Japanese military leaders in WWII – a study of inadequacy

The most amazing thing about the Japanese during the Second World War was not the legendary drive, dedication, obstinacy and unwillingness to give up, of the general soldier, sailor or airman; it was the dismal failure of their leaders to use that resource to good effect.

Many people will point to the stunning Japanese run of victories in the first few months of the war to scoff at this statement, but they are wrong. It is not surprising that skilled and dedicated troops can surprise and overwhelm unskilled and unprepared ones (particularly those who lacked much vital equipment). It is however, very surprising that those troops could not be put in a better long-term position by their leaders.

In fairness, it must be stated that Japan could never win in the long term: as long as the Allies held it together enough to rebuild and return to the conflict. Even the conquest of India, Australia, and Hawaii, and the complete laying waste of all Californian factories, and the Panama Canal by the Japanese, would only have held of the inevitable for a while… If the Japanese ever had the ability to try these. They did not. With most of their troops tied down in China: only a dozen mobile divisions available to fight the whole perimeter; and never enough shipping to supply them all even before impossible plans like invasions of vast new countries were even considered; that is all a pipe dream. (I suppose carrier raids on the US coast or Panama were not impossible, but the Japanese had an appalling record of damaging anything not considered a proper military target. It is what the American’s call an ‘aggression’ thing – too macho to shoot at unprotected targets. See the complete failure of Japanese submarines.)

In practical terms the only thing the Japanese had going for them was surprise; an initial ability to concentrate forces and equipment before their opposition could react; and the skill and dedication of the troops fighting beyond the supposed limitations of their equipment and supply lines. Once those assets were gone, so was any chance of victory. After that the bad leaders tried to hold on to whatever chances the self-sacrifice of their troops could deliver. In the end that came down to ‘can we sacrifice enough lives to make the Allies believe that they will loose too many men to get unconditional surrender’. A strategy of desperation.

Japanese generals did fairly well at he start. By moving faster than expected; by outflanking all opposition through greater manoeuvrability; and by taking whatever casualties were necessary to maintain momentum; they swept aside an ill prepared opposition as easily as the Germans did in Poland, Norway, France, the Balkans or Russia; or as the British did in North and East Africa, and later in France; or as Americans did in French North Africa or France; or as the Russians later did in Russia and Poland and the Balkans; etc. Actually, come to think of it, they had exactly the same effectiveness of any concentrated and prepared force against a dispersed and weak or unprepared one, as has any similar situation in history. Only when conflict got down to something closer to even odds in New Guinea or Burma did the Japanese generals start to look incapable of puling any rabbit out of their hat, other than the gritty endurance of the common soldier.

The Japanese Admirals were far worse. They failed consistently and spectacularly, right from the start. They won victory after victory from their initial position of concentration and surprise, but they never followed up! They failed to convert any tactical victory into a strategic one… with the possible exception of the Battle of the Java Sea.

At Pearl Harbour they slaughtered major ships, and then wandered off leaving the oil tanks, supply depots, repair shops, and harbour facilities almost untouched.

Off Malaya they sunk the two nearest British battleships (their was another battleship and an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean and more on the way, but they are rarely mentioned), and achieved theoretical superiority at sea and in the air. But the British ran dozens of convoys into Singapore and Jave without a single loss until the final evacuation!

Off Java they defeated and dispersed the Allied cruiser force, and successfully invaded Java. This would be the best example of a tactical victory followed by a strategic gain at sea.

At Darwin they slaughtered allied shipping, but wandered off and left the port operational!

At Ceylon they sunk some ships, but left the British fleet in being, and the RAF in control of the air after their carriers withdrew. The total effects of the raid were about the same as a successful cruise by a couple of the better German U-boats.

At Savo Straights The Japanese slaughtered the guarding cruisers, and then wandered off without attacking the vulnerable and vital invasion transports.

At the Phillipines they actually achieved what they had sought all along, with a strong battleship force breaking through after horrendous casualties to face a practically unprotected invasion fleet. But once again they then wandered aimlessly for a while before leaving without sinking anything of note.

The repeated element here is an admiral achieving the initial tactical objective, and then apparently not having a clue how to convert that to anything resembling a strategic success!

Let us start with Nagumo, who has gone down in history as one of the most successful admirals ever, but who turned everything he touched to pathetic disaster.

At Pearl Harbour your average gibbon could have succeeded in suprising the Americans and clearing the skies for strikes on the fleet. However it is likely that the average gibbon would have followed up with the third strike his staff was begging for, rather than turning for home. With six carriers available, he could have easily held a strike bigger than any launched at Midway in reserve, while continuing to pound the base. It was morale weakness and strategic stupidity that led him to withdraw instead of follow up. Yamamato was horrified at the result.

At Ceylon we see the same. His strikes were successful, but his follow ups were indecisive. Two cruisers heading south were sunk, and a scouting carrier borne plane from the fast approaching British fleet intercepted; so he turned away and failed to search in that direction the next day.

At Midway he changed his mind at the wrong time, and suffered the consequences. Then his follow-ups were incompetent guesses. Nonetheless it is undoubtedly fair to say that he fought harder and more sensibly at Midway than in any other engagement of his career. Failure was more due to bad luck there than success was to good luck anywhere else he fought.

The overall assessment of Nagumo is pretty unimpressive. He was a battleship general put in charge of the carrier strike force for no other reason than the fact that he was next in seniority. He did not appear to understand his weapon well, and he certainly did not use it to its potential. The fact that his initial strikes against unprepared and often weak targets were usually successful accords him no greater place in history than the American admiral who commanded the successful fleet at what is now called ‘the great Marianna’s turkey shoot’ (go on name him): in fact, probably less. He partly succeeded on a couple of walkovers, and partly or completely failed on a couple of fleet engagements. He never turned tactical victory into strategic success, and managed to turn even successful operations into strategic failure before sacrificing his nations last chance of victory (to an admittedly clever trap.)

So what about Yamamato. He is generally regarded as the strategic genius who, in his own words, would run riot for a year. In fact he ran riot for about three months, jostled somewhat ineffectively for position for another three months, and was then decisively defeated in the major fleet engagement he had been seeking.

The period of success was an almost inevitable effect of surprise and concentration. Nothing his opponents could have done at the time would have changed that. (Though given another few months, the British Eastern Fleet would have been too big to allow him to send his entire strike force to Hawaii at the start of the campaign.) Nonetheless he failed to exploit any local superiority beyond purely local effects. No strategic victory, only tactical. Verdict… He moved his pieces well when there was little opposition, but only short term.

The period of jockeying for position was less impressive. The fleet he sent to Ceylon should probably have been capable of taking on the BEF successfully, if they manoeuvred well to stay clear at night and strike at day. Possibly he cannot be found wanting in that they failed. Nagumo was not his choice, and Somerville was too experienced to do anything stupid. But why no follow through? The BEF should have been pushed harder to try and get results while the Americans were still playing dead. Yamamato could not have known how many reinforcements the BEF had due within two months (The battleships Nelson and Rodney to add to the five already there, and the aircraft carrier Illustrious and possibly another to add to the three present, and more cruisers and destroyers, etc), but he must have known the margin of superiority could only decline. Yet another strategic error. Verdict… lack of decisiveness.

At Midway he committed an unforgivable sin. Dispersion of resources over vast areas. Even after the four carriers of the strike force had been sunk, he had more carriers with more planes available for the operation than the Americans had had at the start. Unfortunately they were spread to hell and gone all over the place. Some with the main body, far too behind to support the strike force; and some way up in the Aleutians running a pointless diversion. (Recent research seems to indicate that the Aleutians diversion was a brainwave of the Naval Staff, which Yamamoto had to accept as he haggled for thee rest of his plan - a comment on institutional incompetence in its own right). Had two or three of those carriers been supporting the strike force, or had the main body been close enough to follow up the battle immediately, there is little doubt the Japanese could have won. Verdict… Idiot.

Possibly it is a good thing for his memory that he died before the final disasters. One can hope that if he had been the one to break through at the Phillipine Sea, he might have at least pushed the damage bill before retreating. But the dispersal and lack of follow through was so familiar from the operations he had planned, that it is likely the faults were institutional rather than merely personal. Certainly his successors had very similar preferences for over-complicated plans with pointless dispersal of effort.

In fact the Imperial Japanese Navy approached the Second World War with all the impulsive aggression and enthusiasm, and all the lack of coherent strategic planning, of such well known military experts as Lord Cadogan and General Custer. It was not that they lacked the ability to win, it was more that their institutional mindsets were incapable of envisioning a coherent method to achieve victory.

Journalistic Manipulation... since the Crimean War

I was listening to the person currently calling himself Prime Minister of Great Britain on the news a few days ago. In an attempt to distract the media and the public from his impressively demonstrated economic failures, he has taken that most traditional of routes - start a witch hunt.

I despise politicians who take such stances, and have ever since the time in my teens when the military junta in Argentina decided that the best way to distract their populace from their failures was a short victorious war... like invading the Falklands. The dislike only grew as I watched a series of Australian PM's distract a compliant media and cretinous public with such things as "no child shall live in poverty" during the last "recession we had to have"; followed by "great betrayals" and "republics" the next time the polls were bad, and "gun control" and "children overboard" the next time. A pox on all their houses.

It did make me reflect however, on the dangers of a media that can say "oh look, shiny things" whenever their political meal tickets start pulling irrelevant rabbits out of hats. The fact that the media can then whip up a frenzy amongst people who should know better is even more scary. (I still shudder to remember how the last time France exploded a test nuclear weapon at Muraroa Atoll, the Australian government led a chorus of media frenzy which had mindless mobs smashing the windows of French restaurants within weeks. A warning to any Nazi hater who thinks it could never happen here..)

It is not that newspapers themselves are evil ( despite the complaints of voter manipulation from many who do not understand basic concepts of supply and demand leading to a voice for any opinion big enough to pay). It is more a matter of modern journalists being so ignorant of the possible effects of playing with fire. Certainly those I have spoken to have been genuinely shocked to think that their fortnight long rants against someone who has not yet been proven guilty of anything, are leading to lynch mobs in the street. The 'ethics' components of any journalism courses I have looked at seem to have more to do with how not to be sued, than with handling media power judiciously. Don't they study their own history?

In the 1850's for instance, we get the first conflicts where modern telecommunications (meaning telegraph wires), allow journalists at the front to influence popular opinion at home to force politicians into things they are not very keen on doing.

The first 'modern' war correspondent were people like William Howard Russell, who now receives renown for revealing the truth about army conditions at the terrible Crimean Campaign, and for creating a cult of adulation for Florence Nightingale. (Actually the more interesting heroin of that campaign was Mary Seacole, who lacks the modern cred of Ms Nightingale, possibly because she was coloured.) Much is made of characters like Russell, but little is thought about their influence on the causes of wars.

The British government of the day was not remotely interested in being involved in a new European war against Russia. Unfortunately for them, unscrupulous journalists were ready to whip up public opinion to force them to it. What eventually happened was that the government was backed into a corner that required a guarantee of some sort to the Turks, who promptly sent their ragged fleet on a suicide run to be destroyed by the Russians. Result? The British Empire moves in to grant the 'decaying old man of Europe' another 6 decades of subsidised existence.

Oh there were other things going on as well. The most important of which was Napoleon III having a fit of grandious-ness: which meant that a bit of one-up-man-ship between France and Britain could also be played up in the press. Nonetheless the issue was one which should never have led to British involvement in a war. Certainly not a major international one, unless journalists were willing to drive a PR cart (or do I mean barrow?) through government policy.

Another great, if slightly later, example of journalistic integrity being the theory that the American William Randolph Hurst encouraged the Spanish-American War for the sole purpose of expanding newspaper sales.

It was bad enough when journalists were doing it on their own. It was appalling when newspaper magnates became convinced that they could influence their readerships, then national politics, and eventually international relations, by fiat. (See, for instance, Lord Beaverbrook in the lead up to World War Two.) But the nadir is reached when politicians realise that they can direct their fawning lackeys (many of whom are even more pathetic for their self deception that they are fearless investigators) down any blind alleys that suit them.

And so we get witch hunts. Enquiries into problems that everyone knows the answers to, but which are too politically sensitive to act on. (Like students learning to read, write, and behave like human beings). Committees to report on things beyond anyone's control. (Some of the more exotic fantasies of 'environmentalists' spring to mind.) Commissions into things that are the governments fault, but they think they can distract people into blaming someone else for. (Yes, I am thinking specifically of the Victorian Bushfire Commission, where they are not even looking at the state governments failure to follow through on what many previous commissions have told them needs to be done, while steering public attention towards convenient scapegoats who are also victims of the government's policies.) Or yet more reports on things that have had at least two or three reports already. (The PM fellow announced yet another inquiry into the Iraq war.)

Personally, I preferred it in the days when journalists tried to steer people themselves. There is enough variety in newspapers that most journalists are steering the self selecting group who read their particular rag exactly where their preconceptions want them to go... no real issue there. What I can't stand is that journalistic standards have gone so far down this path that they do not even seem aware, let alone interested, that they are putty in the hands of politicians. Do they not know? Do they not care? Is it policy? Is it 'keeping up with the net'? (Or is it an acknowledgement that they can't keep up with the net on news, so they will play shock-jock instead?)

The interesting thing is that the tactics of modern journalists are self defeating. Already there are debates on the collapse of 'quality journalism', simply because there is not the advertising revenue to support it. What the debaters are missing is that the modern media is not about quality journalism. If people want investigation, they go on line and do it. (Or try the new method of contracting online an investigator to look at it... enough people interested can buy a tailored investigation.) The rest of the consumer base only tunes in to have their opinions validated. (When organisations like the BBC, with it's massive resources, rarely bothers to run anything but party politicals on pre-determined lines - see anything on Israel for instance - then quality mass journalism is pretty well finished.) Falling revenues and falling standards become a fairly 'chicken or egg' argument.

What started as manipulating the news for the journalists own beliefs, became tailoring the news you report for your readership; which then becomes limiting what you report to what the readers want to hear about; which then becomes being manipulated into 'newsworthy' items by smart politicians (and others). In practical terms, this progression of 'journalism' seems a quite logical flow from the Crimea to Celebrity Big Brother.

It will be interesting to see whether the net does manage to come up with something well enough done to replace investigative journalism. Something has to.

Unrealistic Heroes 2 - John Curtin

FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON PART OF THIS POST HAS VANISHED. I WILL REPLACE IT ASAP. HERE IS THE SHORT VERSION...

Australia's Prime Minister Curtin is another man who is treated as some sort of national hero by those who seem never to have considered the alternatives. Curtin led Australia through the dark days of the threat of Japanese invasion in teh second half of world war tow, and is often rapturously referred to as the man who saved Australia. Why? How?

It is hard to see how Curtins 'achievements' in world war two were superior to those of his contemporaries, or forebears, or followers. Indeed it would be fair to suggest that Australia has never had such bad prime ministers that any one of them could not have done at least as well in the same circumstances. And by 'at least' as well, I literally mean that the vast majority of Australia's PM's would probably have done considerably better.

Curtin was an amateur at government, with no real experience of running anything of significance, and it showed. (The most telling comment about his control during the crisis, was the oft repeated concept from political and military figures that "Canberra has lost it".)

Curtin was ignorant of international relations, with no real idea how to play the game as his predecessor Mezies had, and it showed. (Menzies had been a welcome visitor to the London war cabinet; and arranged for his army expedition chief to be second in command of the main Imperial theatre in the Meditteranean; and had his opinion sought - if not always valued. Curtin was generally ignored by his allies, to the point that when Churchill asked the Australian civil servant Richard Casey to become the British cabinet minister resident in the middle east, Curtin was reportedly peeved.) Once MacArthur arrived to handle Curtin for the Allies, Roosevelt and Churchill could safely ignore him.

Curtin was completely ignorant of military affairs, and it showed. He cheerfully handed the entire organistaion of Australian defences over to the pompous and vainglorious MacArthur, failing to recognise that Roosevelt had happily pulled the man out of the Phillipines for domestic political reasons, and was now determined to see him kept in exile in Australia for those same domestic political reasons. (MacArthur notoriously ran the newsmen in his area of command. If he said 'American troops under the command of General douglas MacArthur have....' he meant Americans; if he said 'Allied troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur have...' he meant Australians. So paranoid and controlling of media relations was he, that once when he wanted one of his American...

HERE IS THE OLD FINISH...

army leaders to advance faster, that he promised that if the poor man achieved X results, he would actually reveal his name to the newsmen!)

Indeed McArthur was so good at manipulating Curtin, that the real head of the Australian military - General Thomas Blamey - found himself exiled to New Guinea to try and save his own job. The man was supposed to be supervising the two armies, and other corps and divisions, responsible for the defence of the entire continent. Instead he was forced to spend several vital months twiddling his thumbs, and supervising a few brigades in an isolated location. Curtin later admitted that "in his ignorance of military affairs" he genuinely believed that the head of the Australian Army should be at the front. A more damning self indictment by somebody who considered themselves theoretically suitable to run a government in wartime, would be hard to find.

When, later in the war, Curtin finally became aware that McArthur was no longer paying even token attention to Australia or its concerns, he belatedly searched for alternatives. In 1944-5 there was a brief attempt to discuss with the British Chiefs of Staff the concept of a renewed British Commonwealth offensive using Australian, Indian, and British troops, to reconquer the Netherlands East Indies. Unfortunately by this stage, nobody on the international level was taking much notice of the Curtin government. Blamey tried to prevent wasting Australian lives in what he considered to be the useless attack on Balikpapan late in the war, but Curtin gave MacArthur his way... as usual. (As a side issue, it amuses me that the trendy historians who adore Curtin for his 'sticking' the British by 'turning to America', are the ones who now bemoan Australia's lap dog approach to... the United States. But somehow they don't see that as anything to do with Curtin?)

Indeed, by the later stages the war, the only notice that was being paid to Australia internationally, was American and British disgust at the Australian trade union strikes that were undermining the Pacific war effort. Considering that these purely domestic concerns were the only thing that the Curtin government had really attempted to retain control of, this is a sad indictment of their effectiveness in any area.

So it is hard to understand why some people rant about John Curtin's brilliant role in Australian history. He was not respected internationally, or listened to by his own trade unionists. He was militarily incompetent, and ignorant. He pretty much abandoned a position of respect in the British Commonwealth, for a position of ignominy is an American lackey. He did nothing to save Australia could not have been done better by virtually any other politician in our history.

This is not to say that I despise Curtin, frankly he is not significant enough in international history to warrant it. In fact I merely consider him another mediocre Australian politician.

Curtin appears to be another example of how we confuse the reality of high profile with the concept of high-performance.

Unrealistic Heroes 1 - Roosevelt

There have been a number of quite annoying articles on radio recently, mostly focused on making negative comments about the place of President Bush in US history.

Don't get me wrong, I think President Bush was a buffoon: at best, a well-meaning, good old boy, with some rather strange ideological preconceptions. However it is a bit rich to paint him as an Anti-Christ, when he genuinely did prevent any further attacks on US soil; genuinely did have an excellent foreign relations program through most of Asia; genuinely did make significant efforts to promote free trade, particularly with countries like Australia; and genuinely did try to rein back the Democrat inspired excesses of Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae which led to a significant component of the current economic crisis.

Given his basic personality weaknesses, it would be fair to say that I'm quite surprised at how well President Bush did. Speaking as an Australian, with our own embarrassing stock of political leaders, I find it of little hard to waive the examples of Malcolm Fraser (one of Frasers greatest legacies in international affairs was being pivotal in installing Robert Mugabe as President/Dictator of Zimbabwe - nice one), or Paul Keating (a relative non-entity internationally, except for his abuse of European and Asian political leaders - usually when he needed to distract the Australian media and voters from something), as somehow significantly better political leaders. In fact the closest Australian comparison, is our own well-meaning, good old boy, with some rather strange ideological preconceptions: Bob Hawke. (Personally, although not very impressed by his beer guzzling populist swagger, I still consider Bob Hawke to be one of the better Prime Minister's the last half century... Damning with faint praise perhaps?)

Yet for me, the annoying thing has not been the discussion of President Bush's personal failings. Rather, it has been the comparison is made with his predecessors. In particular, several presenters have listed at top 10 US President, and the names they have listed have been somewhat worrying.

Teddy Roosevelt was a well-meaning, good old boy, with some very very strange ideological preconceptions. (Let's face it, he was an aggressive, obnoxious,militaristic, fruitcake.) Putting him firmly in the top 10 US presidents is probably correct, but that says a lot about the average quality of US presidents. (It also makes you wonder whether the long-term historical view of President Bush will be nearly as negative as many people currently believe.)

Woodrow Wilson is a stranger choice. I am not particularly familiar with his domestic policies, except for his ridiculous "too proud to fight" statement during his Great War election campaign, and his racist clean-outs of blacks from government posts. But I am very familiar with his effect on the world as a whole. Wilson's irrational and unrealistic worldview torpedoed the Versailles peace conference, and made a just peace completely impossible (particularly as Clemenceau took advantage of his gullibility to feed in quite a bit of French vengeance). His idealistic 14 points, and the incompetence with which they were pursued, made sure that the defeated powers would be out for revenge as soon as possible. His impractical League of Nations seemed designed to destabilise any attempt at Balance of Power politics in the future. His failure to get his own Congress to ratify any of his promises, undercut any chance of international cooperation to prevent future conflict. Woodrow Wilson's total impact on world history could be summarised as World War II. If that is what makes a great president, I would hate to think what makes a poor one.

Perhaps the problem is that too many people confuse a high profile with some sort of effectiveness. Wilson and the two Roosevelt's were undoubtedly high profile, but were they anything to be proud of?

Which brings us to the greatest fantasy of all, Franklin Delanore Roosevelt.

Biographers of FDR make great claims about his place as one of the greatest American presidents. In particular they comment on his initiatives during the Great Depression, particularly his New Deal; and on his role in getting the United States involved in the Second World War, and leaving it successfully through it.

Unfortunately, all of these claims of success are bollocks.

The first claim, that Roosevelt had a great effect on the depression, is essentially true, but not for the reasons that his supporters might hope. In fact it was his interaction with the international community, particularly his response to the international economic conference - and the way that he reneged on his promises to that group of world leaders - which converted what could have been a small depression, into a much more significant global crisis. Roosevelt did have a significant effect, he helped cause and expand the Great Depression worldwide.

His New Deal, also had a great effect, but again, not the one that his supporters would like to think. Any good statistical analysis of the long-term effects of his Keynsian economics, and protectionist reactions, clearly demonstrates how far behind most of the rest of the developed world United States fell when it came to recovery. Indeed, unlike most of the rest of the world, the the United States still had significant unemployment until the Second World War solved that problem for them.

Then comes the fantasy that Roosevelt successfully steered the United States into the war. It is true that he'd made significant attempts to assist the allies, because he genuinely believed in their cause. However it would be unrealistic to claim that he actually steered the United States into the conflict. He may have involved a few destroyers in some shooting matches with U-boats in the North Atlantic, but that was far as his efforts ever went. The United States joined the war when the Japanese kicked their teeth down their throat at Pearl Harbor. Even then President Roosevelt did not actually manage to declare war on Germany, he waited until Hitler decided to declare war on the United States.

His statesmanship in leading the United States through the war, is also highly suspect. Possibly the worst thing he did, was to announce "unconditional surrender" without consulting his allies or considering the implications. Many Germans in the post-war period made it clear that they had been willing to fight longer and harder to avoid unconditional surrender ("I may as well die fighting as spend the rest of my life chopping wood in Canada"), and many thousands of Americans and other allies paid with their lives for another well intentioned but naive and foolish statement by an American president.

His relations with the French, particularly the Free French, were not good, with significant effects post-war. His attitude to many other free governments, particularly the Poles, Greeks, and later on the Italians, were also unimpressive. In fact his betrayal of the Polish nation, while confessing to Stalin that he needed to keep it quiet until after getting the Polish-American vote in his next domestic election, is unforgivable.

Which brings us to Stalin. President Roosevelt's innocence and ignorance, led him to believe that he could deal with Stalin. In reality, Stalin played President Roosevelt like a cheap instrument. He did not even have to be careful. In fact it could be claimed that President Franklin Delanore Roosevelt's biggest foreign policy achievement is called the Cold War.

Finally we should comment on the private life of a man who pretended to be moral. Or perhaps not. (Yuck.)

Yes, President Roosevelt was a well-meaning, energetic and enthusiastic president. He made significant efforts to improve the lives of his own people, and the world. But he failed. He made it the world wide depression worse; he kept his own country in depression longer than most other countries; he failed to enter the Second World War on his own terms; and he failed to achieve almost any of his long term objectives from the war. In fact the closest thing to a success in these four cases, would be the achievement of provoking the Japanese to sink his fleet, and Hitler to disdainfully declare war. He then abandoned significant portions of the world to communist dictatorship.

In summary he lied, he cheated, he undermined, he betrayed. I know much the same could be said of many politicians, but great ones? If this is the measure of a great president, let's hope for more non-entities.

Why, oh why, do democracies constantly mistake loud and flashy for competent and impressive?

Why do we believe that a high profile equals greatness?

The Worship of Science

A pseudo scientist called Richard Dawkins recently launched yet another crusade to blame all the evils of the world on the superstitious and the ignorant. Fair enough. The problem was that by his definition the superstitious and the ignorant are those who believe in stuff which he doesn’t believe in – in this case God; while the real problem is that one of the most dangerous single classes of superstitious and ignorant people throwing their overly pompous wieght around in modern world appear to be pseudo scientists – like Richard Dawkins. (The man was apparently once a respected real scientist, but has wandered both beyond his area of expertise, and beyond the correct application of scientific principles.)

There appears to be an increasing desperation to the athiests efforts to write off religion in the modern world. More and more efforts are being made by people like Richard Dawkins, who used to smugly assume that religion was a dying vestige of the past: to whip up some popular enthusiasm about what they describe as pointless, or even evil, superstition. Which is amusing, when you consider that atheism, and partcularly ‘scientific’ atheism, has all the attributes of the most fanatical of religious movements.

“Science’, and ‘scientific method’, are funny things in the modern world. They have been elevated in much of the popular imagination, and certainly amongst much of the unthinking press, to the status of unchallangeable truths. They have in fact supplanted religion in the minds of many, as the one true faith which must be defended against all comers. Which is ironic really, because much of what we hold as scientific truth is apparrently wrong, and rarely stacks up to scientific method.

Historically, it was scientitsts ‘defending’ the truth against heresy, who called for the burning at the stake of such dangerous radicals as Francis Bacon and Galileo Galilei. The unthinking assumption applied by many modern people is that they fell foul of the church. But that is only a confusion with the concept of what was effectively a church based education system at the time. It was not the theologians who were calling for blood, but the self proclaimed ‘scientists’ who defended to the death the truths from antiquity as defined by the ‘Divine Galen’ amongst others. In fact if there has been a constant in the last thousand years of science, it has been the repeated enthusiasm by the majority of 'scientists' and scientific bodies to fight strenously against anything which challenges an accepted orthodoxy. They challenge assumptions, ridicule new theories, and usually attack proponents of new ideas. It often takes centuries for new concepts to establish dominance (by which time they are already out of date, but are being defended as the ‘new’ orthodoxy).

One of the problems is with how we interpret the concept of science. The traditional, and correct, name for Physics is ‘Natural Philosophy’, which is still carved on the sides of the older university physics buildings. A phrase coined at the time when scholars clearly recognised that all human understanding of the physical world is theoretical. Now that distinction has largely been lost, particularly in the minds of the so called scientists themselves.

There is a fervent belief in the modern world that scientific method establishes absolute truths. It is this pseudo religious rapture which propels men like Richard Dawkins into proclaiming that we can ‘prove’ his version of the world, because we cannot ‘prove’ God.

Which ignores the fact that we most certainly cannot prove Dawkins version either.

Let us run through a few holes in our science, and our scientific method. Bumble Bees can’t fly - according to my favourite myth of recent science. Moisture cannot be drawn more than ten feet up a tree trunk – according to fairly recent science. And gravity does not work – according to our science (see anomalies and discrepancies).

It is this last which fascinates most. The theory of gravity – and it is a theory not a ‘law’, in the oldest meaning of something unproven – was a nice working hypothesis to explain a few features of the observable world around us. Mind you, so was the theory that the world was in the centre of the universe, and it is marvellous to examine the complex and peculiar models made by the medieval scientitst to try and expalin the movements of the planets as they rotated around the earth. Enormous effort was made to defend the orthodox belief, even after Galileo’s telescopes had made such efforts pointless and ridiculous. The same thing appears to be happening with gravity today.

There have long been anomolies with gravity, such as the concept that something dropped hundreds of metres down a mineshaft appeared to fall faster than something dropped hundreds of metres up in the sky. None of which prevented gravity from becoming the foundation stone of modern physics. But the study of galaxies has disproved all this. There is simply not enough matter in the universe to make it work the way the Big Bang theorists think it should. In fact the total mater in the universe comes to only a fraction of what is needed to make it fit the models. As is usual, the scientists have concluded that it is not the models, but the galaxy, which is incorrect. Therefore the galaxy must have other bits in it to make their models correct!

The first component they theorised was Dark Matter. If there were several times the dark matter in the galaxy as there is the matter we recognise, then the model might work. Except it still doesn’t. The maximum conceivable dark matter for their models still didn’t work, so they had to invent Dark Energy to fill up even more spaces (starting to sound like one of those medieval spheres?). The problem being that the theoretical Dark Matter and Dark Energy apparently cannot be proved except by the theories themselves, and certainly cannot measured. (Oh they are trying. Billions is being spent. No conclusive results expected any time soon. And although those billions seem to be starting to deliver results which might demonstrate some ‘proof’, I suspect that any investment of billions might lead to finding something to justify such an investment... And if we ever do find something like dark matter, what’s the bet we also discover something else which makes new ‘adaptions’ to the models necessary?)

This then is the state of modern physics. Our scientific understanding of how everything works is based on a theoretical existence of something which we can neither find nor measure. And this from people who claim that a God can’t be real because we cannot prove or measure Her! Perhaps someone should suggest to our so called scientists that they find a definition of scientific method in a basic primary school textbook.

Another scientific assumption, is the theory of evolution. I say this not because I don’t accept that species evolve, they patently evolve (one could argue that humanity is evolving into illogical idiots as we speak). What is unproven is that man evolved fom an ape: though every few months we hear of yet another inconclusive excuse for a ‘missing link’ in the fractured inconsistencies of the archeological record. (The British Sci-Fi write Terry Pratchett posits that fossils are the result of a god with a sense of mischief, and writes a whole book around the premiss of the discovery of the skeleton of a dinosaur holding a placard demanding “end nuclear testing”.) The flaw with an argument like this is that it chases it’s own tail. In what way does evolution prove that God does not exist? In what way does our continued enrapture over an unproven dogma - evolution of the species – make our logic superior to religious ‘superstition’.

Take the issue of race. Much modern science declares, loudly and often, that there are no genetic markers for race. A statement which is obviously farcical. It must be something more than a coincidence that two back parents tend to have a black child; and two Asian parents an Asian one; and that when black and white twins are born in a family, there is usually a grandparent of the other race involved. Our alternatives here are somewhat limited. Either there are genetic markers, which we have not found yet (the more likely answer); or there are no genetic markers, and the whole massive coincidence is made statistically possible by some outside influence which we also cannot identify (score another point for those who believe in some sort of god).

The simple answer is not to loudly proclaim the scientific fact that there is no genetic basis for race – as they were doing on publicly funded television recently: but instead to admit the three hardest words that so called scientists can say… “we don’t know”.

‘Science’ is, and will always remain, a collection of theories to explain some observable facts about the world. Science has never been, and will never be, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Countless generations of bad scientists have defended, literally to the death, orthodoxies, against the assaults of new knowledge. The fact that some theories about observable facts allow us to achieve certain desirable results, does not mean that we know the truth about how things really work. It simply means that we have learned a little more about our ignorance.

Take the ‘scientific’ theory of the beginning of creation. The one which people like Dawkins think they can use to disprove the existence of God. The theory is that the whole of existence burst into being from a single point; expanded; formed matter; life came forth from the seas and evolved; all the way to ipods and shopping malls. The fascinating thing is that the book of Genesis also claims that the whole of existence came into being from a word – let there be light; that matter formed; that life came forth from the seas and developed; etc. Of course some extremists claim that God literally did the lot in seven days, which is a lot to load on a misunderstanding of a term for an undefined period of time, but then there are two dangerous types of fanatics in the world – those who believe the world was created as is in seven days and nothing has changed, and those who believe that the entire of reality is nothing but an accident with no rhyme or reason behind it. Both types should be carefully avoided.

The real problem with the scientific theory of the Big Bang, is not that it explains absolutely nothing about why or how such a thing could happen, but that it is in direct opposition to scientific method. If Big Bang’s are a natural phenomena, then we should be seeing Little Bangs all the time. The fact that we can’t find any means that either our theory of the Big Bang is incorrect, or, that a Big Bang could only have happened through direction by a conscious agency. Still struggling to see how any of this disproves the existence of God! In fact the more you look at it, the more the latest scientific theories seem to point to the impossibility that the universe is all an irrational fluke by an inconsistent reality. Or that God has a sense of humour.

Which is not to say that most of the Intelligent Design proponents aren’t as single minded and offensively inaccurate in their self proclaimed crusades as Dawkins and his co-religionists. Any of the extremists of either side should be judged as what they are… fanatics. The type of people who brook no argument, and accept no inconvenient perspective in their pursuit of what they believe. People who know they have the one real truth, handed down direct from their own version of on high. People who, like many generations before them, will protect their version of the truth to the death. In fact, it is people like Dawkins who give religion a bad name.

Oversimplification: The Numbers Fallacy in WWII

Some historians, and many politicians, have simplified World War Two into a few stupid statements. “The war in the west was won on the Russian steps” is one that springs to mind. They usually base such statements on traditional political incompetence – bad use of statistics. The truth is that numbers have rarely overthrown a technological edge (though the Americans under Custer and the British at Isandhlwana might have reservations on this), and World War Two is certainly not the best sample case to argue such a thing.

During the war the smaller campaigns tended to get less credit - though it is sometimes suspicious that numbers are valued in some circumstances, and area in others. The Mediterranean Front against the Axis was an extraordinarily long campaign over an extremely large area, yet many – particularly Americans who often fail to understand the Mediterraneans importance to intercontinental strategy – discount it’s scale and significance. (A British general visiting the Soviets responded to toasts about the battles of Stalingrad and Moscow by offering a toast to El Alemein. The bemused Soviet’s asked how big the battle was, and then commented “we would call that a skirmish” – a point which emphasises the fact that the hundreds of Soviet Divisions embraced by historians of the Eastern Front were rarely as big as a British Brigade or American Regimental Combat Team. To get a real comparison all western divisions should be compared to soviet corps.)

Similarly the Burmese and New Guinea theatres are incredibly undervalued in their role against Japan. There were more Japanese divisions fighting longer and harder in either place than everywhere that American troops fought the Japanese put together. (The fact that in New Guinea it was Australians rather than Americans who did most of the successful fighting – the American troops first assigned disappointed their vainglorious Fuhrer MacArthur enormously at first – might have had an influence on this ranking.)

By contrast the Western Front against Germany in 1944 to 45 is overstated both in the area it covered, and in the number of troops involved (almost half the US troops listed for that campaign did not arrive until it was already almost over. A dozen divisions had barely landed in France before the Germans surrendered.) Which puts it in the same category as the Pacific campaign, which, if the allied troops are discounted – as they so often were by the Americans – rarely saw more than a couple of American divisions at a time engaged anywhere.

The confusion is added to by the enigma that remains China, which is simultaneously undervalued and overvalued. It is undervalued in that China and Manchuria occupied the attention of 80% of the Japanese army throughout the war. Which means that by any the standards applied by some historians: China was the Soviet Union of the East, and deserves all the glory that was lavished on communist Russia by the trendy historians of the last generation. On the other hand it was overvalued, in that China achieved virtually nothing in the war against the Japanese apart from occupying large numbers of very low grade garrison troops. In fact when the US Air Force in one of it’s fits of vainglory, attempted to bomb Japan into submission from bases in China: the Japanese garrison troops stirred themselves enough to sweep forward and conquor – without any trouble at all – the provinces being used as bases (Operation Ichi-Go).

Again the issue is size versus value. Vast areas could be dealt with in World War Two in one of two ways. Large numbers of low quality infantry – as in Russia or China, or small numbers of high technology elite forces – as in African and Asia. The real mistake historians make, which any half way competent wargamer could disabuse them of, is to fail to understand that a good armoured or mechanized division is worth, in both cost and combat value, up to three corps of low value infantry. Indeed the Blitzkrieg campaigns by the Germans in Poland, France, the Balkans, North Africa and Russia; or by the Japanese in the Pacific and Asia; or by the British in North Africa, East Africa and the Middle East; or by the combined Western Allies (British, French, Canadian, Polish, and American) in France in 1944 to 1945; or by the Russians in Europe and the Far East in 1944 to 1945: all had the same things in common. Well trained and well supported elite combat forces sweeping aside large numbers of inadequately trained or equipped infantry.

It is a mistake to imagine that entire campaigns were engagements of similar types of armies. There is a word for the engagements of similar types of armies – stalemate. That word applied to the Western Front while Germany was busy using it’s elite troops to defeat Poland; to the middle years in North Africa (after the British professional troops who had swept aside the Italian, French and Iraqi masses were dispersed to Greece and Iran and Asia); and to the middle part of the war in Russia (after the German’s key strike formations had been worn down and then dispersed to the Med or the west). Stalemate, or ‘too and fro’ engagements, are what characterised North Africa, Russia, Burma, New Guinea and the Pacific islands throughout1942 and 1943.

Consider the German advance of operation Barbarossa for instance. Impressive statistics of over 200 German and allied divisions sweeping into the Soviet union and destroying vast formations and capturing millions of prisoners, hide a simple truth. The Germans sent two armies into Russia. One was a highly trained and superbly equipped mechanised army of about thirty divisions. The other was a vast and largely unskilled force of badly equipped and horse mobile infantry, which trailed along to try and perform the role of garrison troops. The successes and headlines came from the former, while the failure to win was almost entirely due to the inadequacies of the latter. (Though Hitler can personally claim a lot of the credit for destroying the chances that the former almost did have to succeed.)

Incompetent scholars – and that includes most politicians – might ask whether Germany would have been better investing the same resources in another thirty mechanised divisions instead of 170 infantry divisions. Well, yes… Duh! Which completely misses the point. If Germany had been able to, she would. She couldn’t, and therefore she had to make up the difference with as many inferior substitutes as she could get her hands on. For the Germans, those thirty high value divisions were of greater value than the other 170 - a point particularly obvious when many of them had to be sent to the Med or the West. (It may not sound much to transfer a mere 18 divisions to other fronts, but if they amount to more than half of your high tech strikeforce, sheer numbers become irrelevant). By the end of the war it was the Soviet troops who had the mechanised edge – thanks largely to lavish supplies of American trucks (Blitzkriegs are stopped by lack of supplies, not lack of tanks).
The same applies everywhere else.

The Japanese demonstrated an ability to shatter the Chinese at will – when they could spare the effort or inclination. But the great Japanese advances against the Western Allies in Asia and the Pacific were made by the ten most well trained and equipped divisions, while the Army staff acknowledged that the ninety odd divisions assigned to China and Manchuria were both fully occupied, and incapable of contributing much of additional value. Those ten divisions were of greater importance than the other 90, and no advance was possible without them (except against the hopeless Chinese of course - see Soviet attack in 1945).

Similarly the British could sweep the Italian, or French, or Iraqi, forces from the Middle East and Africa at will: but faced stalemate when their obligations in Greece, Iran and Asia dispersed their professionals and left lower quality recruits to take the brunt of German professionals. As long as the Germans could drain the Russian front of high quality divisions for North Africa, Italy, or France: they could reduce the Allies to sheer attrition just the way the Russian infantry were reducing the Rumanian and Hungarian levies in the east (while the remaining German mechanised forces wore themselves out charging around playing firemen).

US troops were usually as highly mechanised as the British from when they entered the war (the lightweight marine division at Guadalcanal being a possible exception – but then it was an elite force in it’s own right). While the Germans could continue to find high quality units to deploy against them – which pretty much meant up until the collapse of the German Armies in Normandy – the Americans found themselves, like the British, reduced to sheer attrition by numbers. Only where they had the chance to sweep up large numbers of lower quality troops – as in the end in North Africa and France and Germany, did their ability to indulge in Blitzkreig came into affect. (The same forces deployed on the Eastern Front would have been indulging in Blitzkreigs much earlier.)

So the whole argument of comparing numbers becomes ridiculous. The vast Japanese army in China was not held by massive Chinese efforts, it was just an immobile mass in it’s own right. The vast hordes of infantry of either side wandering around the Russian plains, were in fact little more than second rate garrisons waiting to be swept away by whichever side next concentrated a high tech strikeforce. The real count of what was going on, was where the elite were being engaged.

In Europe, the vast quantities of Geman infantry being slowly chewed up in Russia were not nearly as significant as the much smaller numbers of mechanised and anti-aircraft troops and planes being slowly chewed up by the western allies. The infantry were of little value, and could be replaced by all sides, in numbers which put the Great War to shame. It was the mechanised forces which broke the budget. Similarly in the East the vast number of Japanese troops sitting around in China were of less significance than the dozen crack divisions and thousands of aircraft being chewed up by the British and Australian armies and the US Navy respectively.

The most significant fact of the Second World War was that numbers always collapsed in the face of technology. It took six to nine Sherman tanks - sometimes more - to have a hope of beating a Tiger tank; but six to nine low quality French or Russian or Italian or Chinese infantry divisions had little chance of stopping a good armoured division. Put elite troops against elite troops, or cheap infantry against cheap infantry, and you get stalemate and attrition. Put elites against cheap, and you get Blitzkrieg.

Returning to what each army would have ‘liked’, the Germans had to halve the size of their armoured divisions in 1941 to ‘create’ the additional numbers they would need to invade Russia while still fighting Britain. Their industrial capacity left them no alternative. The US army initially planned to create over 300 divisions to fight the war. Then 220. Then 150. In fact they eventually made do with 88, and had a hard time manning those because of the sheer cost and production requirements needed to keep 88 mechanised divisions in the field. Similarly the British Commonwealth had over 130 divisions in the field in 1942, but had rationalised that to about 60 highly mechanised units by 1945. The Australian Army for instance, went from a high point of 12 divisions including two (poorly) armoured when facing invasion in 1942, to five well equipped with two armoured brigades by 1945. (Though jungle combat made mechanisation difficult to use, so most operations used far less trucks and tanks than were available to the mainland based forces- making up the mechanised factor with lavish use of landing craft and transport aircraft.) Even the Russians – the great advocates of sheer numbers - reduced the numbers of formations as they improved their quality towards the end.

So which was more important to winning the war – the numbers in Russia or China, or the technology in the West and the Pacific?

How about both?

Without the technical attrition, Germany or Japan could have devoted their technical edges to winning in the numbers theatres. (As a single example consider he million plus men and tens of thousands of anti-aircraft guns the Germans were using against Allied bomber offensives being redeployed as anti-tank guns against the Russians.) But without the numbers being tied down, Germany or Japan might have developed the resources to prevent the Allies from defeating them in the West or Pacific. (As another example consider how close D-Day came to failure despite the Germans having millions of soldiers deployed in the east.)

It is not quite as easy as saying that one tank equals forty infantry, but it is certainly not as farcical as claiming that the numbers on the Eastern Front outweigh the technology on the Western.

Analysis and the sin of Hubris

Two of the postings below - the one about drawing analogies from history, and the one about ‘great betrayal’s’ in history - came to mind when I spotted an article by Michael O’Connor in the November 2008 Quadrant Magazine called Faith, Hope, but not much Charity.

The article, which assesses Australia’s treaty partners in defence terms: makes a good point (which I have been baiting New Zealander’s with for years): when it comments that New Zealand has given up on self defence, and restructured its military forces for police action only in the immediate region. Their preference of course, is that their limited military budget be expended on small-scale, and easily quantifiable tasks - such as propping up collapsing civil order in Pacific island nations. As a result, the capacity of the military forces to engage in any serious war fighting has been largely abandoned.

The justification to this, in the minds of New Zealand’s political leaders and population, is that they have no serious need of military forces. They are relying on their big neighbour and good friend to look after them. As one New Zealand Prime Minister apparently commented to Michael O’Connor, “as long as Australia is secure, New Zealand is secure”.
This has an amusing correlation to my point made in the posting below, about 'great betrayals'. Australian politicians in the 1920s and 1930s frequently convinced themselves and their electorate that they could undercut defence spending, because Australia could not be threatened as long as Britain was secure.

As World War II reveals, when you’re great and powerful friend is busy fighting for its life, it cannot always guarantee the complete security blanket that you have been looking forward to. The screams from Curtin’s government about betrayal when it proved impossible to hold Fortress Singapore (the word ‘fortress’ being political speak, whereas the correct military term was ‘naval base’ Singapore): being a classic example of attempting to hide your own guilt by denouncing the behaviour of others.

It will no doubt be amusing, although somewhat terrifying, if and when the New Zealand politicians and population discover that a future major conflagration in the Asian Pacific area leaves Australia just a little bit too over committed to provide the security blanket that New Zealand feels it deserves. I expect that after the next war, pompous and fatuous New Zealand politicians and historians will express bitter complaints about Australia’s ‘betrayal’ of New Zealand.

O’Connor does not reveal which Prime Minister made the comment to him, but it he has all the hallmarks of ‘bread and circuses now, let the future take care of itself’, that has been the home stomping ground of New Zealand and Australian Labor Party politicians for the past century. (Which is not to say, that leaders from other political parties have not been equally willing to play the same game occasionally, even against the long-term tendencies of their own parties.)

New Zealand’s head in the sand attitude is only a small part of the article. It is however, reflective of the strong historical analysis that makes the bulk of the article. By contrast, the analysis of possible future threats in the article is somewhat less convincing.

Australians have long had a weird fixation on potential threats from countries that we do not understand, while completely underestimating the threat from countries that we believe (until too late) that we can take the granted. This goes right back to the Russian invasion scares at the time of the Crimean War while we ignored the Americans – until commerce cruisers actually arrived in our largely undefended ports during their civil war. Then we had the ‘yellow peril’ threat (where Britain’s modern looking ally Japan was, at least part of the time, on our side). Later Indonesia, as it attempted - in its own view - to tidy up its post-imperial borders: also managed to look like a threatening expansionary power to many Australians. Was Indonesia ever a real threat? No. Is it? Not really (at least not at the moment). Now the big boogie man on the horizon is China, which many people see as a great power, the great unknowable threat, of the future.

There are two problems with the China threat concept. The first is the obvious one, which is nonetheless completely ignored by many military, political and economic analysts, who you would think would have more sense. The most basic glance at the results of China’s one child policy should reveal to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the concept of demography, that China is going to get old before it gets rich. You do not need to go as far as the sort of analysis which led Hitler to believe that Germany must attack the Soviet Union in the early 1940s, when Germany is early 20s manpower peaked, rather than leave it until later when the Soviet Union’s available manpower would climb rapidly. You just need to accept that a modern industrial economy does not function particularly well when the number of retired people starts becoming too excessive a burden the number of workers.

The second problem is less obvious, but carries even more convincing weight. We saw in the last century, the outcome of a monolithic state-controlled superpower – the Soviet Union, trying to supplant a sometimes chaotic but usually vibrant free-market democracy – the United States. So what do you imagine will be the result, when a monolithic state-controlled China battles for supremacy with a sometimes chaotic but increasingly vibrant free-market democracy like India?

20 years ago, while undertaking a scholarship at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU, I drafted a paper on India and the Search for Great Power Status. Even then India was greatly expanding its military forces; interfering in the internal condition of states such as Sri Lanka; and threatening to intervene, if necessary, in the internal affairs of its ‘near neighbours’… “such as Kenya and South Africa” (Quote by the then head of the Indian Navy). Those who have a hard time imagining military aggression by states such as India, should perhaps take a quick glance back at the Falklands War, which was started by an unstable government trying to distract a lively population with what it imagined would be a quick and easy victory on a popular issue.

The point was eloquently made by another article in the same copy of Quadrant by Paul Monk - How to think about Strategic Futures. He quotes several writers, such as Philip Bobbitt and Philip Tetlock, who reinforce the point that too much human planning is based on blindly accepting comfortable assumptions. “ The dominant danger, Tetlock concluded, regardless of the methodology we adopt, is hubris: the close mindedness that leads us to dismiss dissonant possibilities too quickly, or not see them at all.” (Quoted from Monk's article.)

Whether we are looking at perceived threat in the future, or justifying our own failings in the past, far too many of our politicians, historians, economists, and military thinkers, slide far too easily into hubris.