Are Terror Groups Becoming More Powerful Than Nation-States?

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4chan, America, anti-tank missiles, Assad, Britain First, Caliphate, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, Hezbollah, IS, ISIS, Islamic State, Lebanon, Obama, Russia nuclear, Russians, Serbs, Syria, Terrorists, Ukraine, US, War, War with America, War with Islam, War with Syria, War with Turkey

The terrorist ‘rebel’ forces of Syria, who – even if combined – number less than 25,000 men, have fought the million-man army of the Syrian State to a bloody stalemate. Despite the thousands of tanks, APCs, missiles, chemical warheads, fighter-bomber jets, and trained soldiers at Assad’s command, he has failed to prevent massive swathes of his nation falling into the hands of a rugged, relatively disorganised opposition.

In Iraq, another terror group, ISIS, has held its ground against the US, Saudi and Jordanian air forces, the Iraqi army, and various Kurdish paramilitaries.

And finally, in Ukraine, the pro-Russian separatist militias of the Donetsk People’s Republic have held off the armed forces of NATO-backed Western Ukraine whose ranks, even accounting for Russian counter-measures, dwarf the resources and technologies of the opposing side.

What does this tell us about our world?

For me, it raises the vitally important question as to whether the power of terror groups are evolving to a state of parity with national armies. It certainly seems that way, looking at the evidence.

Much of the improvement in guerrilla warfare over the past ten years is due to the development of one particular weapon – the mobile anti-tank missile. Once so large, they had to be hauled about on wheels, modern variants of these weapons are so small they can be carried like a rucksack.

It is a well-grounded fact that anti-tank missiles are cheaper to produce and more efficient in operation than the vehicles they destroy. If they are effectively designed and accurately deployed, 1000 anti-tank missiles can theoretically go against 1000 tanks and triumph.

The Israelis don’t need to be told this. Their brief and unsuccessful war against Lebanon in 2006 is judged in retrospect to be a Hezbollah military victory (a military victory, I emphasise, not an abstract ‘ideological’ or ‘moral’ victory – a military victory by Hezbollah over the Israeli army).  How did the Lebanese movement achieve this? In the main, it was via anti-tank missiles, the latest, most upgraded type used by the Russian military. Hezbollah is rumoured to possess many thousands more.

To understand this requires counter-intuitive reasoning. We naturally assume that a huge, hulking Israeli tank is more likely to triumph over a single Shia terrorist, however well he is armed. But that’s not what happened on many occasions.

It is suspected that the Syrian state has passed more varieties of Russian equipment on to Hezbollah since the beginning of the Syrian implosion. This fact, along with the ghost of the 2006 war, goes some way to explain why Israel has not displayed enthusiasm for a rematch.

By way of conclusion, there is no reason, no reason at all, why a terror group cannot triumph over a modern nation state, and we are seeing them do so in many parts of the world today. That these groups are often only 10 or 20 thousand man strong, should give us all cause for concern, especially at a time when Muslims flow into Europe by the million.

D, LDN.

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The Power of Self-Belief.

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American Liberty, Barack Obama, BBC, Civilisation, Coffee, Defend the modern world, EU, Maiden Protests, Maydan, Nuclear, Russia invaded Ukraine, Tanks, Ukraine, US, US Russia, Weapons

We could cease to exist at any moment. The game of bluff in Eastern Europe is getting older, less careful and more honest. Russia – it can no longer be denied – has invaded Europe. The scenario long dreamed of in spy novels and video-game fiction has become a banal reality.

How do you feel about that? I suppose, given the worst case scenario, we should be frozen in fear, unable to think or consider anything else. That doesn’t seem to be the mood I observe though.

Perhaps we are so shocked that Putin, the charismatic leader of a kindred state, would be so bold, so seemingly foolish to risk a terminal war with America, that we can’t bring ourselves to realise the truth.

The incredulity is natural. Why has Putin done this? Russia is much weaker (economically, militarily, politically) than the West. To be sure, if nuclear weapons were not a factor here, we could have reduced Moscow to rubble by now.

The truth is that Russia, for all its flabbiness and eccentricity, possesses something we have lost – self-belief.

Russia believes in itself. Europe does not. Russia fights for something it understands down to its bone marrow. Europe fights for reasons devised in a smoky room by unelected suits. The Russian people are by-and-large behind their government. The European people feel occupied by theirs.

Although I strongly oppose what he is trying to achieve there, I must concede that Putin’s success in Ukraine represents a triumph of the human over the mechanical; the spirit over the machine. He has faced down vastly more complicated forces by the virtue of his willpower alone. It is no wonder his reputation is gaining in dark glamour for every week that passes.

D, LDN

RT: The Mask Slips.

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American Liberty, anti-Semitism, BBC, Christianity and Islam, Coffee, Counter-Jihad, Cultural Marxism, Defend the modern world, Europe, Multiculturalism, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Russia, russia today, Ukraine

As far as cable news channels go, RT (Russia Today) has long been regarded as admirably broad-minded.

Indeed, the network’s slogan ‘Question More’ is clearly designed to promote a special independence of mind, as well as a willingness to showcase minority opinions.

And it has been true to this goal. In the 9 years of its existence, the channel given a platform to figures as diverse as Nigel Farage, Alex Jones, Norman Finkelstein, Pat Buchanan and Julian Assange.

What (if anything) links this colourful band of characters together is an opposition to globalisation and American Foreign Policy, both of which are imagined by the Kremlin as hostile to Russian interests.

As Joe Pompeo reported:

“RT thrives on covering topics that make the U.S. look bad. Occupy Wall Street gave us images of NYPD officers pepper-spraying peaceful protesters and roughing up members of the press. (Robert) Snowden must have been manna for the network. Still, RT’s journalists swear they’re under no pressure to toe a party line.

“RT also traffics in the type of fringe punditry that’s found an audience across the U.S. media landscape. Its marquee anchor, the zany, histrionic Max Keiser, is a champion of 9/11 trutherism and financial apocalypse. Controversial commentators over the years have included people like the Russian historian who predicted that the dissolution of the United States was nigh, or the American one who believes the CIA is using unwitting citizens as guinea pigs to test dangerous drugs.”

Despite this predilection for exaggeration, RT’s coverage of some issues – notably Syria – has been commendable, with the channel filling a shameful truth-void in the presentations of the West. It is likely as a consequence of this that many patriots in both Europe and America have chosen to overlook the obvious biases of the network toward Putin and China, and welcome its refreshing lack of censorship on issues pertaining to Western policy.

But whatever value could be claimed for RT just a few weeks ago seems now rather more tenuous. The behaviour of the channel since the start of the Ukraine crisis has been shady, immoral and more-than-anything – distinctly amateurish.

Propaganda of the lowest kind has been passed off as news. Groundless accusations (often involving the Jews) have been bandied about with reckless abandon.

The process this effort has tried to defend, furthermore, is now – I argue – inexcusable. The sovereign nation of Ukraine has been mutilated by a vastly more powerful army in clear contravention of international moral standards, and without strategic justification (Russia would always have the Black Sea base at its disposal). The Ukrainian protestors, though there are inevitably some fascists among them, are not all ‘Nazis’ as the network has slanderously claimed. Even RT’s own anchors have rebelled against this tawdry lie-factory, some quitting dramatically on air in protest.

The devil’s bargain patriots have made with the network in the past should now accordingly be revised.

Russia is – needless to say – a very important country, one whose stability is essential to the stability of the world. This importance, together with the rich cultural heritage of the Russian people, makes its current decline into despotic inadequacy a tragedy of global proportion. RT is not a news-service, but a tawdry government mouthpiece suited to an Orwellian hell-state like North Korea, Turkmenistan or Belarus, not the nation of Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky and Gagarin.

Russia, to put it simply, is too good for Russia Today. And if that sounds like a play on words, it’s because it is one.

D, LDN