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Upcoming Cyberwars
Jamyang writes "In the run-up to the first anniversary of September 11, Taiwan's President has accused China of threatening Taipei with "terrorist" tactics in a speech that will fuel Beijing's current fury: "Communist China has accelerated development of 'unrestricted warfare' similar to terrorist methods," he said. Reuters man in Taipei reckon he's referring to "Unrestricted Warfare" [PDF] by leading PLA strategists - Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui - who famously argued that China should focus on "asymmetric engagement" in the 21st century. In fact, many related secret documents have leaked out of China lately. Taiwan's Defense Ministry is taking the threat of infowar very seriously, as can be seen in their 2002 Defense Whitepaper. If the U.S. gets tied up in a ground war in the Middle East, China's going to be real tempted ...."
I know it has been said before, but this is really too tempting. Are all government leaders using Clancy's latest novels to determine their course of action?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
...to make Saddam Hussein shaped firecrackers for American New Years celebrations
What the hell, its 10 til 3 in the morning and I've got karma to burn.
...and those evil linux 'hackers' in China will be prosecuted, then a joint-venture will pop up between China and the US to prosecute everything that has the word 'hacking' into it - expecially the linux kernel.
:)
Damn, look at those linux guys, they have hacking also in the core of their operating system! thank god Palladium will save us.
now let's see your sense of humour
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Somehow we've gotten into the same trap again, things that have been happening for months, if not years, are now blamed on "terrorist activity." I think every skirmish in the past 12 months have all been blamed on terrorism to differing plausibility: Afghanistan/Taliban, Israel/Palestine, Philippines/Abu Sayyaf, N. & S. Korea, and now Taiwan/China. I mean, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has been going on for over 50 years! Is it just a new catchphrase or is it a realisation of the tactics used by one side or the other? And by the US gov't declaring war on terror, it means that the US will have an obligation to help all of these countries in their "War Of Terror"
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
In fact, many related secret documents have leaked out of China lately.
Yea, like how they make Swingline 747 staplers that are *just as good* and the ones they used to make in New York. And documents on just *how* much (or little) they're paying people at the Logitech mouse making plant to make those little cordless mice.
Personally I want to find out about their documents on how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll tootsie pop. I hear they done extensive research into this phenomenon.
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
Would the US intervene if China invaded Taiwan? Absolutely. The intervention might not take the form of massive troop deployments, but you could certainly expect massive air and sea-based theater weapons such as cruise missiles, fuel-air bombs, and the like to be brought to bear on massed Chinese forces.
Whether China could defeat Taiwan is certainly open for debate, but the US would not sit idly by and let China launch an unprovoked attack without doing something about it. For the US not to do so would be tantamount to approving of the invasion, which is ludicrous to imagine.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Now that the US has decided to wage a war against terrorism many other countries have decided to crack down own their own internal problem populations by painting them with the terrorist brush.
Russia did it with chechnians, China did with the minority muslim population in the west. In the case of Israel it has used the post 9-11 US position to crack down much harder on the palestenians to the point of putting eight hundred thousand people under curfew and starving the population into submission.
Before 9-11 all of these actions would have been objectionable to the US govt and the public at large but post 9-11 nobody has raised an eyebrow.
Even in the US anybody who disagrees with the govt gets tagged with the terrorist label. The environmentalists, the "anti globalists", hackers, music swappers, open source developers etc.
It should not surprise anybody to see taiwan jumping on board this bandwagon.
My suspicion is that the term will dilute itself just like the word nazi did after it got overused so much. Feminazi, green nazi, surf nazi, soup nazi etc. When you start labeling everybody with the same tag pretty soon the label encompasses so many people it loses it's potency.
War is necrophilia.
Am I the only one that's getting tired of every world leader referring to the activity of their rivals as being "terrorism"? It reminds me of how, during the Cold War, every problem a nation faced was either blamed on "communist subversion" or "imperialist aggression."
Computer viruses as terrorism? Well, maybe if they're targeted to drop planes from the sky, cause nuclear power plant malfunctions, etc -- but everyday preparation for infowar is not terrorism.
Besides, terrorism is almost always the weapon of the weak (excluding "terror" against one's own population). Strong countries find lobbing a few missiles to be much more effective. There is real danger of full-scale conventional war if Taiwan declares independence from China, and I suspect that computer viruses will be the last of their concerns.
Make cheese not war 8:)
The objective of information warfare is to ensure the Security of Communication, Information and Network of the National Defense. Under the guideline of Defense first, Swift Responses & Preemption, the MND has adopted the strategy of Active Surveillance & Reconnaissance, and Protection to establish a security protection capability of communication and information, which stresses Early Warning and Quick Response so as to maintain superiority in communication and information. Furthermore, in order to cope with cybervirus warfare, the MND has established an information warfare task force in concert with key technology development programs of communication and information security and Net Safety Program of the CSIST so as to create relevant technologies regarding cybervirus control and prevention.@
I fail to see the news in this though. Preparation for the much hyped cyberwars is probably in every countries defense tasklist.
I would submit that Taiwan itself is more of a deterrent than the US for preventing any hostility between China and Taiwan... the reason is simple: Taiwan is now China's third largest investor, next to the US and Japan -- even despite limits on investment activity set by the Taiwanese government. Other than the most advanced technology, much of Taiwan's high-tech manufacturing, such as chip fabs, has been farmed out to factories in Guangdong and Fujian provinces, as well as many other parts of China. The relationship is a lot like say, US and Mexico for instance.
Taiwan pumps a LOT into the Chinese economy, and the Chinese know it. The leaders of China may be aggressive, because face is everything, and they want to maintain a strong posture to the world. Nevertheless, they are not irrational or suicidal. A trade embargo between Taiwan and China would be plenty damaging enough, even without US military intervention (which is also a guarantee -- Taiwan and the US are still subject to terms of their mutual defense treaty, signed as part of US switching diplomatic recognition to the PRC in 1979.)
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I think perhaps you have it backwards - could it be that non-Americans hate the US so much because the United States is always cleaning up spilled milk?
For example, according to an Ipsos-Reid poll last week, 69 per cent of Canadians said the U.S. shares some of the responsibility for the attacks, while 15 per cent said all of the responsibility sits on American shoulders.
If we Canadians feel that way, how does the rest of the world feel? You are bound to get stung when you stick your hand in the hornets' nest looking for honey.
McDonalds is now available in China.
If you want to be liked, try not to sign laws threatning nations wich you have been friends with for the last 100 years or so.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I wouldn't be suprised if a story like this, from a very dependent ally, was encouraged by the powers that be.
Oh yeah, remember; if you or anyone you know smoked a joint since 9/11, you're supporting terrorisim.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Oh yeah? I read in the Weekly World News (the definitive news source) that if the Chinese government got all X billion Chinese to jump up and down at once, they could throw the Earth off its axis! Try that on for size! :D
No, there is no current way to artifically generate an EMP w/o something like a nuclear bomb. Remember Ocean's Eleven? Yeah, that was all made up.
i originally posted the comment below on april 25th, and am cutting and pasting it verbatim... it was attached to the slashdot story "CIA Warns China Might Be Planning Cyber Attack" if you go to the website i mentioned below right now today, you get nothing but a lonely gif, a copyright notice, and a webmaster's address... the veritable calm before the storm? again, i am not much a conspiracy theorist, but what is with the sept. 2002 date i originally mentioned? i wish i had a cache of that page! and honestly, i don't know if this site or this organization is in taiwan, the us, or china, or sealand ;-P someone less lazy than me run a trace route! ;-)
;-P ). I guess honker is hacker in Chinese. It was a toolbox of scripts and methodologies.
Remember then Chinese hacker push in early May of last year? It was to coincide with May Day and in protest over the whole U.S. Spy Plane Hainan Island debacle the month before that.
Some MS boxen got "f**k USA government f**k poizonbox" pasted all over their IIS roots. Not much beyond that, and I think some American hackers returned the favor. A little miniature patriotic hacker war.
Out of curiosity, I kept up to date on Chinese hacking at a site whose address is www.cnhonker.com (visit at your own risk, and don't hit the Back button
But very recently, in March, the site was closed by someone called "lion". I had a Chinese coworker of mine visit the site, and she translated the brief explanation for the site's closing as "After long thinking, we have no choice but close it. Please don't write to us asking why, give us a little time. We'll be back. September 2002, we'll see you again"
I am not much of a conspiracy theorist, but when it comes to autocratic governments, my instincts change... any bets on whether or not the Chinese Government has coopted some of their talented hackers for a patriotic cause?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Taiwan is a major source of investment capital for China, and only seems likely to increase in importance as one in the future. Taiwan recently eliminated an official requirement that investment in the mainland had to be chunneled through third parties, and removed its cap on mainland investment of $50 million last year.
Considering that the single largest threat to the CCP is probably the economic instability and mass urban unemployment that comes with state-owned enterprise reform, market liberalization and WTO accession, it seems exceedingly unlikely that the CCP will take any steps whose immediate consequence will inevitably be a sharp reduction in foreign capital inflows -- inflows the top leadership (or at least Zhu Rongji) seems to recognize is absolutely vital to maintain rapid growth in the country and prevent the financial sector from choking under the weight of insolvency.
THAT being said, if Taiwan actually makes a move towards independence, as seems increasingly likely, it's anyone's guess what might happen, since much of the political legitimacy of the CCP also seems based on catering to Chinese nationalism. Could they afford not to react?
All this being said, having actually read "Unrestricted Warfare" (in English), I think the threat of China as a digital renegade is completely overblown, if it is politically convenient for those with other reasons to dislike/distrust the country. There is nothing in the report that any other military institution isn't already considering. And lest we forget, the US itself targeted civilian communications infrastructure in Serbia during the Kosovo War. In any event -- its likely that air superiority will continue to be the decisive factor in contemporary military conflict -- and China doesn't have remarkably good aerospace airforce and knows it.
You misunderstand - if you read the article, you'd see that those 15% believe that US foreign policy led to the attacks. Rather, had US foreign policy been handled differently, the attacks would have never happened. That's not to defend those 15%, I personally believe that it takes two to tango, but hey, everyone is entitled to their opinion. My point isn't to defend those 15%, or 69%, for that matter. It's just to say that if a closely allied country can find blame in the US, how do people in other countries feel?
I think one has to careful with sweeping statements like that.
1) Somebody will always hate somebody else. And if that somebody else is more known than usually then those that hate will also be more known. Case in point South America and Spain. Not that many South American's are that crazy about Spain. (Obvious reasons, but nobody hears about it).
2) Not everybody hates the US. They were talking about this in CNN Europe Edition. And many came to the conclusion that Europeans do not hate American's per say. They hate the administration and George Bush.
3) Some people who hate the US also hate the West. There are many Islamists (People who believe Islamism is the true way). And these folks, do not like Democracy or anything like that. They only believe in Islamism and hence they hate the West as much as they the US.
4) Humans like bitch. I know that I bitch about the US, but guess what I REALLY bitch about Germany (Schroeder the biggest wahoo, bonehead, idiot, makes George Bush look intelligent, ever elected), France, Canada and all the other countries. But people only remember my bitching of the US.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
And other cultural vandalism.
If I dislike America the Capitalist it'd because of it's success. It's ironic that the majority of Americans I have met are some of the friendliest and generous people I have met but when I walk through my town it makes me sad that everywhere I see Corporate America mocking me with it's ownership of my environment. Within 5 miles of my house there are 4
McDonalds, 2 Wal-Marts, 2 Starbucks and 1 GAP.
As en experiment I just went and turned on my TV. Of the seven channels two of them are shwoing American programmes (Happy Days & something with Tia Carrera as Indiana Jones).
Of course, much of it doesn't start out as unwanted, I like Happy Days but as time goes by this cultural expansionism gets a bit much. Suddenly there are no shops but American shops. All your canned drinks say "made by the Coke Company" and there's nothing but Saved By The Bell or WWF on TV.
America can seem like a guest who brought round a six pack and a pizza but doesn't know when to leave.
Just ask Osama. The Americans come to help stabilise the region but then decide to maintain a military presence that goes far beyond the initial mandate. Now, I will admit, that this presence is probably to *my* benefit, but for some Muslims it's offensive (like Conservative Islam is to me).
I'm not suggesting that any of this makes it okay to spill American blood. Far from it. But that's what it's like living under American influence.
It's no wonder the people try to protect their culture from outside influence. They want dominion over their own affairs.
Perceived common enemies are the stock in trade for the human race be it burglars, burgers or Burghers. There's money/power to be made in "solutions" to all of these.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I'm glad you remembered Tibet (it is afterall China we are talking about). If one means invasions sucessfully repulsed, there were not a lot of those. However, in a lot of places one nation was able to hold on to another from a few years (name any of the countries invaded by the Germans in WW2) to about 50 years for the DDR and even more for the countries comprising Soviet Russia. For example, some of the Central Asian countries were not associated with Russia until about 80 years ago.
In any case the PRC sees the ROC as part of China. They do not perceive it as another country, just a last bastion of power held by a regime chased out of the rest of the country. If they start to accept it as a separate country then there is a chance for long term peace.
To be serious Taiwan and China enjoy a very profitable business partnership and there are many in China who know this. However there are still a few hawks around (especially in the military) who perceive otherwise. Let us wait for the next People's Congress to see who gets in.
In any event -- its likely that air superiority will continue to be the decisive factor in contemporary military conflict -- and China doesn't have remarkably good aerospace airforce and knows it.
"Air superioruty"'s overblown value is a doctrine originated by Germans (in their pathetic attempts to attack Britain from the air alone) and picked up by US as a way to sell themselves an idea of having a war with extremely low casualties on their side. It's bullshit. Any airplane outside of the area of a battle on the ground or sea is nothing but a very large house fly -- an annoying target. The damage that it can cause to anything military is negligible, the possibilities to turn it away by all kinds of attacks, even without actually destroying, are endless, and the best it can do is to bomb cities full of civilians to at best demoralize and usually merely annoy the population.
In a battle on the ground or sea the air force can do a lot of assistance and may even determine the outcome of the battle, but don't kid yourselves -- there must be a battle there in the first place, and a lot of people will have to die there, with or without airplanes flying over them.
War sucks, and if you go there, you are most likely to die. No doctrine changes that.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
If the U.S. gets tied up in a ground war in the Middle East, China's going to be real tempted ...."
Yes, those War Rabbid Communists are going to finally have the opportunity to unleash their unkept minions, hell-bent on destruction in their search to implement their Ultimate Secret Plan.
Those Filthy Communist Chinease have been waiting to assault *YOUR LOCAL MINI-MALL*, Apple Pie, Aunt Betty and Good old God Fearing Democratic America(TM).
RUN! HIDE! The COMMUNISTS ARE COMMMMIIIINNNGGG!!
*or* consider that AMERICANS are paranoid war-mongers - Now actually publicly debating when they will launch an unprovoked attack on another Nation. Propaganda about Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction (which USA officially participates-in, funds and implements) would you Americans not see this as a obvious shift from the present Join a Proxy War (Afghanistan/Vietnam), or maybe Fund Terrorists (C&SAmerica in 80s, Columbia Today), or other less obvious "Public Motivations"... now, now you Yanks are moving into the "Do What Your Told or ELSE - BECAUSE WE SAID SO!" style Warfare... a little off from your usual-run-of-the-mill American WarMongering.
We used nuclear weapons. As you know, that causes 8 squares of pollution and makes everyone hate you.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Perhaps there is little worry about 'cyberwarfare' but it is always important to understand that all governments utilize their intelligence services to conduct industrial espionage. In fact some services like France's publish that as a key objective, publically. The PRC is far more likely to be engaged in penetrating economic assets than military assets.
sound like you're looking for something to complain about
No, if you read the conversation the poster wanted to know where anti-American feeling comes from and, I believe, that my answer was addressing that question from my honest perspective.
You'll notice that I suggested that much of it came from America the Capitalist, not the people.
One could probably write a whole book on the subject so I'm sorry if my post didn't get across all the subtleties.
The symbol of the flag is very strong, marking one's territory. The international success of US retail business (bourne probably because of the vastness of the US continent and the necessity to think big) means we have many such flags and each one of them says 'we own you'. No other country has such a multitude of these symbols planted in our soil.
You'd think there would be such feeling around China and Taiwan. After all, a huge percentage of our household goods and electronics items are made in these places which adversely affects our balance of trade but our relations with China are generally ignored by most people. The only high profile Asiatic business I can think of round these parts is a Mitsubishi Car Dealer.
Personally I'm not predjudice either way because, like you say, it is relatively few people who wield the actual power. It's institutions that become problematic not the people running them. I believe the institutions will eventually crumble, like all that have gone before them. Perpetual Economic Growth as a goal is surely doomed to failure. The capitalists think that the problems will solve themselves once someone thinks of a way to make money out of solving them. Surely that can't be right, can it?
As for TV, well it's an Australian that started the channel that shows WWF all day Saturday and if ever a tv show carried the wrong message about Americans it is WWF. I mean, it's a TV show that's targetted at kids in which the protagonists fight because one of them drugged the other one's daughter and kidnapped her and married her in Las Vegas as some sort of revenge on the other to which the conclusion was for one to baseball bat the other unconcious while people cheered on. With commentary.
At least Fonzie has good manners.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Nothing new to see here, move along.
I know this because Tyler knows this.
what if GW is right? Don't argue that there is no proof...blaha blah blah. Hypothetically, what if he is, and Saddam could nuke people
What if he does have nukes - or chemical weapons? or supports "Terrorists"? These things are ALL DONE BY THE USA!
Having Nuclear Arms is UNIVERSALLY BAD - there is no "exception" from this idea, the USA is not somehow magicall trusted to only do good, and they have proven to not be trustworthy in the past.
What people inside the US (generally) fail to recognize is that it is a complete contradiction for you to be dictating ANYTHING to ANYONE in this regard. It is one thing for the product of the 9/11 event to begin an American-Lead World-Peace initiative (through a body such as the UN) or something, but this is not what has happened.
Instead, after the invasion of Afghanistan, you are now looking to broaden a War, of your creation, to ANOTHER nation - all the while trying to 'justify' and make 'reasonable' the act.
No war is acceptable - ever. It is one thing to defend yourself from attack (the purpose of every military) and another to ATTACK another nation - what you are proposing.
The world does not welcome Americans invading foreign nations... any more than Iraq->Kuwait, Germany->Poland, USSR->Afghanistan etc etc etc.
You cannot invade using "we need a regime change" as the reason, its fucking ridiculous -- and not alittle big scary.
the money from pirate videos supports drug smugglers
Drug dealers don't need to make money on the side from pirating videos. For gods sake, they're in the most lucrative buisness on the planet, and any time the US increases it's intercepts they just increase outgoing shipments. Get together all the money made by movie pirates and it would just be a tiny drop in the bucket when it comes to drugs.
You won't see nearly this much money in piracy untill hardware DRM comes in. Then street dealers will sell crack, coke, weed, and video cards with the DRM disabled or black market TV out jacks wired in.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Taiwan is not officially a state, as it does not clearly have the capacity to enter into relationships with other states, as many other countries view Taiwan as part of the ROC, not as an independant state. Taiwan cannot appeal to the United Nations, because it cannot join the United Nations, due to the fact that membership can be vetoed by any member of the security council, of which China is a member.
This has been a long-standing problem, as Taiwan has 20+ million people, who've formed a self-governing body and want to be their own country, but have an 800-lb gorilla preventing them from doing so. Unfortunately this problem has been worsened in recent years as countries such as the United States have made clear that they don't care about China's oppression of Taiwan by ignorning the issue, and even granting China Most Favored Nation status, as Americans care more about cheap shoes than they do about the oppression of a country, and about gross human rights violations.
Germany invaded major countries like Poland and France, and thoroughly occupied them in addition to consuming various smaller countries as, basically, stepping stones. Care? Well, the Czechs know how much the rest of Western Europe really cared, until the UK, Switzerland and Spain were basically all that weren't assimilated by Italy or Germany.
Russia, for its part, invaded Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Finland... and the world, generally speaking, didn't do a damn thing about them.
The US invaded Grenada -- nobody lifted a finger. The US invaded Panama and implemented some regime change -- again, nobody interfered. The USSR and Cuba funded and trained Marxist revolutionaries all over Latin America and Africa, and nobody but the US really gave a damn.
How much outside intervention have we seen in Jammu and Kashmir? None.
How much outside intervention have we seen when the Turks invade Iraq? Basically none.
If you got the power, or you're not threatening THEM immediately, most of the world won't care. Like Chamberlain, they'll happily sign over a third party's land to somebody else if it doesn't hurt their short-term interests.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Does that mean that we'll be seeing even more spam from .cn? ;)
/*drunk.. fix later*/
If this fukker gets nukes he's going to bomb someone with them
Like maybe Japan?
I was in the City during both attacks on the WTC.
This was a criminal act. Not a sanctinoed act of war launched by a military - Iraq's or anyone else's.
Your message is spot on American WarMongering - thank you for the display.
to about 50 years for the DDR and even more for the countries comprising Soviet Russia. For example, some of the Central Asian countries were not associated with Russia until about 80 years ago.
Wow, I had no idea that the Dance Dance revolution was so successfull!
(er, what do you mean by DDR? Am I missing something?)
Anyway. I agree with what you say about the prospect of war, pretty unlikely. The people with the money in the PRC and ROC have too much invested in eachother to go to war.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Before the modern Zionist movement, "Israel" was nothing more then a few scattered, peaceful, Jewish communities in a large Arab one. The idea that "Israel and Palestine" have been fighting for thousands of years is ridiculous. The Jews have never fought with Islamic Arabs before, and only once before fought with the "Philistines" (for which the region was named 'Palestine' by the Romans)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
<i>If this fukker gets nukes he's going to bomb someone with them
Like maybe Japan?</i>
We were at war with Japan. We asked them to stop. They told us they would fight to the very last man. What were we supposed to do? THEY ATTACKED US. You have some set of coward ass balls to even bring Japan into the conversation. Next time use Dreseden.
<i>
I was in the City during both attacks on the WTC.
This was a criminal act. Not a sanctinoed act of war launched by a military - Iraq's or anyone else's.</i>
Prove it
This
DDR = Deutschen Demokratischen Republik = East Germany.
. You have some set of coward ass balls to even bring Japan into the conversation
Your the one who said "nuke them" - in the end, nothing can ever undo the fact that ONLY AMERICANS have ever dropped Nukes on humans.
Prove it
Ok, so innocence until proven guilty is a matter of convenience? Justice for Americans only?
American policymakers and pretty much everyone else in the realm of international affairs understands that these tensions will continue to surface. The real issue is how the US and China will handle those tensions.
If China were to hit Taiwain, it would not be in the same category as war in the Israeli-occupied areas or Russian adventures in Chechnya. Those issues are of interest to the US, but are not as pressing, because in neither case is the future security of East Asia being called into doubt.
American foreign policy is becoming more and more oriented around containment of China and protection of the Far East. A prosperous free market regional economy is extremely important to the US, and by allowing China to disrupt it at will, the US would be opening the door to further disruptions later.
The domestic faction in the US that you speak of would likely be opposed to a huge, manpower-intensive war over Taiwan, but it would be extremely difficult for anyone to argue that China's annexation of Taiwan would be anything but an invasion of a neighboring country.
The American public has been fed a diet of "Rising China" stories over the past few years by the media, and my guess is they would be strongly in favor of attacking Chinese forces taking part in any such invasion.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"How did this water get here?"
"Probably a burst pipe"
"Hey, what are you complaining for? It's your people that made the pipe burst. Don't blame the water."
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
How you sit in Canada, whose existence is wholly dependant on the US
This is exactly the ignorant egotism that makes Americans mindless assholes. Turn off your TV moron.
Heh, you're an idiot.
"Derp de derp."
I didn't mean to imply that air superiority alone guaranteed victory, so your points are well taken....
But I think you're being overly pessimistic otherwise. Command of the air in Kosovo may not have led directly to the toppling of Milosevic, but let's remember that it was used from 16,000+ feet (out of the range of Serbian surface-to-air missiles), largely out of the understandable American desire to avoid unnecessary casualties.
I think a lot of the pessimism over the value of air superiority otherwise is a hangover from Vietnam, where major air offensives are generally believed to have been ineffective. What people tend to forget is that the Vietcong had an incredibly effective sigint network, and - from evesdropping on unsecured American communications, and particularly the ground- communications of air Force maintenance personel - often had quite advance warning on the location and timing of air assaults.
When the US got its act together and began to secure its communications, the effectiveness of bombing in Vietnam (and Cambodia) increased immesurably.
But I think you're being overly pessimistic otherwise. Command of the air in Kosovo may not have led directly to the toppling of Milosevic, but let's remember that it was used from 16,000+ feet (out of the range of Serbian surface-to-air missiles), largely out of the understandable American desire to avoid unnecessary casualties.
That was a typical use of military force in the time of peace, when civilians' life is valuable -- it works until a real war starts. And, of course, it only supported Milosevich by providing a convenient foreign enemy, ultimately delaying his removal from power by then disorganized opposition, that couldn't use situation either way at the moment. Same with some later events and another weak leader that used foreign "air attacks" against civilians in his country as a crutch for his political career. He is doing fine so far.
I think a lot of the pessimism over the value of air superiority otherwise is a hangover from Vietnam, where major air offensives are generally believed to have been ineffective. What people tend to forget is that the Vietcong had an incredibly effective sigint network, and - from evesdropping on unsecured American communications, and particularly the ground- communications of air Force maintenance personel - often had quite advance warning on the location and timing of air assaults.
When the US got its act together and began to secure its communications, the effectiveness of bombing in Vietnam (and Cambodia) increased immesurably.
Vietnam was a special case in a lot of areas, so I wouldn't read much into that.
Early detection of airplanes flying from remote locations however doesn't depend on interception of communications now -- radars and even satellites do it much better. What is more important, when you are not completely out of resources, it simply doesn't matter much -- just defend what is worth being defended, and accept minor losses caused by whatever will slip through those defenses, or in the areas that are defended poorly. When you are at war you can't guard every building and civilian, but if losses from bombing are higher than, say, potential losses from enemy saboteurs (that are nearly impossible to prevent completely but never can be too high either), enemy will prefer bombing, and you will prefer tying up and wasting enemy's resources in actual battles rather than wasting yours ones on defending large areas that a bomber can reach.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.