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Wonderbras & Flat Tops

By Courtney Messerschmidt Sunday, August 28th, 2011 9:31 am
Posted in Links

Disclaimer: This is part of an elaborate performance art piece. Or hoax. Take your pick. I think it’s brilliant but you might disagree.

All the hot deets, big phased cookies and serious strategic chiz about decline time America and the kinda scarly looking ‘peaceful rise’ of collectivist China brings up serious concerns at the highest levels of Great Satan’s diplopolititary commands.

Most cats seem to agree – China ain’t all that for now – right now – yet the future could be tore up from the floor up.

One of the hottest books out there that may help is The Diffusion of Military Power by Dr Michael C Horowitz . Dr H shared that Military tech and tactics adoption/creation and innovation require mastering multiple skill sets.

Which may funnily enough hinge on a factor that is flat out tough to factor in:

Unbridled free inquiry.

“Courtney, free societies have, in general, a decided advantage when it comes to creativity and innovation, including in the military realm. However, it’s a bit more complicated than that”

All the cool kids know how Great Satan’s indispensable ally just to the east of Durand line sold access to that ditched sexed up chopper of Abottabad/Abottagood infamy. Theft of high tech and reverse engineering are the fortunes of unfree regimes and will directly impact the Diffusion of Military of Power.

Stuff that makes the West the Best — Wonderbra, BvB, individualism, scientific inquiry, rational critical thinking, democracy with it’s inherent capitalism, political freedom, dissidence and open free wheeling debate functions as kryptonite in Smallville in regards to autocrazies, despotries — and by extension — to their acquisition, development and deployment of military power.

Essentially – the charming thing about free inquiry is you won’t get drug out of the drawing room, class room or staff room and shot if you start thinking out loud.

Kaiser Wilhelm-era Prussians of the late 19th century under Bismarck. They were not free by Freedom House’s sliding scale — for sure, yet they came up with the railroads/rifles/telegraph military innovation that cracked the French in the Franco-Prussian War. The naughty haughty Prussians also had a constitutional monarchy, an overtly robust free, uncensored press with a conscript military that could vote and stuff only the elected the Reichstag could approve.

3^rd Reich often gets play as developing the first AirLand Battle doctrine – the Blitzkrieg. Yet blitzing’s spiritual poppa – General Guderian — got Reichwehr’d into the Motorized Tactical Group in like 1927, and studied (and rumored) to have corresponded with JFC Fuller, Chas De Gaulle and BH Liddle Hart. Indeed he xlated their works into German.

Betwixt 1927 and 1933 the ‘klotzen nicht kleckern” cat did a lot of articles and papers on meched up warfare thus becoming an authority with extensive wargaming on his ideas — nom d’guerred ‘Blitzkrieg.” When der Fuhrer saw a live demonstration he was smitten and gave the panzer cats carte blanche to develop it — thus 3rd Reich’s Blitzkrieg was the culmination of illicit ideas fleshed out in a free society and hooked up with need to avoid attrition, the logical conclusion of the mechanization process.

While 3rd Reich was able to deploy cruise missiles, combat jets and even tv guided missiles — all these techs were already on the shelf before the Reich’s internal security cats were able to exile free thinkers abroad or into work or death camps. The advanced Me262 Prince of Turbojet took years to construct to operational stats from on the shelf tech while Great Satan’s P– 51 Mustang went from a sketch on a LA nightclub’s linen napkin to production in 103 days.

Seduced by the sexyful ideology that 3rd Reich would last an entire millennium, Deutschland never really felt the impetus to crash course anything until Stalingrad. By then “Totaler Krieg — Kü rzester Krieg” was far too late. Despite the frantic genius of reorganization to reinvigoratethe panzer franchise, the unfree Reich was fully crunk with tons of 3 Stooges style administrative and production errors that only forbidden free inquiry could have resolved.

Nippon took a similar stance with a autocracy’s mental bonds. Consider the aftermath of Coral Sea Battle. “Flying Crane” (Shōkaku) limped home to undergo months of dry docking repairs, escorted by her sister “Fortunate Crane” (Zuikaku) who was totally o tay with a somewhat depleted aircraft complement. Neither was in action for months.

After virtually blown out of the water at Coral Sea, Great Satan worked relentlessly to fix up USS Yorktown — so that she was able to sortee in 4 days to Midway to help deliver a nasty surprise to annihilate Admiral N’Gomu’s expert Carrier Battle Group — not so much tilting the tide of war against Japan as somersaulting it.

Cold War history continues the action for autocratic Commonwealth Russia. Long lol’d as more ‘evolutionary than revolutionary,” her defense industry is plagued with the horrible situation of being unable to redeem warranty claims by Pakistan, India, Iran and Algeria AND crank out new stuff at the same incredible instant. Since 1992, not a single state defense order has been fulfilled completely and on time.

Will the Diffusion of Military Power work out any better for Collectivist, unfree China? Will secret police, secret trials, secret prisons and secret executions stymie brain power in cutting edge tech and tactical delights and strategic stratagems?

“Carrier warfare is one of the most complicated innovations in the history of military power, as well as one of the most expensive. Of course, if the Chinese mastered carrier warfare, presuming carriers are still the centerpiece of naval warfare whenever that happens, it would represent a threat to American naval supremacy.

“But it’s not clear they’ll succeed in achieving that mastery. And in the meantime, resources they spend on that program are resources they aren’t spending on anti-ship missiles, submarines, and other anti-access technologies that are arguably a greater threat”

Will unbridled free inquiry ensure Free world’s dominance in any endeavor?

“Being a free country seems to almost certainly make it more likely that countries embed the capacity in their militaries to innovate, Courtney. They don’t have to worry about coup proofing and internal security issues as much and they are probably more likely to embrace creativity in general (even within the restrictive confines of a military). Thus, free inquiry may not be either necessary or sufficient for military innovation or the adoption of important military innovations, but it is probably really helpful.”

And that helpful help may continue to ensure Unfree Regimes may adopt instead of creating and may very well win the occasional victory in war time against Free nations, yet will not prevail in the long run.

Pic — “The result of certain fundamental aspects of Western culture, such as consensual government and individualism is unequalled Courtney — especially in its devastation and decisiveness.”

Especial credit and thanks to Dr Michael Horowitz

About the Author
Courtney Messerschmidt is a student at the University of Georgia (or the best performance art experiment of all time!) and the founder of the diplomatic, military and intelligence analysis blog Great Satan’s Girlfriend. That’s where she discusses overseas interventions, counterinsurgency theory, democracy promotion, international relations, terrorism, strategy and gender.

Tags: Blitzkrieg, China, Courtney Messerschmidt, Michael Horowitz, Wonder Bra

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	James Ian Burns August 28th, 2011 at 9:49 am Think we can produce a P– 51 Mustang from scratch NOW in 103 days ? Who canned our “Can Do” attitude?
	CarlPrine August 28th, 2011 at 10:33 am The can is now made in China. On a side note, the book she cites by Horowitz actually is very good.
	Mark Pyruz August 28th, 2011 at 10:39 am This is riddled with mistakes. The German rifle of the Franco-Prussian was actually inferior to the French. It was the German cannon that was superior. The Me-262 may have been the first operational fighter, but the jet turbines that powered it were certainly not “off the shelf.” In fact, they were decidedly underdeveloped and rushed into service. Regarding Hart and Guderian, you are aware are you not that after the war, Hart got Guderian to falsely state he got some of his ideas from Hart, as written into the first English translation of Panzer Leader. It’s a scandal that tarnished the reputation of Hart. That P-51 “production” time is actually for the initial prototype, not the production type. German cutting edge technology at the onset of war was not across the board, but consider the MG38, Type VII U-Boat, advanced fuel injection systems for internal combustion engines, advanced use of tactical wireless systems, advance naval gunnery systems, etc., etc. It should be pointed out that the so-called blitzkrieg was not an off the shelf endeavor. It had plenty of kinks which were worked out the hard way in the Polish campaign. And in terms of un-free societies, consider the development of the T-34 and KV-1 series of AFVs. True the T-34 borrowed certain innovations from the Christie design (that the “free” society of America rejected), but the Soviets introduced plenty of fresh concepts of their own to make it the best all-around tank of the war.. Anyway, most societies contain an element of hubris, and a spirit of exceptionalism certainly resonates among imperial powers, especially ones in decline. By the way, Courtney, a word on the lineage of the term “Great Satan”. Prior to 1954 it was actually applied to Great Britain. And before 1918 it was applied to Russia. Read up on the history of the people that chant it, and you’ll know why.
	Mark Pyruz August 28th, 2011 at 10:46 am I’m sorry, that should read MG 34.
	CarlPrine August 28th, 2011 at 11:21 am She didn’t say that the German rifle was superior. She said, I think fairly obviously, that it was the Prussian use of a complex combination of technologies and tactics (thanks to Krupp’s steel and German railroad density and efficiency) that formed into a winning nexus. As for the German WWII technology, she’s making the (debatable but defensible) point that rudimentary versions of much of the technology existed before 1940, and she’s right. I also edited a few words she had in there about Liddell Hart and Guderian because I didn’t want it to become a tangential debate that has continued now for decades. It obviously didn’t work.
	James Ian Burns August 28th, 2011 at 11:32 am I take exception to our exceptionalism. We are in a game of leap frog.… and the other frog is winning.
	James Ian Burns August 28th, 2011 at 11:39 am Just ordered book by Horowitz and “On China”. Amazon thanks you.
	CarlPrine August 28th, 2011 at 11:40 am As for understanding Iran, I do hope that she tries. As an empire in some decline, it deserves more study.
	zenpundit August 28th, 2011 at 12:01 pm “The German rifle of the Franco-Prussian was actually inferior to the French. It was the German cannon that was superior.” That is true. it is also not the primary reason the French lost the war. Nor for that matter, was von Roon the first guy to use trains to move troops to gain an edge, though he sure was the most dogged about fighting the rest of the high command to preserve his timetables Nice post by Courtney
	Michael Roger Victor Weis August 28th, 2011 at 12:53 pm Very off topic, but have any of you guys and gals read The Strong Horse by Lee Smith, and do you recommend it? I have heard a lot of good things about it, but want to hear what this crowd thinks of it.
	CarlPrine August 28th, 2011 at 1:07 pm Oy. That’s NOT what I was suggesting!
	CarlPrine August 28th, 2011 at 1:07 pm I would not recommend it.
	Michael Roger Victor Weis August 28th, 2011 at 1:12 pm Why not?
	CarlPrine August 28th, 2011 at 1:24 pm Egypt, Tunisia, to start. Sometimes, the people realize that they can ride whichever horse they want, strong or weak.
	Michael Roger Victor Weis August 28th, 2011 at 1:58 pm What about Libya and Syria? Libya was impossible without NATO. And Syria is still Syria. I think the book is mostly about Iraq though. I haven’t read or bought it yet. I wonder what Court thinks or knows about the book.
	courtneyme109 August 28th, 2011 at 2:08 pm At Mr Pyruz. Good points yet countered. Blitzing gotrfined tuned in Fall Weiss. So what? Tuff to find anything other than perhaps those backwards Beatle guitar tracks or maybe the thong that didn’t require tweaking. l’Blitz meme l’moi is sound as presented. T34 and KV are often out mentioned, yet Old Ironside panzer experten personally met or seen on tv maintain that the Deutsch panzerkampf V also nom d’guerr’d Panther was the most best panzer of the war. Her legendary 1st production run probs aside and the sheer number of flamed out T34’s could be considered — as mention of Mr Christie’s suspender track thingy kinda semi sorta hints at. Plus — everybody knows 3CP was able to concentrate nearly 100% of her game on T34 thanks to lend lease that helped out with stuff like troop carriers and trucks. Courtesy of free thinker states. ME262 could also be painted that her turbines were victim to an goofy command logistical R and D program ran from the top down — where thinking out loud could get ya killed — or worse. Many of the unexceptionals shout out about arrogant hubris — yet the euphoric tingly feeling of being absolutely correct is often and easily misinterpreted or misunderstood. Shaytân-e Bozorg — is a catchy phrase debut’d by Ayatollah K himself way back in the last millennium — ““Mericans are the Great Satan, the wounded snake.” Applying it to Great Britain from time to time in the here and now is totally o tay — perhaps a form of ideological lend lease?
	Move_Forward August 28th, 2011 at 4:24 pm Is democracy behind innovation, or is it culture or capitalism? Obviously, stark differences between North/South Korea & yesteryear’s East/West Germany could lie in government or capitalism since culture is the same. In contrast, the rapid rise of China was enabled because the government compromised, allowing capitalism…the culture & somewhat hard-line government remained a constant. Yet Asian cultures have a reputation for copying others innovation & achieving success primarily through hard studies/work. So why hasn’t that worked out in North Korea? Why are hard-working/studying Chinese still having to backward engineer and steal on the internet? There is little in ancient Chinese history that would explain its current direction. In WWII, tiny Japan dominated China & even Vietnam has had its way with China in a few skirmishes. Persia, Greece, Rome, and Great Britain all dominated at different times? Why not now because 3 of 4 have always been democracies? If China and Asia come to the forefront, I would argue it is less a government factor & more due to parents getting children to study math and science rather than the liberal arts. Asian parents do this. U.S. parents do not.
	Move_Forward August 28th, 2011 at 4:25 pm In fact, if government is the reason for U.S. success, the ultmate form of democracy…unions…would make our capitalistic system all the greater. Obviously, Detroit, our steel industry, & rust belt are counter-examples. Innovation thrives in free-thinking places like the Bay Area…but that is hardly a place where democracy is a success. Elected government there kills the innovation by imposing high property taxes, high tuition rates, excessive environmentalism, too much social engineering, excessive business-unfriendly fees/regulations that have made it too expensive there to live or operate a business.
	CarlPrine August 28th, 2011 at 4:48 pm You’re right about the tank.
	neenergyobserver August 28th, 2011 at 10:05 pm I seem to remember some guy by the name of Grant moving a corp by rail in 63–64, with Prussians watching. Kind of makes Courtney’s post even stronger. However Grant didn’t fight about the schedules. Haupt knew a lot more about that, probably more than von Roon for that matter. Nice post Courtney.
	CarlPrine August 28th, 2011 at 10:20 pm Courtney, you’re wrong about the tank. The Soviets still built a better one than we, the French or the British did.
	courtneyme109 August 29th, 2011 at 10:45 am Recent conversations with Kennedy Hickman at Great Sastan’s Military History Institute shares that in their study of T-34, the Deutsch cats sussed her sexyness was that 76.2 mm stiff thing sticking out of the turret, real wide road wheels, and angled sloping armor. MAN’s designer version incorp’d T-34’s strengths into a three-man turret (the T-34’s fit two), the MAN design was higher and wider than the T-34, and was powered by a 690 hp gasoline engine. Sev cats maintain the Pzkf V was more better — superior to T34. Mainly cause she had thick armor .60 in. to 4.72 in and her Rheinmetall-Borsig 1 x 7.5 cm KwK 42 L/70 kannone could uh, penetrate and, pierce the armor of enemy panzers at ranges up to 2,200 yards. And like Kurt Panzer Meyer always claimed — Werhmacht was not out fought as much as gang tackled by overwhelming numbers Personally feel as if the T34/Panther match up is like watching the ancients argue over the best track on the Beatles “Revolver” Cd “She Said She Said!!” “Incorrect — it’s Tomorrow Never Knows”
	Carl Prine August 29th, 2011 at 10:54 am Yes, but your tacit thesis is that democracies and their free markets ultimately build better weapons and incorporate them through better doctrine. You’re now arguing that the henchmen of Hitler’s reich made a better Panzer than the T-34 perfected by Stalin’s regime, both of which we should assume qualitatively superior to what the French, British and American democracies put out. That the superiority of armor didn’t matter so much as other things might be a quibble, of course…
	courtneyme109 August 29th, 2011 at 11:40 am Actually — I’ saying out loud that Unfree Regimes may very well win the occasional victory or upgrade in war time against Free nations, yet will not prevail in the long run. And T34 and Panther are testimony to that. But I agree with you Carl — T34 was way better than any Allied panzer (:
	courtneyme109 August 29th, 2011 at 11:45 am Not Gov sir — unbridled free inquiry. Like Lepanto or the magical appearance of those repeater rifles at Chickamauga — it wasn’t the gov that tho’t that stuff — it was being able to think out loud with getting toted off to a controlled environment — or worse.
	ScottG August 29th, 2011 at 4:52 pm The quote “democracy with it’s inherent capitalism” needs to be flipped/massaged into “Capitalism with it’s inherent democracy (or republicanism)” in order to be correct. Athens, with it’s democratic system (as long as you weren’t a slave) was most certainly not a capitalist economy. However, going back to the Magna Carta, it was economic and property interests and the desire to preserve them from arbitrary government seizure and abuse which increasingly led to the establishment of our modern political system. The slow weakening of monarchy’s control over economic matters in England eventually gave rise to the merchant (or middle) class, who increasingly demanded rights and exercised powers afforded to those represented by the House of Lords. The House of Commons continued to gain in strength and served in many ways as a model for many colonial US legislatures. And so on down the road of history. Bottom line, in western society, political development has followed economic, not vice versa. Along that line, this is why it’s moronic to invade any economically broken and dysfunctional country and start holding elections. Develop the economy, instead. Of course, that requires time and patience. It’s much easier to print up some ballots and ink some fingers and pat ourselves on the back for a job well-done (or not).
	Nick August 29th, 2011 at 5:15 pm If Mr. Horowitz is correct in his assumption that China’s carrier ambition is taking away resources from carrier killer missiles, etc, which I think isn’t as automatic as he assumes. But assuming he is correct it would seem logical to conclude that this is another nail in the coffin of the ‘China’s all about access denial’ meme. If China’s sole purpose was to establish singular dominance in the south-China sea they would be far better served focusing on carrier killer missiles and ASW capabilities. The fact that, again if Horowitz is right, that they’re sacrificing development in those realms for the increased carrier capabilities indicates their valuing force projection over area access denial. Granted carriers do prove some ASW and access denial benefits but few of those benefits are inherent to carriers. I would argue most of those benefits can be more readily achieved if pursued without the limits implicit when one factors in carrier based complexities.
	Peter J. Munson August 29th, 2011 at 6:47 pm I’m no expert in German military history, but some of the stuff I’ve read, Williamson and Murray in particular from what I remember, discusses the German military’s open culture toward innovation, discussion, and professional publishing/correspondence. Yes, Germany was unfun and unfree in a lot of ways, but was it really all that unfree and stifling for certain sectors early on in Hitler’s rise? I’m not sure that it was. I think that Guderian’s role in cribbing from other thinkers does not show a weakness, but a strength. The ability to accept outside thought and adapt it is lacking in many closed societies/polities. This shows somewhat of an open conceptual atmosphere. I’d defer to others with more specialist knowledge, but I think the depiction of Germany may be a bit one-dimensional here. Would a Germany that was led by a slightly less crazy despot who stopped at the always hard to define culminating point of victory be such a good example for your thesis here? I don’t think so. I agree that open inquiry is an incredibly important attribute, but at what point does open inquiry for key classes shut down? When did it shut down in Germany? Does a state need to be a democracy to let the people that matter think freely? Perhaps not.
	Peter J. Munson August 29th, 2011 at 8:12 pm When I said “people that matter” in the last post, I mean people that matter to the regime and its success in implementing policy, whether that be military, economic, diplomatic. People can be pulled out of the classroom for spouting things the regime thinks they shouldn’t talk about, but people weren’t pulled out of German staff rooms for thinking out loud on topics in their lane. Same for laboratories. And what to say for democracies that devolve into decadent waste? Where you can talk about whatever you want, but decision-makers cannot mobilize resources and ideas to any coherent ends? Instead of the universal march toward the end of history, the ancients saw governments as a cycle between pure and defective forms. If we look at it this way, what happens when a group of defective status quo democracies that fail to recreate the conditions for their own excellence faces a group of state capitalist countries that are not democracies but have been able to encourage open inquiry in key sectors, are bold enough to give their citizens a lot of rope, and have harnessed nationalism without becoming psychotic despots, at least not yet? Finally, China’s danger is not in its long term rise, but in the limited window of opportunity it has before the population begins to age mid-century and the leveling growth curve makes it impossible for them to keep people hopeful for a better future. Nationalism makes for a nice diversion, as do expansive policies.
	CarlPrine August 29th, 2011 at 8:50 pm I’m glad to see that you agree with Courtney.

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