(Reuters) North Korea’s Kim says missile test a warning to South Korean ‘warmongers’.

While North Korea weapons tests tend to be analyzed for specific accomplishments, this focus distracts from looking at the trend. All over the world, countries with formerly primitive military establishments have adopted  similar development paths towards advanced, “semi-ballistic” missiles that are much harder to intercept. This is accompanied by dissemination of even more maneuverable hypersonic technology.

The origin of the idea was the Pershing II missile, followed by the Russian Iskander.  With flat trajectories and maneuverability in flight, they may render current, and possibly future antimissile systems ineffective.  While Hypersonic Strategies, Part 6 describes a solution, political considerations may intervene.

The susceptibility of U.S. defense infrastructure stems from:

• Successful use of high technology in asymmetric warfare, which lead to larger “asset lumps” that cannot be subdivided. Example: CAOC.
• Emphasis on power projection, with similar result, such as reliance on aircraft carriers, which are very large lumps.
• Centralization of command within lightly fortified installations, partly from tradition, and partly from the convenience of asset lumping.

The above is very useful in asymmetric warfare, but which now result in concentrated, extremely high value targets soon to be vulnerable to third world weaponry. Survivability can no longer be assumed.

Some innovations offer much greater survivability:

• Distributed radars, constructed out of small, redundant mesh elements. This was made possible by the development of extremely high band gap semiconductors.
• Unjammable mesh communications, (see DARPA ADC program) which would make possible a distributed command hierarchy.
• Ditto for distributed logistics, which is already being implemented.

The object: reduce the numbers of assets requiring defense in the ways described in Hypersonic Strategies, Part 6.

(Reuters) Britain says Iran seizes two oil tankers in Gulf, Iran says captured one.

The Iranians are such fluent  liars, the Russians are trustworthy by comparison.  This comes out of the history of Shi’ism, an oppressed sect.  With the challenge of survival, Shia jurists legitimized lying to the oppressors. Hence the creative fluency of lies now visible.

In opposition, our side adheres to the diplomatic mindset, with measured responses that are easily outraced by Iranian jack rabbits.  Quoting foreign minister Jeremy Hunt,

“These seizures are unacceptable. It is essential that freedom of navigation is maintained and that all ships can move safely and freely in the region.”

Throwing diplomatic boiler plate at a pack of lying jack rabbits, Minister Hunt sounds like he has his panties in a bunch. At least  he should have his stripped pants pressed. The tortoise versus the hare; who will win?

The advantage of a game is that, played well, it allows one to leapfrog intermediate steps where one is losing, to arrive at a winning position that might be somewhat durable. If the game predicts otherwise, there is the chance to abandon it, or radically change course. Either way is better than the “best teacher”, experience, which is also the most expensive.

We can’t claim we are winning. The deployment of U.S. naval assets has not deterred much, if anything.  The  assets mean nothing without rules of engagement that risk conflict. The Iranians have  a fine sense of this, which means they are applying more intelligence to the problem than we are.

The above is not meant to advocate a particular course. The broad options are to double down or walk away.  The conflict is currently almost perfectly cold. As a next step the game may  offer only the next level of temperature, a slight smolder. Whether it escalates can be modeled by a number, a “coefficient“. A positive coefficient is like bank interest; a negative coefficient is like a loan rate.

• The U.S. coefficient is currently negative, with aversion to conflict. It would become positive if the forces now deployed engage in punitive, as opposed to defensive, actions.
• The Iranian coefficient is not yet obvious. If the Iranian coefficient is negative, the U.S. and allies are in control of the heat. But it is probably weakly positive.
• If the Iranian coefficient is positive, the game heats up rapidly.  With exhaustion of will or resources, offensive inclinations may reach a limit  short of total war, the coefficient turning negative. Or it may not; while the German aggressive impulse was exhausted in World War I, it remained potent to the end of World War II. The German coefficient remained positive to the end.
• If both the U.S. and Iran coefficients are strongly positive, the result is total war.
• If one coefficient  is positive and the other negative, a conflict tends to smolder.

In the absence of a Game of Nations style simulation of the New Tanker War, which might provide sage-like insights, the obvious next-step is a naval  convoy system, with rules of engagement that would result in “punitive damages.”

Game players would be eager to know whether this would result in Iran’s use  of Silkworm batteries, emplaced along the Strait, small-boat swarm attacks, and proxies.  Though DoD games the battlefield with perfection,  the coefficient of this article is  the property of a society as a whole.

(CNN) US preparing to send hundreds of troops to Saudi Arabia amid Iran tensions.  Construction units have been deployed to Prince Sultan airbase, which  may receive an upgraded CAOC and a Patriot  battery, enabling deployment of the most advanced assets.

The U.S. coefficient is creeping towards positive. Elsewhere, game players take notice, changing  the numbers assigned  to our intentions.

(Reuters) UK government seeking further information on seized foreign tanker reports: spokeswoman.

(FARS) IRGC Seizes Ship with 1mln Liters of Fuel Cargo Smuggled from Iran, But Denies Seizing Any Other Foreign Ship. Quoting,

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Navy stopped a foreign oil tanker in Lark Island in the Persian Gulf which was carrying 1mln liters of smuggled fuel from Iran, the IRGC said Thursday, but meantime, dismissed seizure of any other foreign vessel as claimed by the foreign media several days ago.

Once again, the name of the ship is unspecified. This is almost certainly the MT Riah. It looks like the Iranians have got their story straight. Perhaps instead of a ring job, they’ll give the ship a paint job.

Iran has decided that anything that will raise maritime insurance rates is beneficial to their cause. And what country can resist free gas?

Edit 6/17/2019, 2:50 PM EST. A point added, highlighted in red. Read down.

(CBC) Iran says its navy came to aid of missing oil tanker Riah as tensions mount in Gulf. Quoting,

“An international oil tanker was in trouble due to a technical fault in the Persian Gulf,” spokesman Abbas Mousavi told the semi-official news agency ISNA.

“After receiving a request for assistance, Iranian forces approached it and used a tugboat to pull it towards Iranian waters for the necessary repairs to be carried out,…”

The tanker is a mini, only 190 feet long, said to be used for local UAE transfer of petroleum. But the UAE denies ownership or crew;  (Khaleej Times) Oil tanker MT Riah not owned by UAE. Quoting,

A UAE official said on Tuesday that the oil tanker MT Riah is not owned by the UAE.

 “The tanker in question is neither UAE owned nor operated.”…”It does not carry Emirati personnel, and did not emit a distress call.”

Points:

• The MT Riah was certainly hijacked by Iran. The absence of a distress call, and deactivation of the tanker’s transponder are evidence enough.
• The tanker was an attractive  target because the small size and value implied reduced chance of paramilitary presence.
• The selection was also based upon the pattern of usage, intra-UAE transport, which resulted in the assumption of UAE ownership. The Iranians were wrong.
• There was little or no representation of Gulf  ethnicities among the crew, or they would have been used as chips.
• The captive vessel presents no opportunity for Iran to pressure the Gulf alliance.
• The failure of Iran to name the tanker, crew, and mechanical defect  indicates  control by higher echelons of power,  which have not settled on the “story.” Internal conflict along secular-religious lines is possible.
• The owners will probably get away with a ripoff repair fee.

The Iranians bungled, giving us just a taste of things-to-come. We have a breather to meditate on the main problem. Quoting  Iranian boats attempted to seize British tanker,

The Iranians are doubtless studying this [Gen. Dunford’s] statement, looking for space in which they can operate. It offers Iran local superiority (see Lanchester’s Laws) that could not be achieved against a unified military response. It fails to accord Iran respect for the strength that comes from desperation.

The Western response may follow the  course of the four-year initial inability  to deal with Somali pirates. The slowness of the EU learning curve in dealing with the ancient menace of piracy was striking. Paying off the pirates encouraged more piracy. while jurisdictional issues of international law and reluctance to use force paralyzed punishment and deterrence.

Iran is far more resourceful than Somali pirates. There is no simple prescriptive solution, because this is a game. Games require both strategy and tactics. In the past, problems such as these have been simulated by State and DoD in the form of board-game simulations played  by specialist students of the various actors.

A brief description of such a game is given by Miles Copeland, CIA plank-owner, in his book, The Game of Nations.

I wrote this on July 30, 2018. For some reason, I never hit the “publish” button. It seems fresh as a daisy, so here it is:

(Reuters) ‘Very positive signals’ after U.S., Taliban talks: sources.

Part of this blog is about the skill of prediction, which deeply involves recognizing previous situations that analogize with the present. The news sites present snapshots of the present, leaving us vulnerable to all our hopes and fears. Sloppy analogy with past can leave us vulnerable to  our hopes and fears. Carefully drawn analogies, evaluated in number and quality,  bind the future to the past. So what is the quality of historical analogy available for the four top issues?

• Iran: Current Iran approaches have limited but useful analogies with the neoconservative approach to  Iraq in 2003.
• Russia: Limited analogy exists to expansionism dating to the 18th century, and to balance-of-power policies.
• China: There is no precedent for the rise of China.
• Afghanistan: Numerous, extensive analogies with  Vietnam exist.

With Afghanistan, as with Vietnam, it can be hard for the best minds to differentiate between the desired outcomes foreign policy goals, and the work of prediction, when we try to exclude confirmation bias. Like most Western readers, I would prefer to imagine the outcome of an Afghanistan with a civil government that has at least limited secular, inclusive aspects. The situation of Pakistan, which is more a failed state than a model, would actually be progress in Afghanistan.

So let’s start with Vietnam. As painful as the experience was,  the lesson lived in memory for little more than a generation. The goals of our fathers for Vietnam were fairly modest. The  corrupt rule of South Vietnam’s elite was supported because, so it was thought,

• The doctrine of Containment of world communism required it.
• Absent the lock-down of a rigid ideology, South Vietnam would continue to evolve.
• The goals were achievable.

A magnificent book recounts  the cautionary tale. The Best and the Brightest, by David Halberstam, documents and dissects. The best thinking of the time, employing the best tools of the time, statistics, estimation theory, game theory, and operations research, could not predict the failure of the massive U.S. military and logistical footprint to defeat a small, economically primitive country with an army of foot soldiers.

At the time, it was countered that the Vietnam debacle was the result of political constraints on the scope of military operations. But if this was so, the best and the brightest toiled on, each working on an assigned part of the problem. The sheer size of the effort, and the variety of approaches and methods used, resulted in  many different measures of success:  body counts, village pacifications, battles won, positions held, enemy presence, and so forth. But out of all this, there never developed a coherent estimate of what the future would hold.

Specialists in unconventional warfare, such as William Colby, later director of the CIA, were influenced by the spirit of the southerners they worked with.  Negative opinions were voiced by those who knew the leadership of the South. Those whose priority of geopolitics made failure unacceptable retained powerful influence over the institutional voice until the 1968 Tet Offensive. Paradoxically, a military victory for the U.S. caused the vox populi to prevail over the custodians of U.S. foreign policy, beginning the process of disengagement.

Vietnam remained a powerful lesson for just a bit more than a generation. But the 2003 Iraq war, which might have succeeded as a surgical intervention, was given a huge remit by a group then known as the neoconservatives, to catalyze the development of liberal democracy in the Middle East. The similarities with South Vietnam in the 1960’s:

• Intervention with a remit of social change well beyond the scope of military victory and occupation.
• Porous borders through which enemy supply lines cannot be effectively interdicted.
• Sanctuaries in neighboring countries.
• Asymmetric warfare; the enemy accepts losses much greater than acceptable by Western forces, without strategic distress.
• Economies restricted to subsistence agriculture and opium.
• Village and clan based societies with little desire for services of a central government.

The last element is most important. What is the minimum government that can bind a country together?  From Trump Wants to Fire U.S. Commander in Afghanistan, a list:

• Raise revenue by taxation.
• Use at least some of the taxes to provide services.
• Facilitate commerce.
• The services provided justify the taxes enough for popular acquiescence.

These are the minimums of good government, when it is a symbiont with the population. With less than that,  a government becomes a protection racket.

In South Vietnam, as in Afghanistan today, there was too little to tax, and too little in the way of services to provide. We like to think of happy villages with modern medical care and, eventually, labor saving devices. But without a tax base, a government cannot acquire the monopoly of force that underpins the rule of law.

If all six factors hold, this implies that while Western intervention can maintain the current situation indefinitely, the Taliban will take over on exit. No amount of diplomatic paper can change this; the men with guns, powered by a religious ideology, win this game.

(CNN) Iranian boats attempted to seize British tanker. Quoting,

Five armed Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps boats unsuccessfully tried to seize a British oil tanker in the Persian Gulf Wednesday, according to two US officials with direct knowledge of the incident.

(Reuters) Iranian boats ‘harass’ British tanker in the Gulf: U.S. officials. Quoting,

Five boats believed to belong to Iranian Revolutionary Guards approached a British oil tanker in the Gulf on Wednesday and asked it to stop in Iranian waters close by, but withdrew after a British warship warned them, U.S. officials said.

There is an inexplicable difference in wording, highlighted in red. The apparent timidity of the Iranian force should not be assumed as a constant of this problem. Five boats is well short of the swarms Iran has practiced with.  This could have been a

• Low level initiative, part of the ethos of the IRGC, in response to nonspecific clerical encouragement.
• Psychological test. In the early years of Somali piracy, active defense was discouraged by the mindset of shippers, insurers, and an overly legalistic EU viewpoint. The Iranian goal: to assess persistence of the attitude.
• Tactical test, though much more cautious than the Dieppe Raid of 1942,  to precede a like assault.

If the mullahs direct  the IRGC to do what they are chartered to do, which encompasses high casualty tactics, verging on suicide, they may snag a tanker:

• The large size of a tanker creates a baffle, blocking the weapons of an escort positioned on the opposite side from   Iranian boats.
• During maneuver of an escort,  baffles lasting a few seconds result when a 30mm gun  cannot be brought to bear. During this brief interval, when the escort is partly exposed, RPG attacks are possible  against an armored gun mount, crew-served weapons, or the bridge.
• The 30mm gun mounts limit how far down the guns can be pointed down, the “depression limit”. So another baffle exists close to the escort.
•  Iran planners  may consider an attack with simultaneous approaches to both sides of the tanker accompanied by a single escort, to have bearable cost. One half of the force is sacrificed.
• We can assume British forces were on board the tanker. This attempt may have been a probe for information about their deployment.

Dunford’s statement echoes Trump’s caution to distinguish between the nuclear issue, and the “tanker war” issue. Quoting  (CNN),

“Escorting in the normal course of events would be done by countries who have the same flag so a ship that is flagged by a particular country would be escorted by that country and I think what the United States can provide is domain awareness, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and then coordination and patrols for other ships that would be in the area would be largely coalition ships.”

The Iranians are doubtless studying this statement, looking for space in which they can operate. It offers Iran local superiority (see Lanchester’s Laws) that could not be achieved against a unified military response. It fails to accord Iran respect for the strength that comes from desperation.

Oil tankers mostly have flags of convenience. With 464 tankers, is the Liberian Navy up to Dunford’s idea? Or the Navy of Panama, with 528 tankers? Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me an oar. In case they’re thinking of chain-sawing a rowboat in two, I have these immortal words of advice from Alfred Thayer Mahan, (which he never said):

Never divide the fleet.

This explores the potential of hostage taking by Iran. It has occurred before.

In 1979,  the former Shah of Iran, Mohammed Riza Pahlevi was admitted to the U.S. by Jimmy Carter, for cancer treatment in New York. Iran demanded the return of the Shah to face trial and inevitable execution. The U.S. refusal was the proximal cause of what followed, though, as with everything involving crowd psychology, one doesn’t find a primer cord linking events.

On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran.  Ayatollah Khomeini originally instructed that the students were to be thrown out. But as asylum for the Shah was a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the Iranian Revolution, Khomeini used the student action  to create an utterly polar adversity with the U.S. This was highly beneficial to consolidation of power, and the implementation of Khomeini’s singular addition to Shia Islam, Velâyat-e Faqih, a form of Islamic theocracy.

Thus began the longest hostage crisis in history: 55 hostages for 444 days, until January 20, 1981. U.S. power was helpless to intervene; protracted negotiations ensued; the hostages were released the day after Jimmy Carter left office. Who won?

Western historians see no gains of substance  by Iran.  It seems likely that Saddam Hussein was emboldened by the U.S.-Iran freeze to start the Iran-Iraq War. Hence in Western eyes, the episode was intensely self-damaging. But our logic is not that of revolutionaries. In their minds at that time, the hostage crisis eased the task of purging and suppressing lingering sympathies towards the West.  In comparison to how many executions would have otherwise been required, they may still congratulate themselves.

Iran’s counter strategy to U.S. oil sanctions has been asymmetrical, deniable, and/or nonlethal. While Iran’s ability to execute this strategy has not diminished, the seizure by the UK of the Grace 1 may indicate to Iran a failure of this strategy to support foreign policy goals. The Grace 1 was seized for violation of EU sanctions against Syria, not U.S. sanctions against Iran,  inspiring Iran’s threat to seize a British tanker.  (CNN) Official warns Tehran could seize UK oil tanker if Iranian ship not released. But since the West is the enemy, it’s a distinction of little import.

With the preparation implied by weeks of heightened U.S. presence in the Gulf, this would likely result in a fight. How much of a fight is unpredictable, since the faster trigger finger wins.  Quoting Arleigh Burke, who gained fame as a destroyer captain, “The difference between a good and great officer is about ten seconds.”

If the sanctions are maintained, regime change will not result. But as with the individual, any society, under extreme pressure, tends to shed the niceties of civilization, regressing to earlier forms — the forms of childhood, or revolution. To date, Iran has relied on crudely technological methods to create a calculus of physical damage favorable to  diplomacy, without success.

Under psychological regression, these methods will be  augmented  by methods which applied to the directly to humans, exacting a price without any technology at all.  Hence, hostage-taking, domination of the nightly news, national agony and political ruin that Jimmy Carter can relate in the first person. Most of the Iranian actors are still around.

On the heels of Iranian limpet mine attacks on tankers in the Gulf, and the drone shoot-down, I can’t help but smile.  But note, the seizure of the Grace 1, making the ship a “material hostage”, may inspire Iran as a blurry analogy to human hostage taking.

The political structure of Iraq is so porous, hostages can be opportunistically grabbed and exfiltrated to Iran with little difficulty. In a twist that might bring a wicked smile to some, hostages could be detained at the site of the 1979 hostage crisis, the former U.S. Embassy in Iran, now an IRGC training center.

Don’t let it happen.