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There's a thread booklist from a ways back here.
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Nov 13, 2018 03:33
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Waroduce posted:I have a 9 hour flight to Europe and a 17 hour flight back and I am looking for good book, podcast or lecture recommendations to load up on for the travel. I am a fan of Military History and Current Event and usually read Cold War, Current Events or Great Game era stuff. My only turn off is the Civil War, but I wouldn't be opposed to a nice biography of Sherman if there was a decent one You should read a bunch of books about the Vietnam War! Start with Embers of War, then do A Bright Shining Lie and A Vietcong Memoir, and then finish it all off with Dispatches. Actually, if you're just going to read one of those, make it Herr's Dispatches. For schlocky mil-SF, Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet series is quite good, and only minimally padded or fashy, unlike a lot of stuff in the genre. Dreadnaughts in space with a perilous voyage home.
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Nov 13, 2018 05:55
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Some personal favorites off the top of my head: Seconding Command Control and Shattered Sword. Also: -The Good War by Studs Terkel -Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt
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Nov 13, 2018 06:43
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It’s not military history, but Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey is also quite good.
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Nov 13, 2018 07:16
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A while back, someone did a piece on William Sherman that talked about his being sidelined for being honest/correct about the nature of the USCW early on. Are there any books on him or ones in which he's mentioned that kind of buck the myths or at least fill in a lot of blanks on the man that you guys can recommend?
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Nov 13, 2018 08:15
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What's the thread's take on the flashman series?
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Nov 13, 2018 10:43
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This is more of a true crime book than a military history one, but David King's "Death in the City of Light", which is about the manhunt for a serial killer in Paris. The thing is, this is going on in 1943, while Paris is under German military occupation.
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Nov 13, 2018 12:32
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You've listened the Revolutions podcast right? Because it has loads of content, and its great listen to it. Switching focus between revolutions makes it easier to dip on and out of, aswell.
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Nov 13, 2018 12:54
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feedmegin posted:Your OP: at the very least consider your obligation to future archival research when you label things. five hundred years from now, what do you want your colleagues to think? HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 13:33
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Epicurius posted:This is more of a true crime book than a military history one, but David King's "Death in the City of Light", which is about the manhunt for a serial killer in Paris. The thing is, this is going on in 1943, while Paris is under German military occupation. That sounds super interesting. Will see if I can find this
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Nov 13, 2018 13:37
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Cessna posted:The same company that put out dice with SS insignia on them? Shocking. Oh man, a couple of guys from my local club make a point of always playing with the dice for the specific list they're running. These dice are out of print, so they've become something of a collectible. The first time I ever played FOW, these are the dice my opponent tossed around the table:  Hoo boy.  Lovingly painting little toy nazis is one thing, chucking dice around the table and hoping for as many swastikas as possible is another. I'm still not super comfortable with these dice, but after playing with this guy for a couple of months I'm at least sure he's not literally a Nazi. Acebuckeye13 posted:So in the tabletop wargame Flames of War, Hen and Chicks is a Soviet rule for armored vehicles that does three things: H&C is gone in version 4, thankfully. In it's place early model T-34s have a rule called Overworked, giving them a -1 to hit when firing on the move, to represent the, well, overworked commander-gunner of the early T-34. Other tanks with the same layout, such as British Valentines, have the same rule. Of course, in it's place, all Soviet tanks are now hit on +2, soooo.... I just use infantry armies. FOW isn't great, but it's the only thing that isn't Warhammer that has an active community around here. 
Geisladisk fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 14:18
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Catching up from Carrier chat from a few days ago. Would ski-jumps have been useful for WW2 carriers?
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Nov 13, 2018 14:22
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Books! Unwomanly face of war is amazing and really should be a must read - women’s experiences on the eastern front. If you’re after something that will take up every single available minute of the flight, God’s War by Tyerman is one hell of a doorstop of a book that covers crusades from beginning to end.
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Nov 13, 2018 14:45
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i read Sleepwalkers in the middle of a 15 hour flight which was itself in the middle of a 24 hour trip and i cannot recommend this course of action the book was great but i couldn't think about a goddamn thing
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Nov 13, 2018 14:52
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Another recommendation, if you're interested in WWII Geman economic policy; a lot of people suggest Adam Tooze's The Wages of Distruction, but instead, I'd recommend Mark Mazower's "Hitler's Empire". He also wrote "Dark Continent: Europe in the 20th Century".
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Nov 13, 2018 16:15
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Plan Z posted:A while back, someone did a piece on William Sherman that talked about his being sidelined for being honest/correct about the nature of the USCW early on. Are there any books on him or ones in which he's mentioned that kind of buck the myths or at least fill in a lot of blanks on the man that you guys can recommend? quote:Breakdown From Wikipedia, but it's more or less accurate
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Nov 13, 2018 16:23
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Deptfordx posted:Catching up from Carrier chat from a few days ago. I would imagine not since in order to not be an obstruction to that big spinning prop in the front it would have to be a gentle slope and thus not be all that useful.
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Nov 13, 2018 16:26
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I'm back at it, and after over a year of me leaving this project dormant I have found the energy to get going again. Article available in non forum post format here: Terrorism and its role in the Iran Iraq war. This is where all the previous articles in this series live too as the old thread has been closed. However for people who prefer an In-Thread posting, here it is. The weapon of Terrorism in the Iran Iraq War. In total war both sides employ and bend every weapon at their disposal to fight the other, the two nations at war lacked the might of the powers in WW1 and 2 to attack the enemy at their base or to enforce blockades of their imports so they did what they could, striking at their opponents via the less resource intensive route of car bombs, hijackings, kidnapping and murder committed by small groups of dedicated people. Indeed, tactics that would be familiar to say the French Maquis or Yugoslav Partisans in their war. Both sides of the Iran-Iraq war employed terrorism in their attempts to fight the other, it was a weapon far more used by the Iranians due to their specific strategic position. Iraq had no interest really in a wider campaign of terror as they were attempting to maintain good relations with as many people as possible, because bluntly speaking they needed arms and money from as many people as possible. Iran due to the chaos of the founding of their regime would suffer from many internal terrorist attacks by groups pushed out in the revolution, while not directly instigated by Saddam he doubtless supported them in some ways. Iran however lacked international support and had a far more aggressive posture, their attacks would isolate them far further from the international community than they had already been and would ultimately in my view serve to harm their own cause. There is also the perspective that the Iranian regime was a revolutionary regime, it wanted to spread its ideology far and wide in the interest of a greater theocratic Shia state and so was in some ways thinking beyond just the narrow perspective of winning the war into the world they wished to inhabit after the end of the war. Birth of Iranian domestic terrorism There was a considerable quantity of chaos that I will not examine here involved in the clerics seizing power, but an upshot of which was there was a cavalcade of mass demonstrations in response to the dismissal of Bani-Sadr who had been the president up to that point. His dismissal was due to his opposition to many of the measures of the clergy in their attempt to control the government via the Islamic Republican Party and circumvent the republic many were attempting to build in the revolution. Bani-Sadr could claim widescale popular support having received over 10 million votes on a platform of maintaining a pluralist system which the IRP wanted desperately to destroy.  Bani-Sadr would demand a referendum claiming that the 10 million or so votes he won in the presidential election gave him a significant popular mandate to participate in the ruling of Iran in a significant way, this was the last straw and he was dismissed by the IRP and Khoemeni. This would trigger massive protests, with half a million taking to the streets of Tehran. The ayatollahs would announce that the courts had the duty to shoot fifty troublemakers a day and the protesters were fired upon to disperse them.  Ayatollah Beheshti Then a bomb would explode at the IRP hedquarters killing Ayatollah Beheshti, head of the Iranian judicial system, along with 4 cabinet members, seven ministers, 27 parliamentary deputies and a large quantity of other staff members. The official death toll is 72 to match the people who died at Karbala, a battle between Yazid 1st the Caliph of Umayyad and the supporters of Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of Muhammad, those 72 are regarded as martyrs and the battle itself has almost mythical status in Shi’ism, It is unlikely only 72 died. The Iranian state would blame the MEK for this though there is no real evidence they were responsible, it’s possible that they were but it has never been shown. A second bomb would explode at the Premiers office, killing Ayatollah Bahonar (the replacement Prime Minister) and President Rajai (the replacement president). The IRP would execute nearly three thousand in the aftermath of this including not only the MEK but members of the KDPi, the Peoples Feda’iyan, the National Democratic Front and essentially anyone else they could get away with to secure their hold on power. Ultimately the revolution would be won by the conservative Clerical elements because they were closer to Khomeini who was the symbol of the revolution but also because they were able to move smoothly into more influential positions, they built on existing church groups that they controlled and used their extensive existing influence in society to outmanoeuvre all their opponents and take control. These explosions and this purging of the governmental system would lead to terrorism being the only outlet for many of these people, the Kurds, the Arabs, the secularists and many others. I will examine the largest of these organisations, the MEK in more detail, but the birth of much of this terrorism that Iran would suffer follows a similar story, but it is fair to say that the civil violence in Iran was very much of the IRP’s own making. The Iranian Mojahedin (MEK) Origins and Ideology We shall start, with an examination of the Iranian Mojahedin, or Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK, sometimes referred to as PMOI or MKO, but here MEK). What they were was a revolutionary force that went against not only the Shah and his attempts to step away from Islam, they also went away from the conservative religious elements that had characterised a lot of Shia islam up to that point; those elements being the ones that would ultimately win the revolution and become rulers of Iran. The actual revolution, as all revolutions are, was extremely messy with communist, liberal, theological, conservative, nationalist, ethnic and other forces all jockeying for control once they had gotten rid of the old ruler. However the MEK would go from fighting alongside the current rulers of Iran in revolution to being their most bitter enemy, their members constitute what was regarded as the primary internal foe of Iran and its members and sympathisers constitute a majority (roughly two thirds) of all executions carried out by Iran throughout the 1980’s.  The organisation itself is rather difficult to pin down as there isn’t much material on it, it is very poorly known outside Iran and as a still active force naturally tries to keep itself quiet. It was founded in the 1960’s by Medhi Bazargan as a liberal democratic organisation to push for democracy. It always had strong support of some religious elements in the form of Ayatollah Taleqani and drew on and was linked to Mossadeghs legacy. It was outlawed in 1963 in response to the uprising of that year, when along with many liberal groups it was banned, and its leaders arrested. The militant group that would become the violent part would continue underground from that point onwards as they broke with the liberal peaceful group that had been savaged by the Shah. It was founded by three alumni of Tehran university, Mohammed Hanifnezhad, Said Mohsen and Ali-Ashgar Badizadegan. The group would continue operating underground with an idealogical battle going on between the Marxist and the Islamic elements until the group would fracture in 1975 into the Marxist Mojahedin and the Muslim Mojahedin, the Marxist Mojahedin would merge during the revolution with Maosist elements to form the Pakyar organisation (full name, The Combat Organization on the Road for the Emancipation of the Working Class). This is where they leave the story of the MEK though that is not to say that the MEK would go anti Marxist in their thought, much of their philosophy would remain similar it’s that the Marxists would repudiate Islam as a means of improving the lot of the working class. At the outbreak of the revolution the aim of the MEK was to destroy the old order entirely, they wanted the eradication of the imperial tradition (the Shah), the military, the capitalist structure of the economy and the clerical structure which they claimed had been co-opted and corrupted to perpetuate the feudal class structure and the inequalities in society. They also stood very strongly for the ideal that the people did not need the clergy to interpret the word of God for them, in a similar fashion to the way that those that translated the Christian bible into the common tongue did, this was inevitably the start of their collision course with the established clergy. However it did have contact with Khomeini while he was in Najaf in Iraq during his exile who tried to recruit them to his side more directly, but their theological interpretation of Islam differed too much for him. Bani-Sadr did not start off as a member of the Peoples Mojahedin (MEK), and in his election he did not receive their official support, however as he fought to maintain his agenda he found himself slowly edged out by the IRP who enjoyed the support of Khomeini. The MEK had gained considerable support and were holding huge protests of the scale of hundreds of thousands against the clerical regime, which was starting to approach the scale of the protests that brought down the Shah and so Bani Sadr would choose to slowly align himself with them as they both wanted to prevent the clerics from achieving a monopoly on power. Ultimately, they would assist him to flee from Iran. The MEK does not describe itself as Socialist or Communist in the Marxist-Leninist sense, it is often identified as such due to its socialist leanings, though it would approach the USSR for assistance in its fight in this era. The fact that they claimed themselves as inspired by an interpretation of Islam and had very significant theological basis for their activities set them distinctly apart from the communist groups (excepting Tudeh). They took some Marxist principles and ideas, but they believed in the desire of man to seek God very strongly and genuinely, they also rejected the central idea of Economic Determinism from Marx. There were a multitude of communist groups within Iran ranging from Tudeh, the Peoples Feda’iyan and various Trotskyist groups, these groups however would not command the wide support that the MEK would end up doing; in my view the main reason, though there are others, is that religion was very important to the Iranian people, and so an outright repudiation of that was just a complete nonstarter for gaining mass support. The MEK would note that they would specifically avoid the Socialist label because the word was loaded with the implication of atheism and materialism. The regime would try to paint them as Marxist for the very same reason. There is a lot more depth to what they believe than what I am outlining here but it would detract from the focus of the article to go any deeper, it also involves a discussion of Marxist principles that really exceeds my own understanding of Marxism. They would also engage in significant resistance activities against the Pahlavi regime that I am also not going into, but they had impeccable revolutionary credentials when it came to the Iranian revolution. Campaign against the Ayatollahs.  Massoud Rajavi At this stage the MEK was lead by Massoud Rajavi, Massoud fled Iran along with Bani-Sadr to Paris in 1981, his wife would follow a year later. They would retaliate against the regimes reign of terror after the bombings by denouncing all regime officials and launching military operations. They would conduct daily attacks of assassinations and bombings against clerical figures, members of the IRGC and centres of IRP administration. They would also initiate a campaign of suicide bombing which would kill several Ayatollahs, judges, the Chief of Police. This campaign would last for years and would reach a peak of 3 deaths per day in the July of 1981 down to 5 per month in December of 1982. There are several reasons why the campaign would eventually slow down, as the regime stabilised it was better able to track down and kill members of the MEK in urban areas. In 1982 they would destroy several safehouses maintained in Tehran and other major urban centres, this would lead the MEK to move to the Kurdistan region to join with the KDPi in fighting directly on the battlefield in opposition of the Iranian government directly on the battlefield. It is unfortunate for the MEK that their open collaboration with the Iraqi government in this fighting would seriously damage their standing in Iran, like many wars it had a great unifying effect on the country and secured the standing of the Islamic government, standing against that force is always risky and like many other groups in the past the MEK suffered for it. The organisation would also become far more restrictive in its structure, turning to almost a cult of personality around Rajavi with members being compelled to live in communes, hand over all their financial assets and their free time was to be spent studying the organisations publications, I can’t help but note the similarities to religious cults like Jim Jones’ The Peoples Temple. Their campaign would continue throughout the Iran Iraq war with little change until 1986, the French government would expel them from France to improve Franco-Iranian relations. They would then move to Iraq as pretty much the only country that would accept them which permanently marred them in the eyes of much of the Iranian populace. The movement would transition from what it was originally, a true mass movement, to a cult like structure with very limited appeal outside its original membership. Rajavi was referred to as Rahbar or Guide, he held absolute power over every aspect of daily life of his followers, it had its own dress code, its own handbooks, its own ideology. It held the belief that the Islamic republic was doomed to collapse by popular unrest, the people would then pour into the streets and demand Rajavi would be their leader, and he could forge a new Democratic Islamic Republic. It was a pitiable end to an organisation that started with such lofty aims and support. They would continue in their assassination program and would claim many victims from then on, but realistically the MEK’s hopes of overthrowing Iran died early in the 1980’s. The attempted assassination of Tariq Aziz and Iranian Embassy Siege.  Tariq Aziz As mentioned in the initial articles there was the attempt to assassinate Tariq Aziz by members of the Dawa party, (Iraqi Shia party headed by Ayatollah al-Sadr) was a manifestiation of the Clergies desire to create and foment Shia separatist and terrorist movements that would lead to the creation of a greater Islamic state. The use of terrorism was a major part in the creation of the pretexts for war, the repatriation of thousands of Iraqi Shia deported to Iran in the aftermath of this incident would become a major part of Iranian war aims. The Dawa party would also carry out a bombing of the Iraqi embassy in Beirut in 1981 killing nearly 30 people. This would be the major Iraqi terrorist action, Khuzestan had been a long fractious province of Iran going back centuries. Pahlavi the first had troubles with it, His son had troubles with it and the Iranian clergy certainly were not going to be immune from it. It was a largely Arab area with considerable oil beneath it that had long felt marginalised and separated from the Persian majority of Iran. It didn’t particularly want to join Iraq but largely wanted to be left alone to determine its own fate. However Iraq would train several emigres from this region to conduct a terrorist attack in London when in April of 1980 6 of them would seize the Iranian embassy. The story of the SAS mission to liberate the embassy is very well documented and so I won’t touch on it in detail. During this siege the terrorists would kill Abbas Lavansani the embassy’s press officer, and during the assault Ali Samadzadeh would be killed by the terrorists during the assault. However, this was an example of how Iraq was also guilty of spreading the Iran-Iraq war beyond the borders of the two nations by unconventional means. Just because during the war itself Iraq had less motive to do so does not necessarily speak to the character of the Iraqi regime. Both regimes were guilty of exporting the conflict through proxy actors to a greater or lesser extent. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.  Emblem of the IRGC, remember this when looking at the Hezbollah emblem later. The IRGC is perhaps the most infamous of the organisations of Iran, precisely what they are is somewhat difficult to define as they control huge swathes of Iran’s economy, large sections of its military and political arenas and conduct operations abroad often as they see fit, especially during the war the left hand of Iran didn’t know what the right hand was necessarily doing. The IRGC are a law unto themselves, almost a state within a state. They would be the primary agents of terror spreading throughout the world during the war. They got their start with the seizing of the US embassy in 1979 by Iranian revolutionaries, this was pretty much at the birth of the IRGC but this sort of spontaneous action driven by revolutionary or religious fervour would characterise their actions in many areas. However, 1979 is really the point at which they started operating. The IRGC would create the Bureau of Assistance to Islamic Liberation in the World, a new body designed specifically to export revolution. It would begin its campaign by moving into Lebanon. It first attempted to co-opt Amal, the Lebanese Shia party to their cause, but had limited success as they would not accept the concept of Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist, which essentially states the primacy of Islamic clergy as the ruling force of the people. However undeterred by this they would found their own organisation. Lebanese Hezbollah  Hezbollah emblem. The IRGC would found a group which gathered together the Shia factions outside of Amal, named Hezbollah, in 1982 Israel would invade Lebanon in the hugely bloody Operation Peace for Galilee, in retaliation for Abu Nidals organisation attempted to assassinate the Israeli ambassador to the UK. This would stiffen radicalism in Lebanon. At the time Hezbollah owed its primary allegiance to the IRGC who would train Hezbollah extremely well, particularly and infamously in the use of truck and car bombs to carry out suicide attacks. Iran would use martyrdom, especially that of the historical battle for Karbala as mentioned earlier, to enhance the mythology around the actions of Hussein ibn Ali in said battle as he martyred himself and his followers in the fight against Caliph Yazid. Indeed Khomeini would take this and the fact that it was a fight against Monarchism at the key moment of schism between Sunni and Shia Islam and use it to indict all monarchs, particularly those of the Gulf states. Hezbollah would form significant bases in Syria where angered by the Israeli invasion Assad would shield them, so they could organise and use Syria as a logistical base for significant shipments of arms and assistance to Lebanon. The first Hezbollah attack took place in 1982 and was a car bomb attack against an IDF building in Tyre in Lebanon which killed 75 Israeli soldiers, 28 other Israelis and around 30 Lebanese prisoners inside the compound at the time. This would be followed by the bombing of the French and US barracks in Beirut in 1983 covered in the 1982-83 article which represents the biggest USMC loss of life in a single day since WW2. Hezbollah would kidnap and murder the CIA station chief in Beirut William Buckley. This is especially notable because it lead to the destruction of the American network in the area because Buckley had been carrying a sheet of paper listing all the CIA operatives in the area who all had to get out pretty drat quickly afterwards.  William F Buckley Hostage taking was a very long-term tradition in the area, and was employed by all sides in Lebanon’s fractious and often violent civil turmoil, but it had infrequently involved foreigners until the 80’s. Initially Iran was very involved, with the head of the American University of Beirut, William Dodge, a long-term resident of the area being kidnapped in July and flown to Iran, however this was too much a direct link for Iran to take and they from that point onwards left activities of that sort to Lebanese Hezbollah. This would lead to a sort of craze where many people who were not even linked to Hezbollah would take hostages just sort of haphazardly, this mess along with the unintentional death of William Buckley eventually Hezbollah had to step in and maintain some kind of order in the area Imad Mugniyah, the very prominent member of Hezbollah played a significant role in this to ensure that all hostages were taken by Hezbollah so they could ensure their welfare in order to maintain them as bargaining chips. They would kidnap people from all western countries to negotiate for everything from money to prisoner release. They would hijack TWA flight 847 and murder US citizen Robert Stethem and held the passengers hostage and also an Air France 737 which was redirected to Tehran. They would also murder USMC Lt. Colonel William R. Higgins in 1988 while he was working for the UN Truce Supervisory Organisation within Lebanon. The list of attacks committed by Hezbollah goes on, notably a series of terrorist bombings in Paris that took place between 1985-86 killed 12 people and wounded over 200 in response to French support to the Iraqi regime. This was set against a backdrop of France negotiating for release of its hostages in Lebanon, interestingly this is when Jacques Chirac, the soon to be Prime Minister of France would do a Nixon and contact Iran to persuade them to not negotiate with the government of Mitterand before the elections in 1986 saying he would give them a better deal if they waited until after the election. Chirac would welcome Iranian delegations to Paris in May of 1986 to discuss normalising relations, on hold since 1979 even as the bombing continued. There would be dozens more French civilians killed before the matter of the hostages were settled including the president of Renault who was assassinated by Action Directe on commission from Iran as retaliation for them being refused access to the enriched Uranium in a deal negotiated by the Shah in the Eurodif project. Hezbollah was Iran’s greatest success outside its borders, it still exists today and has grown to be a major part of Lebanon which sympathetic to Iran and willing to enact attacks on those it considers its enemy. It drove France and the US out of Lebanon and caused France to supply support to Tehran at the same time as it was supporting Iraq. It did this not only through radicalism but by performing basic governmental functions like trash collection and sewage drainage that people who had been failed by their state were in desperate need of. Incidentally it is not the case that the Americans were entirely innocent here either, and for that matter Israel certainly was not in how it conducted itself in Lebanon. In retaliation for Hezbollah activities the US would provide support to Christian Falange members who would attempt to assassinate Sheikh Fadlallah, a prominent Shia cleric linked to Hezbollah, with a car bomb that would kill 80 people outside a mosque where he preached but leaving him unharmed. Operations further afield While Lebanon remains Iran’s biggest success they did act significantly outside of the area. After the Marine barracks bombing the US would retaliate by bombing several Syrian AA positions and Hezbollah positions outside of Beirut. This would provoke a series of terrorist bombings in Kuwait City, Kuwait having a significant Shia population, including attacks on the American embassy, French Embassy and other buildings. This would provoke another response from the US who would use the battleship USS New Jersey to bombard Shiite militia bunkers and positions along the Lebanese coast. They would also enact Operation Staunch, an attempt to actively prevent army getting to Iran via financial consequences.  This would not be the end of the American retaliation as the New Jersey would bombard the Bekaa valley in February 1984, however that was likely a face-saving measure as soon afterwards Reagan would order the withdrawal from Beirut alongside the French, they had decided that the risk was too high to remain in the face of mounting Iranian backed militia activity. The French had conducted their own airstrikes which had been rendered totally ineffectual due to a leak from within their own government that allowed Hezbollah to evacuate and they were suffering mounting attacks, including an attack in Marseilles at the Saint-Charles train station and aboard a train killing 8 French civilians. Eventually France would capitulate and repay Iran much of the money it had invested into the joint Eurodif nuclear program which would amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. Conclusion As Khomeini and many of Iran’s clergy saw it, the US was actively involved in fighting against them, they were aiding Iran, they were backing their opponents in Lebanon and had long stood against Iran and its people, why should they be immune to retribution? The same logic held true for France. They saw themselves as fighting not only Iraq but the entire apparatus of the West, doubtless a lot of them saw it through the lens of resisting Imperialism. It is a very understandable position and one that would reap many benefits for Iran, though as mentioned it also cost them a great deal. Ultimately a large part of the judgement that needs to be made for this comes whether you believe as the Iranians did that they were at war, undeclared though it was, with many countries of the West and the Gulf Arab monarchies, and whether as such you believe that their civilians are legitimate targets. Ultimately I think Iran suffered more for it than they gained, though the point is highly debateable, their attempts greatly scared the Gulf monarchies who staunchly funnelled money into Iraq, to keep them down. It in some cases granted Iraq access to military hardware it might not necessarily have gotten, notably Frances decision to supply the Super Etendard for Iraq’s war on Iranian trade. And it got them cut off from huge areas of international markets for weapons via the US’ operation Staunch. However I don’t really think that they could have done differently, the IRGC was a radical organisation that took on its own momentum after a while and the entire thrust of the Islamic character of the revolution was towards greater Shia liberation throughout the middle east. Polyakov fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 16:52
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Vaginal Vagrant posted:What's the thread's take on the flashman series? They are fantastic and have a lot of real historical background mixed in with the perfect storm that is Flashy.
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Nov 13, 2018 16:58
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I read all this and it was cool and good thank u 4 ur service
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Nov 13, 2018 17:03
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https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1062311785787744256 The History Knower in Chief has weighed in.
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Nov 13, 2018 17:03
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Christ what an rear end in a top hat.
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Nov 13, 2018 17:08
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Like, of course he's a history channel grandpa that believes we bailed out asses in double u double u two.
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Nov 13, 2018 17:11
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i read that like 5 time and I still don't know what the gently caress he's talking about like that's drunk guy at the bar who slept through high school history levels of incoherent
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Nov 13, 2018 17:19
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I regularly feel like an insane person these days because he’s kind of right despite being completely wrong. Part of the point of the NATO arrangements is that letting European nations build large militaries has historically not worked out well! That’s a reasonable take! But I know he got there by being completely and willfully ignorant so what even the gently caress.
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Nov 13, 2018 17:25
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Incidentally the History Channel spent the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day hawking Ford trucks.
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Nov 13, 2018 17:29
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Part of the point of the NATO arrangements is that letting European nations build large militaries has historically not worked out well! Can you expand on this? I don't really understand what you are saying.
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Nov 13, 2018 17:41
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bewbies posted:i read that like 5 time and I still don't know what the gently caress he's talking about the lesson of WWII is that France would have been better off if they didn't try to build an army before the war
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Nov 13, 2018 17:42
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13th KRRC War Diary, 13th November 1918 posted:A presentation of ribands was held by Lieut General Sir G.M.HARPER, K.C.B., D.S.C. commanding IV Corps, in the afternoon in the square in front of the Hotel de Ville CAUDRY.
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Nov 13, 2018 17:55
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The idea is that Europe building up its own military challenges US world domination, but theoretically it also means that America would have prime justification to scale back its military because of how European and American interests often align, which is also bad news for hawks. But then there's also the fact that a certain somebody is certainly very fond of Vladimir Putin's autocracy and has also idly threatened to break up Nato somehow, which would throw everything into chaos. We live in unsteady times. Geisladisk posted:Oh man, a couple of guys from my local club make a point of always playing with the dice for the specific list they're running. These dice are out of print, so they've become something of a collectible. The first time I ever played FOW, these are the dice my opponent tossed around the table: Honestly if somebody kept busting out those dice I'd try arguing that there's just the one swastika on there, not six. You got dice with two ones there.
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Nov 13, 2018 18:07
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Red Eagles: America's Secret MiGs is also a neat book that's worth checking out. LOVE this book. Seriously a great read.
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Nov 13, 2018 18:08
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EvilMerlin posted:Here are some good ones I enjoyed: oo some of these look nice
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Nov 13, 2018 18:27
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this is relevant to our interests
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Nov 13, 2018 18:45
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I suspect the Genoese
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Nov 13, 2018 18:55
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Mr Enderby posted:Can you expand on this? I don't really understand what you are saying. In any case, historically the biggest security threat to any individual European nation has been the nations around it. That can quickly lead to arms races and high tension because if Nation A starts building up because its worried about Nation B, then Nation C is likely to build up as well because Nation A might become a threat later on, and then Nation D responds to Nation C, etc. Now you've got a positive feed back loop going, increasing tensions overall as well as the potential damage if things go sideways. And it can get even more complicated, because B may have decided not to respond to A's build up and try to de-escalate, but now D is also building up and B doesn't have the same trust level with D. Now B has to decide if it's going to accept the risk of being vulnerable to D, or the risk of increasing tensions with A by building up to counter D. And from there it's easy for things to cascade, and that's with each individual actor behaving entirely reasonably. So the idea is that NATO can help keep that kind of thing from happening. Geography and history mean that US military strength is not the inherent danger to the security of any given European state that the military strength of another European state is. Thus the inclusion of the US in NATO and the commitment of each state to defend each other means European countries can get by with much smaller militaries, which reduces the risk for all of them. It short circuits the feedback loop. Even if Nation A is worried about B, they don't have the same immediate pressure to build up - as long as A + the other member states are bigger than B by itself, A isn't forced to consider things in terms of existential threats. Additionally everyone starting at a smaller scale means that it's not as big a risk for A to err on the side of de-escalation - either B jumps off with its smaller force which is inherently a smaller danger, or the time frame gets extended as B builds up. At the same time since C and D aren't solely responsible for their own security, it's easier for them to stay out of things. So the underlying idea is that the US is actually better off overall having an unfair amount of responsibility within the NATO structure because the risk associated with larger European armies outweighs the benefit. All of this ultimately hinges on the US being a reliable ally though. If the European nations can't rely on the US holding up its side of the deal, then they have to build up, because their security concerns aren't just phantoms. The catch-22 is that if you buy the argument above, that's still a net loss in overall security for the world, and particularly for the US. The complaint from previous administrations has been that some of the European states have scaled back to the point that the rest of the alliance won't be able to arrive in enough force and in enough time to fend off an aggressor. Whether that was true or not has definitely been up for debate, as is who's correctly assessing the likelihood of someone (read: Russia) acting as an aggressor, and whether the US assessment of relative strengths is overly pessimistic. But now you have Trump simultaneously calling for individual member states to massively increase their militaries... while also tweeting poo poo like above. It's completely incoherent in terms of policy - unless the policy goal is to wriggle out of NATO any which way that's available. And ironically this is happening just as a lot of Western Europe is re-evaluating what they think of Russian capabilities and intentions and coming up with worrying answers. That's why Macron is talking about a "real European army" - he's trying to thread the needle of compensating for an unreliable US without creating the circumstances that will lead to an intra-European arms race. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 19:06
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zoux posted:I suspect the Genoese
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Nov 13, 2018 19:22
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Comrade Gorbash posted:The complaint from previous administrations has been that some of the European states have scaled back to the point that the rest of the alliance won't be able to arrive in enough force and in enough time to fend off an aggressor. Whether that was true or not has definitely been up for debate, as is who's correctly assessing the likelihood of someone (read: Russia) acting as an aggressor, and whether the US assessment of relative strengths is overly pessimistic. To a lesser extent, this same kind of thing is starting to happen in east Asia, particularly with Japan and Korea. The US is increasingly no longer seen as a reliable ally, and the umbrella of American protection seen as less and less of a guarantee of national safety (read: against China).
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Nov 13, 2018 19:22
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Cythereal posted:To a lesser extent, this same kind of thing is starting to happen in east Asia, particularly with Japan and Korea. The US is increasingly no longer seen as a reliable ally, and the umbrella of American protection seen as less and less of a guarantee of national safety (read: against China). Plus while China has been throwing its weight around a fair bit, it's far from the same kind of brinkmanship Russia has been engaging in. So the argument that a re-militarized Japan is a provocation to China and could cause further destabilization holds up a lot better than similar arguments vis-à-vis Russia.
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Nov 13, 2018 19:38
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 11:38 |
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quote:Geography and history mean that US military strength is not the inherent danger to the security of any given European state that the military strength of another European state is. 1944 suggests the US military can be a pretty large threat to the security of an European state, especially working together with Russia.
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Nov 13, 2018 19:45
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