Palestine and Israel: a case study for technome geopolitics

 

· Recently, I was the leader of a published paper dealing with my average pro stuff (DOI: 10.3390/humans3030016). At first glance its rationale deals with neuro-physiological human evolution abilities along at least 2,5 Ma (million of years). Herein I would try to relate the main paper´s concept christened as “technome” to a  so-called war´s tecnome.

· First of all, I indebt my self to lay before the readers a certain general definition of technome: I assume that it is  the analytical quantification of both material technical and immaterial technical networks defining every object and/or group of material/immaterial objects acting at a certain discrete given time and space.

· Therefore, this war seems to me a very interesting study object since it allows to observe both at zero time and space the  immaterial and material reasons and consequences for a key ongoing war. I mean “key” as a crux event within our Western contemporary present.

· Whether the kind reader of this unpublicized  blog (observarypensar.blogspot) has followed me or not, during the last 12 years, it appears that in general Israeli-palestine wars are full of super technical, both immaterial and material events:

· Actually, both rivals are related by a very long shared History, we could stress upon it saying that both are using on one hand Biblical memories, and on the other archaeological  and very old memories to justify their “spatial argumentation”. That is: their own very reasons justifying their own standing position on the field. The popular core of the war is immaterial.

· The war between them did start after the strategical error of the Arabs not accepting the UN resolution giving a piece of land to the slaughtered central and eastern Jews after the IIWW. It is worth to say that this move can be observed, at present, as the last colonial move by the dying British Empire a hundred years ago to get remote control on the lands near the Suez Canal.

· The strategical error by the triumphant Jews after many local wars (1949-1973 wars) happly taking as a “greek present” the lands of Judea and Samaria plus the eastern side of Jerusalem as a factual result of their impressive military victories. Thus, they are being intoxicated by them selves.

· Nevertheless, what interest me the most, right now, it´s neither the biblical roots nor the hellenic lectures of the victories on the battle fields of this war, but its ongoing complex intertwined material and immaterial  objects (remember that I´m an archaeologist-palaeontologist and a part-time poet) produced by the war. That is: what could be eventually proposed by remotes colleagues in the remote future just observing and thinking about Gaza´s material and immaterial remains after this very war “en course”?

· The first question would be: can an elephant behave as a mouse? Thus, can the Tsahal behave like a guerrilla movement, really? Why I dare to put this question being asked by a remote archaeologist in a remote future to define its war technome? Because today at the Jerusalem Post newspaper the generous analyst pointed out that it was a smart move by the Jew army to behave in a guerrilla way not entering “avec force” inside Gaza. Mon Dieu...quelle perte de qualité dans la pensée strategique!

· Néamoins l´armée juive s´est rendue compte que ce qui l´attendait à Gaza était un piège stratégique classique, mutatis mutandi, un mouvement sophistiqué equivalent à la bataille de Cannas . C´est à dire: attirer l´ennemi vers un gros piege. Pourtant tout en ayant surmonté dans l ´inmediat une tuérie de soldats du Tsahal l´argumentaire en appuie de la suite de coups innatandues par Hamas dans Gaza est également faible: cette guerre on la fait dans un temps infinie. That is the very point of victorious guerrilla´s war: to exhaust the adversary; since one side, Hamas, has no time boundaries to keep their local war, the Israelis do not benefit of this unbounded threshold: for this reason they are an elephant trying to mask and behave like a mouse in a crystal room. Moreover, the strong American help is finite, and it´s controlled by the same rules acting on the Ukrainian war: the sponsors need to be justified within their own national space. That planely means: put on the table clear and neat triumphs...and this is the core problem in a guerrilla war: there are not clear and neat results, even for an elephant trying to behave as a guerrilla warrior. The inertia of your elephant mass limit your degree of freedom to act as a different kind of object both in space and in time. It could be theoretically possible if you would not depend upon your strategical sponsor. Even when you are autonomous in the amount of guns, ammunition and international help, like USA in Vietnam and Russia in Afghanistan, there is a certain subjective threshold that acts in an independent way to the quantitative results on the battle field; for instance there are a lot of  American, French, Spanish military men that still swear that they were wining their respective colonial wars but...politicians betrayed them.

· That´s the point in Gaza: when the Israelis will get upset  sustaining a rotten Government? And in this way we come back to the initial point: sometimes the material and “objective” reality is  flooded by subjective and symbolic matters. A strange thing that we start to observe all along the human evolution.

Igor nearby El Cid and doña Jimena tombs, in Burgos.

y mis labios fríos

 Anoche te soñé desnuda 

estabas cerca de una fuente de agua

tu empapada como la piedra del arroyo

tus cabellos adheridos  a tu cuello y espalda

te miré de perfil al pasar

porque yo caminaba 

próximo 

pero no avanzaba hacia ti

frontalmente

Por eso retuve de tu imagen en destellos

 en instantes de luz

tus piernas tus caderas y brazos mojados

Quizás aún impresionado por tus negativas

no me acerqué a secarte el agua que brillaba en tu blanca piel

quizás temí 

aun en sueños

otro no

Después me alejé caminando por el arroyo

aguas abajo

feliz de vislumbrarte

pero con las manos vacías 

y mis labios fríos

Igor en Burgos, avec mes pensées ailleurs

Las victimas políticas de la guerra prolongada en Ucrania

 Tal como hemos comentado no hace mucho en este blog, en la guerra la variable que controla la calidad del triunfo es el tiempo, no el espacio ocupado. El triunfo del calendario, de la imposición de los tiempos tanto militares como civiles en el territorio en cuestión es la señal estratégica del verdadero triunfo. Gana el que impone, porque es una imposición del que realmente triunfa, su calendario de prioridades estratégicas y tácticas. 

En Ucrania aún la balanza parece equilibrada en términos territoriales, kilometro cuadrado por un lado o por el otro más o menos. Sin embargo resulta evidente que el lado ucraniano tiene razones poderosas para inquietarse por lo prolongado de la guerra. Sus aliados indefectiblemente le están pasando una factura en la que ellos se han hipotecado mucho no sólo en términos económicos, sino también en términos militares: han disfrutado de la tecnología táctica de punta del bloque occidental, y le están haciendo un flaco favor a los proveedores al no usar más eficientemente su armamento. 

El umbral de eficiencia, según se mide en occidente, cuantifica superficies del territorio ucraniano recuperado. Los rusos miden de otra manera, toda vez ha quedado demostrado que cometieron un error estratégico mayor al iniciar esta guerra sin contar con los recursos militares suficientes. De hecho creyeron, equivocadamente, que en poco tiempo resolverían la guerra de agresión. Es decir usaron un criterio espacial para medir su progresión estratégica...y perdieron la iniciativa militar que pasó a manos de la resistencia ucraniana. 

Este error espacial de los rusos ahora lo están cometiendo también los ucranianos: están esforzándose por controlar espacios y no los tiempos del conflicto. Craso error.  Para la parte rusa esta guerra prolongada la beneficia en el medio plazo, pero hay razones para pensar que el grupo dirigente ruso está incomodo con esta continua necesidad de recurrir a aliados asiáticos para compensar su baja producción militar táctica. Los rusos saben muy bien que Siberia en su conjunto abre apetitos muy grandes a la dirigencia china. Mientras mayor sea la deuda militar y económica con China la posición rusa en Asia central se debilita progresivamente.

Es decir al final de la guerra podemos tener dos escenarios geopolíticos impensables hace dos o tres años: por un lado el espacio geopolítico ucraniano estará totalmente en manos de occidente, y Rusia podría ver comprometida no ya su unidad territorial occidental en Europa, o sea de los Urales hacia el oeste, sino que Siberia entrará en un tiempo de conflicto con el actual aliado chino. A mayor presión americana sobre las líneas de navegación china hacia el Pacifico mayores oportunidades les parecerán abrirse, a la dirigencia china, en ese océano continental que es Siberia para los imaginativos y viejos habitantes del continente asiático oriental.

Y por las noticias que me llegan desde Rusia, la posición política de Putin parece realmente deteriorarse a medida que pasa el tiempo. El también será una victima de esta guerra prolongada que inició sin estar preparado estratégicamente para ella.

en Burgos un dia caluroso de Agosto

Igor Parra

Critical observations on the summer campaign in Ukrain.

When the Ukrainian war escalated spatially, in 2022, Putin's goal was certainly to conduct a rapid campaign. He misjudged the Western side's ability and interest in supporting and sustaining the Ukrainians economically and militarily.

This error of assessment constitutes a strategic error that would have meant a military defeat for the Russian side if it did not have strategic reserves that do not end in the so-called "strategic" nuclear weapons. This is the main mistake of Western strategists: it is almost the equivalent of the mistake made by the Germans in 1941 in not considering the Asian factor in the military equation. Now the Westerners had not included it either, and the consequences are already evident: Russia not only gets armaments in the far East but also markets that feed what Napoleon called "the nerve of war", that is to say, economic resources.

 In this summer campaign, which has just begun with an Ukrainian counter-offensive, there are at least two aspects that strike me, as a reader of Thucydides, Churchill, Aron and others who knew and practiced the art of grand strategy, which goes beyond the movement of troops and material resources in space, to obtain a victory over the enemy.

In the first place the lack of the equivalent of the Stavka in the Russian military leadership. No trace anymore of that efficient machine of military thought and action of the Soviet period - Stavka Glavnogo Komandovaniya (Ставка Главного Командования Воооруженнных Сил Союза ССР) which knew how to counter the harsh German offensive military action of the years 1941 and 1942. 

The second striking point is the ongoing mistake made by Western, and especially Ukrainian, military men, who are attracted by what Bachelard defined as a "fascination with objects". This fascination translates into a blind and absolute confidence in the quality of weapons to achieve victory. However, like the Germans in WWII, the Ukrainians do not have sufficient quantities to transform the small quantity of excellent new Western weapons into a critical mass sufficient to break the Russian front. The total amount of V1 and V2 directly hitting London was quantitatively significant, but it did not change the very steam of the Western strategy. It seems to me that the  "Wonder" Western guns, at least right now, are just containing but not winning the ongoing Ukrainian war.

Russians have an absolute line of defense in their nuclear artillery, nevertheless they could be defeated in the Ukrainian space itself, being difficult to foresee if they would accept losing Crimea. But this is not the critical point in itself either: the key seems, again, to be in their temporary ability to fight with the half-gas intensity of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. 

In the West we tend to do sums, body countings, which for the Russians are not significant. Comparing today's Russia with the Soviet Union is a very significant error, because the fifty thousand dead in the Afghan war had a different social value in relation to those killed in Ukraine. Therefore, at the end of the day, we are back to a chessboard where time is a major factor that plays, at least for now, in favor of the Russians. And this is so because they have a significant and larger demographic and natural resources factor in relation to the Ukrainian resources.

On the latter, we have to subtract from Ukraine's demographic potential the millions of people who had already left their country years before the open war with Russia. To that we have to count those who have left during this open war, and the final calculation is that Ukraine is losing a strategic critical mass. Perhaps this is quite more important in absolute terms than the Russian brain drain to the Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, to Germany, Israel or the States.

We are close to a critical point where the huge Russian mass seems to win the timing of the war. The Ukrainian need to impose their own time schedule to Russians, this is the very core of the strategic victory.

Igor Parra 

en Burgos no lejos de las tumbas del Cid y Doña Jimena

Rimini

 Rimini d'estate Rimini di notte

vicino alla barca che galleggia illuminata

vedo il tuo corpo nudo il tuo corpo italiano

morbido come la seta che i tuoi antenati

attraverso i continenti hanno portato fino qua

Ti ho visto così triste così triste, così italiana così bella

che non ho resistito a invitarti per una nuotata notturna

al mio fianco

Il tuo silenzio sorridente era un'immensa affermazione

grande come il mare che ci rinfrescava

Poi mi hai chiesto di spegnere le luci della barca

e mi hai aspettato sdraiata sul ponte

Ti ho asciugato la schiena e i capelli

poi i tuoi baci i miei baci

le tue mani e le mie

si sono intrecciate intorno a noi

una rete che ci ha trattenuto

fino all'alba dell'estate

un'alba calda e umida di agosto

Rimini d'estate Rimini di notte

Ti ricorderò sempre anche se riderai quando lo dirò

So che è così e così sarà

fino a quando tornerò a Rimini e non ti troverò più

Voglio solo dirti

che l'unica cosa importante è la felicità

Sono felice di averti regalato

 un momento

intenso di essa

e di riceverla da te

costruendo sospiri e frasi che solo tu e io

ricorderemo

Raccogli questa esperienza, ragazza italiana

e non dissolverla in altra inutile tristezza

né angoscia né catene immaginarie

perché tu sei il mattino e la notte

tu respiri e la terra vive

e quando dormi le stelle respirano appena

mentre mi trascini in catene

ai tuoi dolci fianchi

Sei stata per qualche giorno e qualche notte il mio centro

la mia pace

oh lontana Rimini

igor parra

Pondering and wondering before the spring-summer campaign in Ukraine

 

MASKIROVKA

strategic masking is a complex art, articulated by multiple prior actions whose purpose is one and only one: to divert attention from the main objective in such a convincing way that even this or that aspect of what is producing the strategic masking is debated, discussed and pondered by its potential enemies while the operational bases of the main action are built with a very low profile.

If someone were to ask me what in my opinion is the best example at the present time of strategic masking, I would not hesitate to point to China's action in relation to the island of Taiwan. 

Besides, in the conflict generated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there was no such masking during the first phase of the conflict. It seems that during the second phase, which is ending now, in a very classical way, with a spring-summer campaign "ad portas", we have on the Russian side a very advanced strategic masking that is acting on the main vector of the Grand Strategy: time. 

If there is no internal coup in the Russian leadership, and the spring-summer campaign turns into the bogging down of the Ukrainian-western war effort, then we will be facing a clear example of successful strategic masking on the Russian side. 

If so, it will have done so by clouding Western reasoning with the spatial projection of its temporal feint, that is, by generating more discussion about space than about what really counts in any kind of war : time, king and master throughout history, redundant though it may seem.

Let time pass by some days  before the next modest piece of observation and thinking, always enlightened by our western and eastern classical masters many times here mentioned during the last 12 years.

to be continued sooner rather than later

Igor Parra 

Burgos

Ukraine, the second moment

 Ukraine, the second moment

Analysing, observing and thinking about a significant event requires a certain perspective. I have let a year of the war in Ukraine pass, as the situation obviously got complicated for Putin already in the initial phase of the game. 

But in Russian military history problems of this kind are recorded in the strategic memory of this people who proficiently cultivate the art of the use of time in space. They are good chess players. And as we all know, chess is a problem machine that relates spatial control...in terms of available time to solve complex game situations.  

So I refer back to my earlier observation and thoughts on the Ukrainian issue of 12 February 2022 and repeat myself: it is likely that the Russian objective is not the one we can imagine in the West. Both Putin and President Xi use strategic time scales that are not the ones we use. 

I am therefore surprised that British intelligence reports almost as a triumph that Russian troops are defensively entrenched in the territory of the Donbas. Perhaps that is a major objective of the Russian move south... not the only one, but a very significant one. 

At the present time we are waiting for a Ukrainian counter-offensive to develop. Perhaps we are on the verge of surprising things, perhaps the business of reconstruction of the Ukrainian territory has begun prematurely. The Russians have flattened cities and infrastructure, now a period of reconstruction should begin.

 Whoever benefits from this will be the winner of the ongoing war. In this way we continue to witness the dilution of nation states, at least in the West, and their consolidation in Eastern Eurasia. In the West, the relationship between war and corporate business is growing, but we cannot say that it has only recently been invented. The great failure of Athens in the Peloponnesian War was to gamble strategically in terms of business on the conquest of Sicily. That thunderous failure (we still hear it from those of us who study these matters) permanently blighted its performance in the war against Sparta. The strategic gambles being made by the West bring us closer to a dangerous zone where a possible scenario would be precisely a scenario analogous to the failure of the Athenian expedition to Sicily. The Athenians did not lose the war the day after the failure of the expedition, the consequences of that defeat caused them to lose the confidence of their allies, the operational capability of their fleet and they were finally defeated by the Spartans in the military field in which they, the Athenians, were strategically dominant. 

For now, these are the observations that, as an archaeologist and palynologist interested in the present and the future, I am making to the kind readers of this unpublicised and very modest blog.

Igor Parra

en Burgos a 240 metros de la tumba del Cid y doña Jimena

Per dieci anni

Tus lindos labios

 Non conoscerò mai il sapore della tua bocca

Non camminerò lungo le tue gambe o le tue braccia

non mi addormenterò sulle tue ginocchia

e tu sulle mie spalle

Non ti vedrò mai dormire serenamente dopo il dialogo amoroso dei corpi 

Durante anni

Ho guadato fiumi pericolosi

Ho attraversato mari profondi di vita intensa

con altre donne 

ma tu sei stata fino alla terza lettera

il mio nord

nella prima

 anni fa

 hai detto che Dio ti stava aspettando

poi che non potevi abbandonare tua madre

e ora hai recentemente dichiarato di preferire lo stato di ambiguità in cui ci troviamo da trent'anni a questa parte. 

Me voy pues

pero

 recordare tus labios

Igor 

Vitacura

What Thucidides said about the war between two equipotencies such as Sparta and Athenes?

  

 

Saco a colación un antiguo texto del mes de abril de 2021 publicado en este modesto Post, porque los eventos en curso en Ucrania lo ameritan, y además lo menciono en el texto precedente, y así ahorro al gentil lector a excarvar mayormente

Classical readings of the asymmetric conflict in the Pacific Basin and Eurasia

A recent publication makes a classic military potential count of different countries to reach the conclusion that in the air the United States of America would win an eventual conflict, Russia would win on land and China would win at sea (https://www.military.direct/blogs/news/which-world-military-would-win-in-a-war).

These types of comparisons lack, in my view, predictive capacity, as they do not incorporate fundamental factors in the strategic equations that, on occasion, allow us to glimpse a winner in armed conflicts of different scales. Thucydides, whom I have mentioned several times in this blog since 2010, enlightens us with his detailed description of the Peloponnesian War, when at the very beginning of his narrative, in the magnificent chapter entitled "Archaeology" he explains why the war between Athens and Sparta was so prolonged: both powers had a decisive capacity in the military sphere in which the other did not. That is, Sparta was omnipotent in land combat, as Athens was at sea.

However, as kind readers will remember, at the end of the war the victory of Sparta was not in "its sphere of power" but precisely in the maritime sphere, where Athens had an overwhelming superiority not only in numbers but also in the quality of human resources, from the seamen to the strategists who directed the naval operations. The decisive factor of that final naval battle, at the mouth of the river Egospótamos (Chersonese) was the tactical surprise originated in a tactical error of the Athenian strategist, added to a factor as important as random that the strategist Lysander, commander of the Spartan fleet, knew how to take advantage of: the coincidence that his fleet sailed in the vicinity of the beaches where the enemy fleet stranded to rest. I leave to the reader the pleasure of the brief and forceful description that Thucydides makes of the final event of this very long war, which exceeded the initial calculations of the contenders. Something similar happens with other initial moments of wars that are prolonged beyond the horizon foreseen by military strategists. I am referring for example to the First World War, or to the Second World War, where Barbarrosa's mistake is only equivalent in the European West to Napoleon's miscalculation both in the Iberian Peninsula and in Russia.

From a current perspective of firepower, and of the doctrines of use of the vectors of that power, we can say that there is not at the present time a technical advance such as to allow a victory in the Pacific basin in an overwhelming way of any potential adversary. The potential major contenders, both in the Pacific and in Eurasia, have sufficient nuclear capability to escalate at any time a direct conflict through even minimal fractions of their respective nuclear arsenals in such a way as to cause decisive damage. That is, damage to demographics and environmental resources of such magnitude that even an eventual winner in such an exchange would see its own socio-political and economic structure profoundly altered.

From this point of view, a conflict simulation exercise takes us back, as Henry Kisinguer is warning, to cold war scenarios, where the outcome of the nuclear conflict was described in the acronym of the scenario that generated the direct nuclear conflict: Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

So, can we locate the asymmetry of a direct nuclear conflict today in the Pacific or in Eurasia? Indeed, having reached the point of no return of the spiral towards extremes- sensu Clausewitz commented by R. Aaron- the use of  nuclear fire could hardly guarantee a complete annihilation of the opposing force in its entirety. Once again Mao's strategic intuition emerges forcefully in the sense that the demographic factor in such a conflict becomes a significant variable: the largest surviving population is the population that in the long term would gain the use of the territory, which is the central core of wars.

My personal impression is that the power or strength of the United States is far superior to that of China and Russia combined, but it is not an overwhelming superiority, like that of the Spaniards, English, French, Dutch or Belgians when they confronted and conquered immense colonized territories with few troops and weapons systems infinitely superior to those of the original inhabitants, whether native Americans, Asian or African. Thus, in the rapid course of an eventual confrontation, an asymmetric response on the part of Russia or China would be enough to generate a change of political regime in the American Federation, and ,or conversely, mostly in Russia than in China.

This potential asymmetrical tactical surprise can have profound strategic consequences, as has already occurred in the universal historical drama. For the German command, for example, there were two significant surprises during the war against the Allies: one purely military: the Russians were able to build huge numbers of tanks and had very important Western assistance at key moments. The other was purely geopolitical at two points in time: at the beginning of the war they miscalculated the reaction of France and the United Kingdom to the invasion of Poland, and at the end of the war they also failed to predict the time it would take for the Soviet Union to confront the Western bloc. They intuited it correctly but they were wrong in the fundamental matter of the Grand Strategy: the real, operative time of the events.

For the fundamental matter of the Grand Strategy is time, not space. 

Although, some military men have a tendency to think that the exercise of the strategic art is space, we think that there is already enough experience and knowledge to think that only time is the essential engine of the art, and this explains then that the asymmetric action has fundamental consequences in the definition of all strategic conflicts.

But we will continue with this in the near future because the times we live in are fertile for those of us who observe the events that precede human actions.

Igor Parra

un dia ventoso y oceánico oriental en Lebu y Vitacura

 Alejandría te recuerdo claramente

desnuda mientras avanzas hacia mi luminosa

aunque esa habitación egipcia fuera penumbra

y no tropezabas porque mi mano guia tu cuerpo

mientras espero en el borde del lino arrugado

tus piernas tus suavisimas piernas 

y mis manos se juntan a tus manos decididas

ansiosa tu por explorar con tu cuerpo algo nuevo

educada por cientos de años en la pasividad que aburre

hallas en mi un sacerdote que te adorará sentado

mirando tus muy inteligentes ojos

 antiguos bellísimos  y sabios

mientras te acomodas sobre mi con una sonrisa de luz

mientras enciendes nuestros labios

con tu suspiro de sorpresa 

quizás de asombro

mientras reacaes en mi y tu boca exhala

aquel sonido tan dulce como tus hombros y cuello 

pero no sé

no quiero saber con precisión que dijo tu primer gemido

porque saldría del ensueño en que me embargas aún 

linda y lejana Alejandría

 

Igor Parra en Vitacura

 una tarde egipcia de estudio y recuerdos

Ukraine, which is the most interesting move: the Euroasiatic (Russian) or the Western one ?

Ukraine and the next russian move

People interested in strategic games, at "grandeur nature", must rejoice and enjoy the particular Ukrainian stage, where many actors are playing what has been christened as an imminent war by some American analysts. My personal interest is centered on the most eastern region, that of China. Nevertheless, some common strategic lines seem to link the Ukrainian actors to those of the far eastern front .

Many times through the last 11 years of this very modest post, I have pointed out that from my very personal quarter the most important variable of strategy, with capital S, is Time. And from this particular point of view, the strategic world tale, being performed by USA, Russia, China, the EU and their corresponding satellites, is following multiple tension lines marked by the conscient use of time by both the euroasiatic and the asiatic players. 

Meanwhile the western side of the strategic equation concentrates merely on the control of spaces by Russians and Chinese, they are, quite probably, strategic worlds and times apart, working in a clever way on temporal lines of action. If I am not completely wrong we are witnessing a real big "classic" indirect approach, being the spatial channeling and  the temporal dilution of the American might the main goal. In this way it is possible to endure the asymmetrical difference between americans (and their western allies),on one side, and russians and chinese on the other. Actually, with a third of the american military strategic strength, the chinese and russians cope that clear power difference, at global scale.

 In this game, at these temporal and spatial scales, the most important thing for the non western side is the control of time, on the contrary the most important thing for the western side seems to be the control of space. A classic and conceptually close strategic paradox has been  explained already by Thucidides, commenting on the cause of the long conflict between Sparta and Athens, during the Peloponnesian War, some 2450 years ago. 

Some time ago I have written on this but I would let the kind readers to find it out by themselves. Again, at a closer scale the Ukrainian conflict seems to be a russian temporal-strategic exercise to accomplish a very limited spatial goal: to keep the control of the Donbas region where many ethnic russians live. The way to obtain this is throwing to the "air" a complete set of military desinformation, which always can bear in itself a dual life: to be or not to be true, and  whether it is true finally, the spatial prize could be a mere fraction of that imagined by the western side. 

This masking game using military electromagnetic signals is matching spatial movements which let the russian HQ to escalate at more than one main axis of progression the military forces. Whatever the final decision would be, they have installed in a notorious way a conceptual fog in the minds of both Ukrainian and western allies. This is in itself a previous nice prize, because they are not going toward the obvious goal: a massive russian attack.

 We will see in a short time the partial end of this very dangerous but interesting move.

 Igor Parra 

 en Vitacura Santiago de Chile

How to interpret the Marxist re-indoctrination of Chinese society right now? (Part Two)

 How to interpret the Marxist re-indoctrination of Chinese society in the 21st century?

Igor Parra

This commentary could occupy several chapters of a political-military essay, however we will limit it to the essential and the concise, the practical and the urgent. At some point, some of the kind readers, who read me in different countries, will realize what this hypothesis I am presenting below means in the short and medium term.

First of all, the stage has been set by Chinese President Xi Jinping himself and has been reported in the international press. Indeed the president declared the reintroduction of Marxism in the national education plans at different levels and grades. In some Western press it has been interpreted as a step towards the arteriosclerosis of the regime of the eighty-year-old leaders of the Asian country.

However, in the Asian press, in the countries neighboring China, there have been no excessively negative comments. What is most interesting from my point of view is that it is in the Vietnamese press where there is no trace of negative commentary, only a relative vacuum since they limit themselves to reproducing summaries of press agencies. At least in the newspapers and journals that we can access from the West via the web.

From a purely Asian, and especially Vietnamese, military strategy point of view, this reindoctrination could only mean that the Chinese leaders are deeply convinced that they will be attacked by a US-led alliance in the not too distant future. Perhaps no more than 5 years (the latter is a derivative of the main hypothesis).

Indeed, when the functioning of the communist armies is known, an aspect that has never been well understood in the West is the utmost importance of the political indoctrination of the troops at all levels of the military echelon. Otherwise it would be difficult to explain the Soviet Russian triumph not only in the Second World War but also in the civil war against the interventionism of all its near and remote neighbors. It would be equally difficult to understand the Vietnamese triumph over the Americans, and along the same logical line, that of the Vietnamese against the French and Japanese colonial power. Likewise, it would not be possible to understand the triumph of the Chinese communists over the Japanese invaders and the direct and frontal confrontation against the Americans in Korea.

The communist ideological component goes far beyond the classic indoctrination and morale of troops typical of Western armies, which has been practiced for several centuries, especially as a moral religious component, for example the text engraved in metal on the belts of German soldiers in various wars: Got mit Uns (God with us).

Who has written best about this in depth is the Vietnamese strategist Vo Nguyen Giap. The titles of his works clearly indicate the fundamental role given to Marxist ideology in the organization of anti-imperialist guerrilla warfare, whether Japanese, French or American. These texts on the one hand summarize the military writings of Marx himself, as well as those of other revolutionary thinkers, but they contribute a very characteristic vision of the relationship not only of the corps or combat echelon, whichever it may be, with coordination and strategic movement, something that Mao succeeds in synthesizing and improving in a notable way, but he adds a particular accentuation to the political relationship between the military political cadre and its own instrument of defense and attack. It is perhaps the best operational compilation of the enormous importance of the political education of a military cadre; its conclusion is that without deeply assimilated ideological content the enormous difficulty of modern warfare from the revolutionary camp cannot be executed in spite of any technologically superior military instrument or complex. Only political superiority operationally projects sufficient willpower to the body of combatants armed no longer with material weapons, but with conceptual weapons.

Having said the above, which is known to scholars of the political indoctrination of modern armies, it is worth proposing that we can interpret as a clear sign of readiness for war the fact that Chinese society activates its Marxist political indoctrination in a transversal way. This has several operational implications far greater than incorporating this or that aircraft carrier, or developing this or that super sonic missile system. 

If we read Mao and his best pupil Vo Nguyen Giap carefully, the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China is preparing for a new kind of revolutionary war. We will continue to comment on this in future posts. In the meantime, readers who lack a Vietnamese revolutionary military education would do well to start reading Vo Nguyen Giap very carefully.

pregunto por preguntar

 a flor de tiempo 

¿significa acaso a flor de piel?

que estés lejos

como lo siente mi piel encendida

y en mi alma la flor del tiempo impacienta

¿implica que estás ausente?

si el corazón del camino

que en el pecho llevo

 no se agita

¿quiere decir que morí

o que llegué ahí donde la flor del tiempo

florece?

cuando no respondes

es que me olvidaste

o el tiempo que pasé en los caminos

me enterró fuera de tu piel

y de tu hermoso corazón

que fue tantos años

los caminos

que caminé

con el alma en flor?

entonces 

¿aquí se quedará tu lozana presencia

en este recoveco de mi ruta

que es tu corazón?

¿seguiré queriendo caminar

a través de las claras auroras

tu presencias 

ya ausentes?

Quizás ya lejano

mi recuerdo mustio

se murió hace tiempo

incluso en la memoria

del siglo

Quizás ahora 

siga feliz

a pesar del olvido

¿Quizás gracias a él?

Igor Parra, entre Vitacura y Lebu

The Chinese Clock (Part One)

 The Chinese Clock (Part One): Mao's super synthesis

 I.

In line with my a-periodic commentaries on this blog about the situation in Egypt, the Middle East (Syria, Israel, Palestine, Turkey), I accentuate those sporadic analytical visits even further east. 

When we approach China we are imbued with a sense of entering a space where strategic thinking has been not only conceptualised but efficiently put into action, over several groups of hundreds of years summing up millennia, almost in a continuous way through time and space. There, the greatest strategic change emerged at Mao's death with the development of an unprecedented and far-reaching action, which was not initially understood in the West: the operational synthesis of successful Western capitalism with a local form of war communism, in fact a variant of the one triumphantly imposed by the Bolsheviks around 1922 on the ruins of the defeated Tsarist Empire, and on the defeated Western alliances to wipe out communism militarily.

II.

Mao conceived years before his death the fundamental theoretical principle used by the political-military leadership of the Chinese system during the post-Mao transition. This Maoist concept, his main contribution to political theory, is based on how to overcome the "classical" Hegelian, Marxist and Leninist debate on "reality". Until Mao, the highest level of the socio-economic historical process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis ended with "the change of reality" which arises from an organised political will, oriented towards the seizure of power in order to precisely "change the reality" of the living conditions of the population. Mao proposes something radically different, going beyond the classical synthesis, which he criticises as "weak": it is no longer enough to interpret reality, nor to change reality... but: a new reality must be created.

Thus, the successors of the "great helmsman" did not deepen the errors of the war communism practised by the Soviet Union and its satellites, for they did as their leader had written: the chinese did not reinterpret or change reality... they created another reality. They made the most innovative strategic synthesis since the Council of Nicea, 1694 years ago, when the Roman Empire converted to Christianity. The Maoist synthesis can be called the Super Synthesis because it surpasses the previous level of strategic analysis and practice. It was Mao's political adversary, Deng Xiaoping, who launched the experiment, but conceptually it was totally in line with the political-theoretical line that Mao had created. Thus, all political-military and civilian cadres of any rank were perfectly familiar with that part of Mao's theoretical legacy. In the West, only the few communists who had seriously read Mao understood the profound meaning of this concept, of this Super Synthesis, when the profound economic transformations in China began 10 years later. What was mistakenly seen from the West as the partial or complete westernisation of a communist regime, for millions of senior cadres, Chinese communist party militants and ordinary citizens, it was actually the creation of a new singular reality , not a mere change of reality. The gang of 4 belonged to the past with their criticism of this radically new policy for a new reality, they still were  about changing reality, thus they totally lost their ticket to the big scenario.

In the Western we tend to operate under pre Maoist rationales , just doing a simplistic kind of taxonomy when we say that the Chinese are just summing up capitalist market concepts and practices within a communist formal dictatorship. I dare to say that this is a weak analysis of what is really happening in China.

Igor Parra, Vitacura-Lebu 2021

¿"Guerra del Peloponeso" en ciernes: alguien gana o todos pierden?

 Lectura clásica del conflicto asimétrico en la cuenca del Pacífico y Eurasia

Igor Parra

Una reciente publicación hace el recuento del potencial militar clásico, de diferentes países para llegar a la conclusión que en el aire ganaría un eventual conflicto los Estados Unidos de América, en tierra la ganaría Rusia y en el mar lo haría China (https://www.military.direct/blogs/news/which-world-military-would-win-in-a-war). 

Este tipo de comparaciones carecen, desde mi punto de vista, de capacidad predictiva, pues no incorporan factores fundamentales en las ecuaciones estratégicas que, en ocasiones, permiten vislumbrar un ganador en conflictos armados de diferente escala. Tucidides, a quien he mencionado reiteradas veces en este blog desde 2010, nos alumbra  con su descripción detallada de la Guerra del Peloponeso, cuando nada más comenzar su narración, en el magnífico capitulo titulado "Arqueología" explica porqué la guerra entre Atenas y Esparta fué tan prolongada: ambas potencias tenían una capacidad decisiva en la esfera militar en la cual la otra no lo tenía. Es decir Esparta era omnipotente en los combates terrestres, como lo era en el mar Atenas.

Sin embargo , como recordaran los amables lectores, el final de la guerra la victoria de Esparta no se dió en "su esfera de poder" sino precisamente en la marítima, donde Atenas había tenido una aplastante superioridad no sólo de numero sino de calidad del recurso humano, desde la marinería hasta los estrategas que dirigían las operaciones navales. El factor decisivo de esa batalla naval final, en la desembocadura del río Egospótamos (Quersoneso)  fué la sorpresa táctica originada en un error táctico del estratega ateniense, sumado a un factor tan importante como aleatorio que supo aprovechar el estratega Lisandro, comandante de la flota espartana : la casualidad que su flota  navegase en las cercanías de las playas donde la flota enemiga varó para descansar. Dejo al lector el placer de la descripción breve y contundente que hace Tucidides del evento final de esta larguísima guerra, y que excedió los cálculos iniciales de los contendientes. Algo similar ocurre con otros momentos iniciales de guerras que se prolongan más allá del horizonte previsto por los estrategas militares. Me refiero por ejemplo a la Primera Guerra Mundial, o a la Segunda Guerra Mundial, donde el error de Barbarrosa sólo tiene equivalente en el occidente europeo al error de calculo de Napoleón tanto en la peninsula Ibérica como también en Rusia.

Desde una perspectiva actual de potencia de fuego, y de las doctrinas de uso de los vectores de esa potencia, podemos decir que no hay en el momento actual un avance técnico tal que permita una victoria en la cuenca del Pacifico de forma aplastante de ningún potencial adversario. Los potenciales principales contendientes, tanto en el Pacífico como en Eurasia, tienen la suficiente capacidad nuclear de escalar en cualquier momento un conflicto directo a través de fracciones incluso mínimas de sus respectivos arsenales nucleares de forma tal que causen un daño decisivo. Es decir un daño en la demografía y en los recursos ambientales de tal magnitud que incluso un eventual ganador en ese intercambio vería profundamente alterada su propia estructura socio política y económica.

Desde este punto de vista, un ejercicio de simulación de conflictos nos retrotrae, tal como está advirtiendo Henry Kisinguer, a escenarios de la guerra fría, donde el resultado del conflicto nuclear estaba descrito en el acrónimo del escenario que generaba el conflicto nuclear directo: Destrucción Mutua Asegurada (MAD en inglés). 

Así pues, ¿ podemos localizar la asimetría de un conflicto nuclear directo el día de hoy en el Pacífico o en Eurasia? En efecto, al llegar al punto de no retorno de la espiral hacia los extremos, sensu Clausewitz, el recurso al fuego nuclear difícilmente podría garantizar una completa aniquilación de la fuerza contraria en su totalidad. Una vez más emerge con fuerza la intuición estratégica de Mao en el sentido de que el factor demográfico, en un conflicto de ese tipo deviene una variable significativa: la mayor población que sobrevive es la población que en el largo plazo ganaría el uso del territorio, que es el núcleo central de las guerras.

Mi impresión personal es que la potencia o la fuerza de Estados Unidos es muy superior a la china y rusa sumadas, sin embargo no es una superioridad aplastante, como la de los españoles, ingleses, franceses, holandeses, o belgas al enfrentarse y conquistar inmensos territorios colonizados con poca tropa y sistemas de armas infinitamente superiores a la de los habitantes originarios, ya americanos, asiáticos o africanos. Así, en el transcurso rápido de un eventual enfrentamiento bastará una respuesta asimétrica por parte rusa o china para generar un cambio de regimen político en la Federación americana, que incluso en caso de una probable victoria militar, total o parcial por parte de ellos, les signifique un cambio del escenario politico democrático del país. 

Esa potencial sorpresa táctica asimétrica puede tener consecuencias estratégicas profundas, tal como ya ha ocurrido en el drama histórico universal. Para el mando alemán, por ejemplo, hubieron dos sorpresas significativas durante la guerra contra los aliados: una puramente militar: los rusos fueron capaces de construir enormes cantidades de tanques y contaron con una ayuda occidental muy importante en momentos clave. La otra puramente geopolítica en dos momentos: al inicio de la guerra calcularon mal la reacción de Francia y del Reino Unido a la invasión de Polonia, y al finalizar la guerra tampoco acertaron en la previsión de los tiempos que tardaría la union soviética en enfrentarse al bloque occidental. Lo intuyeron correctamente pero se equivocaron en la materia fundamental de la Gran Estrategia: el tiempo real, operativo, de los eventos. 

Porque la materia fundamental de la Gran Estrategia es el tiempo no el espacio. Algunos militares tienen tendencia a pensar que el ejercicio del arte estratégico es el espacio, pero ya hay suficiente experiencia y conocimiento para pensar que es únicamente el tiempo el motor esencial del arte, y ésto explica entonces que la acción asimétrica tenga consecuencias fundamentales en la definición de todos los conflictos estratégicos.

Pero de esto continuaremos próximamente porque los tiempos que corren son fértiles para los que observamos los eventos que preceden a las acciones humanas.

Vale.

viento del sur en la ciudad

 HOY DIA VENTOSO 

una falda azul claro

el viento sureño

levantó

en la esquina de Teatinos con Alameda

Treinta o más obreros 

atentos al revuelo

de la tela color cielo

y de las piernas que la izaban

y de la cintura que la sujetaba

silbaron 

y sonreimos alegres

todos

los caminantes de la calle

Porque sepan ustedes que

aún 

en esta sureña ciudad que fué inca

y española

aún 

la sangre hierve 

en primaveras ventosas

a los hombres 

que tienen manos duras

callosas

y que las hembras de este tierra

sonrien coquetas

cuando el "sureño"

encajonado entre los edificios

las obliga a caminar

sujetando la tela 

a sus cuerpos cimbreantes

Aún hoy 

hay gentes que miramos

sorprendidas

las altas montañas 

que nos separan del mar

por el poniente

y las que por levante

nos alejan

imponentes

y hermosas

de las lejanas y fertiles pampas

del otro lado andino

A pesar del ruido

y de tanto edificio especulado

de los carabineros

 persiguiendo estudiantes

de la gente indiferente

del ciego miserable que sopla una flauta

de los mendigos extraviados

en mitad del hiperconsumo

aún hoy

toda esta piedra y cemento urbano

se humaniza

cuando el viento austral

levanta faldas

y hay hombres y mujeres

que se alegran

por ello

Pavlov se desvanece

 imagine una habitación desconocida

de la que nunca sabrá dónde estaba

porque no puede ver por esa venda amarrada

a la cabeza

Tiene dos objetos metálicos en los ojos

la música estridente 

no acalla sus alaridos

durante horas de estallidos luminosos

en cascada

y su lengua lengua seca

cada vez más seca

El tiempo lo mide usted, 

señor

por la música que usa durante el interrogatorio

decenas de preguntas

no hay dialogo

preguntas y castigo

castigo y castigo

para preguntas

sin excusas 

sin preguntas

Pero hay una y una sola que rescato

hoy aqui frente a usted 

señor

se la transcribo quitando menciones a mi madre

y amenazas a mis hermanos, padre y familia 

le ahorro molestias a la audiencia

Su pregunta era ésta

¿Porqué se solidarizan con Vietnam?

¿Qué te importan a tí esos desgraciados?

¿Qué se te perdió allá?

¿Qué te importan los bombardeos y los que se mueren de hambre?

Por cierto 

señor

olvidaba recordarle que eso pasó en octubre del 74, 

en Santiago

 allá lejos de acá.

Hace 44 años esa fue una de sus  meras preguntas  entre  muchas otras 

Su protocolo indicaba castigo para quebrarme 

con dolor 

 y a tener miedo

 a palabras

a simples palabras como solidaridad, 

amistad, 

señor,

pues anunciaban la inmediata descarga eléctrica

para torturar a una mera persona de 15 años

Pero ahora que voy a morir 

me gustaría responderle,

 señor,

a lo que decenios atrás usted no me dió tiempo 

 señor

Pues mire usted aquellas las preguntas urgentes

las preguntas importantes ya no lo son

tienen menos importancia menos peso que un suspiro de colibrí

en cambio las otras

las del banal ablandamiento físico y sicológico

siguen explicando 

y seguirán explicando todo 

para las multitudes cariñosas 

que lo asustan,

 señor,

sí que le asustan a usted y a sus mandantes

a sus amos

pues son tantas y tan simples

las cosas maravillosas

que usted 

no entiende,

señor.

BOSQUE OSCURO PIRENAICO

 BOSQUE OSCURO 

donde yazgo feliz

 tu cúpula 

lejana

sostenida por cientos de altos pilares vegetales

filtra luces ensombrecidas

que me guían

hacia tus limites 

hacia la normalidad de la urbe

Camino 

por tus caminos en flor

y oigo atento

tu movimiento ramoso

Porque intentas  enredar

 mis cabellos

y mis ropas 

y a tus aves de canto verde

las escucho 

gorgojear 

que me pierden

al desbordar 

con su silbo

en tus verdes bóvedas 

enmaderadas y enmohecidas

retumbar con ecos blandos

de madera mojada

En esta noche oscura

ceso la marcha sobre tu hojarasca ruidosa

y me asiento 

en viejos troncos 

a escuchar el canto insistente

del ruiseñor enamorado

y miro con ojos cerrados

al fondo de tus abismos

infinitos

en los que antaño 

encontré reunidos y rebeldes

a mis sueños 

todos

El amanecer me iluminará

desnudo en tus fríos arroyos

veloces y sonoros

vivo aún

con el seso despierto

y avido de salir de tu cúpula

que me oculta al anochecer

el bello cuerpo estrellado de Isis

Pero 

volveré una y otra vez

pues en ti

oh gran bosque oscuro

veo a veces

claramente reflejada

a lo lejos

mis sombras viajeras

ya reposadas

y

llenas de respuestas

a las preguntas

que traigo 

en manojos sangrantes.