Daily Roundup 4/8/2021
Before the music stops
NORTH KOREA
Thanks but no thanks
North Korea will not participate in the Tokyo Olympics.
According to a website published by the commission overseeing the country's participation in the sporting event, the main reason would be "to defend athletes from the health crisis caused by Covid-19".
It is a consideration we take with some scepticism given reports in the past months of a heavy outbreak of Coronavirus that is unclear whether it is under control.
UK
Skirmishes
Northern Irish police have clashed or been attacked repeatedly over the past three days in loyalist areas. The very latest of these examples saw 30 Molotov cocktails thrown at different areas in what was described by the police as a "planned attack". 27 officers were injured.
INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
One man's loss is another man's gain
In the meantime, the microprocessor sector is starting to propose concrete solutions to the lack of components that are also essential for car production, following a slowdown in TSMC's production due to a severe drought on the island of Formosa.
From this point of view, the European options seem to be limited to four countries: the Netherlands (ASML and other companies linked to British manufacturers and designers), Germany - with the production chain linked to Siemens - and Infineon, good waterways that are essential for producing silicon bases and other components. We would like to point out that Infineon has shown limited appetite to drastically increase production, probably as a result of a number of strategic reasons, including the cost of a possible expansion in the production of chips intended for other purposes besides household appliances and cars. We're not sure, however, that the company's forecast is so far-sighted - and finally France and Italy with giant STMicroeletronics central to the production of aerospace and military equipment.
Meanwhile in Asia, the Japanese company Renesas, the same company that acquired the British manufacturer Dialog two months ago, has begun expanding production to support the automotive sector.
IRAN
Kaboom
An Iranian-flagged transport ship used for trips to Yemen was reportedly hit by a landmine.
The New York Times reported that the attack was apparently orchestrated by Israel.
Such tactics have often been relegated to sabotaging air and land transport, but the involvement of naval infrastructure sends a signal to both Tehran and Beijing, which has repeatedly violated US sanctions in defiance.
We are not sure if this was a smart move.
AFRICAN HORN
There is no two without three, but three without four?
A third attempt at negotiations over the use of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has failed. As if that were not enough, Ethiopia reiterated that it only wants to keep the African Union as an intermediary in a rather self-referential signal given Addis Ababa's influence on the international organisation. In response, Egyptian President Al Sisi called for the involvement of the UN, the US and the EU.
The region is a bit of a mess amid reports of the spillover of the Ethiopian Federal Government/Eritrean TPLF conflict into Sudan and reports of human rights violations and mass extermination.
USA-RUSSIA
Dusting off the hatchet and moving unpredictably
An undeniable truth of all institutional structures is that in the long run, power and task management logics settle around them, tending to make all processes of the organism inflexible and difficult to change. In many respects this phenomenon is more the result of the increase in the average age of the officials and staff who carry out all the operations and who, consequently, tend to influence the strategies, the attempts at reform and the mentality of the whole body.
We could go on for hours without coming to a conclusion that would satisfy the palate of many interlocutors so we will just try to briefly apply what has just been said to the quiet changes that have taken place over the last few decades within the US and Russian armed forces with a view on a possible confrontation in Eastern Europe.
The Russians have had to deal with the political, economic and military collapse of the Soviet Union caused mainly by a dysfunctional expansion of the military dimension at the expense of the civilian one.
The atrophy of the communist civil economy coupled with a sense of defeat among Moscow's elites in the competition between the US and the Soviet Union meant that for almost twenty years the Bear's most important concern was to regain some form of international respectability and re-establish domestic order.
Famous in this respect is the damage done by the smuggling of Soviet equipment by various agents or ex-agents of the KGB and other agencies who, out of opportunism or to meet part of their institutional expenses, flooded black markets around the world with military goods that were difficult to obtain in any other way: including in some cases even nuclear warheads (we doubt that such devices can still be found).
Given the success of Russia's diplomatic manoeuvres in contexts such as Latin America and the Indo-China peninsula, it seems quite clear that the Kremlin has been partially successful in restoring a degree of dignity.
The maintenance of internal order and, consequently, the restructuring of the armed forces is another matter.
The Russian Federation has already had several baptisms of fire in conflicts such as the war in Chechnya or in the Donbass and Crimea, but while the first was the expression of an internal clash within the federation itself and Moscow's turnaround against the centrifugal thrusts of some "provinces", the other two were a much more studied campaign that showed a well-oiled war machine a few years later, signalling successful attempts at reform and renewal of the armed forces.
The reform process continues to this day and has attracted the attention of many countries including China and the United States.
Many of the new capabilities of the Russian armed forces are intended to cover up old weaknesses and target the weak points of possible enemies. With a view to a conflict with NATO, the Kremlin has developed a strategy of rapid deployment followed by targeted bombardment with guided artillery systems and other medium- to long-range weapons with the aim of hitting both supply lines and a large proportion of armoured vehicles and aviation, while the various types of ground troops (mechanised, airborne...), which are central to the strategy, have been deployed with the help of the Russian military. ...), central to the strategy of conquest and control of the battlefield, set up supply lines, coordinate attacks and target the front in what would resemble the First World War. What the Russians are aiming for, however, is not a war of attrition forcing them to make a costly advance, but rather to gain a dominant position in the territory they are interested in (they tend to consider an area stretching from Lithuania down to a good chunk of the eastern sector of Ukraine) BEFORE NATO, through the US and perhaps France, Italy and the UK, have reinforcements on the ground. At this point, short- and medium-range nuclear warheads (quick to deploy and difficult to trace and intercept) come into play to deter counterattacks, together with A2/AD S-400 platforms capable of shooting down aircraft such as F-35s or missiles of various types, creating a defensive dome.
The US has various means at its disposal to face a war against Russia but many of these are inadequate following the Kremlin's renewal and reforms. It does not make matters any better that the Americans are overextended around the world and that public opinion is increasingly fed up with the country's involvement in international conflicts.
The elephant in the room is the enormous number of soldiers that the Russian Federation has at its disposal - the active personnel of the army is one million and 14 thousand active from a reserve of two million (estimates suggest 800 thousand ready to fight and distributed in five macro sectors of the country) with an average age between 18 and 27 years - which, following the more limited numbers of the USA, forces Washington to focus on different logics and fall back on technological superiority.
This actually ends up creating a problem because the extent of Russian capabilities to disrupt the operation of many of the American platforms through ad hoc tools that are still being studied by the intelligence community is unclear.
The problem that arises with the emergence of asymmetric capabilities (literally how much the conformation of a military body with respect to the enemy relies on a tactic or weapon that clearly defines its operation on the battlefield and is not shared by the other side. The Americans have a monstrous air support capacity that is a legacy of the Second World War while the Russians rely on an overwhelming number of soldiers combined with the ability to destroy and or deny the use of support means) is not limited to influencing only a possible exchange between the Russians and the Americans of course, but also touches on a confrontation between Beijing and Washington.
This brings us to the discussion of the armed forces overseas.
The United States is still unmatched in military power, and many of the reports suggesting that China may be overtaking it ignore the capabilities the country is capable of deploying in a coordinated attack by sea, land and air.
As we have already noted, however, the advantage Washington enjoys over Russia and China is not only shrinking but also suffering from a different form of attrition: it is strategically inadequate for the new face of warfare.
Drone systems, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computers, centralised command systems, supersonic missiles and reinventing the use of tactical nuclear devices are all being implemented in one way or another.
One of the very latest examples of the inadequacy of part of the US arsenal may have emerged in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict when a series of interconnected Azerbaijani drones (probably supplied by the Turks) used complex triangulation technology to inform ground troops of certain enemy movements and at the same time defend the central unit which was positioned a few hundred metres above and carried out missile launches in tandem with data sorties.
It later emerged that the technology would be similar to that developed by the Israelis in connection with the IAI Harpy puppet/suicide drone.
In response to such a context, the Americans have set up the wall-of-mirrors strategy by upgrading of some old platforms like the B-52 and short- to medium-term deployments communicated at the last second that prevent possible enemies from being sure what might hit them in case of an initial confrontation.
In particular, Washington's gaze is on Crimea and the Donbas, which has recently seen serious troop movements and the advanced deployment of the Ukrainian army in preparation for a full-scale conflict.
The rest of NATO, unless Ukraine joins the alliance or the conflict overflows into sensitive territories, is likely to stand by and watch.
It is unclear how far Moscow is willing to go, but it is likely that the Kremlin believes Kiev is willing to go to war to regain lost territory and will consequently end up heavily damaging the country by seizing territory it needs.