Expeditionary Wars: what Legitimacy? The unstated reasons for war.

As a follow-on of my previous post dedicated to the legitimacy of expeditionary wars (here), today I will tackle the left top part of the graph, where cynicism is at the top of the considerations.

For an easier reading, here is a reduced copy of the afore mentioned graph:

The vain support to failing states, going back to Clausewitz

Some days ago I had the opportunity to attend  to a colloquium dealing with European Defence. At this occasion, I decided to cross the Rhine (peacefully) and went to Strasbourg.  

One lecture was dedicated to Mali and the three military operation taking place over there. The speaker, Mr Dupuy, chairman of a French think tank named "IPSE" (no website available), although talentuous, was facing all the contradictions of current operations in Mali, explaining that the French commitment was absolutely needed although disrupting the terrorists would not solve the problem, if they were to be disrupted. Those explanations seem to have left a large part of the audience skeptical about the French goals in Mali and the final end state.

About Maps and Wars

As some European countries have decided to commit a little bit more assets in support of the French Armed Forces in Mali, time has come to have a closer look at the operations map. A long time ago, General De Gaulle wrote, that Geography drives the history of a country. Well, let's have a look at the operations map of this region of the world. 

Why should we have a look at maps? Indeed, having still in mind some pieces of History, I perfectly remember those pictures of field officers first looking at a map before deciding of the scheme of maneuver they would decide of, in order to disrupt the enemy units. This is exactly what the French Armed Forces are remarkably doing in the mountains up there, in Northern Mali.

However, among the scarce news broadcasted by the French MOD, I couldn't find anyone giving me a clue of the area in which their infantrymen are operating. 

What could I do?

The Last Moonshiners of European Defence, or how solitary military operations will very soon belong to history

Drifting on the web is one of my favorite games. Today, I would like to deal with those I would like to name the last Moonshiners of European Defence.

How is it the hell possible to draw a parallel between the late Popcorn Sutton, a renowned Appalachian moonshiner, and European powers?

Let me tell you!

First of all, as less than a quarter of my readers are Americans, here are some details on the Appalachian moonshiners. Those guys have been illegally making liquor for generations and belong to the American traditions. One of them, a iconic figure was named John 'Popcorn' Sutton, and he will be at the centre of this post. In the documentary that you can see here below, this 62 years old man, riding an Ford-T pick-up states:

'This is the last dam run of likker I'm ever gonna make'.

Eurocorps and other multinational Headquarters are not planned to deploy in Mali

On a pretty regular basis I can read on the requests leading to this humble blog (I claim the word 'humble', when I compare the content of this blog to the ones listed in the blogroll), that some people had typed 'Eurocorps' and 'Mali' as keywords. My conclusion is that some pedagogy on European Defence is still needed. Therefore this article will be useless for those who are skilled in defence matters and is intended to the newcomers.

Well, let us start from the very beginning: there are three types of multinational operational headquarters. As the French operation in Mali is of land-centric type, i.e involving mainly land forces, let us focus on land headquarters.

Some Reasons for which France will remain alone in Mali

Now that French Army has reached a deserved initial military success in Mali, time has come to look forward and check whether its allies will at last decide to join and support France in its efforts to expel islamists from this country (as far as I could understood it seems to be the final objective).

For fun, I will not make use of a traditional strategic analysis, but I will try to make use of Mr Ben Polak's lectures at Yale, available on the Internet (here). Being an absolute math-, eco- and calculus-phobic I will try my best.

France in Mali: a military success and a strategic dead end

Usually I am a great fan of O. Kempf, the author of Egea, the must among the blogs dedicated to strategic studies, at least in French language. However, some days ago I was surprised by one of his articles, titled: "Mali, les permanences géopolitiques s'imposent...", that could be translated as: Mali, the standing geopolitical rules still prevail...".

What does then O. Kempf deal with?

Mali: Is European Union to be ashamed?

Some days after France decided to deploy its troops in Mali, a quick look at the blogs and media dealing with defence and strategy let me deduce that, once again, Europe was sentenced to whatever you want for having been unable to react on time to counter the islamist threat coming from the Sahara.

Let us get deeper into the funniest critic I could read. I mean the lack of support by our main allies.

Indeed, that's a fact: neither the UK, nor Germany, even less Spain and Italy or Poland provided troops to reinforce the French ones. The only significant support they decided to offer, beyond the usual political backing, are transport aircraft, like C-17 by the UK and the USA, Transall by Germany and C-130 by Belgium, for instance. I was even told that this support was constrained by many caveats or even by the price!