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Revolver has certainly been hard on the U.S. military over the last couple years. We’ve warned about its internal ideological purges and shown how pathetic today’s generals are compared to the legends of the past. We’ve even speculated that the American military soon won’t even be the world’s strongest armed force.
But we aren’t here to demoralize you. We believe that with the right strategy and the right leaders, America can be saved. So today, Revolver is going on a tour of the world’s other militaries. Fortunately, “military intelligence” is an oxymoron in many countries, and incompetence is hardly the exclusive domain of the Pentagon.
UK: Evacuation of Basra
The Afghanistan war ended in embarrassment for the United States, as the moment U.S. troops pulled out of the country, the Afghan “government” instantly collapsed against the Taliban. But America’s British allies suffered an arguably even greater humiliation. During their time in Iraq, the collapse came before the British pulled out, not after.
Following the overthrow of Saddam’s regime, Britain’s forces assumed control of the Basra region in southern Iraq. Southern Iraq was overwhelmingly populated by Shia Muslims, so it lacked the Sunnis who supported Saddam Hussein’s government and drove so much sectarian violence elsewhere. But nevertheless, the British proved totally unable to control the situation. Shiite militias took over more and more of the city, while the British found themselves routinely stymied by a few hundred members of the city’s police department (which the British themselves were supposed to be training).
Eventually, the Shiite militias grew so numerous and so deadly that the British were confined to their bases. There was no going out, except by maximally-armed convoy. The city of Basra, with its million-plus citizens, was ruled by the militias, which murdered vendors who sold alcohol or barbers who shaved men’s beards.
Eventually, the British concluded that even their bases were untenable. In early September 2007, their men and vehicles rolled out of the city to an airbase 13 miles away, never to return. Formally, the city was handed over to the control of the Iraqi government. But in reality, it was ruled by Shiite militias. Just to make the withdrawal, the British had to meekly (and secretly) negotiate with the militias so that they could depart the city without being attacked.
In the end, in early 2008, it was the Iraqi army, backed up by the Americans, that had to do what Britain could not, defeating the Mahdi Army in a 2008 offensive. As some graffiti on a portable toilet put it:
Q: HOW MANY BRITS DOES IT TAKE TO CLEAR BASRAH?
A: NONE. THEY COULDN’T HOLD IT SO THEY SENT THE MARINES.
TOP A THA MORNING CHAPS!
The entire saga was Britain’s most embarrassing military defeat since…
UK: The Fall of Singapore
The early days of World War II in the Pacific were a low point for the U.S. armed forces, but they were an even lower point for the British Empire.
At the outbreak of the Pacific War, Britain’s chief bastion in East Asia was the critical port of Singapore, garrisoned by nearly a hundred thousand troops. Shortly before the war, Prime Minister Winston Churchill reinforced the base with the brand-spanking-new battleship HMS Prince of Wales. The fortress was supposed to be nearly impregnable from any attack by sea, but unfortunately for the British, that’s not where the attack came from.
Mere hours after the Pearl Harbor attack, Japanese troops landed hundreds of miles to the north, on the Malay peninsula. British commanders dispatched the Princes of Wales north to oppose the landings, where the battleship revolutionized naval warfare… by becoming the first capital ship destroyed solely via air attack.
Still, the odds seemed long for the Japanese: Their army numbered barely 30,000, while the British fielded more than twice that number and wielded the advantage of being on defense. Yet the lightly-encumbered Japanese troops raced rapidly through the supposedly-impenetrable Malayan jungle, arriving at the outskirts of Singapore after just a few weeks.
However, the Japanese supply situation was dire. Had the British remained defiant, they may have won an unlikely victory. But in a brilliant play, Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita bluffed the British, pretending to possess overwhelming strength and demanding unconditional surrender. The British meekly capitulated, yielding 85,000 prisoners in the only surrender of more than a thousand years of British military history. Total Japanese casualties totaled less than ten thousand.
France: Dien Bien Phu
The Vietnam War to this day remains America’s costliest military defeat. More than 58,000 American troops died in the failed effort to protect South Vietnam from a Communist takeover.
But while America lost the war, it still acquitted itself well in battle. U.S. forces emerged victorious almost every time they encountered the Vietcong or North Vietnamese directly, and America inflicted far more casualties than it sustained. Even the famous Tet Offensive, which convinced the U.S. public the war was unwinnable, was actually a massive tactical victory for U.S. forces. In the end, America lost the conflict not because its troops were defeated on the battlefield, but because the public saw the war as too costly to keep fighting.
France, on the other hand, can boast no such consolation. A decade before U.S. involvement in Vietnam began in earnest, France was still struggling to hold on to its colonial possessions in Southeast Asia. Their plan: Land more than 10,000 troops, including elite paratroopers and members of the famed French Foreign Legion, at the inland base of Dien Bien Phu, then cut off Viet Minh supply lines and force the enemy into an open battle, which the French would easily win.
It was all a great plan, as long as the French could keep their supply lines open. Which, as it turns out, they couldn’t. After the French arrived at the base, history-teacher-turned-self-trained-general Vo Nguyen Giap quietly amassed a huge quantity of anti-air and artillery units and supplied them with hundreds of bicycles modified to carry more than 400 lbs. of supplies. What happened next, as described by Air Force Mag, was devastating:
Incredibly, the French did not see that Giap was emplacing his guns on the forward slopes of the hills, looking directly down on the camp. The peaks were steep, and howitzers on the reverse slopes would have had to fire at unfavorable angles of elevation to clear the ridges. The guns would have been vulnerable on the forward slopes except that Giap placed them in deep casemates, narrow embrasures dug into the face of the hill, protected by several yards of overhead cover with only the muzzles protruding. Since each gun was assigned to a single target, there was no need for the barrel to move.
When Giap began sporadic bombardment in January, the French took it to be pointless harassment. In fact, the guns were sighting in on their specific coordinates. The main attack, which began at twilight on March 13, was devastating. The French batteries were unable to target Giap’s guns and their artillery spotter airplanes were destroyed on the airstrip.
Strongpoints Beatrice and Gabrielle were overrun the first night and Anne-Marie was taken soon thereafter. By the fifth day, the French had lost the equivalent of three battalions. Giap’s casualties were even greater, but he was now able to strike the encampment with mortars and artillery.
French artillery chief Piroth, who had guaranteed that the Viet Minh guns would do no harm, committed suicide.
With so much firepower, it became impossible to land or take off a plane from the French airfield. Soon, the French realized that instead of luring the Viet Minh into open battle, they had been lured into a deathtrap. While the French desperately resupplied and reinforced their garrison via parachute airdrop, the situation was hopeless. After a two month siege, twelve thousand French troops surrendered, and French rule in Indochina was over forever.
Russia: Forgetting the electric bill
America spends $800 billion a year to ensure that its military remains the most prepared and combat-ready force in the world. Lately, America’s preparedness has appeared shaky. For starters, our ships keep running into each other.
But it could be much worse. We could have the Russian military’s level of readiness.
In 1995, several Russian nuclear submarines were sitting in port when their coolant systems started to fail. Sabotage? An enemy attack? Nope: The Russian navy literally hadn’t been paying its electric bill, and finally the power company cut them off. Russia swears there was no risk of the nuclear submarine suffering a meltdown, but then again, Russia also thought it was going to beat Ukraine in a week. Speaking of which, one reason Russia’s armored offensive bogged down might be that its vehicles are still using tires manufactured in the Soviet Union.
China: Losing a land war in Asia
If Americans feel bad about losing to a small impoverished nation in Southeast Asia, they should take some solace: Vietnam has beaten every single nation trying to control it in the past century. France’s humiliation has been mentioned above, but China’s Vietnam intervention is a little-remembered calamity as well.
While the People’s Republic of China had been a useful ally of North Vietnam during the height of the war, after Vietnam’s unification relations rapidly went south. So in 1979, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping decided it was time to demonstrate his nation’s dominance over its neighbor. The plan: Strike over the border with overwhelming numbers, capture six regional capitals, declare victory and return home.
But as soon as the Chinese marched south things began to go south. Despite being outnumbered roughly 4 to 1, the Vietnamese defenders were more experienced, better-organized, and better-led. Chinese defense minister Su Yu boasted that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could take Hanoi in a week, but after close to a month and tens of thousands of casualties Chinese troops were not even halfway there. After grinding out enough territory to claim Vietnam had learned its “lesson,” Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping ordered a quick scorched-earth retreat back into China.
Ironically, the Vietnam defeat may have paved the way for China’s rise to superpower status. The PLA’s disappointing military performance undercut the hardline Maoist position in the CCP, and bolstered Deng’s plan for economic reforms. Not only that, but the costly outcome may have convinced China’s leaders that foreign military adventures were high-risk, high-cost, and low-reward, a lesson that America’s leaders would do well to learn themselves. When Deng saw the Vietnam invasion was going worse than hoped, he quickly did enough to save face, then cut his losses and got out. If instead of Deng, China were ruled by Lindsey Graham, the PLA might still be battling insurgents in Vietnam to this day.
Israel: Brainwashing and hypnosis
America’s intelligence arm has become more famous for its blunders and delusions than its successes. Forty-five years ago the CIA failed to see revolution coming in Iran. Twenty years ago it sold the Iraq War as a hunt for non-existent WMDs. More recently, high-level CIA staff have convinced themselves that Russia is shooting them with an invisible high-tech laser beam.
But take heart: Even the world’s most famously cunning and ruthless intelligence agency is vulnerable to preposterous and embarrassing blunders.
In 1968 Swedish-born psychologist Binyamin Shalit told Israeli intelligence that he could take a Palestinian prisoner and, using brainwashing and hypnotism, reprogram him into a remorseless killer who could be sent to assassinate Yasser Arafat. Despite this basically just being the plot of “The Manchurian Candidate”, Israeli high command went along with the plan, giving Shalit custody of a relatively dimwitted Fatah prisoner named Fatkhi. In his epic 600-page history of Israel’s assassination program, “Rise and Kill First}, Ronen Bergman describes what happened next:
A small structure containing about ten rooms was put at the Shalit team’s disposal. Here, Shalit spent three months working on Fatkhi, using a variety of hypnosis techniques. The message drummed into the impressionable young man’s head was: “Fatah good. PLO good. Arafat bad. He must be removed.” After two months, Fatkhi seemed to be taking in the message. In the second stage of his training, he was placed in a specially prepared room and given a pistol. Pictures of Arafat jumped up in different corners and he was told to shoot at them instantly, without thinking first, right between the eyes—shoot to kill.
…
In mid-December, Shalit announced that the operation could go forward. Zero hour was set for the night of December 19, when Fatkhi was scheduled to swim across the Jordan River into the Kingdom of Jordan. A fierce storm rolled in, and the rain was unrelenting. The usually calm and narrow Jordan overflowed its banks. AMAN wanted to postpone, but Shalit insisted that Fatkhi was in an “optimal hypnotic” state and that the opportunity had to be exploited.
…
Rafi Sutton was standing on the Israeli bank of the Jordan and watching as, soaked and shivering, Fatkhi waved goodbye to his operators. “He made a pistol out of his fingers and pretended to shoot an imaginary target between the eyes. I noticed Shalit was pleased with his patient. It was a bit after 1 A.M.”
About five hours later, Unit 504 received a communication from one of its agents in Jordan: A young Palestinian man, a Fatah operative from Bethlehem, had turned himself in at the Karameh police station. He told the policemen that Israeli intelligence had tried to brainwash him into killing Arafat and handed over his pistol. A source inside Fatah reported three days later that Fatkhi had been handed over to the organization, where he had made a passionate speech in support of Yasser Arafat.
This list could go on and on, but we will save the rest for a part two. In the meantime, we encourage you to let us know what we left out in the comments. Stay tuned.
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