Warlord Economics

I was asked about this tweet, if this was a fair summary, and my response got too long for twitter, so posting it here.

If you’ve ever wondered how conflict economics work, here is the down and dirty version after seeing it from the ground level on several continents over the years.

I can see the perspective, and agree that the US shouldn’t be involved in what Israel is doing. There is no upside for us and only downside. But not being involved and enforcing the RBO or International Law are two different things.

Enforcement always comes down to someone imposing their will through violence on another.

At first you can ask someone, then you tell them, then you sanction them, but when that doesn’t work, and it never works entirely since there is always someone who will buy at a discount, everything has a price relative to risk/reward at some point, then if you are determined to make them comply, you have to make them through violence.

For violence to work, the country/entity/person enforcing the rules has to be fully committed to wielding a level of violence that makes the other side feel having your will enforced on them is less painful than them continuing to resist your will.

Violence is about gaining compliance by breaking the other side’s will, it has nothing to do with their physical means of fighting. You are embarking on an endeavor to break them emotionally and mentally as a person, people, or nation.

The ultimate example of this was the US dropping atomic bombs on Japan. We not only broke an ancient empire which had never been conquered by a foreign power in their entire history. We broke their future generations ability to even mentally comprehend waging a war against us ever again.

Japan went from dudes committing seppuku to avoid the dishonor of defeat in 1945 to kids unable to take a picture in 1985 without flashing the peace sign while they wore Levi jeans.

Think about that level of breakage. I used to when my US warship was sitting in the same drydock where the Yamato was built in World War II. I never reacted when an old Japanese dude threw a shoulder into me when I was in a Tokyo train station.

I felt empathy for them. I would hope I would still be as proud to do the same if the positions were reversed. Imagine losing all your friends, your empire, the level of sacrifice those guys gave, and it was all for nothing.

You lost everything and now your grandkids are wearing your enemies clothes, speaking their language, flashing peace signs, and your enemies grandkids are walking around your country like I own it.

The national willpower, human cost, and treasure that it took to mentally and emotionally break them is hard to comprehend.

This isn’t a unique situation, people are pretty much the same around the world, human nature is a constant.

Watch the Battle of Algiers movie from 1966 to see the level of will required to win a counterinsurgency against a civilian population. But even then, it only worked for a time before the national French will required to exert their will on Algeria faded away.

This is what Israel is currently doing against Gaza and they know they are on the clock. They have limited time to break the will of the Palestinians before the will of their own people and the international will to support the level of violence required fades.

This is also why I think the US strikes in Yemen and the blood thirsty calls by ancient politicians to strike Iran who are risking nothing and should be in an old folks homes instead of clinging to power like Skeletor at Castle Grayskull is such a joke.

The US national will to exert the level of violence required against either of them to win is not there.

There is zero point to having aircraft carriers when the public is not committed to the level of violence necessary to make the Houthis stop.

The Houthis can take more pain than we are willing to deliver since that is all they’ve known for last decade.

Americans can’t even take living without air conditioning, Houthis are having missiles and bombs dropped on their heads while wearing flip flops in 120 degree heat and chanting bring the pain while they keep launching missiles.

No amount of ordnance dropped on them is going to break dudes who have had tens of thousands of bombs dropped on them by Saudi Arabia.

We’re going to have to brutally break them in their homes, in front of their families, at the point of a rifle, and the US doesn’t have the willpower to do it, which I think is a good thing.

I don’t want an American kid who is an E-3 making $2,600/month dying for Israeli foreign policy.

My friends and I catching a bullet while we make as much of the Vice President of the United States as essentially privateers for the US, fighting under the flag for the bag, is an entirely different story. We know the job, risk, and what we signed up for.

But wanting to send our best kids back to the Middle East, with the same shitty leadership that lost the last war and suffered no consequences for their failure, when the nation doesn’t have the will to win is sickening.

Fuck our politicians and anyone else wanting to do it.

I’m not alone in feeling this way.

People in the system keep telling me how mighty we are if we could only fight in Ukraine instead of advising or how I’m missing the point in the Red Sea, or why defending Taiwan is feasible, and I’m like no, all of you are wrong.

Get out of your SCIF or cubicle, quit watching memes on Twitter about past glory, and quit believing what you are briefed by someone who has massaged the intel to be politically palatable to the reality in DC.

Go see it on the ground for yourself. You’ll see what I’m seeing.

Any strength that can’t be used politically is not a strength at all because violence first and foremost is a battle of wills and the US doesn’t have the will to level the force required.

That should be obvious to anyone looking at our recent record.

We left Afghanistan, are pretty much gone from Iraq, and would pull out of Iraq and Syria completely if politicians could find a way to do it. We lost in Ukraine, but that was a lost cause from the start, simple logistics. To believe a country with no industrial war base left who had to fly all supplies half way around the world to supply a hodge podge army was going to beat an army with an industrial war base and single supply chain, all moving by rail was super fucking dumb.

Hell, I’m getting ready to go on a 90 day TDY to a failed state where the mission brief states we’re only there because it isn’t politically advantageous for us to leave.

The amount of fakery happening, simply so the optics stay somewhat good and people in the US don’t see how the world has changed is amazing.

It is great for me and my bros, chaos equals cash for us. Things are bad so business is good, but that isn’t good for the US.

Just look at the Red Sea, where we can’t hide we don’t have a real answer to the ballistic missile threat the Houthis are leveling at us.

We’re idiots if we don’t think Iran and China are gathering all the real world data being gained in theater against naval targets to improve their own ballistic missile defense doctrine.

That British tanker on fire is a powerful image. Is the Houthi ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance) great?

Not necessarily. But is it good enough? Fuck yes.

The message is clear, the only nations that transit the Red Sea are the countries the Houthis decide, and there is nothing the United States can do. We cannot even adequately protect our own ships off their shores because the US Navy is now in a game where anything less than a 100% success rate is a failure and the Houthis only need a 1% success rate to win.

Imagine that ship on fire is a US ship.

Armchair Warlord has an excellent post on how two US merchant ships, escorted by a US destroyer tried to make the run and turned around after a missile got through the destroyer’s defense shield.

And the west can’t say much about it since we’re the ones who started proxy ISTAR in Ukraine targeting Russian assets.

Complaining that Iran is now doing the same with the Houthis only makes us look like weak pussies. If you’re going to live by the sword, don’t beg for mercy when someone starts swinging a sword back at you.

We are ignoring the future of ballistic missile threats at our own peril like we did the future of drone warfare from what happened in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 2020 and did nothing to prepare.

Many are focused on how US Navy owns the maritime energy supply line for China. Why wouldn’t China start putting anti-ship ballistic missile batteries along their naval network based on how the Houthis are doing?

As for international law vs RBO (Rules Based Order), international law as it is now with UN, WHO, etc won’t survive without RBO. They are western constructs and US will never be beholden to them. The puppet doesn’t tell the puppeteer what to do.

If the world wants to live by international law, they’ll have to build it and fund it themselves and stop coming to the UN in New York, which is why I try to keep tabs on what BRICS is doing.

For international organizations that operate under international law, after being in war zones and conflict zones for over a decade, a lot of conflicts would be unsustainable without the international community.

Here is how they work at the ground level.

A warlord starts a conflict. He has an entire army that needs supplies, food, medicine and money to keep their loyalty.

Where does he get these things?

By making international organizations pay a tax to get goods to the people he is killing.

The warlord first lets the international media in to cover the conflict he is waging. The media tells the world of the bad things happening.

Everyone 5,000 miles away in the first world sees what he is doing, is outraged, and wants to do something.

They don’t know that their very natural human reaction to help others is being used against them by a finely tuned machine.

The entire process of conflict economics is designed to keep people emotionally exhausted, poorer, and easier to control.

Celebrities in bowties, vapid people to their core who love to be told what humanitarians they are donate to NGOs, become ambassadors and get their pictures taken at galas.

NGO’s then get additional funding from western governments and go into these conflict zones carrying food, supplies, and medicine in and help refugees get out, which of course become a further burden on the west.

The fraud, waste, and abuse is bad. Read USAid OIG reports if you don’t believe me, billions went missing in Syria and other places, no one was held responsible. It is all a racket.

Why does this happen?

Western NGO workers can’t go to the worst places where the aid is needed, they rely on local implementing partners to take the aid into the conflict zone.

This is where the Warlord keeps his army funded and loyal.

He sets up checkpoints on all the roads and controls the flow of supplies.

The small amount of aid that actually reach those who need it is after the warlord takes a cut to supply his army, and another cut to sell on the black market to the very same people he is persecuting at astronomical prices.

The western NGO local implementing partners also have families, and the first law in conflict is you take care of your own family first, so they steal from the NGOs too and report supplies stolen. In reality they are selling supplies on the black market.

How do I know all this?

My men and I were blown up in Afghanistan with fertilizer bought by a western NGO with US taxpayer dollars in Pakistan. The high nitrogen content fertilizer that some dipshit NGO bought, not realizing high nitrogen content fertilizer was perfect for making huge vehicle borne IEDs was reported stolen west of the Khyber Pass.

In actuality it was likely sold by an implementing partner into the terrorist network, mixed into a 5,000 truck bomb in a dude’s backyard and driven into my camp. I medevaced 54 of my guys and will never be the same from a TBI.

Nothing like being blown up by your own tax dollars.

So after a warlord takes a cut of all these supplies and implementing partners steal some more, just enough supplies get through so the humanitarian crisis continues.

After all, how many conflicts are actually won?

Almost none, that isn’t a mistake. You don’t want to kill the goose that keeps laying golden eggs for warlords, western NGOs, intelligence agencies, and politicians.

The only people not winning from conflict economics are western taxpayers paying for all this shit and getting inundated with refugees driving housing prices up and labor costs down, the poor E-3s getting TBIs in Iraq, and the civilian population getting raped and murdered so conflict economics can continue as all those entities above keep enriching themselves.

In case you’re wondering where the Warlord is putting his profits, that is going into real estate and other assets in safe jurisdictions facilitated by western intelligence agencies who approach the warlord to fight as a proxy against groups they want smoked, most often affiliated with competing nations, to further their own career ambitions.

The conflict continues, with everyone getting paid, the media, international organizations, NGOs, the warlord, western intelligence agencies, and western defense companies.

This is why you see no accountability for top military leadership for failures and why politicians are eagerly calling for escalation whenever they can. Politicians are getting pad by western defense companies, and top military leadership all want to retire and then get a nice comfy retirement job in the sector.

So don’t believe the bullshit about escalation with Iran over three dead service members. That is classic sunk cost fallacy. We shouldn’t even be there, and anyone calling for escalation has their own interest in mind. They do not care about honor, or you, your family, or your country.

And all of this is not to denigrate the hardworking NGO personnel on the ground who genuinely are trying to help people in conflict zones.

They are cannon fodder. Most that I have known seem to either be gay dudes or women, not really sure why it skews that way, but it seems to based on personal experience. They go places I would never go without a gun, a team, ISR support and a quarter million a year.

Then when things go bad, we leave them to get gangraped if they’re women, or raped with a coke bottle in the ass if they’re a dude until it breaks and they die horrible deaths, which is never covered in the media that helps perpetuate all this continuing. If I have daughters they will never be allowed anywhere near an NGO.

So for me, there is no difference between the RBO or international law at the ground level currently, but we’ll see what the future holds.

See you out there, Radigan