Should Germany join the United States as a superpower?

[statemachine]

Getting the Indians on reserves and killing the buffaloe was fairly easy.Vietnam,you can't cut out the food supply,there is always something to eat.In Kenya,Britain employed considerable resources to hunt these guys down.Ian Henderson,king of the pseudo- gangsters has a book available on the web,first published in the mid 50's.These techniques,apparently first perfected by Wingate in the 30's in Palestine.

[Annelie]

while looking for the book mentioned it was interesting to note that

His account does not attempt to describe or explain
how he was able to convert captured Mau Mau terrorists
to his own use almost overnight. If a brief answer to this is
possible, it is that his deep knowledge of the Kikuyu
people, their language and their customs, enabled him to
reach into their minds and influence their thoughts in the
way he wished. He knew the enemy as did few, if any,
other Europeans in Kenya's security forces.

knowing your enemy as few did was most important.

http://www.archive.org/stream/manhuntin ... p_djvu.txt

[phylo_roadking]

Vietnam,you can't cut out the food supply,there is always something to eat.

Yes - but you're missing the point. Terrorists or insurgents "do" that job; they fight, move covertly, suborn pro-government natives, kill informers, smuggle and hide weapons, police their friendly areas, preach revolution of whatever flavour, etc. If they have to forage to live - they don't have time to actually BE terrorists and insurgents. For an individual or group of individuals to live off the land - any land - is an immensely time-consuming process. You spend all your time just staying alive. THAT'S why removing the civil population from the security equation is the first basic step - for then there is noone willing to provide you with food that you don't have to waste time finding, killing and preparing for yourself, all the time hiding from observation. With aerial observation, listening posts, patrols on the ground etc., Charlie wasn't about to start pointing his noisy AK47 at Vietnamese bushmeat...AND it only eats for a couple of days, probably a lot less in tropical heat....AND wild meat animals are a lot leaner than cultivated animals. There's noone to put time or effort into preparing hides for weapons, tunnels to live in, or if they exist "within" the local population - noone to look after your crops, livestock etc. while you're off having fun....and no supportive civil population bringing you information and intelligence, you have to go and get it yourself.

Here's an example; grain/cereals are easier to carry and last FAR longer than fresh meat; can you imagine a guerilla group of 100 men in the field? It would need 20-25 goat-sized animals PER DAY to live, and if it wasn't needed out of sheer quantity, it would be needed because of the speed meat spoils in tropical conditions, as I said above. That number of decent-sized meat animals or an equivalent needs to be tracked and killed, butchered, and transported back to camp...BUT how long would the equivalent calorie-count in rice last? It's far more portable, and doesn't spoil - but how many people over how long a period of time and how many acres of paddy is needed to grow it???

That's why URBAN terrorists are so hard to combat - if they have access to funds; a HUGE percentage of what makes their "job" just so difficult is removed immediately; they can just pay rents, pay bills, shop at supermarkets or eat at MacDonalds!!! And it's the reason why modern urban terrorist groups with no ready access to outside funds resort quickly to "crime" - protection rackets, kidnapping for ransom, counterfeit goods, smuggling various types of contraband by the same process and routes as their arms etc. - to MAKE the money they need. And then they get mired down further into plain criminality, for they have to launder the money etc....

Throwing insurgents on their own resources - or rather finding their own resources - is the proven way to win, and has been for over a century; there were Boers who came out of the Veldt almost two years after the war was over - having stayed out of contact with pursuing British forces for so long that they lost all contact with anyone - the British had made sure there was noone around for them to be in contact with! - and didn't even know the war was over South Africa may be big, but it's no post-WWII Pacific island LMAO That's how effective the British "police" methods finally were. Ditto there were Mau-Mau who stayed starving in the bush for months, coming out in dribs and drabs when they eventually had too - for they couldn't hide, move around the countryside covertly, fight...AND EAT...all at the same time.

[statemachine]

Phylo,in the jungle,or most of Africa,you don't need to get fancy to survive.What was the name of those South African commandoes that ate rotten meat in their training?You can eat tons of bugs,snakes galore.

Annelie,it's great to know your enemy.Some things are getting glossed over,the play between these two groups was very,very rough.Pg 54.

"Directing the pseudogangster operation was Ian Henderson--a man whose name would become synonymous with brutality,not just in Kenya but elsewhere in Britain's empire as well.Henderson is credited with transferring the torture techniques he perfected as a member of the Kenyan Criminal Investigation Department to the pseudogang military operations that he oversaw in the forests.Guerrillas who were captured alive later recalled stories of unspeakable interrogation methods employed by Henderson and his minions.But in the eyes of the local settler population,the pseudogangsters were Kenya's finest--proving they could pierce the heart of Kenya's forests to hunt down those remaining "savages" who were threatening civilization"

[phylo_roadking]

Phylo,in the jungle,or most of Africa,you don't need to get fancy to survive.What was the name of those South African commandoes that ate rotten meat in their training?You can eat tons of bugs,snakes galore.

1/ it's easy to stay alive - but NOT at all easy to generate enough calories to actually function, to trek under load for 20-30 miles a day etc. It takes time for forage enough to live on, more time on top of that to forage enough to function above survival level - AND that has to be repeated every single day. That's the point of removing a supportive civilian population - to make the insurgents have to do ALL that for themselves, and you reduce the actual real time they can devote to killing people and causing assorted mayhem...

2/ Yes, you can eat allsorts to keep yourself alive - but you ALSO eat things that way which reduce your other chances of survival - foodstuffs that need an increased water intake for example, or put you at direct risk of disease. And in turn a reduced calorie intake leaves you open to disease and dietary deficiency issues in the long- or short term. if you look at all of those dumb telly survival programmes, or "I walked the length of South America on 150 calories a day" books - and the common theme and comment you'll find is that "X is enough to keep you alive, but the real secret is still finding help and rescue BEFORE your strength gives out".

[statemachine]

Believe me,phylo,I've heard it first hand.Bugs.Snakes.Maggots.Bugs are non-stop.

[phylo_roadking]

Yes - but you can't just eat at random. You have to know what to eat, and how to prepare it. And to find a minimum 1500 calories a day for even leisurely load-free crosscountry work means a LOT of bushtucker foraging. But to function fully what's the minimum - 1500 to 2000 calories a day? I know heavy manual work requires up to 3000 calories per day.

That's why the VC transported rice etc. along with their military munitions; it's quite simply FAR easier to feed large numbers of people in the field with normal "human" foodstuffs, that dried, tinned, smoked or salted last far longer than anything in the wild. That's what "cultivated" foodstuffs have become over thousands of years; they're a far more condensed way of processing calories compared to their wild equivalents.

Here's an example; a band of guerillas in some stereotypical jungle terrain somewhere. Lightly-laden with personal arms and carrying their share of the group's equipment they can cover 20 miles a day...or ten miles at most if they spend time foraging enough for the whole band to live on. They're facing X number of foreign colonial troops on the ground patrolling...who being heavily laden Europeans can perhaps cover 12-15 miles a day. Now normally the guerillas can outmarch/outpace them....but living off the land they can't. They have to spend X-amount of time simply surviving. And thus the manouverability and speed in the terrain advantages they should enjoy over the colonial security forces is negated. And once the security forces can outmanouver the normally more mobile insurgents, the locals have lost control of the game, and their movements are simply reactions to the security forces'. They've too busy THEN both feeding themsleves, and avoiding capture, to actually take offensive action.

And any guerilla army, insurgency, or terrorist organisation that has to expend its efforts on protecting itself and surviving, rather than actually DOING anything - is finished. Look at ETA, for example...down to something like at most a dozen active members now, and two more of those arrested this week - one in Ireland, one in France IIRC.

[statemachine]

I suppose you are correct for any kind of organised resistance over more than a few weeks.That Henderson book does list some rather stupendous distances barefoot Africans covered in a day,though.4 or 5 times the distance of an equipped soldier.

[phylo_roadking]

They would do so to attempt to break contact with any pursuit, and conversely in that earlier decade the British Army and the security forces wouldn't pursue beyond the range of any aerial umbrella or transport. The only problem was...what the Kikuyu rebels found was they were "loose" in the bush and highlands without any support, having to live off the land after that. Same as the Boers sixty years earlier when they took to the mountains to break contact with the Crown forces. Breaking contact just put them right out where their position was even worse

[statemachine]

The pipeline.Apparently designed by the same Englishman that ran the WWII POW camps.

[august]

getting back to the point of the topic, i feel germany should go nuclear and vastly expand her armed forces. germany today is as much a natural ally of america as is the uk or any other nation currently allied with the us. i think more of an ally than our supposed middle eastern "allies".

[phylo_roadking]

i think more of an ally than our supposed middle eastern "allies".

Of course they're great allies - they pay! IIRC Saudi pays the US a GREAT deal of money every year for the maintenance of US forces in the region.

[Annelie]

Is United States still considered an super power?
I understand it is losing its financial superpower status?

[statemachine]

The U.S may be hurting,but I wouldn't count them out that quickly,there's a lot of depth to the team,more than most people realise.The Chinese understand this,that's why so much of their espionage effort is directed at the U.S.They appreciate the German computer system as well.

[august]

no matter what the saudis pay, and i'm sure the us still foots a considerable bill, it's not worth the damage done by having a us footprint in the region.