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Musings Report 2022-10 3-5-22 Non-Linearity, Unpredictability and War
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Non-Linearity, Unpredictability and War
In a linear system, changing the input by 1 unit leads to the output changing by 1 unit.
Turn the amplifier volume knob up one notch from 0 to 1 (the input) and the output--the sound coming out of the amp's speaker--increases proportionately.
In nonlinear systems, the change in the output is not proportional to the change of the input.
In a nonlinear system, turning the knob up one notch from 0 to 1 might cause ear-shattering feedback: the change in the output isn't proportional to the change in the input.
In complex nonlinear systems, simple changes in one part of the system produce complex effects throughout the entire system.
A war started 10 days ago. Let's set all the complexities and opinions of why aside Let's look at this war as a nonlinear system.
I have never been in a war, but I worked with many Vietnam War veterans. Their experience was remarkably diverse.
One draftee infantryman served his year-long tour in the field and never saw any combat at all. A Loach (scout helicopter) pilot was shot down three times and in danger pretty much every time he lifted off.
A Green Beret medic hung his shirt out to dry on a bush in the jungle and came back to find a sniper's bullet hole through the pocket over the heart.
A war isn't one thing, it's many things interacting nonlinearly.
A young friend of mine is currently working in the country of Georgia. She is multi-ethnic so she can't be identified by nationality. She blends into many cultures. She speaks Arabic (she lived in Morocco) and Georgian, a bit of Azeri and is pretty good in Russian.
She has visited, and has contacts in, many Arabic-speaking and Eastern European nations. She has years of experience on the ground in places few Americans know anything about. She is not a pundit or propagandist in a fancy office. She posted a snapshot of this poster in Georgia.
Georgia is a very unique country with a complex history. It is not an American ally. It was annexed into the USSR at its founding. Other Eastern European nations were annexed into the USSR's control after World War II (The Eastern Bloc).
To get a taste of life in the USSR pre-1961, read all three volumes of The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
You didn't have to be a dissident to end up in the Gulag. You could have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, had the wrong friends or been denounced by an enemy.
Those of us who didn't live in Eastern Bloc countries can't speak to their experience. The emotions they have about Russia have deep roots.
The war appears to be having a nonlinear effect on their memories and emotions, and not in a warm and fuzzy way.
It's very unlikely these emotions will suddenly become warm and fuzzy whenever the war ends.
It's difficult to predict how things end up in nonlinear dynamics, but human emotions can be transferred from generation to generation.
The output of this war when measured in the emotions of former residents of the USSR's Eastern Bloc might well reverberate for decades, affecting economies, cultures and politics far into the future.
Hatred might be too strong a word. We won't know for a long time. Words are one thing, actions are another.
I haven't read much about this particular historical-cultural nonlinear dynamic. There are few if any Western correspondents in these countries.
Despite the fact that war is intrinsically nonlinear and therefore unpredictable, pundits quickly coalesce around whatever is viewed as most likely to happen in the opinion of experts.
What's interesting to the detached observer is what isn't just considered unlikely, it's considered impossible.
That Russia might lose this war militarily is in this category. Nobody seems to think it's worth mentioning even as a remote possibility.
I distinctly remember a famous anthropologist in the 1960s predicting the U.S. would lose the war in Vietnam due to the simple fact it was invading someone else's country.
Few pundits seem to recall that Ukraine was an independent nation 700 years ago. Its time in the USSR was a small part of its long history.
It's hard to predict hatred and the will to resist. That makes it hard to predict the long-term outcome of a war.
What strikes this non-military observer is a comment long ago by my friend the Vietnam era Loach pilot about the difference between jungle and desert in terms of cover.
Ukraine is mostly flat steppes. There is no equivalent of jungle cover. Convoys of heavy vehicles generally operate on roads. Without any cover, they are visible from a great distance--especially when viewed through a telescopic sight on a missile launcher light enough to be carried by one person.
Tanks are expensive--around $8 million each. Armored vehicles and trucks are also expensive.
A fire-and-forget (i.e. self-targeting) Javelin missile costs about $80,000 and is not quite four feet long. It's remarkably effective in knocking out tanks, armored vehicles and trucks.
The Javelin can be launched 2.5 miles from the target. Can you see two people crouching on the ground 2.5 miles away?
The Stinger anti-aircraft missile is 5 feet long and weighs 22 pounds--34 pounds with launcher. This is considerably less than a 50-pound bag of fertilizer, rice, etc. It costs about $120,000 each and can take down aircraft that cost multiple millions of dollars each.
This is asymmetric in the extreme: a cheap, low-weight missile can destroy vehicles and aircraft which take months or years to replace.
This asymmetry suggests attrition matters: if the defenders get enough missiles into the hands of those who know how to use them, the invading force will have to replace every tank, armored vehicle and truck knocked out by a cheap missile. That is a non-trivial task.
The U.S. fielded 11,000 Huey helicopters in the Vietnam War. 1,900 were shot down and another 1,100 were lost to accidents and malfunctions. Despite having the world's largest economy, the costs of the war adversely affected the U.S. economy.
Russia's economy is comparable to Australia's--$1.6 trillion--and roughly one-third of Germany's economy. Russia has 144 million people, Germany has 83 million and Australia has 26 million. Can Russia afford to replace hundreds of costly vehicles and aircraft without sacrificing other spending?
I am also struck by the criticality of logistics in war. To point to one example of many, English Admiral Lord Nelson was the victor at Trafalgar not just as a result of his tactical brilliance and leadership but because he was a tireless logistical genius, constantly working to supply his crews with fresh food and keep his weather-lashed wooden ships in good repair.
(The wear and tear on canvas sails, hemp ropes and wooden hulls at sea was immense.)
Nelson chased the French-Spanish fleet across the Atlantic and back, and then had to maintain a blockade to await the decisive battle. He also had to have sufficient gunpowder to keep his crews well-trained via practice cannon fire.
Feeding 190,000 soldiers is non-trivial. So is fueling and maintaining hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles, trucks and aircraft. An army on the move is an entire city, and that army needs an entire second army to supply it and protect the vulnerable supply lines.
Of the 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam, the majority were doing logistical work. They were not on patrol in the jungle or piloting helicopters.
If the invading soldiers run out of food, fuel and ammo, the war is lost.
If hundreds of small, light missiles reach the defenders, the invaders must be able to replace most of the vehicles and aircraft lost to the missiles, or the war is lost.
If the will to resist strengthens rather than weakens, the invaders will lose the war.
It's foolhardy to predict the long-term outcome of any war, for the outcome is unpredictable. But we can predict that emotions, the will to resist, military asymmetries and logistics will play major roles in the military outcome.
Has any nation successfully invaded and occupied a resisting, armed country over the long-term in the past 60 years? I can't think of any.
Highlights of the Blog
Podcast:
Charles Hugh Smith on The Great Reset Agenda (WEF) (42 minutes, with Richard Bonugli)
Posts:
If You Want to Build Back Better, Reshore Our Entire Supply Chain 3/4/22
Wars Rarely Achieve Their Initial Goals: The Curse of Second-Order Effects 3/2/22
Why So Few See the Last Chance to Exit 2/28/22
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Stayed away from "news" and worked on my next book.
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
Ranked: Nuclear Power Production, by Country
Why a Blue City Is Feeling the Blues
Jeremy Grantham Doubles Down on Crash Call, Says Selloff Has Started
The Other Bose: How an Indian Freedom Fighter’s Curry Became a Sensation in Japan: Rash Behari Bose’s role in the freedom struggle remains relatively unknown in popular history. However, the unique dish he introduced remains immensely popular in his adopted home.
4 lessons from Bhutan on the pursuit of happiness above GDP
A Socialist Plan to Fix the Internet
100+ Ultra-Rich People Warn Fellow Elites: 'It's Taxes or Pitchforks'
What I learned from 100 days of rejection | Jia Jiang (15:31)
Peak TV Tally: According to FX Research, A Record 559 Original Scripted Series Aired in 2021
'Corporate vultures': how Americans fearing higher water bills are fighting takeovers
Defence technology (Economist series)
Decreasing Ore Grades in Global Metallic Mining: A Theoretical Issue or a Global Reality?
Five Things You Notice When You Quit the News (via Maoxian)
1) You feel better
2) You were never actually accomplishing anything by watching the news
3) Most current-events-related conversations are just people talking out of their asses
4) There are much better ways to "be informed"
5) "Being concerned" makes us feel like we’re doing something when we’re not
"Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness." Fyodor Dostoevsky
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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