(Reuters) Yemen’s pro-government coalition fractures as separatists grab control in Aden.

I wrote about this August 2018, in Reuters: Yemen’s separatists attack military academy in Aden:

• Primary. Houthi versus non-Houthi.
• Secondary. north versus south.
• Tertiary, potential.  Zaydi Shia versus Sunni in the north.

The tertiary conflict has yet to occur, impeded by the historical political passivity of Yemen’s Sunnis.  The politics of Yemen has been dominated by Zaydi Shia up to the modern period. Ali Abdullah Saleh, the assassinated ruler of Yemen, was himself Zaydi Shia.

Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi  is the first Sunni ruler of modern Yemen.  He is a southerner. But should the situation evolve in favor of the Saudi coalition, Hadi may repress the south.

If the Saudi coalition wins, the northern Sunnis will become politicized, simply by association with the winning side. The tertiary conflict could then ignite. With Hadi bogged down in the South, the Houthis could re-ignite the conflict. Resurgence seems to be a general tendency in that part of the world.

If this seems improbable, consider the general liquidity of allegiances. Saleh was the principle opponent of the Houthis before his resignation, even though most Houthis are Zaydi, as was Saleh. He oppressed followers of his own religion.

Until the advent of the Houthis, loyalty was a purchasable commodity.

(Reuters) Moscow acknowledges mysterious rocket explosion involved nuclear workers. Quoting,

In a separate statement Rosatom said the accident occurred during the engineering and technical support of “isotope power sources” on a liquid propulsion system. It gave no further explanation, and a spokeswoman at the agency contacted by Reuters declined to clarify.

This is bunk, obfuscation. It follows the traditional Russia pattern. First, deny. Next, obfuscate. Then stonewall.  It’s a predictable replay of the Skripal poisonings. The points of obfuscation:

• An isotope is a variety of an element. All  elements exist as one or more isotopes. Through common usage, “isotope” has come to to refer to isotopes that are radioactive.
• All radioactive isotopes produce heat through decay, varying from minor to considerable.  This is spontaneous nuclear decay, not nuclear chain reaction.
• The heat can be used to make a nuclear battery, a source of electric power, which lasts years or decades. The only current use of these batteries is for missions to the outer solar system, where sunlight is too weak to power a spacecraft.
• There was limited past use of nuclear reactors to power radar espionage satellites. Because of the enormous cost of these satellites, they have always been launched from land, and only by the most highly qualified boosters.
• There is no current use for nuclear batteries in weapons systems, which these days use chemical batteries, mainly lithium-sulfur. This leaves only a flying nuclear reactor.

The art of obfuscation deflects attention from the obvious to  the  obscure and implausible: A  test of a rocket for an interplanetary craft or expensive spy satellite,  from an unstable floating platform in the frigid arctic Onega Bay, an extension of the White Sea? Ludicrous!

Yet the Rosatom statement is not technically a lie:

• All elements are isotopes, though not all isotopes are radioactive.
• A nuclear reactor is technically an isotope power source. But this term is not understood to be a flying reactor. Obfuscation.

It is a moral lie, concealing a weapon devoid of the safeguards that make a nuclear deterrent a moral choice.

Putin has boasted about this missile. (WaPo) Putin claims Russia is developing nuclear arms capable of avoiding missile defenses. Why this  obfuscation about a weapon in which Putin expressed pride?

Because, to date, it is a dangerous failure, a flying Chernobyl, which will result in at least a few excess cancer deaths in Russians. It falls short of the only moral goal of a strategic deterrent:

Protect the innocent.

(Reuters) Two dead in Russian rocket engine explosion; radiation spikes, shipping shut. Quoting,

The brief spike in radiation was reported by authorities in the nearby city of Severodvinsk, which has a population of 185,000. This apparently contradicted the defense ministry, which was quoted earlier by state media as saying radiation was normal.

With one exception, the nuclear ramjet, a rocket engine is not a source of radioactivity.  Things which are not radioactive stay that way, because chemical reactions do not create radioactivity. If something is subject to intense or prolonged irradiation by something that is radioactive, typically with neutrons, then a nuclear reaction occurs, creating new radioactive material.

If the Russians tested a rocket without bothering to remove the nuclear warhead, or left it nearby, that would indicate a level of alcohol consumption that is not possible, even in Russia.  That implies that whatever was radioactive could not be removed from the test article before the test was performed.

This implies that Russia’s nuclear ramjet, to power their nuclear cruise missile, was involved. The ramjet contains a small, air-cooled nuclear reactor that replaces chemical fuel. It heats air admitted by a duct in the front of the engine, causing the air to expand out the back.

The radiation spike indicates that the reactor was disintegrated by an explosion  inside the ramjet, or nearby.

• If the ramjet reactor is not a fail-safe design, or is defective, the rate of atomic fission could spike, causing it to melt. Nearby organic materials, if confined by the missile housing, could result in explosive disassembly. This is not like a “high explosive” detonation, but enough to kill a few bystanders.
• Even a nuke powered ramjet has to be boosted to a pretty high speed before it will start producing thrust. So the cruise missile it is mounted on a conventional, chemical booster stage. If the booster explodes, it can destroy the ramjet reactor.

The ramjet reactor core is not very radioactive before use. Like a commercial power reactor, the radioactivity of the core increases drastically with use. So if the explosion is caused by a fission spike, more radioactivity is released than by a booster explosion.

The fuel for a ramjet reactor is at very high temperature when the ramjet is operating.. It is encapsulated to withstand this stress for the short time it has to work. The town of Severodvinsk reported a brief radiation spike, so the explosion lofted radioactive materials into the air. The briefness of the spike indicates that packaging remained mostly intact, so the fuel was not widely dispersed.

There is real danger here.  The ramjet reactor itself, independent of the warhead, is a source of radioactivity, which increases  with every minute of run time. A nuclear powered cruise missile has the danger of a nuclear weapon, even with no warhead.

Vladimir Putin has expressed pride in this nuclear powered cruise missile. He may not understand that the danger of this weapon: It can slip the leash of the most careful testers. It may fail so that it cannot be controlled from the ground. It may spontaneously change course. Perhaps scarring Russia’s earth is what Stalin would have deemed  an acceptable cost. But even in testing, this ill-conceived weapon could deal nuclear death outside of Russia.

This is one reason why the U.S. cancelled a nuclear cruise missile program, Project Pluto. It was too provocative.

Vladimir Putin, in provisioning your country with a nuclear deterrent, it is vital to eliminate the chance of self-inflicted harm. Nuclear weapons are hellish enough without it.

(NY Times) Aleksei Navalny, Putin Foe, Is Hospitalized After ‘Allergic Reaction’ in Russian Jail.  Quoting,

One of Mr. Navalny’s allies, Leonid Volkov, said on Twitter on Sunday that he had spent 28 days in the same cell in June and had a similar experience to the apparent allergic reaction.

“Immediately upon release, I got all swollen and covered with red spots,” Mr. Volkov wrote. “We thought this was an allergy.”

Though diagnosis requires examination with specialist expertise, it could be the initiation of chloracne, a disfiguring skin disease resembling acne. It is considered a marker of dioxin exposure. Quoting (NCBI) Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2014, Appendix B Short-Term Adverse Health Responses,

Chloracne is a skin disease that is characteristic of exposure to 2,3,7,8-tetra-chlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) and other diaromatic organochlorine chemicals. It shares some pathologic processes (such as the occlusion of the orifice of the sebaceous follicle) with more common forms of acne (such as acne vulgaris)…

Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine politician, was poisoned with dioxin, resulting in disfigurement. The motivation behind such nonlethal poisoning is to avoid creation of a martyr, and to deprive the victim of political charisma by disfigurement.  Navalny is at similar risk.

The loss of Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down within sight of the Kremlin Walls, was almost regretted by comparison, particularly by Vladimir Putin himself. The sentiment is probably not shared by the significant criminal element within the Kremlin. But on Alexei Navalny, the sentiment is probably unanimous: any chance of political rise must be stopped, without the danger of martyrdom.

For the criminal element, the reason is simple: Navalny is after them. It’s either Navalny or them. Anyone who understands the power of that faction wouldn’t put their money on Navalny. If there were a chance to make it look like an accident, they would take that chance. Apparently, Navalny lives carefully.

Putin’s bargain with the Devil, by which it can be argued that he saved Russia from chaos, involved co-opting all the elements of Russian society, and he has never found a way to pay it off. But there is also a political reason of some legitimacy why Navalny must not be allowed to rise.

It involves the Caucaus. Navalny opposes the allocation of public resources to placate the Caucasus. The slogan of the campaign is “Stop feeding the Caucasus”. For some reason, RT has an article on it that doesn’t sound like half truths: Nationalists demand Moscow ‘stop feeding the Caucasus’. (I do not vouch for total absence of distortion.) Quoting Putin from the article,

“Those who say so deserve to have a piece of themselves cut off,” Putin said during an interview with media outlets from the Chechen Republic. “They do not understand what they are talking about. As soon as any country starts to reject some problematic territories, this means the beginning of the end for the whole country,” he stressed.

Chechnya is an autonomous oblast of the Russian Federation, within the Caucasus, separated from the borders of Russia by somewhat less dangerous regions, though Ingushetia, closer to Moscow, comes close. Two Chechen wars were fought, the second a decisive “win” for Russsia. But the loyalties of Muslim subjects are undermined by radical sympathies that extend through porous borders.

At great cost, Putin crushed Chechnya, and then sealed up the volatile remnants of discontent in a web of personal fealties involving Ramzan Kadyrov and his cohorts. This is not a modern political arrangement. It is purchased loyalty, the price made affordable by the brutality of the Chechen wars. As long as Kadyrov is treated right, it may endure. But if Russia “stops feeding the Caucasus”, conflict beckons, apartment bombings, and a third Chechen war.  Chechnya has a very large, irritable, militia.

No state other than the Russian Federation contains within it another hostile state, temporarily pacified by a welfare program. To stop feeding the Caucasus, it has to be amputated by a guarded border. Perhaps this is the object of Russian nationalists. But that would bring the Middle East to within 400 miles of Moscow.

That’s too close for comfort.

A remark by Xi Jinping is suggestive. (South China Morning Post) Xi Jinping warns Communist Party would be ‘overthrown’ if Taiwan’s independence push left unchecked. Quoting, “The Communist Party would be overthrown by the people if the pro-independence issue was not dealt with.” But the reason is twisted 180 degrees: An independent, democratic Taiwan represents an alternative to the Communist Party.

From Xi’s remark, which applies directly to Hong Kong, a criteria for intervention by China can be derived.  As a geographically contiguous source of political contagion, it is far more dangerous than Taiwan, a more distant source of  communicable disease of thought. But the adjacent troop deployments in Shenzhen do not mean intervention has been decided; it is a precautionary mobilization.

The economic price of intervention would be very high, utterly destroying the economic premium of Hong Kong. No longer a center of commerce, it would become an economic dependency of Shenzhen. That this is appreciated  by the mainland leadership is indicated by the soft approach of their proxy, Carrie Lam:

• All recent arrests were bailed.
• Confidence-building meeting held with the leaders of the business community.

The harsher clashes, between organized crime elements and protesters, were probably paid for by mainland elements.

Blaming the unrest on Western instigation, the CIA, etc., is expected, an indication of the problem Hong Kong presents to the mainland as a relay point to the mainland for Western ideas, which the mainland authorities confuse with active subversion.

The criteria is  indicated: Evolution of the protests towards a “second government.” The participation of normally conservative civil servants is significant. This evolution would be indicated by:

• Defection of an element expected to be loyal.
• Organizing efforts by civil servants, bringing political form to an amorphous movement.
• Emergence of a political movement that attempts to form an alternative government, or simply a parallel power structure.

Absent overt indications such as the above, concessions by Carrie Lam, that instead of diminishing the protests, result  in  escalated demands, contain the implied trigger for intervention.

The cost is drastic, requiring drastic fear.

(Reuters) North Korea’s Kim says missile test a warning to South Korean ‘warmongers’.

While North Korea weapons tests tend to be analyzed for specific accomplishments, this focus distracts from looking at the trend. All over the world, countries with formerly primitive military establishments have adopted  similar development paths towards advanced, “semi-ballistic” missiles that are much harder to intercept. This is accompanied by dissemination of even more maneuverable hypersonic technology.

The origin of the idea was the Pershing II missile, followed by the Russian Iskander.  With flat trajectories and maneuverability in flight, they may render current, and possibly future antimissile systems ineffective.  While Hypersonic Strategies, Part 6 describes a solution, political considerations may intervene.

The susceptibility of U.S. defense infrastructure stems from:

• Successful use of high technology in asymmetric warfare, which lead to larger “asset lumps” that cannot be subdivided. Example: CAOC.
• Emphasis on power projection, with similar result, such as reliance on aircraft carriers, which are very large lumps.
• Centralization of command within lightly fortified installations, partly from tradition, and partly from the convenience of asset lumping.

The above is very useful in asymmetric warfare, but which now result in concentrated, extremely high value targets soon to be vulnerable to third world weaponry. Survivability can no longer be assumed.

Some innovations offer much greater survivability:

• Distributed radars, constructed out of small, redundant mesh elements. This was made possible by the development of extremely high band gap semiconductors.
• Unjammable mesh communications, (see DARPA ADC program) which would make possible a distributed command hierarchy.
• Ditto for distributed logistics, which is already being implemented.

The object: reduce the numbers of assets requiring defense in the ways described in Hypersonic Strategies, Part 6.

(Reuters) Britain says Iran seizes two oil tankers in Gulf, Iran says captured one.

The Iranians are such fluent  liars, the Russians are trustworthy by comparison.  This comes out of the history of Shi’ism, an oppressed sect.  With the challenge of survival, Shia jurists legitimized lying to the oppressors. Hence the creative fluency of lies now visible.

In opposition, our side adheres to the diplomatic mindset, with measured responses that are easily outraced by Iranian jack rabbits.  Quoting foreign minister Jeremy Hunt,

“These seizures are unacceptable. It is essential that freedom of navigation is maintained and that all ships can move safely and freely in the region.”

Throwing diplomatic boiler plate at a pack of lying jack rabbits, Minister Hunt sounds like he has his panties in a bunch. At least  he should have his stripped pants pressed. The tortoise versus the hare; who will win?

The advantage of a game is that, played well, it allows one to leapfrog intermediate steps where one is losing, to arrive at a winning position that might be somewhat durable. If the game predicts otherwise, there is the chance to abandon it, or radically change course. Either way is better than the “best teacher”, experience, which is also the most expensive.

We can’t claim we are winning. The deployment of U.S. naval assets has not deterred much, if anything.  The  assets mean nothing without rules of engagement that risk conflict. The Iranians have  a fine sense of this, which means they are applying more intelligence to the problem than we are.

The above is not meant to advocate a particular course. The broad options are to double down or walk away.  The conflict is currently almost perfectly cold. As a next step the game may  offer only the next level of temperature, a slight smolder. Whether it escalates can be modeled by a number, a “coefficient“. A positive coefficient is like bank interest; a negative coefficient is like a loan rate.

• The U.S. coefficient is currently negative, with aversion to conflict. It would become positive if the forces now deployed engage in punitive, as opposed to defensive, actions.
• The Iranian coefficient is not yet obvious. If the Iranian coefficient is negative, the U.S. and allies are in control of the heat. But it is probably weakly positive.
• If the Iranian coefficient is positive, the game heats up rapidly.  With exhaustion of will or resources, offensive inclinations may reach a limit  short of total war, the coefficient turning negative. Or it may not; while the German aggressive impulse was exhausted in World War I, it remained potent to the end of World War II. The German coefficient remained positive to the end.
• If both the U.S. and Iran coefficients are strongly positive, the result is total war.
• If one coefficient  is positive and the other negative, a conflict tends to smolder.

In the absence of a Game of Nations style simulation of the New Tanker War, which might provide sage-like insights, the obvious next-step is a naval  convoy system, with rules of engagement that would result in “punitive damages.”

Game players would be eager to know whether this would result in Iran’s use  of Silkworm batteries, emplaced along the Strait, small-boat swarm attacks, and proxies.  Though DoD games the battlefield with perfection,  the coefficient of this article is  the property of a society as a whole.

(CNN) US preparing to send hundreds of troops to Saudi Arabia amid Iran tensions.  Construction units have been deployed to Prince Sultan airbase, which  may receive an upgraded CAOC and a Patriot  battery, enabling deployment of the most advanced assets.

The U.S. coefficient is creeping towards positive. Elsewhere, game players take notice, changing  the numbers assigned  to our intentions.

(Reuters) UK government seeking further information on seized foreign tanker reports: spokeswoman.

(FARS) IRGC Seizes Ship with 1mln Liters of Fuel Cargo Smuggled from Iran, But Denies Seizing Any Other Foreign Ship. Quoting,

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Navy stopped a foreign oil tanker in Lark Island in the Persian Gulf which was carrying 1mln liters of smuggled fuel from Iran, the IRGC said Thursday, but meantime, dismissed seizure of any other foreign vessel as claimed by the foreign media several days ago.

Once again, the name of the ship is unspecified. This is almost certainly the MT Riah. It looks like the Iranians have got their story straight. Perhaps instead of a ring job, they’ll give the ship a paint job.

Iran has decided that anything that will raise maritime insurance rates is beneficial to their cause. And what country can resist free gas?

Edit 6/17/2019, 2:50 PM EST. A point added, highlighted in red. Read down.

(CBC) Iran says its navy came to aid of missing oil tanker Riah as tensions mount in Gulf. Quoting,

“An international oil tanker was in trouble due to a technical fault in the Persian Gulf,” spokesman Abbas Mousavi told the semi-official news agency ISNA.

“After receiving a request for assistance, Iranian forces approached it and used a tugboat to pull it towards Iranian waters for the necessary repairs to be carried out,…”

The tanker is a mini, only 190 feet long, said to be used for local UAE transfer of petroleum. But the UAE denies ownership or crew;  (Khaleej Times) Oil tanker MT Riah not owned by UAE. Quoting,

A UAE official said on Tuesday that the oil tanker MT Riah is not owned by the UAE.

 “The tanker in question is neither UAE owned nor operated.”…”It does not carry Emirati personnel, and did not emit a distress call.”

Points:

• The MT Riah was certainly hijacked by Iran. The absence of a distress call, and deactivation of the tanker’s transponder are evidence enough.
• The tanker was an attractive  target because the small size and value implied reduced chance of paramilitary presence.
• The selection was also based upon the pattern of usage, intra-UAE transport, which resulted in the assumption of UAE ownership. The Iranians were wrong.
• There was little or no representation of Gulf  ethnicities among the crew, or they would have been used as chips.
• The captive vessel presents no opportunity for Iran to pressure the Gulf alliance.
• The failure of Iran to name the tanker, crew, and mechanical defect  indicates  control by higher echelons of power,  which have not settled on the “story.” Internal conflict along secular-religious lines is possible.
• The owners will probably get away with a ripoff repair fee.

The Iranians bungled, giving us just a taste of things-to-come. We have a breather to meditate on the main problem. Quoting  Iranian boats attempted to seize British tanker,

The Iranians are doubtless studying this [Gen. Dunford’s] statement, looking for space in which they can operate. It offers Iran local superiority (see Lanchester’s Laws) that could not be achieved against a unified military response. It fails to accord Iran respect for the strength that comes from desperation.

The Western response may follow the  course of the four-year initial inability  to deal with Somali pirates. The slowness of the EU learning curve in dealing with the ancient menace of piracy was striking. Paying off the pirates encouraged more piracy. while jurisdictional issues of international law and reluctance to use force paralyzed punishment and deterrence.

Iran is far more resourceful than Somali pirates. There is no simple prescriptive solution, because this is a game. Games require both strategy and tactics. In the past, problems such as these have been simulated by State and DoD in the form of board-game simulations played  by specialist students of the various actors.

A brief description of such a game is given by Miles Copeland, CIA plank-owner, in his book, The Game of Nations.

I wrote this on July 30, 2018. For some reason, I never hit the “publish” button. It seems fresh as a daisy, so here it is:

(Reuters) ‘Very positive signals’ after U.S., Taliban talks: sources.

Part of this blog is about the skill of prediction, which deeply involves recognizing previous situations that analogize with the present. The news sites present snapshots of the present, leaving us vulnerable to all our hopes and fears. Sloppy analogy with past can leave us vulnerable to  our hopes and fears. Carefully drawn analogies, evaluated in number and quality,  bind the future to the past. So what is the quality of historical analogy available for the four top issues?

• Iran: Current Iran approaches have limited but useful analogies with the neoconservative approach to  Iraq in 2003.
• Russia: Limited analogy exists to expansionism dating to the 18th century, and to balance-of-power policies.
• China: There is no precedent for the rise of China.
• Afghanistan: Numerous, extensive analogies with  Vietnam exist.

With Afghanistan, as with Vietnam, it can be hard for the best minds to differentiate between the desired outcomes foreign policy goals, and the work of prediction, when we try to exclude confirmation bias. Like most Western readers, I would prefer to imagine the outcome of an Afghanistan with a civil government that has at least limited secular, inclusive aspects. The situation of Pakistan, which is more a failed state than a model, would actually be progress in Afghanistan.

So let’s start with Vietnam. As painful as the experience was,  the lesson lived in memory for little more than a generation. The goals of our fathers for Vietnam were fairly modest. The  corrupt rule of South Vietnam’s elite was supported because, so it was thought,

• The doctrine of Containment of world communism required it.
• Absent the lock-down of a rigid ideology, South Vietnam would continue to evolve.
• The goals were achievable.

A magnificent book recounts  the cautionary tale. The Best and the Brightest, by David Halberstam, documents and dissects. The best thinking of the time, employing the best tools of the time, statistics, estimation theory, game theory, and operations research, could not predict the failure of the massive U.S. military and logistical footprint to defeat a small, economically primitive country with an army of foot soldiers.

At the time, it was countered that the Vietnam debacle was the result of political constraints on the scope of military operations. But if this was so, the best and the brightest toiled on, each working on an assigned part of the problem. The sheer size of the effort, and the variety of approaches and methods used, resulted in  many different measures of success:  body counts, village pacifications, battles won, positions held, enemy presence, and so forth. But out of all this, there never developed a coherent estimate of what the future would hold.

Specialists in unconventional warfare, such as William Colby, later director of the CIA, were influenced by the spirit of the southerners they worked with.  Negative opinions were voiced by those who knew the leadership of the South. Those whose priority of geopolitics made failure unacceptable retained powerful influence over the institutional voice until the 1968 Tet Offensive. Paradoxically, a military victory for the U.S. caused the vox populi to prevail over the custodians of U.S. foreign policy, beginning the process of disengagement.

Vietnam remained a powerful lesson for just a bit more than a generation. But the 2003 Iraq war, which might have succeeded as a surgical intervention, was given a huge remit by a group then known as the neoconservatives, to catalyze the development of liberal democracy in the Middle East. The similarities with South Vietnam in the 1960’s:

• Intervention with a remit of social change well beyond the scope of military victory and occupation.
• Porous borders through which enemy supply lines cannot be effectively interdicted.
• Sanctuaries in neighboring countries.
• Asymmetric warfare; the enemy accepts losses much greater than acceptable by Western forces, without strategic distress.
• Economies restricted to subsistence agriculture and opium.
• Village and clan based societies with little desire for services of a central government.

The last element is most important. What is the minimum government that can bind a country together?  From Trump Wants to Fire U.S. Commander in Afghanistan, a list:

• Raise revenue by taxation.
• Use at least some of the taxes to provide services.
• Facilitate commerce.
• The services provided justify the taxes enough for popular acquiescence.

These are the minimums of good government, when it is a symbiont with the population. With less than that,  a government becomes a protection racket.

In South Vietnam, as in Afghanistan today, there was too little to tax, and too little in the way of services to provide. We like to think of happy villages with modern medical care and, eventually, labor saving devices. But without a tax base, a government cannot acquire the monopoly of force that underpins the rule of law.

If all six factors hold, this implies that while Western intervention can maintain the current situation indefinitely, the Taliban will take over on exit. No amount of diplomatic paper can change this; the men with guns, powered by a religious ideology, win this game.