Mark Safranski: the 21st-century way of war and the exhaustion of the American Empire
Dec 10, 2023
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Mark Safranski, long-time military affairs commentator, discusses the transformation of war and diplomacy in the 21st century. They explore the theories of fourth and fifth-generation warfare and highlight the closing technological gap between the US and China. The podcast also delves into the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the influence of foreign governments on American policies, and reflections on the state of the American military.
Warfare has undergone a significant transformation over the past two decades, with the rise of peer competitors like China forcing the US to reassess its military strategy and develop capabilities for long-range deterrence.
The foreign policy establishment, often referred to as the 'blob,' has been subject to criticism due to its lack of strategic thinking, superficial knowledge of the world, and theory-driven ideas.
The US Navy is facing a concerning decline in the number of warships while China's naval power continues to rise, raising strategic implications and challenging US military dominance.
Deep dives
Transformation of Warfare
Over the past two decades, warfare has undergone a significant transformation. The United States shifted from a cold war military to a counterinsurgency force, heavily involved in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Drones became a prominent weapon in modern warfare, with advancements in technology enabling their widespread use. However, the rise of peer competitors like China has forced the US to reassess its military strategy and develop capabilities for long-range deterrence. Despite being more powerful than before, the US now faces relative decline due to a series of strategic and military setbacks, such as deindustrialization and the Iraq war.
Ineffectiveness of Foreign Policy Establishment
The foreign policy establishment, often referred to as the 'blob,' has been subject to criticism due to its lack of strategic thinking, superficial knowledge of the world, and theory-driven ideas. Experts within the establishment have occasionally made disastrous decisions, such as the intervention in Libya, which resulted in unintended consequences. This skepticism towards the blob is warranted, as it often fails to prioritize effectively and lacks a deep understanding of geopolitics and strategy. The overreliance on theory and neoliberalism has contributed to a dysfunctional relationship with China and the erosion of American industrial capacity.
Return of Neoconservatism
Despite a brief decline in influence, neoconservatism never truly disappeared from the foreign policy landscape. There are generational differences within neoconservatism, with the second generation exhibiting a more hawkish stance. Nonetheless, the influence of neoconservatives is resurging, with a renewed emphasis on interventionism and intervention in conflicts like that of Israel. This resurgence raises concerns, as it risks reinvigorating a more interventionist foreign policy approach that dominated the post-9/11 era.
The Decline of the US Navy and the Rise of China's Naval Power
The podcast highlights the concerning decline of the US Navy and the simultaneous rise of China's naval power. The US Navy has faced a significant reduction in the number of warships, having gone from 320 warships in 2000 to 280 warships today. In contrast, China has significantly increased its naval capabilities, expanding from 223 warships to 355, including two aircraft carriers, with plans to reach 435 ships by 2030. The podcast emphasizes the strategic implications of this power shift, with the US lacking the shipbuilding capacity and struggling to maintain military dominance in the face of China's rapid naval expansion.
Concerns about Non-State Actors and Super-Empowered Individuals
The podcast also delves into the threat posed by non-state actors and super-empowered individuals. It discusses how technological advancements enable individuals to launch strategic-level attacks with minimal resources, which can have significant political and economic consequences. The conversation raises concerns about individuals leveraging technology, such as gene splicing, to modify viruses or bacteria and carry out devastating attacks. It highlights the challenges of surveillance and the difficulty of detecting such threats when individuals deliberately avoid a digital footprint or engage in extremist rhetoric. The podcast acknowledges the ongoing risk and emphasizes the need for vigilance, particularly as non-state actors continue to leverage engineering skills and pose a potential threat to global security.
On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib discusses war and diplomacy from 9/11 to 10/7 with Mark Safranski. Safranski is a long-time military affairs and foreign policy commentator who ran the popular weblog Zenpundit beginning in 2003. They survey how the 21st century, from the 9/11 attacks down to the Hamas atrocity against Israelis on 10/7, has seen a transformation of war and diplomacy by other means. From an age of flip phones as a luxury item in the early 2000’s to ubiquitous smartphones in the 2020’s, Safranksi and Razib explore how even still in 2023, Russia and Ukraine are engaging in the most significant set-piece battles since War War II, recapitulating some of the worst aspects of stagnant trench warfare more than a century on.
Safranski then explains the theories promoted by military scholars about how warfare has, and should, change in the technological era, particularly William Lind’s ideas of fourth and fifth-generation warfare. He also argues that drone technology in various forms has been around since World War I, though it was perfected in the past twenty years. Considering America’s technological advancements over the 21st century, Safranski alarmingly explains that the gap between us and our nearest competitor, China, is rapidly closing (with the US losing every government-sponsored war game against China in the years around 2020). He believes that the unipolar moment of the late 1990’s is truly ending, and elaborates on the decay that has overtaken some branches of the US military, in particular, what had been the world’s dominant blue-water navy, which is literally rusting away.
They conclude the conversation by reflecting on the changing role of the blogosphere in influencing military and foreign policy thinkers, and how the decade after 9/11 saw a fertile cross-pollination between online discourse and the brain trusts of the military-industrial complex. Finally, Razib asks Safranski if the neoconservative movement is making a comeback in the wake of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, and what has surprised him about American reactions to 10/7.
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