Imperial Military Breakdown

Our hearts are obviously with the people suffering in Texas with the recent storms, loss of electricity, and general suffering going on.  Of course, whenever something bad happens, conspiracy theories emerge and someone shared to me an article from last year that China can send an electromagnetic pulse to destroy the American power grids.  While I can see no way it would have been possible for China to cause the current problems in Texas (unless they borrowed the weather dominator from Dick Cheney), the article did make me think about military matters more generally. 

Those paying attention should have noted that the Imperial Military has been on the decline for a while.  Not only does it punish Southern troops, who disproportionately enlist for combat roles, but they also invest in bad equipment. The U.S. also continually chooses bad allies.  Some troops found this out a couple years back when they were punished after they discovered the rampant pedophilia of our “allies” in Afghanistan and tried to stop it.  This has been a recurring pattern for the U.S.  Arm a local insurgency and then acts surprised when that group does worse things than the very forces we’re supposed to be fighting (Mujahideen being the most glaring example that comes to mind).  With recent media attempts to spread the narrative that right wingers should be treated as an insurgency in the U.S., this becomes even more absurd.  We thought it absurd when Swalwell threatened to nuke citizens that love guns; now the Overton window has shifted to make that stance semi-acceptable. 

Various shakeups are going on in the military.  A Navy Chaplain may be booted from the military for holding theologically correct, therefore politically incorrect, views.  One key takeaway: “He hasn’t changed, but apparently the military culture has.”  That’s right, traditional Christianity is viewed as dangerous to the military.  The impact to morale of combat troops losing good chaplains is currently unknown, but likely not great.  Religion is important to troops, a realization even the atheistic USSR made.

Unsurprisingly, with banning Christianity, so too has Biden reversed Trump’s rules regarding mentally ill people who mutilate their genitals in the military.  Less surprising, but more of a head-scratcher, is the relaxation of rules regarding dress.  Female soldiers, and presumably males who identify as females, can wear lipstick, nail polish, earrings, and dreadlocks.  Yes, no place like a warzone to make sure your makeup and jewelry is “on fleek” as the melanin enriched, and would-be melanin enriched among us say. 

The fact that the headline, “Women Aren’t The Problem, Standards Are” isn’t from the Babylon Bee should be reason enough to know that the U.S. military is no longer the frightening force of the past.  There’s been talk about the lowering of military standards for some time, but I hadn’t actually seen what the changes are until recently. 

The U.S. Army has gotten rid of its old PT tests and now has the  Army Combat Fitness Test  (ACFT).  So, what is the new test like?  You need a total of 140 points to get Gold, 160 to get Grey and 200 to get Black.  It seems odd that Black is better than Gold, but I’m sure there’s nothing significant to that.  The website says this test is harder than the older test, but that seems a bit odd.  The requirements to get Gold don’t look particularly difficult: 3 140-pound deadlifts, a standing power throw of a 10-pound medicine ball for 4.5 meters, 10 hand-release pushups in 2 minutes, the sprint-drag-carry in three minutes, 1 leg tuck, and run two miles in 21 minutes.

The U.S. military becoming a farce wouldn’t mater as much without other militaries becoming more serious.  Russia has recently revealed their cyberpunk armor and China is doing naval drills with Iran and Russia. In addition to more serious foreign forces, certain shifts economically may impact military decision-making.  China has supplanted America as Europe’s main trading partner, which indicates more economic downturn and less stability in the U.S. in the coming years.  That’s historically a good motivation for war, but where?

We’ve got the media attempting to get people outraged over the Burmese coup.  I’m not about to weigh in on the justification of the coup for the simple fact that I, like most people living in the United States, never think about Burma.  I fail to see any reason why we should care.  Oh, I know, we’re supposed to care about “muh democracy” wherever it can be imposed throughout the world, but these democracies usually are worse than the preceding regime. 

Burma is in the logical sphere of influence of China, so it seems odd for the U.S. to even think of deploying for risk of WW3.  However, you never know what Bumbling Biden will do.  I don’t put it past the government to use the CIA to lie to gin up cause for war, like Weapons of Mass Destruction or a fake imminent attack, but it just doesn’t seem believable with Burma.

As I said in the beginning of this article, obviously China is not behind the problems in Texas, but I did want to talk about this purported EMP capability.  I don’t think they would hit the U.S. with an EMP as some sort of Red-Dawn style invasion.  The issue is not that China can conceivably hit Texas or make Detroit worse with an EMP, but 1) use it discriminately to pick off vessels with high level targets for kidnapping and torture and 2) they can use it to disrupt supply chains and prevent supplies going to troops in combat zones abroad.  If the Chinese can take out an aircraft carrier group, they can get a boat or plane that has a high-level target covertly.

Supply chain disruptions are more likely because it’s less likely to be noticed.  If a supply depot in Afghanistan loses power, who is going to blame the Chinese?  Likewise, even though some have speculated that foreign intervention caused the recent fires and failings of U.S. ships recently, there’s no conclusive evidence of that so nothing is done.  With that in mind, I suspect the coming years will have a lot more expensive ships, including supply ships, having malfunctions at sea to ensure troops don’t get reinforced and resupplied. 

This is a problem for a few reasons.  The best soldiers in the world cannot win engagements without ammo, oil, food, and medical supplies. Worse than that, it messes with morale and causes them to get restless, undisciplined, and sometimes lash out at the civilians in the area.  I know we like to pretend we live in a civilized age, but whether its 2021 AD, BC or anywhere in between, under-supplied troops cause problems. So, we see an increased likelihood of incompetent troops, expensive military vessels losing power at sea, and supplies not getting where it’s needed. What can we expect? Just like we saw little city-states of communists pop up in the U.S. last year, don’t be surprised when some makeup and gaudy-jewelry wearing sergeant becomes warlord of some village in the Middle East.  It may sound fanciful, but so too did a Soundcloud Rapper becoming a Warlord in Seattle.