China goes down to the sea: Putting the “hybrid” in warfare (Bonus update: Biden’s excellent balloon* adventure)

Foreword:  In the interim before sending this to post, the Chinese surveillance balloon* swam into America’s ken.  (Since then, more unidentified airborne objects have been shot down in the last 48-odd hours.)  As an example of the intrusive level at which the Chinese Communist Party is prepared to admit itself to other nations, including the United States, the balloon could hardly have been more timely or useful.  The separate phenomenon recounted in this article has been pooh-poohed by some Western observers as a stretch, too exotic, or – somehow – “evidently” not close enough to implementation to worry about.  But there’s really no closer it has to be.  The capability exists; the opportunity is wide open right now.  Of course China didn’t develop the capability merely for the CCP’s amusement, with no intention of using it.  If Xi Jinping has major geopolitical moves in view, as he manifestly does, now is the time to make preparations for it.  That’s what the surveillance balloon was about:  not just a probe, but a measure to prepare a hybrid battlespace.  We should be paying attention to everything.  I’ll have a few comments on the balloon at the end.

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Back to the future: The post-Pax foreign policy debate

It is no accident that the arc of the 20th century has in some ways circled back to where it started, one hundred years on from the prelude to the “Great War” of 1914-18.  Whether humans imagine themselves to be acting on ideology or “realism,” we continue to do pretty much the same things.  Between politics, geography, and time, we humans are very predictable.

But Americans need not despair.  Our Founders built America

Russian naval bases for world peace

 

The face of Old World incursion into the Americas, 1860s-style. Emperor Napoleon III of France and Empress Eugenie. Painted by Jean-Leon Gerome.

The times, they are a-changin’.  Five years ago this month, at the very dawn of the Obama Epoch, there was a flutter in the dovecote where the armchair military analysts hang out.  A rumor circulated that Russia planned to secure the use of the Yemeni island of Socotra, in the Indian Ocean, as a naval base.  The old Soviet navy had used Socotra