To All,
Good Wednesday Morning April 19 2023
A bit of history and some interesting tidbits
Regards,
Skip
Admin note
If some of you were Windmillers you can ignore the note inviting Dutch's Windmillers to join the List. If you start receiving 2 Lists let me know and I will get it fixed.
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This day in Naval and Marine Corps History April 19 1848 On This Day
1917
The U.S. Naval Armed Guard crew on board SS Mongolia engages and damages a German U-boat, the first engagement against the enemy after declaration of war on April 6.
1920
The first German submarine brought to the United States after World War I arrives at New York. During World War I, U 111 sank three Allied merchant vessels that included the British steamer Boscastle on April 7, 1918. The submarine surrendered later that year.
1945
USS Buckley (DE 51) and USS Reuben James (DE 153) sink the German submarine U-879 southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
1955
USS Albany (CA 123) and USS William Wood (DD 715) begin providing disaster relief to citizens of Volos, Greece, following a catastrophic earthquake.
1960
The Grumman A2F-1 Intruder makes its first flight. The Intruder receives the designation of A-6A in 1962, and upon entering service in 1963, becomes the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps principle all weather/night attack aircraft.
1997
USS The Sullivans (DDG 68) is commissioned at Staten Island, N.Y. The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer is the second Navy ship named after the five Sullivan brothers who died when USS Juneau (CL 52) was sunk shortly after the Battle of Guadalcanal Nov. 13, 1942.
2017
The Cyclone-class patrol coastal ship USS Zephyr (PC 8), its embarked U.S. Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) personnel and coalition forces pursue and board a small fishing vessel, called a panga, and interdict 750 kilograms of cocaine with a total street value of $22.5 million.
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This day in World History
April 19
1539 Emperor Charles V reaches a truce with German Protestants at Frankfurt, Germany.
1689 Residents of Boston oust their governor, Edmond Andros.
1764 The English Parliament bans the American colonies from printing paper money.
1775 The American Revolution begins as fighting breaks out at Lexington, Massachusetts.
1782 The Netherlands recognizes the United States.
1794 Tadeusz Kosciuszko forces the Russians out of Warsaw.
1802 The Spanish reopen New Orleans port to American merchants.
1824 English poet Lord George Gordon Byron dies of malaria at age 36 while aiding Greek independence.
1861 The Baltimore riots result in four Union soldiers and nine civilians killed.
1861 President Abraham Lincoln orders a blockade of Confederate ports.
1880 The Times war correspondent telephones a report of the Battle of Ahmed Khel, the first time news is sent from a field of battle in this manner.
1927 In China, Hankow communists declare war on Chiang Kai-shek.
1934 Shirley Temple appears in her first movie.
1938 General Francisco Franco declares victory in the Spanish Civil War.
1939 Connecticut finally approves the Bill of Rights.
1943 The Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazi rule begins.
1960 Baseball uniforms begin displaying player's names on their backs.
1971 Russia launches its first Salyut space station.
1977 Alex Haley receives a special Pulitzer Prize for his book Roots.
1982 NASA names Sally Ride to be the first woman astronaut.
1989 The battleship USS Iowa's number 2 turret explodes, killing sailors.
1993 The FBI ends a 51-day siege by storming the Branch Davidian religious cult headquarters in Waco, Texas.
1995 A truck bomb explodes in front of the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
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ROLLING THUNDER REMEMBERED Thanks to the Bear … Bear🇺🇸⚓️🐻
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER (1965-1968)…
From the archives of rollingthunderremembered.com post
Skip… For The List for Wednesday, 19 April 2023… Bear🇺🇸⚓️🐻
OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER (1965-1968)…
From the archives of rollingthunderremembered.com post for 19 April 1968… Strauss and Howe (1997): THE FOURTH TURNING, "America feels like it is unraveling."
This following work accounts for every fixed wing loss of the Vietnam War and you can use it to read more about the losses in The Bear's Daily account. Even better it allows you to add your updated information to the work to update for history…skip
Vietnam Air Losses
Access Chris Hobson and Dave Lovelady's work at: https://www.VietnamAirLosses.com.
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Some other bits of history for this date
1775 – At about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town's common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment's hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the "shot heard around the world" was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun. By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from England to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against the Patriot arsenal at Concord and capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington. The Boston Patriots had been preparing for such a military action by the British for some time, and upon learning of the British plan, Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes were ordered to set out to rouse the militiamen and warn Adams and Hancock. When the British troops arrived at Lexington, Adams, Hancock, and Revere had already fled to Philadelphia, and a group of militiamen were waiting. The Patriots were routed within minutes, but warfare had begun, leading to calls to arms across the Massachusetts countryside. When the British troops reached Concord at about 7 a.m., they found themselves encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots. They managed to destroy the military supplies the Americans had collected but were soon advanced against by a gang of minutemen, who inflicted numerous casualties. Lieutenant Colonel Frances Smith, the overall commander of the British force, ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans. As the British retraced their 16-mile journey, their lines were constantly beset by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. At Lexington, Captain Parker's militia had its revenge, killing several British soldiers as the Red Coats hastily marched through his town. By the time the British finally reached the safety of Boston, nearly 300 British soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties. The battles of Lexington and Concord were the first battles of the American Revolution, a conflict that would escalate from a colonial uprising into a world war that, seven years later, would give birth to the independent United States of America.
1951 – Gen. Douglas MacArthur, relieved of his command by President Truman, bid farewell to Congress.
"I am closing my 52 years of military service. When I joined the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams. The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that 'old soldiers never die; they just fade away.'
"And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty.
"Good Bye."
1995 – A massive explosion at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, kills 168 people and injures hundreds more. The bomb, contained in a Ryder truck parked outside the front of the building, went off at 9:02 a.m. as people were preparing for the workday. Among the victims of America's worst incident of domestic terrorism were 19 children who were in the daycare center on the first floor of the building. A little over an hour after the explosion, Oklahoma state trooper Charles Hangar pulled over a car without license plates in the town of Perry. Noticing a bulge in the driver's jacket, Hangar arrested the driver, Timothy McVeigh, and confiscated his concealed gun. McVeigh was held in jail for gun and traffic violations. Meanwhile, a sketch of the man who was seen driving the Ryder truck in Oklahoma City was distributed across the country. On April 21, Hangar saw the sketch and managed to stop McVeigh's impending release. When investigators looked into McVeigh's background, they quickly learned that he had ties to militant right-wing groups and was particularly incensed by the Branch Davidian incident in Waco, Texas. The Oklahoma City bomb exploded exactly two years after David Koresh and his followers were killed in the federal government's raid of the cult compound. Soon, three friends of McVeigh-Terry and James Nichols, and Michael Fortier-were also arrested for their involvement in the bombing. McVeigh and Terry Nichols had gone through basic training together after joining the Army on the same day in 1988. Although Nichols was discharged in 1989, McVeigh had served in Operation Desert Storm before quitting the Army when he was rejected for the Special Forces course. Acquaintances of McVeigh knew that he was obsessed with a book called The Turner Diaries, a fictional account of a race war caused by right-wing extremists in the United States. The book begins with the bombing of the FBI headquarters. McVeigh also told his sister Jennifer that he planned on doing "something big" in April 1995. With Nichols and Fortier's assistance, McVeigh assembled a bomb that contained nearly 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and racing fuel. After Fortier testified against his former friend, McVeigh was convicted in June 1997. The jury imposed a death sentence. Terry Nichols was convicted of being an accessory to the mass murder, and he received a life sentence. On June 11, 2001, McVeigh was put to death by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, the first federal death penalty to be carried out since 1963.
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Fun Quiz and Pilot Quotes
Thanks to Jerry ... AND Dr. Rich
There are only nine questions:
This is a quiz for people who know everything!
I found out in a hurry that I didn't. These are not trick questions.
They are straight questions with straight answers.
1. Name the one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends.
2. What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?
3. Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted.
4. What fruit has its seeds on the outside?
5. In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bottle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bottle is genuine, and it hasn't been cut in any way. How did the pear get
inside the bottle?
6. Only three words in standard English begin with the letters 'dw and they are all common words. Name two of them.
7. There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least half of them?
8. Name the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.
9. Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the letter 'S.'
Scroll down for the answers.
Answers To Quiz:
1. The one sport in which neither the spectators nor theparticipants know the score or the leader until the contest ends: Boxing.
2. North American landmark constantly moving backward: Niagara Falls.
The rim is worn down about two and a half feet each year because of the millions of gallons of water that rush over it every minute.
3. Only two vegetables that can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons: Asparagus and rhubarb.
What about bell peppers (if kept from freezing) and parsnips?
4. The fruit with its seeds on the outside: Strawberry.
5. How did the pear get inside the brandy bottle? It grew inside the bottle. The bottles are placed over pear buds when they are small, and are wired in place on the tree. The bottle is left in place for the entire growing season. When the pears are ripe, they are snipped off at the stems.
6. Three English words beginning with dw: Dwarf, dwell and dwindle... Some dweeb sent this to me.
7. Fourteen punctuation marks in English grammar: Period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation mark, brackets, parenthesis,
braces, and ellipses.
8. The only vegetable or fruit never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form but fresh: Lettuce.
9. Six or more things you can wear on your feet beginning with 'S': Shoes, socks, sandals, sneakers, slippers, skis, skates, snowshoes,
stockings, stilts.
(Being an aviation fan, I love this first section!)
MILITARY WORDS OF WISDOM
"If the enemy is in range, so are you."
Infantry Journal
"It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed." U.S. Air Force Manual
"Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons."
- General MacArthur
"You, you, and you .... Panic. The rest of you, come with me."
- U.S. Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt.
"Tracers work both ways."
- U.S. Army Ordnance
"Five second fuses only last three seconds."
- Infantry Journal
"Any ship can be a minesweeper....Once."
"Never tell the Platoon Sergeant you have nothing to do."
- Unknown Marine Recruit
Clean it, if it's Dirty.
Oil it, if it Squeaks.
But: Don't Screw with it if it Works!
USAF Electronic Technician
"If you see a bomb technician running, keep up with him."
USAF - Ammo Troop
"Yea, Though I Fly Through the Valley of Death ,
I Shall Fear No Evil.
For I am at 80,000 Feet and Climbing."
"You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3.."
- Paul F. Crickmore ( test pilot, SR-71 )
A Navigator's Definition of Latitude & Longitude:
Latitude is Where We are Lost, & Longitude is How Long We've been Lost There!
USAF Navi-guesser
"The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire."
"If the wings are travelling faster than the fuselage, it's probably a helicopter -- however, it's probably unsafe in any case "
"When one engine fails on a twin-engine air plane, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash."
"What is the similarity between air traffic controllers and pilots?
If a pilot screws up, the pilot dies;
If ATC screws up, .... The pilot dies."
The three most common expressions (or famous last words), in aviation are:
"Why is it doing that?"
"Where are we?"
and
"Oh Sh..t!"
"Airspeed, altitude and brains.
Two out of three are needed to successfully complete the flight."
"Mankind has a perfect record in aviation.
We never left one up there!"
"Flying the air plane is more important than radioing your plight to a person on the ground who is incapable of understanding or doing anything about it."
"The Piper Cub is the safest air plane in the world; it can just barely kill you."
- Attributed to Max Stanley (Northrop test pilot)
"There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm in peacetime."
- Sign over squadron ops desk at Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ, 1970
"If something hasn't broken on your helicopter, it's about to."
Heard muttered by Dale Woods!
"You know that your landing gear is up and locked
When it takes FULL power to taxi to the terminal."
As the test pilot climbs out of the experimental aircraft, having torn off the wings and tail in the crash landing, the crash truck arrives; the rescuer sees a bloodied pilot and asks, "What happened?" The pilot's reply: "Beats me, I just got here myself."
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The Depopulation Bomb
Thanks to Mud
This is an article I found to be of great interest. It made me wish I could live long enough to see how it plays out.
S/F,
- Mud
The Depopulation Bomb
Joel Kotkin
Today, the spectre haunting the global order is not communism, as Marx predicted, but seemingly relentless demographic decline. We can already see its consequences in everything from the fight over pensions in France to the persistent labour shortages across almost all the high-income world. In the future, a lack of human labour is also likely to accelerate a shift towards automation, reshaping economic and political conflict for decades to come.
The world's population has long been growing on an upward curve. About 75 per cent of the world's population growth has occurred over the past 100 years, more than 50 per cent of it since 1970. But now, according to the United Nations, population growth is on course to drop to near zero, especially in more developed nations. Globally, last year's total population growth was the smallest in half a century. By 2050 it is estimated that some 61 countries are expected to experience population declines.
A majority of the world already lives in countries with fertility rates well below the replacement level (2.1 births per woman) – the level, that is, at which a country's population would remain steady. By 2050, UN data suggests 75 per cent of countries will have fertility rates below replacement level. Some UN demographic projections now contemplate that world population could peak in 2086, with the global population about one billion below today's level by 2100. Ours will become a rapidly ageing planet. In 1970, the median world age was 20.3 years. By 2020, it had increased to 29.7 years, and it is expected to be 42.3 years in 2100.
It's no longer a question of if, but when global populations will start to decline. We are entering a new epoch, defined by the first large population declines since medieval times. A series of plagues halved Europe's population between 1346 and 1460. The primary causes today are not war or disease, however, but social evolution, including the decline of the family and religion, as well as diminished economic opportunity and a soaring cost of living. Most rich countries have to contend with birth rates well below the replacement rate. Japan, which has a fertility rate consistently 50 per cent below replacement, is likely to see its population drop from 126 million in 2021 to under 90 million by 2065. Indeed, last year, Japan recorded twice as many deaths as births.
Similarly, Europe's population growth has been tapering for a generation. European fertility rates fell from 16.4 babies born for every 1,000 persons in 1970, to 9.1 in 2020. Last year the UK's birthrate also hit a record low, with fertility rates for women under 30 at their lowest levels since records began in 1938. A fifth of all British women are now childless by middle-age.
The decline in fertility rates has also been evident in North America, traditionally a bastion of stronger demographic growth. US population growth, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, has fallen to the lowest rate in peacetime since America's founding. China's birthrate has also cratered, causing its workforce to shrink by 41million – equal to the entire German workforce – in just the past three years. And it's now slated to drop by a further 20 per cent by 2050. Over the past few decades, fertility has dropped precipitously across east Asia, including in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore.
This demographic decline is already reshaping the world economy. As economist John Maynard Keynes warned as early as 1937, the 'chaining up of the one devil', overpopulation, 'may, if we are careless, only serve to loose another still fiercer and more intractable' – the devil of demographic decline. The US population aged between 16 and 64 grew by 21 per cent during the 1980s, but in the 2010s grew by less than three per cent – shrinking as a proportion of the population. Consultancy Korn Ferry projects a deficit of at least six million workers in the US by 2028. Even greater declines in the workforce can be seen in the UK, the EU and east Asia.
The shrinking of the labour force combined with growing numbers of the elderly is already generating political unrest. Take the widespread protests over pensions in France. Strikingly, it's not the elderly who are protesting, sometimes violently, on the streets, or failing to collect garbage. The protests are driven by working-class voters who are themselves a decade or two from retirement. While more than the 63 per cent of the total population favour the protests, more remarkable still is that 71 per cent of those aged 18-24 are in favour. They fear that they will lose the secure retirement that was once considered a natural right in France's statist economy.
French president Emmanuel Macron has justified lifting the pension-qualifying age from 62 to 64 by pointing to the fact that France's retirement population is due to rise from its current level of 16 million to 21 million by 2050. Other countries, like Germany, are confronting the new demographics both by raising taxes as well as raising the pension age. Other countries across the OECD will be faced with similar dilemmas.
These trends will impact both the current economic superpowers, America and China. America's social-security system is on track to be depleted by 2034. In 1970, there were 18.7 persons aged over 65 for every 100 of working age, but this has increased to 26.4 in 2022. The UN projects it to increase to 57.1 by 2100 if constant rates of fertility continue. China, which once boasted a huge, growing and youthful population, has seen its labour force decline since the 1990s, and it will be fully a third smaller again by 2035. The senior population in China is expected to have more than tripled by 2050, one of the most rapid demographic shifts in history.
Clearly, it's time to turn the page on biologist Paul Ehrlich's long-standing prediction that humanity is doomed to 'breed ourselves to extinction'. In the coming decades, many of humanity's challenges will likely be products of depopulation, not overpopulation, including a brewing generational conflict between a generally prosperous older generation and its more hard-pressed successors. The erosion of young people's input, notes economist Gary Becker, also tends to slow the rate of innovation.
In an ageing, slow-growth world, young people are clearly disadvantaged. Indeed, most in the high-income world believe the next generation will be less well-off than the current one. In virtually every high-income country, notes Pew, the vast majority of parents – 80 per cent in Japan and over 70 per cent in the US – are pessimistic about the financial future of their offspring. Young people have a similarly negative outlook, including in the US. Understandably so, given that for initially middling earners, the chance of moving to the top rungs of the earnings ladder over a lifetime has dropped by approximately 20 per cent since the early 1980s.
Resentment of the Baby Boomer generation in particular (born 1946-1964) is likely to only increase, as it is set to hold the most wealth in the US until well into the 2030s. Remarkably, Boomers, many of whom are well into their 70s at least, now account for almost two in five new homes bought in the US – more than Millennials (born 1981-1996) and many more than Generation Z (born 1997-2013).
This alienated young generation is likely to be more radical and less tolerant than the one raised with the expectation of expanding opportunity. Already, barely half of voters for the Democratic Party, the dominant party among Millennials, believe that hard work actually pays off. And as political scientist Yascha Mounk found in 2018, while over two-thirds of older Americans consider it 'essential' to live in a democracy, only one in three Millennials feels the same.
Unable to achieve a middle-class standard of living, many young people in France are rejecting society entirely – what Le Monde describes as 'political de-socialisation'. And many others are drifting to the political extremes, such as supporting the ex-Trotskyite, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, or the doyenne of the French hard right, Marine Le Pen. Both benefit from the popular anger at Macron's pension reforms. Similarly in the US, younger voters have tended to favour more ideologically hard line candidates, like Bernie Sanders, with his promises of debt forgiveness and permanent subsidies. In the 2016 presidential primaries, Sanders won more votes from people under 30 than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton combined.
The demographic crisis is also reshaping geopolitics. The Ukraine war has become a war of attrition between two countries that are running out of young people. According to UN projections, Ukraine's population will fall 18 per cent from 2022 to 2050. This is without accounting for the impact of the Russian invasion, which has sent seven million people out of Ukraine. Arch-rival Russia also faces inexorable depopulation, likely to worsen due to its botched invasion. But even before the war and the pandemic, 2019 deaths were running about 50 per cent higher than births. Standing at 145 million in 2022, the Russian population is expected to drop to 133 million by 2050, according to the UN.
With both countries lacking reserves of soldiers, much of the war has consisted of an exchange of drones and missiles, able to terrify populations without massive army losses. Automated warfare seems the future for militaries like the United States, which also is having trouble filling its ranks.
A similar substitution of technology and capital for humans will drive economic competition as well. Already, large tech firms are finding they can operate profitably with dramatically reduced work forces. Asian countries, like Singapore and China, are looking at AI and robots to maintain their industrial prowess as their population ages and declines. A diminished ability to exploit low wages makes technological preeminence more essential. The current battles over China's tech firms, like Huawei and now TikTok, suggest control of intellectual property may prove a critical determinant of global economic power.
Perhaps the biggest demographic issue pertains to those parts of the world still with growing youth populations, largely in south Asia and Africa. Although India's birth rate has slowed considerably, it is estimated to have already overtaken China as the most populous country in the world, and is now the fastest growing big economy on the planet. India is also experiencing a rising tide of tech and manufacturing investment. So we may well see a brief period where Beijing displaces New York or London as the world's economic capital. But, given China's rapidly ageing population, the day of New Delhi and Mumbai could soon follow.
The main area of global population growth, however, will be in Sub-Saharan Africa. Between 2022 and 2050, UN projections indicate that nearly 55 per cent of world population growth will occur in Sub-Saharan Africa. Between 2050 and 2100, Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to account for all population growth. This last refuge of Marx's 'reserve army of the unemployed' represents a challenge that must be met, through immigration and through investment in their economies. Or else it will create a source of permanent chaos.
The very things places like Sub-Saharan Africa need – new energy sources, growing export markets and capital investment – will not be easy to procure from stagnant Western economies concerned largely with satisfying their pensioners. Indeed, the West may well choose to protect its economy through 'the fight against climate change'. In practice, this means imposing carbon taxes on poor-country imports, which the West has already begun to do. Sadly immigration, one obvious palliative, has proved highly unpopular in almost all rich countries, and is leading to tighter border controls across Europe.
For the future, finding common ground between ageing countries and still youthful populations will be critical. To date, the West still seems asleep. It is more obsessed with gender ideology, racial reparations and climate change than the economic growth desperately needed by the developing world. In a sensible world, the West, as well as China, would find a way to use the current surplus labour and to integrate these countries more fully into the world economy. If not, the demographic crisis will lead to ever more conflict, and a world even more unstable than ours is today.
Joel Kotkin is a spiked columnist, the presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Urban Reform Institute. His latest book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, is out now. Follow him on Twitter: @joelkotkin Picture by: Athena / Pexels.
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Thanks to Brett
Geopolitical Futures:
Keeping the future in focus
https:geopoliticalfutures.com
Daily Memo: The Battle for Eurasia's Borderlands
Today the Black Sea, tomorrow the South China Sea.
By: Antonia Colibasanu
April 19, 2023
Borderlands have long been an object of scrutiny in the realm of geopolitics, as they represent a point of convergence, interaction and oftentimes conflict between nations and political systems. The significance of these regions cannot be overstated, as they often serve as a crucible for political and military struggles, as well as a site for intricate diplomatic negotiations and maneuvers. In addition, borderlands frequently witness the interplay of different economic and social systems, giving rise to distinct hybrid cultures and identities.
Classical geopolitical analysis, which focuses on the political, economic and military domains to understand a country's geopolitical imperatives, has traditionally been ill-equipped to account for the complexities of borderland regions, beyond their geographical location. However, my own research project related to an upcoming book I'm currently writing on the borderlands, beginning with the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and my work on current events for Geopolitical Futures, have highlighted the diversity of roles played by borderlands in regional and global stability.
Core Borderlands and Geopolitical Nodes
As I delved deeper into the theories of Halford Mackinder, Nicholas Spykman and Alfred Thayer Mahan – all prominent geopolitical thinkers from different eras and political environments – I began to discern a common denominator for the world's borderlands or, more precisely, the borderlands of the world's continents. These regions are characterized by their strategic location, distinctive socio-economic features, and sustained interest from major and middle powers seeking to ensure their stability. Indeed, the very stability of these borderlands is paramount, as without it, the risk of war and conflict looms large, threatening to spill over into neighboring regions and potentially reshaping the geopolitical landscape of an entire continent.
The notion of what I call a "core borderland" emerges as a crucial concept in understanding the stability of the international system. The Eurasian continent's core borderland is in Central Asia, where the influences of Europe, Russia, China, India, Iran and Pakistan converge, much as it was for their ancestors. Afghanistan is a prime example of a core borderland, as evidenced by the sustained interest of major powers in its stability over time. This is also why Afghanistan can never completely be controlled.
The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has created a power vacuum in Central and Southwestern Asia, triggering changes that have reverberated across Europe and its borderlands. The timing of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is not coincidental; it follows a sustained period of U.S. withdrawal from the Greater Middle East, not to mention the global pandemic. Meanwhile, other European powers, such as Poland and Turkey, have moved to consolidate their positions in their borderlands. As a result, tensions have risen in these historically vital areas of international trade and investment. I call these areas "geopolitical nodes," places of strategic importance where two or more regional or global powers meet. Unlike a core borderland, where major powers' interests collide, a geopolitical node hosts major trade routes that sustain interdependencies between states.
In their theories, both Mackinder and Spykman point to potential geopolitical nodes without necessarily calling them that. Mahan elevated naval power, but by combining elements of their theories, it is apparent that the Black Sea and the South China Sea are Eurasia's most important geopolitical nodes.
Throughout history, the Black Sea has been a meeting point for empires, facilitating contact between Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It remains a vital hub for regional stability. However, it is also the node most affected by the war in Ukraine. The body of water at the other end of Central Asia is the South China Sea, a relatively recent node that is rapidly growing in importance. The South China Sea is home to a third of maritime trade by value, mostly due to China's resurgence in recent decades. Meanwhile, over the past decade, in preparation for the war in Ukraine, Russia has sought alternate trade routes to Europe that bypass the Black Sea and has increased its presence in the South China Sea.
The U.S., which remains the classical global maritime and land power, is facing two competitors. The first is a resurgent Russia, a regional land power that is looking to stretch its reach beyond Europe. The second is a new kind of Eurasian competitor, China, which is both continental and maritime.
The core borderland, where they meet, is Central Asia. In this sense, Afghanistan has been the perfect metaphor for how empires clash and coordinate. The nodes of the Black Sea and the South China Sea are balancing off one another as they interact through the strategies pursued by the U.S., Russia and China. The longer the conflict in Ukraine lasts, the more uncertainty there is in the Black Sea waters and the more pressure there is on China, on the shores of the South China Sea, to join the global economic war.
Russia-China Rivalry
Russia has played a quiet but important role around the South China Sea for the past 20 years. Even though it has close ties with Beijing, Moscow has been steadily arming rival claimants to South China Sea waters like Vietnam and, to a lesser extent, Malaysia, while also trying to build defense ties with the Philippines and Indonesia. In addition, Russia has contributed significantly to the development of offshore energy resources in both the South China Sea and the so-called North Natuna Sea, off the coast of Indonesia. While Western energy companies frequently reduced investments in contested areas to avoid conflict with China, their Russian counterparts filled any significant investment gaps. The $400 billion, 30-year energy agreement signed in 2014 between the China National Petroleum Corp. and Russia's state-owned gas company Gazprom marked the start of Russia's diplomatic pivot to Asia. It was also the year that Russia invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
In 2001, Russia's trade with Europe was almost triple its trade with Asia ($106 billion versus $38 billion). In 2019, European trade was $322 billion compared with Asia's $273 billion. After Russia's annexation of Crimea, Europe cut trade and investment ties with Moscow, while Asia embraced it.
Russia's outreach was especially well-received in Southeast Asia. Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar – its traditional allies in Indochina – stepped up their defense cooperation with Moscow. Over the past two decades, Vietnam alone has spent $7.4 billion on Russian weapons, including cutting-edge fighter jets and submarines. Importantly, the two largest countries in Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Indonesia, looked into extensive defense agreements with Russia. Moscow sent its defense attache to the Philippines for the first time ever, and Russian warships started frequenting Manila Bay. Rodrigo Duterte, the then-Philippine president, made history by becoming the first Philippine head of state to visit Moscow twice, and he actively pursued energy and defense agreements with Russia in 2019.
Additionally, Russian energy firms increased their presence in Vietnam's exclusive economic zone and supported Indonesia's own energy exploration efforts off the Natuna Islands coast. As a result, in an interesting turn of events, Moscow found itself arming and supporting China's maritime adversaries throughout Southeast Asia.
Russia tried to lessen the pressure on Beijing by routinely holding joint military exercises with China, spanning the East China Sea, Central Asia and the Far East. Moscow largely agreed with Beijing's position on both the U.S. naval presence in the region and The Hague's 2016 arbitration tribunal ruling that invalidated the majority of China's expansive South China Sea claims.
An enterprising Russia has positioned itself as a dependable third force to both the West and China, taking into account Southeast Asian countries' innate propensity for strategic diversification. Beijing has largely tolerated its supposed ally's strategic buccaneering in its own maritime backyard because it wants to keep Moscow on its side, especially in the midst of a raging conflict of its own with the West. But this precarious situation could be drastically changed by President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, which has made Russia the world's most sanctioned country.
The majority of Southeast Asian countries have been appalled by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, which led to their fateful vote in favor of the U.N. General Assembly resolution denouncing the invasion in 2022. Describing the crisis as an "existential issue," Singapore, the region's most developed nation, has imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia. Others have done the same.
The increasingly complex Western sanctions won't just make it difficult for Moscow to reach major defense and energy agreements; the country's growing reliance on China may cause it to withdraw strategically from the South China Sea. Beijing will probably pressure Moscow to refrain from arming and supporting its adversaries in the South China Sea and elsewhere as its power continues to eclipse Russia's. This would further mean that China will be well-positioned to assert its own sphere of influence in Southeast Asia in general and the South China Sea in particular, at the expense of Russia.
For Europe, the geopolitical node in the South China Sea is distant. However, Russian moves in Asia are likely to trigger a U.S. reaction, especially if they lead to a change in China's strategy. This would, in turn, directly impact Europe.
Our world is fraying at the edges, beginning in the European borderlands but potentially stretching into Asia. Geopolitical nodes will become only more important as supply chains are reformulated, competition for raw materials grows and technological change fragments cyberspace and more. The most critical nodes are the Black Sea and the South China Sea, where the U.S., Russia and China contend for influence and control.
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This Day in U S Military History…….April 19
1892 – Charles Duryea drives the first automobile in the United States, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Charles engineered the car and his brother Frank built it. The Duryea's "motor wagon" was a used horse drawn buggy that the brothers had purchased for $70 and into which they had installed a 4 HP, single cylinder gasoline engine. The car (buggy) had a friction transmission, spray carburetor and low tension ignition.
1915 – Aviation engineers working for Dutch-born Anthony Fokker develop the mechanical interrupter gear, which allows machine gun bullets to be fired through rotating aircraft propeller blades.
1919 – Leslie Irvin of the United States makes the first successful voluntary free-fall parachute jump using a new kind of self-contained parachute. Irvin was born in Los Angeles. He became a stunt-man for the fledgling Californian film industry, for which he had to perform acrobatics on trapezes from balloons and then make descents using a parachute, the Type-A. Irvin made his first jump when aged fourteen. For a film called Sky High, he first jumped from an aircraft from 1,000 feet in 1914. He developed his own static line parachute as a life-saving device in 1918 and jumped with it several times. He joined the Army Air Service's parachute research team, and at McCook Field near Dayton, Ohio. After World War I, Major E. L. Hoffman of the Army Air Service led an effort to develop an improved parachute for exiting airplanes by bringing together the best elements of multiple parachute designs. Participants included Irvin and James Floyd Smith. The team eventually created the Airplane Parachute Type-A.
1972 – US 7th Fleet warships, while bombarding the North Vietnamese coast, are attacked by MiGs and patrol boats as Hanoi begins to challenge US naval presence in The Tonkin Gulf for the first time since 1964. The destroyer USS Higbee is badly damaged.
Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day
BETTS, CHARLES M.
Rank and organization: Lieutenant Colonel, 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Place and date: At Greensboro, N.C., 19 April 1865. Entered service at: Philadelphia, Pa. Birth: Bucks County, Pa. Date of issue: 10 October 1892. Citation: With a force of but 75 men, while on a scouting expedition, by a judicious disposition of his men, surprised and captured an entire battalion of the enemy's cavalry.
ELLIOTT, RUSSELL C.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company B, 3d Massachusetts Cavalry. Place and date: At Natchitoches, La., 19 April 1864. Entered service at: Boston, Mass. Birth: Concord, N.H. Date of issue: 20 November 1896. Citation: Seeing a Confederate officer in advance of his command, charged on him alone and unaided and captured him.
LANGBEIN, J. C. JULIUS
Rank and organization: Musician, Company B, 9th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Camden, N.C., 19 April 1862. Entered service at: New York, N.Y. Born: 29 September 1846, Germany. Date of issue: 7 January 1895. Citation: A drummer boy, 15 years of age, he voluntarily and under a heavy fire went to the aid of a wounded officer, procured medical ass1stance for him, and aided in carrying him to a place of safety.
STEVENS, HAZARD
Rank and organization: Captain and Assistant Adjutant General, U.S. Volunteers. Place and Date: At Fort Huger, Va., 19 April 1863. Entered service at: Olympia, Washington Territory. Born: 9 June 1842, Newport, R.I. Date of issue: 13 June 1894. Citation: Gallantly led a party that assaulted and captured the fort.
CARSON, ANTHONY J.
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company H, 43d Infantry, U.S. Volunteers. Place and date: At Catubig, Samar, Philippine Islands, 15-19 April 1900. Entered service at: Malden, Mass. Birth: Boston, Mass. Date of issue: 4 January 1906. Citation: Assumed command of a detachment of the company which had survived an overwhelming attack of the enemy, and by his bravery and untiring efforts and the exercise of extraordinary good judgment in the handling of his men successfully withstood for 2 days the attacks of a large force of the enemy, thereby saving the lives of the survivors and protecting the wounded until relief came.
THORSNESS, LEO K.
Rank and organization: Lieutenant Colonel (then Maj.), U.S. Air Force, 357th Tactical Fighter Squadron. Place and date: Over North Vietnam, 19 April 1967. Entered service at: Walnut Grove, Minn. Born: 14 February 1932, Walnut Grove, Minn. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. As pilot of an F- 105 aircraft, Lt. Col. Thorsness was on a surface-to-air missile suppression mission over North Vietnam. Lt. Col. Thorsness and his wingman attacked and silenced a surface-to-air missile site with air-to-ground missiles, and then destroyed a second surface-to-air missile site with bombs. In tile attack on the second missile site, Lt. Col. Thorsness' wingman was shot down by intensive antiaircraft fire, and the 2 crewmembers abandoned their aircraft. Lt. Col. Thorsness circled the descending parachutes to keep the crewmembers in sight and relay their position to the Search and Rescue Center. During this maneuver, a MIG-17 was sighted in the area. Lt. Col. Thorsness immediately initiated an attack and destroyed the MIG. Because his aircraft was low on fuel, he was forced to depart the area in search of a tanker. Upon being advised that 2 helicopters were orbiting over the downed crew's position and that there were hostile MlGs in the area posing a serious threat to the helicopters, Lt. Col. Thorsness, despite his low fuel condition, decided to return alone through a hostile environment of surface-to-air missile and antiaircraft defenses to the downed crew's position. As he approached the area, he spotted 4 MIG-17 aircraft and immediately initiated an attack on the MlGs, damaging 1 and driving the others away from the rescue scene. When it became apparent that an aircraft in the area was critically low on fuel and the crew would have to abandon the aircraft unless they could reach a tanker, Lt. Col. Thorsness, although critically short on fuel himself, helped to avert further possible loss of life and a friendly aircraft by recovering at a forward operating base, thus allowing the aircraft in emergency fuel condition to refuel safely. Lt. Col. Thorsness' extraordinary heroism, self-sacrifice, and personal bravery involving conspicuous risk of life were in the highest traditions of the military service, and have reflected great credit upon himself and the U.S. Air Force.
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AMERICAN AEROSPACE EVENTS for April 19, 2021 FIRSTS, LASTS, AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THANKS TO HAROLD "PHIL" MYERS CHIEF HISTORIAN AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE AGENCY
19 April
1919: Leslie Leroy Irvin made the first successful parachute jump from an airplane. Capt E. F. White and mechanic H. M. Schaefer flew a DH-4 with a Liberty 400 HP engine for 738.6 miles in 6 hours 50 minutes to set an American distance record in nonstop flight between Chicago and New York. (24) 1932: A Goddard rocket with gyroscopically-controlled vanes for automatically stabilized flight flew for the first time in New Mexico. (4)
1935: Amelia Earhart flew from Burbank to Mexico City with one stop. She completed the trip in 13 hours 32 minutes. (24)
1937: New York City dispatched the first letter to encircle the world by commercial airmail. It went to San Francisco, Hong Kong, Penang, Amsterdam, and Brazil before returning to New York on 25 May 1937. (24)
1938: Lewin B. Barringer set a US glider record of 212.45 miles from Wichita Falls, Tex., to Tulsa.
1941: The Naval Aircraft Factory started work on a Glomb (glider bomb) with a television camera aboard to transmit a view of the target to control planes. Plans called for the Glomb to be towed long distances by powered aircraft for release and guidance to the target by radio control.
1946: Lt R.A. Baird III flew a P-80 to a 494,973-MPH speed record for 100 kilometers. Consolidated Vultee (Convair) Aircraft Corporation received a contract to study subsonic and supersonic missiles with a 1,500- to 5,000-mile range. This program led to the development of the Atlas missile. (6)
1956: After years of controversy, the DoD concluded that the Army would conduct the aviation training needed to support existing Army activities.
1957: Cape Canaveral successfully launched a Douglas-built Thor IRBM (SM-75). (16) (24)
1961: In the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the Alabama ANG lost four B-26 crewmembers—Riley Shamburger, Wade C. Gray, Pete W. Ray, and Leo F. Baker—in a special operations mission. (21)
1967: From the Air Force Western Test Range, an Atlas booster lifted a Precision Recovery Including Maneuvering Entry (PRIME) unmanned spacecraft into space, where it demonstrated maneuvering, lifting, reentry, and aerial recovery techniques. (16) 355 TFW F-105s shot down four MiG-17s during strikes against the Xuan Mai army barracks southwest of Hanoi. (17) MEDAL OF HONOR. Maj Leo K. Thorsness earned his medal by protecting a mission to rescue downed airmen in North Vietnam. While flying an F-105 with low fuel, Thorsness shot down one MiG-17, damaged another, and drove off three more. Despite an urgent need for fuel, Thorsness decided to recover at a forward operating base to allow another aircraft in an emergency condition to refuel from a tanker. Enemy forces, however, shot him down, captured him, and held him as a prisoner of war until 4 March 1973. (21)
1975: Operation FREQUENT WIND. Through 24 April, to support the extraction of Americans, South Vietnamese and other nationals from Saigon, MAC deployed the 18 TFW from Kadena AB to Korat AB, Thailand; airlifted 951 troops and 269 tons of cargo from Kaneoke, Hawaii, to Kadena AB; and airlifted two passengers and 12 tons from Osan AB to Korat. The command operated a total of 17 C-141, 1 C-5, and 3 commercial missions. (18)
1976: SECDEF Donald H. Rumsfeld flew in the B-1. This was the first time a SECDEF had flown in a test aircraft. (3)
1979: Through 20 April, MAC used 7 C-141 and 4 C-130 missions to deliver 139 tons of supplies and equipment to Titograd IAP after a major earthquake rocked the sourthern Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia and Albania. (16)
1984: The USAF held ground-breaking ceremonies for Site III of the phased arrary, sea-launched ballistic warning system, Pave Paws, at Robins AFB.
1993: Through 24 April, units in Alaska participated in the USAF's first combined exercise with the Russian Air Force. It featured a search-and-rescue effort in Siberia. (21)
1995: OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING. A powerful car bomb leveled a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 169 and wounding 400 people. The USAF airlifted firefighters, search and rescue teams, investigators, and medical personnel to Oklahoma. Units at Tinker AFB provided supplies, equipment, and bomb-sniffing dogs. Through 4 May, Air Mobility Command aircraft flew 25 missions to move 1,359 passengers and 3,864 tons of cargo. (16) (18)
1999: The AFFTC performed a unique flight test for Operation ALLIED FORCE by having a B-52 drop emergency food supplies from a high altitude with reasonable precision. The successful test resulted in considerable humanitarian assistance to refugees. (3)
2003: A McChord AFB C-17 Globemaster III, flown by a crew assigned to the 315 AW (ReserveAssociate) at Charleston AFB returned seven former US Army prisoners of war to the US, one week after their rescue in Iraq. The C-17 flew five men and women from the 507th Maintenance Company to Fort Bliss, Tex., and two Apache helicopter crewmen from the First Cavalry Division to Fort Hood, Tex. A KC-135 and crew from the 157 AREFW at Pease ANGB, N. H., refueled the C-17 on its trip from Ramstein AFB to the US. (22)
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