As tensions rise in the Middle East, the Straits of Hormuz, the Mediterranean and off the Somali pirate coast, the Royal Navy, spreading its small ration of jam thinner and thinner, is sending two ships, the new destroyer HMS Dauntless , and, reportedly, a Trafalgar -class submarine, to the Falklands. Now there is no doubt that Dauntless , at 8,000 tons, is a very capable ship, bigger than many World War II cruisers, and with an impressive array of weapons. The reported submarine (its deployment is not confirmed) is also very modern and is reported to carry 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles and Spearfish torpedoes. Meanwhile, an anti-British mob in Argentina has cleverly burnt the HSBC bank, which is Hong-Kong owned, and vowed to attack a new British business every day (perhaps after investing in a primer in geography). There are, however, major problems from the British point of view: Dauntless is one of only 19 major surface combatants in the whole Royal Navy, a situation that Admiral Lord West, the former First Sea Lord and professional head of the Royal Navy, described as “horrifying.” How will the Navy cope if one of the innumerable mishaps possible at sea puts a ship out of commission? The defense cuts under the Cameron government, Lord West says, have been both too severe and incoherent. They have included scrapping the RN’s last dedicated aircraft carrier and the Nimrod long-range aircraft (some broken up before completion), and selling the Harrier force of short takeoff jets — which at a pinch might have operated from other ships — to the U.S. Already these scrapped assets have been sorely missed in Libya. The center of the Falklands defenses is the Mount Pleasant air base, with just four aircraft and rapier missiles. Professional opinion is that taking Mount Pleasant by invasion would be very difficult and costly, but if it were taken then there is no way Britain could now assemble a task force to retake it. And four aircraft does not sound like very many to cover a group of islands about the area of Wales plus the maritime exclusion zone These two ships are obviously a vital card in the game: they are much more modern than anything the Argentineans can put up. However, there is a possible downside here: the design of the Dauntless is impressive-looking but is completely untested in battle. (Seventy years ago HMS Hood was an enormously impressive-looking ship, equipped with mighty 15-inch guns, and the product of hundreds of years of experience, but in its first serious battle blew up with almost all hands). In the first modern Falklands campaign, in 1982, the destroyer HMS Sheffield, then a new ship, was lost after being hit by a missile that failed to explode but ignited high-pressure propellant. Naval history is full of stories of awe-inspiring new ships that proved inadequate — or lethal for their crews — in the event. In World War I armored cruisers, which both sides had thought the coming thing, were frequently sunk with all hands. Three British battle-cruisers blew up at Jutland with enormous loss of life. Past history has shown that in sea vs. air combat the aircraft has the advantage unless the ship concerned has a heavy escort of fighters, which is plainly not going to be possible here. It is true that missiles may have altered the equation but seems to be asking a lot of one ship, no matter how sophisticated, to hold off wave after wave of attacking jet aircraft and missiles from relatively nearby bases. There is another problem, which a layman cannot really assess or know if Dauntless has solved: the more sophisticated ships become, and the more packed with electronics, the more vulnerable they may become. Gone are the days when a ship might be hit with hundreds of cannon balls and repairing it was a matter of calling for the bosun and the carpenter. During Indonesian confrontation a modern British ship was put out of action for some time because an Indonesian sampan dropped a mortar bomb in the water beside it and shook up its electronics. A large modern warship almost approaches a living body in its complexity, and like a living body, the more complex it becomes, the harder it is for it to shrug off damage and carry on. The submarine might also be very useful, but it has an enormous area of sea to patrol, and has to be in the right place at the right time. A further question arises: how long can two of the Royal Navy’s best ships be kept on station with all manner of demands on the Navy’s desperately overstrained resources elsewhere? This is not to say for a moment that disaster will overtake the two British ships in the event of war. They are a mighty powerful force. Many of the ships’ capabilities are secret, but one can hardly escape the thought that the previous conflict showed modern sea power depends on air cover, and that Britain, without naval aviation, is putting all its eggs in two baskets, and untried baskets at that.
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Britain Puts All Its Eggs in Two Baskets
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes that Israel will attack Iran in April, May, or June. This is according to a 2 February Washington Post column by David Ignatius, apparently relying on a conversation with Panetta. Ignatius’s column came out at the same time as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s speech in which Barak declared that Iran would soon enter a stage where its nuclear program would be immune from attack. In his speech, according to a report in the Financial Times , Barak said, ” The world today has no doubt that the Iranian military nuclear program is slowly but surely reaching the final stages, and will enter the immunity stage from which point the Iranian regime will be able to complete the program without any effective intervention and at its convenience.” He added, “Dealing with a nuclearized Iran will be far more complex, far more dangerous and far more costly in blood and money than stopping it today. In other words, those who say ‘later’ may find that later is too late.” Had statements like these come during the Cold War from, for example, America and Britain, it would be suspected as a ruse. Such ploys were a commonplace then, each side trying to maneuver against the other to draw wavering nations to their side in the dispute du jour . This is different. Since Obama took office, Israel has learned to suspect America, not trust it. Obama’s Islam-centric foreign policy has broken the link between Israel and the United States. There is no common policy on Iran that could have resulted in coordinated statements by Barak and Panetta. The personal hostility between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the public face of deep disagreements. Their enmity became open after Obama had demanded Israeli-Palestinian negotiations based on the pre-1967 war borders. Last May, Netanyahu schooled Obama before the television cameras after a rocky private White House meeting. A visibly angry Obama shifted uncomfortably in his chair during Netanyahu’s compelling lecture. Netanyahu’s subsequent speech before a joint session of Congress amplified the clear break between the two men. Since then, Obama, Panetta, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey have attempted to dissuade Israel from any military action against Iran. But the only result has been that Israel’s distrust of the Obama administration has grown to the point that Israel will not tell Obama what it plans. Panetta himself has worked to heighten that distrust. Last December, he blamed Israel for the lack of talks with the Palestinians, admonishing Israel to “Just get to the damn table.” In effect, by its feckless actions and pressure on Israel but not Israel’s enemies, Obama has deprived Israel of options other than war. Continued sanctions against Iran have been met with defiance from Iran and dissembling from its allies. Iraq is apparently planning to help Iran avoid a pending embargo on Iranian oil by shipping Iranian oil from its ports, hiding its origin. (That plan may be only symbolic, because the construction of planned pipelines delivering oil and gas from Iran to Iraq’s export center are not scheduled to be finished until 2014.) The European embargo of Iranian oil is months away, and may never happen. Obama’s actions have made the Middle East and Southwest Asia vastly more unstable. Our actions to encourage rebellion in Egypt and military action in support of the Libyan rebellion have only propelled the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood movement to power in both nations. Panetta’s announcement that we may withdraw from Afghanistan a year early relieves pressure on Iran and encourages both Iran and Pakistan to continue their strong support for the Taliban. Obama’s plan to release five top Taliban commanders from Gitmo is a major boost to the Taliban. According to a leaked NATO classified report, the Taliban are confident that they will return to power quickly after our withdrawal from Afghanistan. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that Iran is prepared to launch terrorist action inside the United States. Iran was greatly emboldened when, in 2009, Obama’s “hands off Iran” policy failed to support the nascent rebellion against the mullahs. Last December, a New York court held that Iran had helped al Qaeda mount the 9/11 attacks. The sad fact is that, since 1979, Iran has paid no price for its central role in terrorism against the United States. Obama’s preference for passive sanctions — rather than overt or covert measures that can deprive Iran from its ability to produce nuclear weapons — has granted Iran more time to reach what Ehud Barak called the “immunity stage.” What is that? Immunity for Iran means that its nuclear weapons program would be so deeply buried and dispersed that only a nuclear attack on it could delay or destroy it. Israel can’t afford to wait for Iran’s nuclear weapons program to become immune. Israel would certainly use nuclear weapons in response to such an attack against it, but it isn’t about to wait until a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran is its only option. The Israeli calculus is complex. Attacking Iran will certainly provoke Iranian attacks, using missiles and terrorist proxies, which could result in massive Israeli casualties. Hizballah, Iran’s Lebanese proxy, will launch its thousands of missiles into Israel. The Hamas terrorists in Gaza will do the same and other Iran-connected terrorists — including al Qaeda — will probably attack U.S. and other western targets. If Israel suffers massive casualties, it’s entirely possible that its Arab neighbors would try to mount another 1967-like attack. But in 1967 and again in 1973, Israel had clear American support. When Israel appeared to be losing the 1973 war, U.S. Air Force aircraft were being armed and fueled to fly into the fight. That possibility still exists, but the Israelis’ distrust of Obama is so great that they aren’t including that in their war planning. Israel believes it is alone, and in that it’s probably right. As I wrote about eighteen months ago in a quasi-fictional forecast , Israel’s military will be stretched to the limit in attacking Iranian targets that are a long flying distance from Israel, and are both dispersed and — in many cases — deep underground. If it chooses to attack, it should also judge that suppression missions against Hizballah in Lebanon and against Syrian missile forces are an essential part of the plan. Such an attack will ignite a theater-wide war that Israel may not survive. Obama isn’t serious about preventing Iran from achieving nuclear weapons. In the three decades since the Iranian regime came to power, no diplomatic effort has ever changed its behavior. The only option for us, for Israel, and for the shopkeepers of Europe is to strike at Iran’s nuclear program to dismantle it. But that option, despite what Obama and Panetta say, isn’t one we are seriously considering. Left with no other choice, Israel will have to do what we lack the resolve to do. If Secretary Panetta’s belief is as the Washington Post reported, and if we are to take Ehud Barak’s statements at face value, Obama’s inaction would mean that Israel has concluded that it cannot rely on American action in its defense. By continuing inaction against Iran, going beyond ineffectual sanctions, Obama is pushing Israel toward war. Netanyahu is scheduled to visit the U.S. for a major speech to the AIPAC group next month. It may be the last opportunity for him and Obama to come to an understanding on decisive action against Iran. Soon after Netanyahu returns home, the Israelis will have to risk their nation’s existence in a war that is as much ours as theirs.
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Pushing Israel to War
From the Middle East Media Research Institute, excerpts from an interview that aired Monday on Al-Hayat TV with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I met with the head of the elections commission. I think that the first step has gone well, and that elections have been held for the lower house that everyone has considered to be free and fair. So that’s one milestone, and the next will be the drafting of a constitution. I can’t speak about what the Egyptian experience should be, because I’m operating under a rather old constitution. The United States, in comparison to Egypt, is a very new nation, and yet we have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world. Let me say first that a constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom. If the people don’t care, then the best constitution in the world won’t make any difference. So the spirit of liberty has to be in the population, and then the constitution – first, it should safeguard basic fundamental human rights, like our First Amendment, the right to speak freely, and to publish freely, without the government as a censor. You should certainly be aided by all the constitution-writing that has gone one since the end of World War II. I would not look to the US constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary… It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the US constitution – Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It dates from 1982. You would almost certainly look at the European Convention on Human Rights. Yes, why not take advantage of what there is elsewhere in the world? Ginsburg, of course, gets one of nine votes on the functional meaning of the US Constitution. That she thinks the age of the constitution she’s charged with interpreting make it deficient relative to newer constitutions is kind of shocking, particularly in the context of her praise for the rights enshrined in the First Amendment — rights that, in practice, are protected far less robustly in South Africa or Canada or Europe than they are in the US. On the other hand, given her style of interpretation, it’s kind of not shocking at all. (Hat-tip: Weasel Zippers )
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Justice Ginsburg to Egypt: Don’t Look to the US Constitution as a Model
From the Middle East Media Research Institute, excerpts from an interview that aired Monday on Al-Hayat TV with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I met with the head of the elections commission. I think that the first step has gone well, and that elections have been held for the lower house that everyone has considered to be free and fair. So that’s one milestone, and the next will be the drafting of a constitution. I can’t speak about what the Egyptian experience should be, because I’m operating under a rather old constitution. The United States, in comparison to Egypt, is a very new nation, and yet we have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world. Let me say first that a constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom. If the people don’t care, then the best constitution in the world won’t make any difference. So the spirit of liberty has to be in the population, and then the constitution – first, it should safeguard basic fundamental human rights, like our First Amendment, the right to speak freely, and to publish freely, without the government as a censor. You should certainly be aided by all the constitution-writing that has gone one since the end of World War II. I would not look to the US constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary… It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the US constitution – Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It dates from 1982. You would almost certainly look at the European Convention on Human Rights. Yes, why not take advantage of what there is elsewhere in the world? Ginsburg, of course, gets one of nine votes on the functional meaning of the US Constitution. That she thinks the age of the constitution she’s charged with interpreting make it deficient relative to newer constitutions is kind of shocking, particularly in the context of her praise for the rights enshrined in the First Amendment — rights that, in practice, are protected far less robustly in South Africa or Canada or Europe than they are in the US. On the other hand, given her style of interpretation, it’s kind of not shocking at all. (Hat-tip: Weasel Zippers )
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Justice Ginsburg to Egypt: Don’t Look to the US Constitution as a Model
Navy wants commando ‘mothership’ in Middle East
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Navy wants commando ‘mothership’ in Middle East
