Category Eastern Europe

Coronavirus and Government Turnover

Some countries have done a better job than others in addressing and dealing with the coronavirus. This is reflected in the number of cases per capita and the number of deaths per capita, if the statistics by country are reliable and reported in the same manner. Dealing with the coronavirus also has a huge economic impact. I am not sure people have fully evaluated the economic impact of this disease which appears like it is going to be an issue until at least the end of 2021.

Needless to say, a government that has not done a good job of containing the coronavirus is going to be hit twice, once from criticism of how it dealt with the virus and a second time from the economic impact of having to deal with it over an extended time. This is magnified if they have to again shut down because of a failure to control the first wave, or a resurgent first wave, and fail to address a second wave. The ideal situation is that the virus is identified, brought under control and then kept under control. This is the case with Italy, even though it was initially the worse hit of the European countries. The cases by day for Italy are below:

As can be seen, even Italy is dealing with a resurgence in cases, although a lot less than some other countries.

The leadership of a country that fails to contain the virus is going to obviously come under considerable criticism and of course, they also have to deal with a declining economy in the process. Usually, in democratic countries, a declining economy means that the government gets voted out. In non-democratic countries, the situation is a little more complex, but often dictatorships are challenged when the economy declines. While I don’t have the current economic statistics for Belarus at hand, I do have their current reported coronavirus statistics. For a country of 9.4 million people, they have a reported 70,645 cases and 646 deaths. This is an infection rate of 0.75 percent or one case per 133 people and a death rate of 0.007 percent or one case per 14,551 people. This is assuming these report numbers are correct. It does report a death rate of those infected of less than 1%, which makes one suspicious that the number of deaths is being underreported.

The graph of daily cases looks like this:

If this is true, then it looks like they have brought the virus under control. This was done without any requirements nationwide for isolation or wearing mask. There is considerable suspicion that these statistics are not correct.

Just for comparison, the United States has an infection rate of 1.75 percent or one case per 57 people and a death rate of 0.05 percent or one case per 1,852 people.

So, just to compare the countries in the area:

……………………..Percent infected…………..Percent killed

Belarus……………0.75………………………….0.007

Russia……………..0.65………………………….0.01

Ukraine……………0.26…………………………..0.006

.

Poland…………….0.16…………………………..0.005

Lithuania………….0.10…………………………..0.003

Latvia………………0.07…………………………..0.002

.

United States……..1.75………………………….0.05

 

Now there are reasons not to entirely trust the numbers coming out of Russia. There may also be reasons not to trust the numbers coming out of Belarus, especially as Lukashenko has not be supportive of the efforts to control and contain the virus. It is clear that the virus is a bigger problem for Belarus (and Russia) than it is for some of their neighbors, even if their reported statistics are not as bad as the United States.

Therefore, if the virus is still a major problem in Belarus (which I gather it is) and the economy is in trouble because of it (which I assume it is), then these are two issues that Lukashenko must deal with that are potentially crippling to his chances of staying in power. He may not be the only leader in danger of being ousted because of their failures to address the virus.

 

P.S. Data is from 6:28:02 PM on 24 August 2020 drawn from Johns Hopkins CSSE

The Situation with Belarus

Image taken from Independent.co.uk at:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/belarus-protest-minsk-lukashenko-a9684436.html

 

The protests have been going on in Belarus for two weeks now. On Sunday, they had something like 200,000 protesters in the street. Still, one can be too hasty in reaching a conclusion. For example, the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine in 2013-14 lasted for three months (21 November 2013 – 23 February 2014) and that was against a security force that killed over 100 from gunfire, primarily using snipers. The earlier, bloodless Orange Revolution in Ukraine lasted two months (22 November 2004 – 23 January 2005). The Rose Revolution in Georgia last three weeks (3 – 23 November 2003). These last two a very similar to what is occurring in Belarus, as they were over a disputed election result. In all three cases, the country’s leadership was overthrown.

On the other hand, all large demonstrations do not succeed. We have the Syrian Civil War, which started as protests against the government of Assad in March 2011. We have the protests in Tiananmen Square which dragged on for seven weeks (15 April – 4 June 1989) before the protests were run over and broken up. The Chinese Communist Party is still in power. This was at a cost of 300 to 3,000 killed, depending on who you wish to believe.

But, it does appear that this one may drag on for a few more weeks.

Let’s compare the landlocked Belarus to its neighbors:

.………………………………………………………..Per Capita………….Per Capita
…………………Population…………..GDP………….GDP.……………..GDP (PPP)
Belarus………….9.4 million…………63 billion……….$6,744…………….$21,223
Russia………..146.8 million……..1,657 billion……..$11,205…………….$30,819
Ukraine…………41.7 million……….162 billion……….$3,881…………….$10,310

 

Poland………….38.4 million……….607 billion……….$17,369…………..$35,651
Lithuania…………2.8 million………..56 billion……….$20,355…………..$38,751

Latvia……………..1.9 million………..37 billion………$19,105…………..$32,986

 

United States…328.2 million……22,321 billion…….$67,426…………..$67,426

 

These economic estimates do not take into account the effects of Coronavirus and the subsequent shutdowns. For example, the figures for the United States are from IMF, October 2019, which pre-dates the virus.

Russia in the country to the east of Belarus, Ukraine is the country to south. Poland is the country to the west (and a member of NATO), and Lithuania and Latvia are the countries to the north (also members of NATO). Lithuania is where the opposing candidate, Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya is currently residing. According to the official election results, Lukashenko got 80% of the vote (4,661,075 votes) while Tsikhanouskaya received 10% (588,622).

Events in Belarus

It is not front-page news in the United States, but events in Belarus are getting interesting. There are now daily demonstrations, the demonstrations are wide-spread, and there are supporting strikes. This does look serious and there appears to be a real chance that the dictatorial rule Lukashenko could be overthrown. I have never done a systematic study of the phenomenon, but once the protests 1) reach a certain size, 2) reach a certain level of sustainability, 3) are broadly based across a country and 4) supported by strikes and business shutdowns…. then I suspect there is a high probability that the current government will be thrown out of power. With some research, I suspect one could come up with a probability of this occurring (much like we did with probability of winning or losing an insurgency: See: America’s Modern Wars).

Now, the Belarus situation is more complex, because Russia is in the neighborhood and has been working on trying develop some form of closer integration or unification with Belarus. So, as things there get more tenuous, one wonders if Russia will not be tempted to intervene. So far, their costs for intervening in many other locales had not been crippling. At this point, suspect we are looking at six or more possible outcomes:

1. Lukashenko manages to remain in power.
2. Lukashenko is replaced by someone in his entourage.
3. Lukashenko is overthrown and replaced by a democratic government.
4. Lukashenko is overthrown and replaced by a government that becomes an oligarchy or another dictatorship.

5. Russian intervenes.

6. Lukashenko forms a combined government with the opposition so as to head off Russian intervention.

 

Russian intervention could have several forms

1. To prop up Lukashenko, possibly in exchange for signing a treaty that surrenders some or much of their sovereignty.
2. To prop up a replacement for Lukashenko, also in exchange for signing a treaty that surrenders some or much of their sovereignty.
3. Russia annexes Belarus.

 

Would not be surprised to see dramatic developments there in the next few weeks.

Belarus?

It looks like the next potential conflict in Eastern Europe is over Belarus. Russia has had more than one conflict with Georgia (population 3.7 million) that has split off two separate states from it (Abkhazia and Ossetia). Both of these conflicts pre-date Putin’s presidency of Russia. Russia more recently has had a conflict with Ukraine (population 42 million, excluding Crimea and Sevastopol) that split off two “Peoples Republics” (Donetsk and Lugansk) and annexed Crimea. Pre-dating Putin is the Transnistia Republic cut out of Moldava (population 2.7 excluding Transnistria, which is 0.5 million).

Now, apparently Russia and Belarus are in a discussion over economic integration that the dictator of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko (age 65), is not too happy with. He claims that his talks last week with Putin is not about “integration” of their economies but about  “merging.” Meanwhile Russia has cut the oil to Belarus, forcing it to get it from Norway and other places.

So what is Belarus exactly? It is a country of only abut 9.5 million people. Not very big, although not very densely populated. It has one major city (Minsk) with an urban population of around two million. Its second largest city is Homeyel (Gomel) with a only half million. For all practical purposes, it is an old style city state, with one major urban area and lot of land. It is 208 thousand sq. kilometers, or about the size of the state of Kansas or Nebraska. To compare:

 

……………………………..,……Belarus…………Russia………….Ukraine
Population (millions)………………..9.5……………147………………42

GDP (billions)………………………60……………1,657…………….134
Per Capita…………………….$6,477………….$11,305………..$3,220

Area (thousand sq. km.)………..208…………..17,098…………….604

 

Part of the problem is that Lukashenko has been dictator of Belarus for the last 20 years. He is not exactly close to the U.S., the E.U. or hardly anyone else. He is kind of standing alone, which is not a very good position to be in when one of your neighbors is at least 15 times larger (and over 27 times richer) .

We shall see how this develops, but an independent Belarus always looked a little improbable. It was briefly independent once before, in 1918. The Belarus Rada still maintains itself as a government-in-exile, located now in Vancouver Canada. This is actually the oldest remaining government-in-exile.

Lessons Learned from the Russo-Ukrainian War

I noticed that our blog was being pinged by a site I was not familiar with, so I took a look at it….and I don’t read Chinese Korean  (see: https://m.blog.naver.com/alsrb19/221127427656).

But the site had a link to a paper written by Dr. Phillip A. Karber of the Potomac Foundation. This is worth looking at:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwsSGlkg0LM2aVhrNXExQ2FVTngxbzhWYVFCSFpvNWNCdVFB/view

This was done as part of the “Historical Lessons Learned Workshop.” I gather Dr. Phillip Karber and retired Gen. Wesley Clark wandered around Ukraine a lot during 2014 and 2015. Mr. Karber was wounded in June 2015 in a MLRS strike at Bebedynsky during the process. While I have never met him, Phil Karber has been around for a while, having worked for Andy Marshall (OSD Net Assessment). A few highlights:

  1. “…the struggle in Ukraine has involved the largest scale battles in Europe since the end of the Second World War.” (page 2)
  2. “The Russo-Ukrainian War has been full of surprises. First, it was totally unexpected.” (page 2)
  3. “A third surprise is the relative lack of Western attention given to the military aspects of the Russo-Ukrainian War; particularly given the unexpected scale and duration of the conflict….” (page 3)
  4. Artillery: “In the Ukraine conflict the author has witnessed units firing 300-400 rounds per tube per day. This increased intensity of fire is both outgoing and incoming.” (page 16)
  5. “Data from the Ukraine conflict show that artillery is producing approximately 85% of all casualties on both sides.” (page 17)
  6. “In July 2014….In the space of six weeks, the Russians launched 53 fire strikes at 40 different locations, which decimated Ukrainian forces. For example, at Zelenopillya, in a combined MLRS fire strike that lasted no more than three minutes, two Ukrainian mechanized battalions were virtually wiped out with the combined effects of top-attack munitions and thermobaric warheads.” (page 18)
  7. “Since the end of the Cold War, armies around the world have given increased emphasis to light Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV), which prioritizes mobility and fire-power over survivability. The evidence coming in from the Ukrainian conflict seriously questions the validity of that emphasis.” (page 26)

There are probably a few other significant points that I passed on.

The Battles of the Donetsk Airport (May 2014 – Jan 2015)

Just published by The Institute of Land Warfare is a paper by Major Amos C. Fox, U.S. Army called “Cyborgs at Little Stalingrad”: A Brief History of the Battle of the Donetsk Airport. It is not long (16 pages) and definitely worth a read.

A few highlights:

  1. “Contrary to conventional narratives on the primacy and high-mindedness of maneuver warfare and the crippling effects of electronic and cyber warfare, positional warfare and sieges are the zeitgeist of contemporary war.” (page 12)
  2. “Positional battles and sieges have also commanded the counter-Islamic State campaigns in Iraq, Syria and the Philippines.” (page 12)
  3. “These battles are important because they remind students of war that rugged, land-centric combat arms warfare has not been thrown into the dustbin of history but is instead alive and well.” (page 16)
  4. He does document the downing of 10 Ukrainian aircraft in May – July 2014 (pages 11-12), but leaves out any reference to the downing of Flight MH17 on 17 July 2014 over Eastern Ukraine, killing 298 civilians.

To quote from the last paragraph of my book, War by Numbers (page 328):

The post-Cold War world appears to be world of many small conflicts…the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 proved that the United States is not immune to attack and that we do have to remain engaged with the rest of the world to some degree. Certainly U.S. armed forces will be part of that engagement, and they will be called upon to fight a range of wars, from drone strikes and special operations to full-scale guerrilla wars and conventional campaigns. All must be addressed and planned for.

Quantifying the Holocaust

Odilo Globocnik, SS and Police Leader in the Lublin district of the General Government territory in German-occupied Poland, was placed in charge of Operation Reinhardt by SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. [Wikipedia]

The devastation and horror of the Holocaust makes it difficult to truly wrap one’s head around its immense scale. Six million murdered Jews is a number so large that it is hard to comprehend, much less understand in detail. While there are many accounts of individual experiences, the wholesale destruction of the Nazi German documentation of their genocide has made it difficult to gauge the dynamics of their activities.

However, in a new study, Lewi Stone, Professor of Biomathematics at RMIT University in Australia, has used an obscure railroad dataset to reconstruct the size and scale of a specific action by the Germans in eastern Poland and western Ukraine in 1942. “Quantifying the Holocaust: Hyperintense kill rates during the Nazi genocide,” (Not paywalled. Yet.) published on 2 January in the journal Science Advances, uses train schedule data published in 1987 by historian Yitzhak Arad to track the geographical and temporal dimensions of some 1.7 Jews transported to the Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor death camps in the late summer and early autumn of 1942.

This action, known as Operation Reinhardt, originated during the Wansee Conference in January 1942 as the plan to carry out Hitler’s Final Solution to exterminate Europe’s Jews. In July, Hitler “ordered all action speeded up” which led to a frenzy of roundups by SS (Schutzstaffel) groups from over 400 Jewish communities in Poland and Ukraine, and transport via 500 trains to the three camps along the Polish-Soviet border. In just 100 days, 1.7 million people had been relocated and almost 1.5 million of them were murdered (“special treatment” (Sonderbehandlung)), most upon arrival at the camps. This phase of Reinhardt came to an end in November 1942 because the Nazis had run out of people to kill.

This three-month period was by far the most intensely murderous phase of the Holocaust, carried out simultaneously with the German summer military offensive that culminated in disastrous battlefield defeat at the hands of the Soviets at Stalingrad at year’s end. 500,000 Jews were killed per month, or an average of 15,000 per day. Even parsed from the overall totals, these numbers remain hard to grasp.

Stone’s research is innovative and sobering. His article can currently be downloaded in PDF format. His piece in The Conversation includes interactive online charts. He also produced a video the presents his findings chronologically and spatially:

Measuring the Effects of Combat in Cities, Phase II – part 2

There was actually supposed to be a part 2 to this Phase II contract, which was analysis of urban combat at the army-level based upon 50 operations, of which a half-dozen would include significant urban terrain. This effort was not funded.

On the other hand, the quantitative analysis of battles of Kharkov only took up the first 41 pages of the report. A significant part of the rest of the report was a more detailed analysis and case study of the three fights over Kharkov in February, March and August of 1943. Kharkov was a large city, according to the January 1939 census, it has a population of 1,344,200, although a Soviet-era encyclopedia gives the pre-war population as 840,000. We never were able to figure out why there was a discrepancy. The whole area was populated with many villages. The January 1939 gives Kharkov Oblast (region) a population of 1,209,496. This is in addition to the city, so the region had a total population of 2,552,686. Soviet-era sources state that when the city was liberated in August 1943, the remaining population was only 190,000. Kharkov was a much larger city than any of the others ones covered in Phase I effort (except for Paris, but the liberation of that city was hardly a major urban battle).

The report then does a day-by-day review of the urban fighting in Kharkov. Doing a book or two on the battles of Kharkov is on my short list of books to write, as I have already done a lot of the research. We do have daily logistical expenditures of the SS Panzer Corps for February and March (tons of ammo fired, gasoline used and diesel used). In March when the SS Panzer Corps re-took Kharkov, we noted that the daily average for the four days of urban combat from 12 to 15 March was 97.25 tons of ammunition, 92 cubic meters of gasoline and 10 cubic meters of diesel. For the previous five days (7-11 March) the daily average was 93.20 tons of ammunition, 145 cubic meters of gasoline and 9 cubic meters of diesel. Thus it does not produce a lot of support for the idea that–as has sometimes been expressed (for example in RAND’s earlier reports on the subject)–that ammunition and other supplies will be consumed at a higher rate in urban operations.

We do observe from the three battles of Kharkov that (page 95):

There is no question that the most important lesson found in the three battles of Kharkov is that one should just bypass cities rather than attack them. The Phase I study also points out that the attacker is usually aware that faster progress can be made outside the urban terrain, and that the tendency is to weight one or both flanks and not bother to attack the city until it is enveloped. This is indeed what happened in two of the three cases at Kharkov and was also the order given by the Fourth Panzer Army that was violated by the SS Panzer Corps in March.

One must also note that since this study began the United States invaded Iraq and conducted operations in some major urban areas, albeit against somewhat desultory and ineffective opposition. In the southern part of Iraq the two major port cities Umm Qasar and Basra were first enveloped before any forces were sent in to clear them. In the case of Baghdad, it could have been enveloped if sufficient forces were available. As it was, it was not seriously defended. The recent operations in Iraq again confirmed that observations made in the two phases of this study.

P.S. The picture is of Kharkov in 1942, when it was under German occupation.

Measuring the Effects of Combat in Cities, Phase II – part 1

Our first urban warfare report that we did had a big impact. It clearly showed that the intensity of urban warfare was not what some of the “experts” out there were claiming. In particular, it called into question some of the claims being made by RAND. But, the report was based upon Aachen, Cherbourg, and a collection of mop-up operations along the Channel Coast. Although this was a good starting point because of the ease of research and availability of data, we did not feel that this was a fully representative collection of cases. We also did not feel that it was based upon enough cases, although we had already assembled more cases than most “experts” were using. We therefore convinced CAA (Center for Army Analysis) to fund a similar effort for the Eastern Front in World War II.

For this second phase, we again assembled a collection of Eastern Front urban warfare engagements in our DLEDB (Division-level Engagement Data Base) and compared it to Eastern Front non-urban engagements. We had, of course, a considerable collection of non-urban engagements already assembled from the Battle of Kursk in July 1943. We therefore needed a good urban engagement nearby. Kharkov is the nearest major city to where these non-urban engagements occurred and it was fought over three times in 1943. It was taken by the Red Army in February, it was retaken by the German Army in March, and it was taken again by the Red Army in August. Many of the units involved were the same units involved in the Battle of Kursk. This was a good close match. It has the additional advantage that both sides were at times on the offense.

Furthermore, Kharkov was a big city. At the time it was the fourth biggest city in the Soviet Union, being bigger than Stalingrad (as measured by pre-war population). A picture of its Red Square in March 1943, after the Germans retook it, is above.

We did have good German records for 1943 and we were able to get access to Soviet division-level records from February, March and August from the Soviet military archives in Podolsk. Therefore, we were able to assembled all the engagements based upon the unit records of both sides. No secondary sources were used, and those that were available were incomplete, usually one-sided, sometimes biased and often riddled with factual errors.

So, we ended up with 51 urban and conurban engagements from the fighting around Kharkov, along with 65 non-urban engagements from Kursk (we have more now).

The Phase II effort was completed on 30 June 2003. The conclusions of Phase II (pages 40-41) were similar to Phase I:

.Phase II Conclusions:

  1. Mission Accomplishment: This [Phase I] conclusion was further supported. The data does show a tendency for urban engagements not to generate penetrations.
  2. Casualty Rates: This [Phase I] conclusion was further supported. If urban combat influenced the casualty rate, it appears that it resulted in a reduction of the attacker casualty rate and a more favorable casualty exchange ratio compared to nonurban warfare. There still appears to be no basis to the claim that urban combat is significantly more intense with regards to casualties than is nonurban warfare.
  3. Advance Rates: There is no strong evidence of a reduction in the advance rates in urban terrain in the Eastern Front data. TDI still stands by its original conclusion that the average advance rate in urban combat should be one-half to one-third that of nonurban combat.
  4. Linear Density: Again, there is little evidence that the presence of urban terrain results in a higher linear density of troops, but unlike the ETO data, the data did not show a tendency to trend in that direction.
  5. Armor Losses: This conclusion was further supported (Phase I conclusion was: Overall, it appears that the loss of armor in urban terrain is the same as or less than that found in nonurban terrain, and in some cases is significantly lower.)
  6. Force Ratios: The conclusion was further supported (Phase I conclusion was: Urban combat did not significantly influence the Force Ratio required to achieve success or effectively conduct combat operations).
  7. Duration of Combat: Nothing could be determined from an analysis of the data regarding the Duration of Combat (Time) in urban versus nonurban terrain.

There is a part 2 to this effort that I will pick up in a later post.

Future Conventional Warfare Scenarios

What are the U.S. Armed Forces’ potential conventional warfare missions?  Is conventional warfare gone, leaving the U.S. Army conducting special ops, training, coordinating air and drone strikes, providing counterinsurgency support, and generally just kicking down doors?

Well, there are still a few potential conventional warfare scenarios out there, even if they have a low probability of occurring:

  1. Korea: We still have the majority of the 2nd Infantry Division deployed in Korea as a reserve force for the Republic of Korea (ROK) Army. If a war blows up in Korea, then we are immediately right in the middle of a conventional war. It is 1950 all over again. Amid all the “fire and fury” type comments, I do consider this to be a low odds of occurring. Still, it is one conventional warfare mission that has existed since 1950 and does not appear to be going away.
  2. Taiwan: I don’t think China is going to invade Taiwan (their third largest trading partner), but stranger things have happened. I believe we are informally committed to defend Taiwan if this happens. We have no ground troops there.
  3. Ukraine: We have no commitment to defend Ukraine. On the other hand, if Russia rolls across the border with tanks and is heading towards Kiev, then we may decide we need to intervene. Exactly with what forces we would use is a question, but this is potentially a mission in the future. I don’t think it is likely. If Russia was going to conduct a conventional invasion of  Ukraine, it would have done so in 2014.
  4. Baltic States: On the other hand, we do have a commitment to defend the three Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia). They are members of NATO. Right now, with the forces currently in place, a Russian conventional invasion would sweep over these three countries in a matter of days. Then what? The U.S. would be challenged to be able to quickly move a single armored or mechanized division there, let alone the several divisions it would probably take to re-claim them. We currently are not defending them and do not have the ability to quickly re-take them. That said, the odds of Russia doing this is very, very close to zero, because they do end up in a war with 29 nations. This is probably not the best use of their time.
  5. Belarus: On the other hand, I don’t rule out tanks rolling into Belarus at some point in the future. Lukashenko, the Belarus dictator, is 63 years old, and these guys don’t live forever. Once he is gone, will Belorus undergo a calm transition of power to a new president (for life)….or does Russia take this opportunity to reclaim Belarus? Unlike Ukraine, there is not a strong nationalist group that is clearly ready to fight off any Russian invaders. If Russia did decide to take Belarus (probably making sure they were invited, like they were in Afghanistan in 1979), is there anything we could do about it? How concerned would we be about it?
  6. Georgia: Russian already had a five day war with Georgia in 2008. Russia probably could have overrun Georgia if they wanted to. They probably can now. It is a very small country and geographically isolated from NATO. I don’t rule out it becoming a battlefield in the future. Not sure what the United States could do about it.
  7. Iran: While I don’t think that the U.S. will ever invade Iran, I would have said the same thing about Iraq in 2000. Of course, Iran is a country with a population more more than twice that of Iraq. Invading Iraq in 2003 led to lots of long-term complications. Invading Iran might get even more difficult.
  8. The mission not yet named: The last 30 years are notable in that the United States has been dragged into three major wars rather suddenly. At the beginning of 1990, I don’t recall any defense analyst saying the United States was about to enter into a war with Iraq for the sake of saving Kuwait (who we had no alliance with). Yet, less than a year later, this is exactly what we did, and it was done with a large conventional force of nine deployed U.S. divisions. In 2000, I don’t recall too many defense analysts saying that we would soon be invading Afghanistan and Iraq. These missions came rather suddenly. So, one must always assume that there is a possible conventional mission at any time in any place. It has happened twice in the last 30 years. These are hard to plan for and to structure forces for, yet there is clearly a need for a mobile conventional force just in case.

Anyhow, that list appears to cover the possible conventional warfare missions for the United States right now. The one with the highest probability of occurring is “the mission not yet named.” There are many other flash points in the world, but most of them are not ones that would attract American conventional ground forces. Still, as shown by Kuwait in 1990 and Iraq in 2003, we can end up involved in a conventional conflict with very little notice. This is a far cry from the days of the Cold War when the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact were lined up along the border of Germany. The future ain’t what it used to be, to borrow a quote.