibre of KGB General Pavel Sudoplatov who obtained the nuclear atomic bomb secrets from J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Stalin himself whose agent in the White House was Harry Hopkins, that the Russians would use the same technique twice if they did the first one as charged is too absurd to be treated seriously.
If we read the report from Pepe Escobar below in the Asian Times in Footnote Two, the goal of Russian and Chinese policy is to recruit Germany into a triple alliance locking together the Eurasian land mass a la Mackinder into the greatest geopolitical alliance in history and unbalancing the world balance of power in favour of these three great powers against the Anglo-Saxon sea power. It is obvious that this effort of poisoning Navalny is to interrupt Nord Stream Two and to assure the Anglo-Saxons that Germany will not create a Reinsurance Treaty of Prince Otto von Bismarck between Germany and Russia linked to China. Its purpose is to kill two birds with one stone. If he shoe fits, etc.
Nord Stream Two is in Germany's vital national interest as it provides a land based natural gas and oil energy source as the EU and US fleets cannot keep open the Straits of Hormuz. This is demonstrated by the Geopolitical Futures review of the naval inadequacies of the US fleet to protect the South China Sea in Footnote Three which was already analyzed by me in 2018 in Footnote Four in much greater detail in the piece entitled: "The Straits of Hormuz The Trigger To World Depression."
The US policy regarding Iran has nothing to do with nuclear weapons that are for sale on the black market by North Korea and Pakistan based on strangling sanctions that are very counterproductive and the North Korean hydrogen bombs have already been acquired by many Middle East powers. No one really cares about the nuclear issue except as a lever to force a regime change in Iran. The policy regarding Iran only has to do with their control of the Straits of Hormuz. As we see with the 400 billion dollar alliance between China and Iran that is expected to be signed in March, Russia and China will protect Iran as their control of 22 million barrels a day of oil through the Straits of Hormuz together with Russian control of 25 million barrels a day of oil produced in Russia and their "controlled" former provinces in Central Asia gives them with China control over half the world's oil . In other words, it gives China and Russia the control of the world. This is what Iran is all about. And this control is intolerable to the Anglo-Saxons.
Footnote One:
Here is an intelligence analysis of the first Skripal with comments by a SVR source and MI6 source:
SVR source:
Dear David,
Thanks for the meeting today; useful and interesting!
I would like to add 3 arguments in support of my vision of the S. episode:
he was recruited in Spain in early 1990s by US agents (S. served then as #2 at the Madrid Embassy military Referentura)
later on, when S. was sentenced already and was serving his term, he was released out of prison ahead of completion of the term to be exchanged for 10 Russian agents caught in the USA, and the exchange itself was agreed upon and arranged between CIA and GRU (1 to 10!)
the procedure of exchange foresaw S. shall go to the USA, and it was quite a surprise to learn his CIA paid for jet landed in the UK...Looks like all was done to screen out States from that "landscape"... and neither in Germany nor in France it would have been easier to build up such an anti-Russian case as in Salisbury - on the eve of Russian most important Presidential elections, when S. practically was feeling very safe and forgotten by Russians generally and his ex-colleagues in particular...
By all means, official Russia specifically wouldn't even think of such "closure" of the S. case.... Too exotic, too complex, too unprofessional... BUT - just to the point in the other side's interests and no direct evidence (so far!) to US masterminding ... obedient Brits are sincerely shouting "down with Russia"!...
Kind regards
MI6
X
Dear David:
On Mackinder, only two countries have ever come close to “commanding the world”, namely Britain and America, and neither had any control over Eastern Europe and the ‘World Island’. The need to control and defend a large landmass is a weakness, not a strength – at least until someone is foolish enough to invade you (and then it is only a strength if your population remains loyal). The US has a large landmass, but it is protected by two oceans. Even so, it hasn’t been overly successful in preventing infiltration from the south.
The UK had nothing to do with the poisoning. The penny might not yet have dropped in Whitehall with regards to the imperative of cultivating a strong Russia now that we are leaving the EU, but everyone realises that this is not a time for making more enemies. If MI6 had wanted to mount a false-flag op along the lines suggested, it would have been in France or Germany. There was no guarantee that the UK’s Nato allies would rally to its side because of an attack in Salisbury. It might just have been left out to dry (which would have given added strength to those in the UK still fighting against Brexit, on the grounds that it would have shown how isolated and weak the UK was without the EU), whereas if there’d been a ‘Russian’ attack on French or German soil, the UK could have immediately proven itself a loyal and useful ally despite leaving the EU (which is a point it is keen to make). I’m afraid you are looking in the wrong direction on this one.
Y (MI6`)
‘Something fishy here’: Putin doesn’t believe UK poisoned Skripals
Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t believe in conspiracy theories that say the British government poisoned former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.
The Skripal affair, which turned relations between the UK and Russia from bad to worse, was brought up by filmmaker Oliver Stone during an interview with Vladimir Putin. Stone asked the Russian leader if he believes in the theory that Sergei Skripal wanted to return to Russia and divulge some secrets but was stopped by the British government.
“Honestly, I don’t really believe it. I don’t believe it,” Putin replied.
The Russian president said if British intelligence wanted Skripal poisoned, they certainly had the ability to do so. "There is something fishy here," he noted, alleging that whoever was behind the attempted murder was more interested in the "scandal" that it triggered.
Advising Stone not to take the conspiracy theory seriously, Putin said that Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer who moonlighted for the Britons, hardly had anything to offer to Moscow in exchange for allowing him back.
He was out of the game. What information could he possibly possess?
Skripal was outed as a double agent and sentenced for treason in Russia, but his prison term was cut short by a spy swap in 2010, after which he moved to Salisbury. In March 2018, he and his daughter Yulia were affected by a toxic substance which the British government identified as the military-grade nerve agent called ‘Novichok’.
London accused Moscow of ordering a hit on Skripal and charged two Russian nationals who traveled to Britain at the time of the poisoning of being a Russian military intelligence hit team.
Moscow has repeatedly denied the allegation, urging London to hold a transparent investigation and provide proper consular access to the Skripals, whose whereabouts – and status – remain unknown. When asked about Skripal, Putin joked that he has no idea where he is because “he is a spy, he is always hiding.”
Footnote Two:
SHIFT IN WORLD BALANCE OF POWER COMING
The reader should review this article closely as the Chinese and Russians are very closely following the course of action predicted by David K. Lifschultz in articles distributed by the Lifschultz Organization founded in 1899.
Definitive Eurasian Alliance Is Closer Than You Think
We have seen how China is meticulously planning all its crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic moves all the way to 2030 and beyond.
What you are about to read next comes from a series of private, multilateral discussions among intel analysts, and may helpfully design the contours of the Big Picture.
In China, it’s clear the path ahead points to boosting internal demand, and shifting monetary policy towards the creation of credit to consolidate the building of world-class domestic industries.
In parallel, there’s a serious debate in Moscow that Russia should proceed along the same path. As an analyst puts it, “Russia should not import anything but technologies it needs until it can create them themselves and export only the oil and gas that is required to pay for imports that should be severely restricted. China still needs natural resources, which makes Russia and China unique allies. A nation should be as self-sufficient as possible.”
That happens to mirror the exact CCP strategy, as delineated by President Xi in his July 31 Central Committee meeting.
And that also goes right against a hefty neoliberal wing in the CCP – collaborationists? – who would dream of a party conversion into Western-style social democracy, on top of it subservient to the interests of Western capital.
Comparing China’s economic velocity now with the US is like comparing a Maserati Gran Turismo Sport (with a V8 Ferrari engine) with a Toyota Camry. China, proportionately, holds a larger reservoir of very well educated young generations; an accelerated rural-urban migration; increased poverty eradication; more savings; a cultural sense of deferred gratification; more – Confucianist – social discipline; and infinitely more respect for the rationally educated mind. The process of China increasingly trading with itself will be more than enough to keep the necessary sustainable development momentum going.
The hypersonic factor
Meanwhile, on the geopolitical front, the consensus in Moscow – from the Kremlin to the Foreign Ministry – is that the Trump administration is not “agreement-capable”, a diplomatic euphemism that refers to a de facto bunch of liars; and it’s also not “legal-capable”, an euphemism applied, for instance, to lobbying for snapback sanctions when Trump has already ditched the JCPOA.
President Putin has already said in the recent past that negotiating with Team Trump is like playing chess with a pigeon: the demented bird walks all over the chessboard, shits indiscriminately, knocks over pieces, declares victory, then runs away.
In contrast, serious lobbying at the highest levels of the Russian government is invested in consolidating the definitive Eurasian alliance, uniting Germany, Russia and China.
But that would only apply to Germany after Merkel. According to a US analyst, “the only thing holding back Germany is that they can expect to lose their car exports to the US and more, but I tell them that can happen right away because of the dollar-euro exchange rate, with the euro becoming more expensive.”
On the nuclear front, and reaching way beyond the current Belarus drama – as in there will be no Maidan in Minsk – Moscow has made it very clear, in no uncertain terms, that any missile attack from NATO will be interpreted as a nuclear attack.
The Russian defensive missile system – including the already tested S-500s, and soon the already designed S-600s – arguably may be 99% effective. That means Russia would still have to absorb some punishment. And this is why Russia has built an extensive network of nuclear bomb shelters in big cities to protect at least 40 million people.
Russian analysts interpret China’s defensive approach along the same lines. Beijing will want to develop – if they have not already done so – a defensive shield, and still retain the ability to strike back against a US attack with nuclear missiles.
The best Russian analysts, such as Andrei Martyanov, know that the three top weapons of a putative next war will be offensive and defensive missiles and submarines combined with cyber warfare capabilities.
The key weapon today – and the Chinese understand it very clearly – is nuclear submarines. Russians are observing how China is building their submarine fleet – carrying hypersonic missiles – faster than the US. Surface fleets are obsolete. A wolf pack of Chinese submarines can easily knock out a carrier task force. Those 11 US carrier task forces are in fact worthless.
So in the – horrifying – event of the seas becoming un-sailable in a war, with the US, Russia and China blocking all commercial traffic, that’s the key strategic reason pushing China to obtain as much of its natural resources overland from Russia.
Even if pipelines are bombed they can be fixed in no time. Thus the supreme importance for China of Power of Siberia – as well as the dizzying array of Gazprom projects.
The Hormuz factor
A closely guarded secret in Moscow is that right after German sanctions imposed in relation to Ukraine, a major global energy operator approached Russia with an offer to divert to China no less than 7 million barrels a day of oil plus natural gas. Whatever happens, the stunning proposal is still sitting on the table of Shmal Gannadiy, a top oil/gas advisor to President Putin.
In the event that would ever happen, it would secure for China all the natural resources they need from Russia. Under this hypothesis, the Russian rationale would be to bypass German sanctions by switching its oil exports to China, which from a Russian point of view is more advanced in consumer technology than Germany.
Of course this all changed with the imminent conclusion of Nord Stream 2 – despite Team Trump taking no prisoners to sanction everyone in sight.
Backdoor intel discussions made it very clear to German industrialists that if Germany would ever lose its Russian source of oil and natural gas, coupled with the Strait of Hormuz shut down by Iran in the event of an American attack, the German economy might simply collapse.
There have been serious cross-country intel discussions about the possibility of a US-sponsored October Surprise involving a false flag to be blamed on Iran. Team Trump’s “maximum pressure” on Iran has absolutely nothing to do with the JCPOA. What matters is that even indirectly, the Russia-China strategic partnership has made it very clear that Tehran will be protected as a strategic asset – and as a key node of Eurasia integration.
Cross-intel considerations center on a scenario assuming a – quite unlikely – collapse of the government in Tehran. The first thing Washington would do in this case is to pull the switch of the SWIFT clearing system. The target would be to crush the Russian economy. That’s why Russia and China are actively increasing the merger of the Russian Mir and the Chinese CHIPS payment systems, as well as bypassing the US dollar in bilateral trade.
It has already been gamed in Beijing that were that scenario ever to take place, China might lose its two key allies in one move, and then have to face Washington alone, still on a stage of not being able to assure for itself all the necessary natural resources. That would be a real existential threat. And that explains the rationale behind the increasing interconnection of the Russia-China strategic partnership plus the $400 billion, 25-year-long China-Iran deal.
Bismarck is back
Another possible secret deal already discussed at the highest intel levels is the possibility of a Bismarckian Reinsurance Treaty to be established between Germany and Russia. The inevitable consequence would be a de facto Berlin-Moscow-Beijing alliance spanning the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), alongside the creation of a new – digital? – Eurasian currency for the whole Eurasian alliance, including important yet peripheral actors such as France and Italy.
Well, Beijing-Moscow is already on. Berlin-Beijing is a work in progress. The missing link is Berlin-Moscow.
That would represent not only the ultimate nightmare for Mackinder-drenched Anglo-American elites, but in fact the definitive passing of the geopolitical torch from maritime empires back to the Eurasian heartland.
It’s not a fiction anymore. It’s on the table.
Adding to it, let’s do some little time traveling and go back to the year 1348.
The Mongols of the Golden Horde are in Crimea, laying siege to Kaffa – a trading port in the Black Sea controlled by the Genoese.
Suddenly, the Mongol army is consumed by bubonic plague.
They start catapulting contaminated corpses over the walls of the Crimean city.
So imagine what happened when ships started sailing again from Kaffa to Genoa.
They transported the plague to Italy.
By 1360, the Black Death was literally all over the place – from Lisbon to Novgorod, from Sicily to Norway. As much as 60% of Europe’s population may have been killed – over 100 million people.
A case can be made that the Renaissance, because of the plague, was delayed by a whole century.
Covid-19 is of course far from a medieval plague. But it’s fair to ask.
What Renaissance could it be possibly delaying?
Well, it might well be actually advancing the Renaissance of Eurasia. It’s happening just as the Hegemon, the former “end of history”, is internally imploding, “distracted from distraction by distraction”, to quote T.S. Eliot. Behind the fog, in prime shadowplay pastures, the vital moves to reorganize the Eurasian land mass are already on.
(Republished from Asia Times by permission of author or representative)
Footnote Three:
Excerpted from Geopolitical Futures:
What the Pentagon is most worried about with China. The U.S. Defense Department on Tuesday released its annual report to Congress on Chinese military developments. The sections on China’s breakneck missile, nuclear and warship buildups are getting the most attention, and for good reason. The Pentagon now estimates the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force has more than 200 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (with a range of 3,000-5,000 kilometers, or 1,900-3,100 miles), and an estimated 200 IRBM mobile launchers. A year ago, the Pentagon estimated that China had just 80 launchers. Altogether, the Pentagon estimates that the Chinese arsenal now features some 1,250 ground-launched ballistic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles with ranges of up to 5,500 kilometers.
China’s growing ability to put U.S. warships and bases at risk with ever-expanding reach is the single biggest threat to the U.S. Navy’s ability to operate in the South and East China seas. Shorter-range missiles have long worried U.S. defense planners about their ability to, say, come to Taiwan’s defense. (Relatedly, a Taiwanese Defense Ministry report released over the weekend is still bearish on whether China could actually conduct an amphibious invasion.) But the increasing range of the Chinese arsenal could theoretically make it more costly for the U.S. to cut off Chinese sea lanes at one of the many chokepoints along the first island chain and Strait of Malacca – the U.S.’ biggest point of leverage against China.
The Pentagon also sees China as having already achieved parity with or passed the U.S. on shipbuilding and integrated air defense systems.
China’s military modernization drive still has all sorts of deficiencies, especially on long-range power projection capabilities. But in its littoral waters, at least, China is turning into a formidable force.
Footnote Four:
THE STRAITS OF HORMUZ AS A TRIGGER TO WORLD DEPRESSION
July 1, 2018
Secretary Of State Michael Pompeo
U. S. Department of State
2200 C. Street Northwest
Washington, D. C. 20520
Dear Mike:
There is a grave national interest that is threatened by the derivative and financial structure outlined below in the report on the use of Stochastic Control Theory which I have explained in simple English. According to Warren Buffett, the 600 trillion to 1.2 quadrillion world derivative market constitutes a weapon of financial mass destruction. In the discussions outlined below, these derivatives are used to drain a trillion dollars a year out of the market in manipulated profits. Aside from this being parasitic and illegal, it is dangerous to the national security of the United States as the shutting of the Straits of Hormuz by Iran can trigger a world depression as these 1.2 trillion of derivatives implode. These profits are protected by the former Attorney General Eric Holder too big to prosecute doctrine.
The 1987 stock market crash was engineered by the manipulation of the stock market by the cash settlement derivative by a giant cartel on Wall St. as explained in the Stochastic piece. It was resolved by forcing all the major players in the cartel to use their massive profits from their manipulation to reverse the crash using the same technique that they crashed it with and this was successful. In the 2008 crash such efforts were not sufficient and we created about 400 years of credit to make sure the monetary aggregates such as M-3 did not implode. 2.7 trillion dollars of which were used as excess reserves to repair the balance sheets of the bankrupt banks by paying them interest above market so that they would not fractionalize for ten years. These excess reserves are now being unwound with a much more limited effect than if they had been fractionalized. This can be offset by lowering reserve requirements as the Chinese are doing. We had to make up for the destruction of credit and it could be handled by papering it over.
If the Straits of Hormuz are closed by the Iranians the shortage of 22% of the world oil supply could not be similarly papered over and it would detonate a collapse of the 1.2 quadrillion derivative market causing a market crash worse than 1933 Weimar Germany. The Bank for International Settlements calculates about 600 billion in total derivatives but Swiss sources say there are at least 1.2 quadrillion with some placing it at 2.5 quadrillion. This relates to an 88 trillion dollar World GDP or a derivative market 28 times the World GDP.
General Barry McCaffrey explained to me below at a lunch at the Harvard Club that the US fleet cannot keep the Straits of Hormuz open as it cannot project sufficient military power to do so and the fleet must leave immediately the entire area in the event of a war with Iran or face total annihilation.
"The Russians have delivered large quantities of Sunburn missiles to Iran designed to fly as low as nine feet at 1,500 miles an hour with dodging capacity. They can be fired from a flatbed truck which makes them mobile. It is perfect for flying into the Straits of Hormuz which is no more than forty miles wide while the actual transit space is about two miles at points. This missile fired from the Iranian shores will punch a hole the size of a room in any ship in the Straits in a fraction of a second. The SS-N-22 sunburn supersonic anti-ship missile has been described as the most lethal missile in the world today designed to defeat the Aegis radar defence system of the United States and subsequent renditions. The Russian SS-NX-26 Yakhont missile (speed Mach 2.9) line the Iranian northern shore. No declassified studies of the ability of these missile to penetrate an aircraft carrier defence have been issued, but it would appear that a large barrage of these missiles cannot be defended against by any known method but jamming equipment.
However, we have the example of the Russian missile (falsely attributed to China) designed with anti-jamming equipment hitting an Israeli frigate (INS Hanit, July 14, 2006) off the shore of Lebanon during the Israeli attack on the Hezbollah. It sailed through the most advanced US and Israeli jamming equipment. While the Israelis denied that they even had turned on their jamming equipment, this did not make any sense to have the INS Hanit jamming equipment turned off when that ship off Lebanon was in a war zone and that they were turned on was confirmed to me by the highest Israel authorities (Mossad) who said they issued this denial at the request of the Americans so that it might not be known that the system on American warships was worthless."
Many more advanced offensive missiles than this have been since that conversation been acquired by the Iranians as well as advanced anti-missile missiles to deny access to their airspace from enemy aircraft.
"The United States does not have the military power to keep the Straits of Hormuz open and its carrier task forces must flee if they are within range of Russian and Chinese anti-ship missiles lining the coast of Iran which are the most advanced in the world." General Barry McCaffrey, former Assistant to the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS); and Director of Strategic Plans and Policy, Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a conversation with David Lifschultz at lunch at the Harvard Club." In addition, in a conversation with David Lifschultz the chief derivative trader in oil for Goldman Sachs said if the Straits were cut off oil would rise to $500.00 to a $1,000.00 a barrel and then crash the derivative market taking down the world economy as Warren Buffett has pointed out.
Here is a brief summary of the military analysis of General Barry McCaffrey at the Harvard Club lunch with me in which he discusses the strategic inability of the United States to keep the Straits of Hormuz open:
The aircraft carrier became the new weapon of naval war replacing the battleship as the premier weapon for the simple reason that the planes were able to destroy the battleships before the battleships came near enough to destroy the aircraft carriers. This made battleships, cruisers and destroyers obsolete.
The United States ended the World War Two essentially in control of the all the seas and their main instrument of control were these aircraft carrier task forces. The US took this control from the exhausted and bankrupt British Empire and inherited their long built Empire with the empires of Japan, Germany, France and the Netherlands. The control mechanism was the US control of the world financial system established at Bretton Woods constructed around the CHIPS and Swift clearing systems where 88% of world financial transactions has a dollar on one side. The UN and World Court were merely parts of the control mechanism where the small nations rights were really imaginary as we see in the case of Iran.
When the Korean war broke out with the surprise invasion of South Korea in June, 1950, the other key component of the United States winning World War Two of land based air power was quickly nullified as most of the friendly air bases in South Korea were overrun. (Tanks armies were the third component of World War Two military power now nullified by advanced Kornet missiles. Submarines were the third.) The United States Seventh Fleet quickly arrived at the scene to provide that air power to the US and South Korean armies stranded defending at the Pusan Perimeter which saved the day. It was from that moment to the present that air power projection against land targets, rather than the fleet battles in the deep blue water, would be the main justification for aircraft carrier task forces. Naval aircrews from the Seventh Fleet's Task Force 77 flew 275,000 sorties amounting to 53% of the close air support and 40% of the interdictions sorties in Korea.
Air power was a major factor in World War Two. Field Marshall Fritz Erich von Manstein outnumbered troops defeated the Russians at the Crimea saved by Baron Wolfram von Richthohen Fliegerkorps VIII whose air force annihilated half the Russian forces. There Fritz earned his Marshall's Baton. In a reversal at Normandy, Field Marshall Rommel in his famous message to Hitler predicting an allied breakthrough stated that allied air supremacy was smashing their best trained troops and the situation was hopeless. As we shall discuss later, the United States is banking on air power to stop the Russian Army in Europe today in the event of an attack but there will be no airports whether military or commercial within ten minutes of the commencement of war as Russian Iskander missiles carrying tactical nuclear warheads or conventional will knock them all out nullifying NATO's air power. Tank warfare is similarly obsolete based on the improved Kornet missile and advanced silent submarines and their advanced missiles will control the seas eliminating the aircraft carriers the other major component of World War Two power. The problem is that the western armies are preparing for World War Two and not World War Three. As such, a look at NATO and its dilapidated German force demonstrates that this deterrent is but a figment of the imagination and would be wiped out within two to three weeks according to German generals we have discussed this with. In other words, in a war in Europe the three components of World War Two military power power the aircraft carrier nullified by submarines, tanks nullified by the Kornet missile and air power nullified by the destruction of the air fields would not stand in the way of a Russian Army that could reach the English Channel in two weeks.
During the Vietnam War the US Navy similarly projected air power in the newly reconstituted Task Force 77 participating in the sustained air campaigns such as Rolling Thunder and Linebacker. From 1964 to 1973 Task Force 77 flew hundreds of thousands of attack sorties against targets in North and South Vietnam. In Operation Desert Storm in Iraq the United States Navy gathered six aircraft carriers with over 400 aircraft into the Red and Arabian Seas as part of the coalition air campaign. The aircraft carriers remained in the region participating in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict.
During the period from World War Two until recently the Navy operated close to shore with little to fear. The Russians and Chinese have developed anti-ship missiles that line the coast of China creating a 2,000 kilometer fire zone where no aircraft carrier is safe according to open sources. We understand that the range is much further than this from informed sources. If we go just by the 2,000 kilometer line it includes a large part Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.. And if we go according current informed estimates 3,000 to 4,000 kilometers, it will include all of these countries as well as the waterways. It would jeopardize our bases in countries as Japan, the Philippines, etc. which would be targeted in a war.
The Chinese anti-navy missile and airpower is dispersed, mobile, and designed either to be hidden or sheltered in hardened and underground facilities. For example, China's DF-21D anti-ship missile is based on a medium-range missile that is moved about and launched from a transporter-erector-launcher (TEL). Most of China's land-based anti-ship land attack cruise missiles are also launched from a TEL. China's maritime strike airpower, which includes most of its fleet of Flanker fighter aircraft, can be based at scores of air bases, most of which are hardened against attack, some to a very high extent. These are the forces that can reach out 2,000 kilometers if not more.
It is important to note that our new F-35C strike fighter for our aircraft carriers has a maximum combat radius 1,100 kilometers which is about the same as the older F/A 18 EF. Even when armed with standoff missiles, these combat radii won't be adequate to keep the aircraft carriers out of range of land-based threats to aircraft carriers. In addition, most of our bases are vulnerable within the 2,000 kilometer range and all of them except in Australia would be within Chinese missile defensive range at 4,000 kilometers.
We recently watched the Tomahawk missiles strike Syria but their range is only 1,600 kilometers which are carried by our cruisers and destroyers which makes them worthless against a land opponent with longer distance missile capacity as China presently has lining their shore.
In other words, the nearer bases are vulnerable and the farther bases are too far out for our short range designed strike aircraft. This means our entire offensive capacity in Asia is geared to short-range conflict that we are hopelessly outmatched in that almost all our short range bases stand to be immediately wiped out by Chinese defensive missiles and our long range bases do not have sufficient long range strike aircraft. We must consider all our aircraft carriers as short range as they are limited by the range of their aircraft and therefore useless in future ground support operations, And as far as their use for patrolling the seas the aircraft carriers are vulnerable to advanced Russian and Chinese silent submarines with anti-ship missiles. In other words, the United States has lost control of the seas and all of its commerce is in jeopardy in the event of a major war. Its military industrial complex that depends on parts from Asia could be shut down within two weeks for those that rely on just in time inventory control.
The US air capacity is about 12-1 short range to long range strike aircraft. This means that our enormous air power in Europe stands to be wiped out when the Russians hit the air fields with tactical nuclear weapons, and our long range strike aircraft is totally inadequate for the defence of Europe. Our entire defence budget is, therefore, warped and irrational.
The cost of a Gerald R. Ford-call aircraft carrier is 15.1 billion dollars which breaks down to 11.8 billion for the carrier and 3.3 billion for 24 F-35C strike fighters. We could buy for that some 27 of the new long-range strike aircraft at a planned cost of 550 million each. The United States has to immediately shift its procurement budgets to try to remedy this mismatch.
Thus far General McCaffrey analysis and it continues.
The Russians have delivered large quantities of Sunburn missiles to Iran designed to fly as low as nine feet at 1,500 miles an hour with dodging capacity. They can be fired from a flatbed truck which makes them mobile. It is perfect for flying into the Straits of Hormuz which is no more than forty miles wide while the actual transit space is about two miles at points. This missile fired from the Iranian shores will punch a hole the size of a room in any ship in the Straits in a fraction of a second. The SS-N-22 sunburn supersonic anti-ship missile has been described as the most lethal missile in the world today designed to defeat the Aegis radar defence system of the United States and subsequent renditions. The Russian SS-NX-26 Yakhont missile (speed Mach 2.9) line the Iranian northern shore. No declassified studies of the ability of these missile to penetrate an aircraft carrier defence have been issued, but it would appear that a large barrage of these missiles cannot be defended against by any known method but jamming equipment. However, we have the example of the Russian missile designed with anti-jamming equipment hitting an Israeli frigate (INS Hanit, July 14, 2006) off the shore of Lebanon during the Israeli attack on the Hezbollah. It sailed through the most advanced US and Israeli jamming equipment. The Chinese have these missiles.
The United States has tested successfully in 2013 the X-47B experimental unmanned aircraft though the trouble with them is that its range is only 1,900 kilometers versus about 1,100 for manned jets, but that greater range is insufficient to operate outside even the 2,000 kilometer missile defensive wall of Russian and Chinese missiles and these anti-ship missiles are said to have a much greater distance capability. There was a phenomenal exhibition of Russian military advances when their equipment downed a Stealth Drone and effected its landing in Iran enabling the Russians to put their hands on this advanced technology. The implications of this military coup could be dire for any adversary in that a nuclear tipped missile fired at Iran could be diverted and returned to its source. Nor have we discussed here how the Russians have sealed their airspace with defensive missiles (S-500) ending MAD. Nor their tens of millions of nuclear bomb shelters for their people.
This ends the General's analysis summed by saying in a war the US fleet must flee away from the Straits of Hormuz or be annihilated, and the US cannot keep the Straits open.
If the Iranians shut down the Straits of Hormuz, 22% of the world oil supply will be cut off. The consequences will be that the oil price will rise to over $500.00 to $1000.00 a barrel and the world economy will start to implode with all the financial markets crashing as in 1929 as the 2.5 quadrillion of derivatives start a chain reaction of destruction as a financial weapon of mass destruction. In this case, the shortage of oil unlike the shortage of credit in 2008 destroyed as it was cannot be made up by a fiat instruments. The oil is not there. Therefore, this derivative market is a national security issue. The manipulations of markets is also a serious issue as it is illegal but no one seems to care about it. Until these derivatives are wound down, Iran controls the entire world whether the US Carthaginian Congress wants to recognize it or not. This is the reason the US wants to oust the present leadership in Iran and not nuclear weapons that are available on the black market from Pakistan and North Korea as the Straits closing would collapse the US economy.
I had proposed a solution to this problem to the then Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman that the company named Genoil can tap the 900 billion barrels of world heavy oil reserves creating a 25 million barrel a day reserve production capacity at a cost of 165 billion dollars as an insurance policy for the now 88 trillion dollar world GDP and Sam thought it was a great idea. However, it was blocked by the major oil companies as the Genoil technology is highly disruptive to the value of their light oil reserves whose value would collapse as Genoil can convert heavy, high sulfured oil to light unsulfured oil at a much cheaper price that WTI and Brent which make up their reserves.
We recommend that the Department of State together with the Department of Defense and Treasury Departments move to unwind the 2.5 trillion derivative market for national security reasons on an emergency basis and adopt the Genoil technology.
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