John Michael Greer: Archdruid Report Essays

The danger the corporate state faces does not come from the poor. The poor, those Karl Marx dismissed as the Lumpenproletariat, do not mount revolutions, although they join them and often become cannon fodder. The real danger to the elite comes from déclassé intellectuals, those educated middle-class men and women who are barred by a calcified system from advancement. Artists without studios or theaters, teachers without classrooms, lawyers without clients, doctors without patients and journalists without newspapers descend economically. They become, as they mingle with the underclass, a bridge between the worlds of the elite and the oppressed. And they are the dynamite that triggers revolt.

Scource

Poet -

Just a heads up JMG will be a podcast guest on the site in 2 weeks.

cheers,
A

Regrets, but I find Greer's story deeply troublesome. I understand that the first three parts were really just a setup to get to these last two parts about the dissolution of the American union. Unfortunately, the first three parts are so cartoonish and self-deluded that I have lost a lot of interest in what Greer says. His thoughts on decline are still valuable, but he has a 4th grader's understanding of what goes on in the larger world.

For example, I wrote to a friend about the first part of this story and asked, Where is the UN? The US does nothing, but nothing, without first obtaining a UNSC resolution to cover its backside. The whole story should have died on the vine right there with China and/or Russia killing any such resolution. And when China strikes, does that not constitute an attack on a NATO nation, would that not invoke a NATO response? The real world is overlaid with layer upon layer of treaties, private agreements, foreign nationals working in strange places. Complicated stuff that never works out neatly.

Instead, JMG shows us rolling into Africa with incredible forces (I've done military planning for Africa, this is an utterly inconceivable force structure for that environment) and blundering into a Chinese trap. Oh, that trap--how come everything the Chinese do is undetectable and perfectly executed while everything we do is blundering, unprotected and easily observed? This is a strawman.

I could cite many, many more examples of his lack of understanding of how intelligence works, how cruise missiles are deployed--lots and lots of examples, but they won't matter because he is incapable of listening to others and learning from them. Read the comments following the first two. Anyone who praises JMG gets a big attaboy, anyone who raises doubts about the scenario gets an icy reception and a threat of banning. When one commenter cites a long history of situations that contradicted JMG's thesis, JMG responded petulantly by accusing him of "cherry picking." Unfortunately, it seems to me that JMG is doing the cherry picking. He certainly is not interested in articulated arguments that might contradict his assumptions.

Same with his obsession about the carriers. Full disclosure: I am a carrier sailor, a product of Naval aviation. I've forgotten more about carrier warfare than JMG ever thought he knew. And yes, we are terribly aware of our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Terribly aware. But they aren't what JMG thinks they are, even though he actually started to work that way in his first part. It's a part of JMG's 4th grade view of things that carriers are obsolete and we're all fighting the last war, hence we're wide open and vulnerable. And yes, this is a childish misconception, easily refuted by the foolishness with which the military has rushed to all its "new and improved" objectives, tactics, training and procedures over the past decade. If anything, mistakes are made by not fighting the last war, but by fearfully trying to avoid the mistakes of the last war.

This is where I find the series getting creepy. I appreciate JMG's repeated observation that we are not the first civilization in history to exceed our resource limits, and like the others before us we will pay dearly for it. I personally remind myself regularly to collapse now and beat the rush. And I have been warning of the black eye that is coming our way in military defeat. Unfortunately, as with Rome (which seems to be more JMG's model than any period of US history), the defeat will more likely be gangrenous, a slow but steady withering. IMHO, it's already started. What's creepy is the relish with which JMG takes to it. It's as if he wants us to be an arrogant, hubristic people who deserve what's coming.

So far, he's left the worst class, the financial class, out of the responsibility entirely. The American populace is foolish and ignorant, but they are not the arrogant, hubristic drivers who have been pushing us into wars regularly this past century. Somehow, this whole dynamic seems to have been overlookedby JMG, and all of a sudden, individual congressmen make a difference in episode four.

JMG's criticism of apocalyptic theorists is that they make the the apocalypse wash away all that the theorist can't stand in his own world, and replace it with the theorist's perfect world. Somehow, he's doing exactly that with this story--washing away the big, complex American empire that he can't understand or appreciate (yes, appreciate, because our fat, dumb and happy American lives are a direct consequence of our imperial corporatism, and losing our superiority, however immoral one might think it, will cause immense suffering to those we love), and replacing it with lots of small "human" scaled states and communities that resume self-government.

No fiefdoms, landlords or emergent feudalism here, no financiers owning most of America with layers of discreet agents between them and the serfs, none of that bad stuff. All of us Americans overseas on the imperial guard, what happens to us with the 5 Sep Amendment? All the assets overseas? Maybe he should read Orlov, get some insight on what happens when empires collapse. I remember Russian sailors fishing in their underwear in the harbor at Bahrain, one watch on, one watch off. No fuel to run the engines, hence no air conditioning. No food at all. No pay to go ashore and buy food. No fuel to leave, and no one in Moscow to issue orders to leave even if they could buy fuel. US sailors, who had contested the seas with them for decades, were sending over food, and buying "souvenirs" from the Russians (uniforms, pretty much anything not permanently attached to the hull) just to give them money.

But perhaps I'm hasty. He has one more episode. Let's see how "apocalyptic" JMG's end state will be.

Steve, go to the second posting of the series and read the comments by Nestorian and Johnnyrustsinthesun, and then see how JMG responds to them. Note the obscure comment by JMG, "Johnny (offlist), at this point you're just nitpicking. Enough." Since he already replied to Johnny's post about being dogmatic, it seems that the post he's referring to has already been deleted. Johnnyrustsinthesun disappears at that point.

Additionally, as much as he flames some posters for swallowing the Pentagon press releases about our capabilities, he takes every Chinese claim as infallible.

Finally, note the very brief comment by a poster named Will, and the dismissive "lots of others here disagree with you." Followed by "they're not as enlightened as us cats are" from CherokeeOrganics.

However, I can't find "banned" in there, although his general disclaimer at the bottom of the comments makes it clear that he will do it if he feels like it. It's his blog, I don't fault him for that. What I fault him for is, not once in all the comments does he ever show any sign of awareness that he might have something wrong, might have misestimated or misunderstood something.

I find his scenario utterly implausible. Going back to my comment on wargaming, this is in some ways what we call "fighting the scenario." In an exercise, we want to test something, and the scenario may be implausible to silly, but we have to go with the scenario if we're going to complete the test. The problem with something like this, though, is that the scenario has to be plausible if he wants to provoke thought about this thesis (not assent, but thought). JMG wants to show how a military defeat can lead to the dissolution of the USA. That he gets the military bits all wrong is damaging, and that he oversimplifies the political bits only hurts more. I certainly don't see him convincing anyone who isn't already convinced (or as some commenters seem to be, eagerly awaiting--the commenters that JMG regularly gives big attaboys to, which I find just a bit creepy).

I don't find American collapse or military defeat or the ultimate breakup of the USA implausible at all. I do find the straw men and flawed assumptions and dogmatic assertions of JMG to make this particular explanation of how it can happen unbelievable. If these weaknesses are challenged, no argument follows, only rhetorical tricks and appeals to the crowd. I'll be glad when he gets back to the personal and emotional issues of how we manage our slow decline, that's where his strength is.

OITW -

Been following your most recent string of posts with a lot of interest. You aren't the only one who finds JMG out in left field with his scenarios and with ebbing cred.

I spent 24 years in the submarine force, retired from COMNAVSUBFOR staff. I saw my share of implausible exercise scenarios. And that was from staff planners who had real experience.

You've highlighted numerous shortcomings in JMG's Phase 0 set up. His transition through Phase I and higher derails almost immediately. He makes the potential adversary look 10 feet tall and bullettproof - a time proven tactic straight from the playbook of defense contractors and the flag officers who support them (and the pet project that solves the problem).  How ironic.....

If JMG's assertions were even close to an accurate reflection of PRC/PLA capability, they would have Taiwan, the Senkakus, Spratlys and Paracels. But they don't.

I had to stop reading the lead-up scenarios - between the incredulity and inaccuracies of JMG's assumptions and the sycophantic cheerleading from the posters (not too mention the deletion of contrarian posts as you've pointed out), SNR was less than one.  I found myself getting too distracted by the process with which the postulated end point arrived rather than the credibility of the end game. 

In other words, how can you get there if you can't get there?

And finally - thanks for your service....

I can't help but think that some people here are totally missing the point of this series of posts and perhaps using this as an opportunity to shake their manly parts in Greer's direction.  "My military planning chops are bigger than yours!"  For the record, I'm one of the people over there who disagreed over several specifics of his scenario.  But none of that matters.  Sure maybe for some of the war nerds who will comfort themselves with the knowledge that it is highly unlikely that everything would break as perfectly against the US as he paints.  I sort of wish he had made it a lot more competitive, but I understand he was trying to tell the story in a short, concise narrative.  But even a close defeat in terms of objectives, along with serious loss of US lives and expensive hardware, could have serious repercussions on this country's stability.   At least, according to him, that's what history tells us, and I think it's reasonable to be open to the argument.

All in all, and admittedly as someone without the upper-level military science background of some others, I think he has done a pretty good job of showing what some of the repercussions could be.  Again, for the record, I have found some of his post-defeat narrative a bit unconvincing, and have given my arguments there as well.  It's all just nit-picking, though,  The question is, did you learn anything from it, or not?  Or did you get so caught up in your own reaction that you couldn't hear what he had to say?   And what does that tell you about yourself?

Okay, I'll bite. What is the point of this series of posts? I seriously don't believe you read my posts to understand the nature of my objections, but as I stated in two of them, US military defeat and deep political repercussions are certainly plausible, perhaps historically inevitable. However flawed, JMG's story is just a vehicle to try to get us to think about that. My real concerns aren't his misunderstandings of modern warfare, it's his response to criticism. I don't feel superior in any way for seeing the oddities in his responses, just aware that like other apocalyptics much of what he presents is a function of his own anxieties and biases. So what is the point of this quintuplet of posts by JMG?

^ MARTIAL arts teacher

It could have been your marital arts teacher.

Just a little Navy love, the rest of you can look the other way.