The Enterprise has seen better days.

(If you think this won’t have spoilers for Star Trek Into Darkness, you’re out of your Vulcan mind.)

Roddenberry’s dream lives on.

This might come as a surprise to many; it certainly came as a surprise to me. I wrote in my first post on BlogTarkin some months ago that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, with its grim but brilliant take on Roddenberry’s utopia, nevertheless eroded the Federation’s moral edifice with “the slow poison of necessity.” J.J. Abrams’ first foray into the franchise in 2009, with only an oblique reference to Starfleet as a “humanitarian and peacekeeping armada,” seemingly abandoned Star Trek’s vaunted position as the moral high ground of popular science fiction.

Did Star Trek Into Darkness bring the franchise back to its roots? It depends on what those roots are. Much of Star Trek’s enduring popularity comes from the chemistry between its diverse crew. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and their shipmates met even the wildest expectations in building this camaraderie. At the same time, Star Trek has always represented a moral and social paradigm to which we could aspire. That utopian vision, however, is often presented fully-formed to the audience without any perspective on the work that went into building it. Into Darkness tackles this weakness.

There are occasional allusions to destructive conflicts and world wars. Upon pursuing a Borg invasion to late 21st century Earth in First Contact, Data is able to estimate “from the radioactive isotopes in the atmosphere” that they had arrived a decade after World War III. “Makes sense,” Riker muses. “Most of the major cities have been destroyed. Very few governments left. Six hundred million dead. No resistance.” And yet, in the ashes of the society in which you and I currently live, Zefram Cochrane builds a starship out of a nuclear missile, travels faster than the speed of light, and ushers in a new era for human civilization. In Star Trek, dystopia precedes utopia.

But this is as far as Star Trek’s depiction of the late 20th and early 21st century goes. The franchise envisions humanity without racism, poverty, disease, or war, but never showed what must be done to achieve it. This leap is like jumping from the Declaration of Independence in 1776 to the birth of American hegemony after World War II without addressing the slaughter of the Civil War or the desperation of the Great Depression in between. Roddenberry showed us the far future’s promise in the 1960s but gave almost no indications about mankind’s imminent challenges.

Except for Khan.

Khan Noonien Singh, introduced in the 1967 episode “Space Seed”, is a genetically-engineered superman who conquered most of Eurasia in the 1990s before his Napoleonic exile into cryogenic sleep. More than just another villain, Khan is faster, stronger, and smarter than Kirk and his crew could ever be. The 20th century tyrant is never bested by strength or intellect alone in the Star Trek films: only Kirk’s greater familiarity with starships in Wrath of Khan and Spock’s knowledge from the future in Into Darkness allow them to gain the upper hand. Khan is, as the elder Spock gravely observes, the most dangerous foe the Enterprise ever faced.

But Khan’s significance goes deeper than just clever plot devices. Star Trek, at its most fundamental level, exalts the limitless nature of human potential; Khan subverts that ideal by combining the heights of human endurance and cunning with a brutal amorality. This ruthless “savagery,” as Khan himself describes it to Kirk, is so utterly absent from 23rd century humanity that Starfleet must resurrect it from their ancestors to use against the Klingon Empire. Most damningly, Khan isn’t a medieval European king or bygone Asian emperor who ruled at a time when such brutality was expected. He came to power in the mid-to-late 1990s. He’s one of us.

Into Darkness may have lacked grand soliloquies on philosophy or visions of gleaming utopia, but it did counterpoise Kirk and the Enterprise against contemporary societal issues. Since the last Star Trek film alone we’ve seen a Starfleet more militarized after its failure to defend Vulcan, whose upper echelons are even willing to use untraceable missiles to kill fugitives. Our heroes ultimately reject targeted killings, threat inflation, societal militarization, and the worldview that Khan and the Starfleet admiral who awakened him represent. Crucially, Kirk’s final position is influenced by Spock’s cool logic and McCoy’s folksy wisdom but not framed by either. Instead the Starfleet captain from Iowa relies upon a much simpler argument: that’s not who we are.

Americans, especially millennials, can understand this. The destruction of Vulcan in the first film changed Kirk and Spock’s timeline; 9/11 changed ours. How many young Americans learned Arabic and Pashto or studied counterterrorism and international relations because nineteen men flew three planes into a building and one into the ground, killing thousands? The September 11th attacks prefaced a decade marked by the proliferation of Islamic terrorism, long and painful wars in the Middle East, a toxic and divisive political climate in the United States, weakened protections for civil liberties, and vast expansions of government power. Is that who we are now? Is that who we want to be from now on?

Granted, Into Darkness doesn’t provide flawless comparisons. Whereas Starfleet doesn’t bother telling the Klingons they’re going to kill a fugitive on their homeworld with advanced missiles, for example, the U.S. government’s targeted killing program almost certainly operates drones in Pakistan and Yemen with those governments’ secret permission. And as Kirk and the audience also later discover, a Starfleet admiral orchestrated the entire terrorism campaign to provoke a war with the Klingons. The parallels with contemporary American society aren’t perfect, but the trajectory is unmistakable.

To what extent must we reshape our society to confront threats, real or imagined?” As far as Star Trek’s questions go, it’s not as dramatic as “Should we use a morphogenic virus against the Founders?” or as philosophical as “Are androids entitled to the equal protection of the laws?” But it is more pertinent. Kirk gives us his answer in the film’s closing monologue, a eulogy for those who died in Khan’s final devastating attack.

There will always be those who mean to do us harm. To stop them, we risk awakening the same evil within ourselves. Our first instinct is to seek revenge when those we love are taken from us. But that’s not who we are. When Christopher Pike first gave me his ship, he had me recite the Captain’s Oath. [“Space, the final frontier…”] Words I didn’t appreciate at the time. But now I see them as a call for us to remember who we once were and who we must be again.

Will Barack Obama, a Trekkie, heed this call? The president signaled a willingness to change course in his State of the Union address earlier this year. On Thursday, he’ll give a speech at the National Defense University on the drone program, Guantanamo Bay, and counterterrorism where he might outline those shifts. Already Obama has overseen significant broader shifts in American foreign policy by emphasizing multilateralism and a widely-touted “Asia pivot,” with varying degrees of success. But Obama, unlike Kirk, has so far failed to recast the current conflict in his own terms or to bring it to a close.

Thus the psychological burdens remain. George W. Bush framed the struggle against al-Qaeda as a “war on terror” and the imagery remains fixed in the American collective consciousness. But this level of indefinite conflict is mostly unfamiliar to the American historical experience. Britain recognized independence after Yorktown, Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Berlin fell to the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union fell in Berlin. Without a capital to seize or an army to defeat, bin Laden’s death might be the closest American society can come to closure. That’s why, instead of the macabre triumphalism that some commentators described with revulsion, the street celebrations and public jubilation following bin Laden’s death should be seen as a societal catharsis too long denied. When Obama announced the raid in Abbottabad, another dark chapter in American history seemed ready to close. It hasn’t yet, of course, but the onus is now on us. When it comes to ending the war on terror, the first step is choosing to take one.

Perhaps there’s still room for Star Trek to set the example for us after all. Kirk tells us to remember not only who we once were, but that we must be them again. The film ends with the characters embarking upon the five-year mission of exploration that made them legends in another timeline. Balance is restored and history is (mostly) returned to its rightful trajectory.

The Enterprise is leading us not into darkness, but out of it.

The crew of the USS Enterprise ponders an ethical dilemma in the latest film, “Star Trek: Into Darkness”.

Reeling from a series of deadly terrorist attacks, the Federation dispatches the Enterprise on a vengeance mission.  The target?  A terrorist hideout deep within sovereign Klingon territory.

Armed with dozens of long-range torpedoes, the Enterprise silently parks just inside the neutral zone, as the crew debates their options.  Is it ethical to kill from such a range?  Is it human?

In the end, Kirk shelves the long-range strike idea in favor of a night raid on the Klingon homeworld.

Of course, his reasoning has nothing to do with violating the sovereignty of a major power.  Instead, Kirk yields to the Prime Directive of sci-fi combat, which states that space combat can only take place when ships are a.) within visual range, b.) on the same two-dimensional plane, and c.) aforementioned ships must fire broadsides at one another.

This rule, of course, holds true despite all the advances in beyond-visual-range technology pioneered in the 21st Century.  Sci-fi script writers have long realized that long-range missile combat lacks suspense.  A shootout on the Klingon homeworld is no less ethical than a long-range missile strike…but it’s a lot more exciting.

And, perhaps that’s why there’s such hysteria about “drone ethics“.  Drones are yet another step removed from the battlefield.  Indeed, drones alter the notion of what it is to be a warrior:  their pilots return to their homes at the end of a combat mission  A recent proposal to offer valorous awards to drone operators was met with universal snark and mockery.  In fact, many manned aviators even argue that drone operators aren’t really pilots.

In short, we expect our warriors to be more like Captain Kirk–even though Captain Kirk’s reckless disregard for regulations would hardly make him a good captain.  Given the cinematic Kirk’s penchant for insubordination and sexual harassment, we would have expected him to be drummed out of Starfleet years ago.

Well, either that or perhaps promoted to Chief of Starfleet’s Sexual Harassment Prevention Task Force.

A skyscraper-sized Reaper descends to dominate a planet.

This event, entirely fictional, is inspired by chapter 33 of T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. In it, Lawrence lays out his vision for how the Arab Revolt  might defeat the Turks in Arabia. In this, I lay out the counter-insurgent’s dream, a fantastical imagination of the introduction of the Reaper, a la Mass Effect fame, as the ultimate weapon in counter insurgency.

This is a response to the April 1, 2013 post at “Danger Room” by one Andrew Exum, a thinker of moderate intellect and exceedingly conventional vision. The issue in question regarded a series of scenarios describing possible wars between “Tennessee” and “Georgia,” apparently  pair of your American states. After exhaustively researching the histories and capabilities of these two nations, I have set forth a series of events far more likely to take place, and considerably more interesting to the strategic theorist.

A Tennessee Air National Guard C-5A Galaxy

The causes of the war of August 2014 are not interesting or relevant, apparently involving some sort of trivial dispute over water. The logic of modern warfare applies independent of the political exigencies of any particular conflict.   Regarding the order of battle of the two antagonists, the only weapons relevant to our analysis air the air fleets that each could access. Fortunately, the government of Tennessee had the foresight to initiate a set of agreements with Federal Express that allowed the conscription of FedEx planes and pilots in case of invasion from Georgia or Kentucky. These agreements would prove critical in the end stages of the conflict. Altogether, Tennessee would eventually call on the following fleet of aircraft:

• Airlift Squadron: 5 C-5 Galaxy
• Airlift Wing: 6 C-130 , 12 MQ-9 Reaper
• Air Refueling Squadron: KC-135R
• Fed Ex Express:
• 35 A300
• 18 A310
• 28 757
• 8 777
• 3 MD-10
• 21 MD-11

Georgia pursued a different path, eschewing the difficult work of developing relationships with the many airlines operating out of Atlanta International Airport.  Instead, Georgia concentrated its efforts on small aircraft and helicopters, the better to support the advance of its ground forces into Tennessee. In addition to a plethora of such small craft, Georgia was able to draw on some large aircraft from the Georgia Air National Guard.

• Air Control Wing: 6 E-8C Joint Stars
• Air Lift Wing: 6 C-130H
• 250+ helicopters and small aircraft

Fundamentally, this war represented the cleanest collision of the air-minded and the ground-minded.  Consequently, it also represented the clearest vindication of the principles that I had set forth in my volume Command of the Air.

Georgia’s land offensive made initial progress, but bogged down as bands of primitive East Tennessee hill people ambushed and harried Georgian columns and logistical trains. Tennessee had wisely invested in only minimal land forces, relying on the inherent savagery and fighting prowess of the Appalachian tribesmen to sufficiently slow the Georgian advance until airpower could prove decisive.  Regular Tennessee National Guard forces prepared a defense-in-depth in the outskirts of Chattanooga, allowing the Georgians their initial prize while working with the tribesmen to make them pay for it. However, this defense would not have held for long in the face of a renewed Georgian offensive if airpower had not won the day.

Georgia foolishly squandered the airpower available to it in by dissipating its aircraft and pilots across a variety of secondary missions.  Georgian C-130s supplied operational air mobility and some close air support, but could not sufficiently break open Tennessee’s defenses to allow penetration into vital areas. The fault lay not with the airmen (who were surely brave and skilled) but rather in their employment in service of a land offensive that could not possibly produce decisive results in the brief period before Georgia’s cities began to burn.

The aircraft appropriated by the government of Tennessee were not designed as bombers, which reduced their effectiveness.  In the future, state governments should take care to arm their Air National Guards with dedicated bomber wings.  Nevertheless, the courage, tenacity, and technical know-how of Tennessee’s air guardsmen allowed the conversion of these cargo craft into strategic bombers, albeit often in awkward, dangerous fashion. Given the ad hoc nature of the Tennessee Air National Guard offensive, a robust air defense system, supported by pursuit aircraft, might have prevented or at least substantially delayed the decisive blows of the war.  Unfortunately, Georgia devoted so little attention to air-centric matters that it failed even to mount the most tepid air defense.

The first fire-raid came on August 20, as over 40 Tennessean bombers appeared over the city of Athens.  Renowned for its cultural significance, Athens proved little match for the 2000 tons of incendiaries dropped by the “Volunteers.” Additional raids devastated Roswell and Macon, with a follow up raid against Athens throwing the region into chaos on August 30.

On September 1, 2014 the decisive moment came in a pre-dawn raid against the Georgian capitol of Atlanta.  4 C-5, 4 C-130s, 25 A300s, 13 A310s, 20 757s, 6 777s, 1 MD-10, and 18 MD-11 delivered nearly 5500 tons of ordnance onto the city and surrounding suburbs.  Tennessee’s attacks concentrated on the downtown financial districts as well as on wealthy outlying areas. The municipal capacity of Atlanta was overwhelmed, with fires continuing to burn for days.

The timing of the strike was no accident. Coming 150 years to the day after the burning of the city of Atlanta by a band of Northmen, this raid proved a political masterstroke, shattering the will of Georgia’s political class to continue the conflict. Georgia responded with a desultory attempt to bomb Knoxville, but apart from gutting a few square blocks of the University of Tennessee, the attack had no serious strategic impact. Their homes in ruins, soldiers in Georgia’s advanced ground elements began to desert and mutiny against their officers.

At this point the details of the conflict become uninteresting to the historian, allowing us to shift to strategic lessons learned.  Tennessee won this war because of a culture of airmindedness.  It had prepared (through laying the groundwork of a relationship with Federal Express) to acquire an air force capable of strategic action. Tennessee then used this air force to strategic effect, rather than dissipating it for ephemeral battlefield advantage.  The smoking ruins of urban Georgia attest to the folly of yoking airpower to conventional ground thinking.

Ruins of Atlanta deopt after burning by Gen. Sherman’s troops, 1864

Of course, it’s not the first time pundits have distanced themselves from ill-fated military adventurism.  Gene Rodenberry supported the Vietnam War through an allegorical proxy war with the Klingons in a Star Trek episode which aired in February 1968.  Kirk’s insistence that the Federation continue to arm a primitive race with weaponry reflects what many felt was a need to keep the Communists in check in Southeast Asia.  Or “staying the course” as we’d say these days.

Of course, no one remembers being for escalating the Vietnam War.

If you’re reading, please consider this humble treatise as a token of my affection. Time and again, our love has been tested, equally by Peeta’s noble heroism as by your detractors’ defamatory bile. The latest such knave, Scott Weiner, emerged yesterday from his trollish cave, penning a condemnable screed against your revolutionary insurgency. Weiner references your revolution as a “post-Orientalist” phenomenon, which he views as a reflection of liberalism’s exploitative underbelly. As you and I have discussed, however, your laudable violence is hardly liberal, and instead reflects an abiding commitment to Frantz Fanon‘s liberationist violence.

Before your arrival, Panem was a seething, festering sore of political governance. As residents of District 12, we were underresourced, underfed, and underappreciated: our women were poor, our children emaciated, and our men rarely able to manage the psychological, social, and financial burdens of family upkeep. Our wages were low, and scarcely commensurate to our invaluable contribution to Panem’s militaristic, decadent economy. My grandfather Karl‘s warnings were prescient, and bore remembering: in Panem’s pre-revolutionary economy, we laborers risked dehumanization: alienation from ourselves and, perhaps most importantly, from our collective consciousness of common dignity.

When you returned from your triumphant Hunger Games, you inculcated our people with a sense of pride, a fierce urgency of revolutionary upheaval. Your violence was a model of rebellion, and your image an icon of our anti-imperialist politics. Where Gale–the erstwhile object of your flirtation, and now a Panem official in District 2–compromised his humanity, you rejected the prospect of political conformity, opting instead to cast off the yoke of your oppression, and of ours. Through your liberationist violence, you imagined a new Panemian humanity: where our industrial labor is duly compensated, and where each District’s profound creativity is heralded as representative of Panemian civilization. Contra Weiner, your violence was hardly a form of self-empowerment, so heralded in Ms. Winfrey’s antiquated texts. Rather, it was a vessel for humanity, for the manifestation of dignity in a liberated politics.

Where Panem’s prior revolutionists imagined a hierarchical vision of a new society, you refused exclusion, prompting a notion of egalitarianism that has inspired widespread, liberating revolt. You acknowledged Panem’s lumpenproletariat, the invisible society of District 13, as a revolutionary force, a dormant opportunity for liberationist mobilization. In your embrace of District 13, you also embraced your mockingjay identity, a palpable demonstration of your resilience and revolutionary leadership.

As Dan Nexon observes, however, your liberationist violence had its consequences: your post-traumatic stress disorder, a result of your trying management of revolutionary authority, has become increasingly apparent throughout the past weeks. If you’ll let me, I’d like to help you, to enable Panem’s liberation to continue. Call me, maybe?

May the odds be ever in our favor,

The Real Tarkin

Spoilerplate Warning

A map of Panem by AimArrowsHigh

The Hunger Games trilogy presents a case study of revolution which is on the one hand instructive and on the other hand puzzling. The state of Panem (post-apocalyptic America) experiences a revolution that shares both uncanny similarities and unmistakable differences with other revolutions, fictional and non-fictional. At the center of the revolution in Panem is the heroine of the series, a teenager by the name of Katniss Everdeen, who is played in the film version of The Hunger Games by actress Jennifer Lawrence. To Western audiences, Katniss Everdeen is the epitome of a revolutionary leader. However, a critical examination of the society of Panem and its revolution should raise serious questions in this regard. While many Westerners view Katniss Everdeen as empowered heroine, a critical comparison of her actions reveals deeply troubling attitudes and beliefs at play.

A fan-made map of Panem by Helmet 31

Flaws In The Revolutionary Account

The events which take place in Panem are uncritically accepted by many as a “revolution.” However, several aspects of these events throw this claim into doubt, particularly in light of scholarly accounts of the phenomenon.

First, the uprisings in Panem are exclusively by lower-class populations. Yet Barrington Moore (1966) underscores the importance of the “landed upper class” to revolution. It is of course possible that a landed upper class exists in the Capital, but accounts make no mention of this class defecting during the rebellion. While individuals with personal ties to Katniss Everdeen make efforts on her behalf, the major force of the uprising is from the peasantry. Moore predicts than in such cases the outcome of the revolution will be fascism. However, Panem lacks the privatized corporations which would be necessary for this outcome to occur.

Perhaps then the revolutions are a case of peasant rebellion a la James C. Scott (1976). This account too is incomplete. Peasant rebellion and the “everyday resistance” Scott writes about – criminal activity committed in defiance of the State – is usually confined to the periphery. In Panem, the population is reacting to national-level events in a national uprising whose goal is the downfall of the regime. These uprisings are also largely separate from the insurgency itself, comprised of what Bueno de Mesquita et al (2004) refer to as the “minimum winning coalition” or inner circle of the regime.

Finally, the source of the insurgency is not what existing accounts of revolution predict. Humiliation is often a key variable in a person’s decision to rebel. Additionally, Ted Robert Gurr (1970) identifies the role of relative deprivation in sparking a person to rebel. He argues that it is those underprivileged members of society who interact daily with the advantaged group who feel most painfully their own oppression. However, were this the case in Panem, the instigators of the rebellion should have been the Avoxes, criminals who have had their tongues removed by the State and serve as a source of domestic and municipal labor. True, the actual instigators – former winners of the Hunger Games – faced relative deprivation upon their arrival to the Capital. However, the Avoxes experienced the humiliation of this power differential much more sharply. While the lack of civil society in Panem may be partially to blame, it is more than conceivable that Avoxes should have at least participated in the rebellion once news of it came to the Capital.

Ultimately, the revolutionary account cannot explain the puzzling dynamics of the overthrow of President Snow in Panem. To better understand the uprisings there, we must ask why this is the case. A critical perspective is most instructive in this regard.

A fan-made map of Panem by Vamg

The Post-Orientalist Explanation

The Hunger Games revolves around the heroine Katniss Everdeen. Everdeen is an strong, empowered, individualistic minority member of society. In this regard, she represents the Liberal ideal type. Liberalism has its roots in the 19th century as a European ideology stressing individual empowerment for the benefit of society as a whole. Everdeen’s credentials as a liberal are established during the Hunger Games themselves. Everdeen’s reluctance to kill, her alliance with Rue, and her compassion after Rue’s death all speak to liberal notions of empowering the self, benefiting the social benefit of all. Her decision to convince Peeta to swallow nightlock – even though they were eventually stopped from doing so – is the ultimate act of self-empowerment and cooperation. As a result, Everdeen is touted later by the rebellion as the epitome of Liberalism. However, critical examination reveals that Everdeen’s actions are anything but empowering to her victims.

Liberalism as an ideology has also been used to justify violence and subjugation of non-liberal societies, often under the pretense of “humanitarian intervention” (Duffield, 2001). Katniss Everdeen is an empowered girl, but invokes the ways the Capital limited citizens’ rights in Panem as the pretense for violence against the State and its citizens. Her nickname is “Mockingjay,” a reference to genetically altered birds in Panem which can remember and mimic complex sound patterns. However, the nickname refers to Everdeen’s role as one who travels throughout Panem, diffusing her ideology and “enlightening” the citizenry. At the same time District 2’s citizens are supposedly being liberated, Everdeen is complicit in an attack in which citizens are killed – a paternalistic exercise of her own empowerment. Additionally, when the revolution’s leaders take a vote on whether the children of the Capital should be forced to participate in a Hunger Games of their own, Everdeen votes yes. The democratic nature of this proceeding should not distract from its decidedly illiberal leanings.

In a sense, Katniss Everdeen is an post-apocalyptic Lawrence of Arabia. Critical scholars understand the political role played by Lawrence of Arabia and other Westerners who visited the region as part of the ideology of Orientalism (Said, 1979). Orientalism is the idea that Western beliefs and attitudes of superiority towards the Middle East legitimized its domination of that region. Katniss Everdeen is an orientalist for a time after Orientalism – a Post-Orientalist. Her travels are not “liberating” for Panem’s citizens but rather preserve her own superiority over them. As one who created Liberal cooperation in the state of nature which is the Hunger Games, Everdeen flaunts her credentials for personal gain. Her aim is not to liberate the citizens of Panem but to use Liberalism as a cynical cover for her aims of national domination.

~

For further reading on the political science of the Hunger Games from Duck of Minerva, please see here and here.

Clones can think creatively, you will find them immensely superior to droids
–Taun We, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Okay, we get it. We shouldn’t rely on “Death Star” weapon systems. They promise too much, come in over-budget, and come with all sorts of pesky design flaws.

But that doesn’t  mean we should rely too heavily on droids to carry out our foreign policy.  As our Empire has moved away from traditional fleet-on-fleet warfare, we’ve taken on more policing actions in the ungoverned ares of the Outer Rim, which require the use of droids to carry out our dirty work.  But our battle droids have yet to encounter a hardened, competent opponent.  Sure, they’re great for hunting Jawas, Ewoks and Gungans.  But what if they came up against a conventional, or “hybrid” force?

In one incident, an eight-year old child  flew an N-1 Starfighter into a Droid Control Ship, disabling the primary controls for an entire droid army.  Moreover, droids are increasingly reliant on the Electromagnetic Spectrum, making them susceptible to hacking and jamming.

Sure, we can produce autonomous, hunter-killer Vulture Droids…but would we really want to take a Neimoidian out of the loop?

Let’s face it, we need to invest in people, rather than technology.  We need well-trained, educated Clone Troops who can adapt to any situation.  We need to reverse a decade’s worth of growth acceleration and allow our Clones the opportunity for broadening assignments and leader development.

Unfortunately, hundreds of Imperial Senators have fallen under the control of a Sith Lord, Darth Sidious, who stands to personally profit from the construction of a Death Star.  And by spreading out contracts for the Death Star among his cohorts in the Techno Union, the Corporate Alliance, and the Intergalactic Banking Clan, components of the Death Star superlaser are built in seemingly pacifistic systems, such as Alderaan and Naboo.

If the Imperial Senate can’t kill this project, I’m afraid nothing will, with the possible exception of a proton torpedo fired down a conveniently-located exhaust port.

With this sort of Senatorial gridlock, it seems that Clone training, education, and leader development will be the first thing we sacrifice, should the Imperial budget be cut.  Already, Clone Pilots are unable to maintain currency in their LAAT/i Gunships.  Marksmanship training has been cut so significantly, I fear that our Stormtroopers–legendary for their “precise” marksmanship–won’t be able to hit the broad side of a barn.

So forget Battle Droids; invest in people.

Invest in our Clones.

Let’s Cut the Imperial Fleet Some Slack

It’s difficult to tell from the original three movies, but the Imperial Fleet is a very new organization. Their operational and strategic missteps make much more sense in this light. A galactic fleet cannot be built in a day. Although we see a Star Destroyer at the end Revenge of the Sith, a fleet is comprised of more than just ships. Doctrine, tradition, staff work, planning processes, and institutional experience are just as important as the ships themselves. Even though decades elapse between Revenge of the Sith and The Empire Strikes Back, it was just not enough time for the Imperial Fleet to become an elite force.

The Battle of Hoth occurs twenty-two years after Palpatine seized power.The first expeditionary operation conducted by the US Navy after their formative battles during the American Revolution occurred between 1801-1805, twenty six years after its formation. Both of these conflicts were waged against non-state actors by very new nations. Although the First Barbary War was successful for the American Fleet(thanks to a few Marines) there was an embarrassing mistake. The USS Philadelphia was run aground and captured, along with its entire crew, without a fight. Additionally the expeditionary force had to depend on third party support from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Presuming that years in the Star Wars galaxy are identical to our own, the two young fleets had a similar amount of time to develop. The Imperial Fleet that we see in Empire, while presumably leavened with
clone-veterans from its formative battles, just did not have the know-how to conduct counterinsurgency on a galactic scale. The tactical and strategic situation that the fleet faced at Hoth was, to them, a new one.

The fact that Palpatine was even able to marshal the resources, clone army notwithstanding, to operate a galactic fleet in so little time is impressive. The US Navy is the most powerful navy in the world, but it has spent 238 years getting to that point. The US Department of Defense uses the acronym DOTMLPF- doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, and facilities- to evaluate new programs. All of these aspects of a military organization takes years to develop, even for just a single new unit. Palpatine had to create and validate all of these aspects of the Imperial Fleet from scratch, all while Vader was force-choking officers with years of experience. Additionally, Imperial policy excluded non-humans from service, so the Empire could only draw from humans to find the knowledge and skills necessary to man a fleet. The institutional incompetence and poor staff work evident in the botched attack on Hoth is evidence of his haste and Vader’s toxic leadership.

Brett Friedman is a Marine with delusions of grandeur, and one of the editors at Grand Blog Tarkin.

Missed Opportunity: Rieekan’s Failure at Hoth

The conventional wisdom regarding the Battle of Hoth is that it was a major Imperial victory, described in terms of the Rebels as the massively overmatched ragtag band scattering before the unstoppable Imperial juggernaut. The contrary wisdom of sci-fi strategists focuses both on the tactical blunders made by the Imperial force, and the strategic factors that influenced the decision-making of key leaders. Both narratives are wrong. The Rebel Alliance was anything but a ragged insurgent mob; they were a well-equipped and well-organized hybrid threat# at the time. The Battle of Hoth should have been a decisive victory for the Rebels, perhaps even as significant as the Battle of Yavin had been. The Imperial forces bungled what should have been a fairly simple HVT capture or kill mission, their staggering incompetence playing right to the Rebels’ strengths. However, the Alliance only managed to scrape by with a strategic draw due to their failure to take advantage of key opportunities during the battle to strike a massive blow to the Imperial fleet and the Empire’s key leadership. Hoth was also not a total tactical failure for the Empire; in fact they managed to pull off a partial victory, since Echo Base was indeed reduced to rubble, and the Rebels lost a large amount of materiel in the process of their hasty withdrawal under fire. The Imperial forces managed to salvage a partial success out of what by all rights should have been a crushing defeat, thanks to the even greater failures of their Rebel opponents, in particular the criminal negligence of General Rieekan.

The Rebel failure at the Battle of Hoth started long before the fighting began. Casually disregarding the key element of Echo Base’s defense and evacuation plans—the planetary energy shield—the Rebel force did not even make an attempt at denial or deception, not bothering to conceal or camouflage the shield’s power generators with so much as a camo net. This oversight enabled an Imperial probe droid to easily obtain photographic evidence of their presence, and later for the assault force to quickly identify and destroy the generator. General Rieekan compounded this error with poor or nonexistent reconnaissance planning. He did not clearly identify his priority information requirements (PIR), had no communications plan or contingency for missing personnel, no counter-recon plan, and relied far too heavily on unmanned sensors. Because of this, there were no additional resources committed in response to a report of a suspicious meteorite (that turned out to be a probe droid), Luke Skywalker was forced to investigate alone, and was then out of communication for hours before anyone even noticed he was missing. Once the probe droid was finally discovered, it was by an unmanned sensor and a SIGINT intercept of its transmission, the damage already done by the time the impromptu QRF—consisting of Han and Chewie—was able to locate and destroy it. Once the ground invasion started, the poor reconnaissance planning was even more apparent: with no screening force forward of the main trench line, the defenders did not see the AT-AT assault force until they were within visual and ground-shaking range. Of course, the lack of scout observation posts was irrelevant because the Rebels did not even attempt to employ indirect fires or obstacles to disrupt, turn, or block the attackers. Despite being able to see the enemy main body well beyond direct-fire range, the Rebels simply allowed it to literally walk directly into its main objective, nearly unopposed. The only token resistance offered was pitifully ineffective direct fire from medium crew-served infantry weapons, a stunningly poor choice against the entirely predictable circumstance of the enemy using armored vehicles. Lacking any depth whatsoever, once the single defensive line was easily overrun, the assault force had an uninhibited path to the power generators, enabling the destruction of the base. The attempt at close air support is almost too embarrassing to mention. Lacking effective armor-defeating weapons, the snowspeeders had improvise an attack solution on the spot using harpoons and tow cables. Even after all the other failures, this might have worked if not for the cartoonishly suicidal tactics of Rogue Squadron. Ignoring their near-infinite maneuverability advantage over the AT-ATs, they insisted on attacking directly through the walkers’ incredibly narrow frontal cone of fire instead of from the flanks or rear, resulting in multiple aircraft losses. This technique also placed the speeders directly in the line of friendly fire as well, though no blue-on-blue incidents resulting from poor airspace deconfliction are shown.

The responsibility for all these failures falls to General Rieekan, the Rebel commander at Echo Base. Blame cannot be placed on lack of resources; the Rebel Alliance was remarkably well-equipped for a non-state actor, with capital ships, heavy weapons, and advanced fighters at its disposal. General Rieekan managed to secure anti-access/area denial capabilities to defend Echo Base (the energy shield and ion cannon); effective anti-armor systems, artillery pieces, and engineering equipment should have been easy to obtain. Rieekan simply failed to conduct a proper mission analysis. The failure was also not of Rebel Alliance military culture writ large. Disruptive thinking, tactical innovation, and maximization of limited resources was practically institutionalized at the Battle of Yavin. The Battle of Hoth turned on a failure of basic defensive preparation. If General Rieekan had made even a token effort at engagement area development, the small Imperial ground assault force would have been easily defeated. This in turn would have enabled the Rebels to target and disable the blockading Star Destroyers (which Admiral Piett clumsily positioned within range) with the ion cannon, and then call for reinforcements to finish them off, or cover a more deliberate evacuation. Instead, General Rieekan’s negligent incompetence and failure to accurately assess the situation cost the Rebel Alliance an opportunity for a major victory at Hoth.

Mike Forbes is an army officer with an IPA focus and a MENA hobby. He can be found on twitter.

Dunkirk-on-Ice

In 1940, French historian Marcel Bloch wrote a slim volume entitled Strange Defeat, on the incomprehensible defeat of the superior French Army at the hands of the Wehrmacht. 60 years later, Ernest May wrote the complementary version in Strange Victory, an account of the improbable German success in defeating France. Many have written on the utter failure of the Imperial Navy to successfully crush the Rebellion once and for all at the Battle of Hoth, but few have bothered to explore the rather unlikely escape the Rebels made from their icy fortress. “How did they not lose?” Contrary to Spencer Ackerman’s view, the Alliance was faced with dire options and chose mostly the best available.

Ackerman critiques the Alliance for keeping virtually all of their key military players in the same location at Echo Base, but ignores the value of face-to-face, instantaneous communication among Rebel leaders. Collaboration is key to any successful insurgency, and while distributed cells might have a better chance of survival, they still require a core group to perform key coordination and planning functions. This is most effectively provided through close, personal cooperation.

The relative inconspicuousness of the base also worked in its favor. Recall that Admiral Ozzel in fact dismissed the Hoth probe droid’s reports – “My lord, there are so many uncharted settlements. It could be smugglers; it could be pirates; it could be…” – only to be overruled by Vader himself, because “the Force tells [him] so.” An insurgency can plan for only so many contingencies, and presumably an extrasensory religious detection of their base was perhaps not in the scenarios constructed by the Alliance.

Ackerman also criticizes the decision to build only one base on the planet, but Hoth, of course, is inhospitable, and presumably has only a small area of habitable terrain. As the base is located at the end of a valley, without room for maneuver, a Maginot-type static defense makes the most sense, and the Rebels are not seeking to crush any attacker; merely to fight a delaying action. This, in fact, explains the choice of most of the defensive weaponry: the ion cannon can disable enemy ships and hopefully cause additional collisions; what artillery the Alliance can even afford is designed to slow an attacker and buy time to fully evacuate. Ackerman describes the planetary defense shield as one “that can’t keep an invader out and complicates their own escape.” It’s certainly better than no shield. The small, limited openings are for the benefit of the ion cannon shots, not the transports and escorts, and in the sense of preventing an immediate and total bombardment from the Imperial Fleet is most certainly a wise decision.

If the Rebels failed anywhere, it’s in not predicting the “unknown unknowns” – that Vader was more concerned with in-person victory than annihilation and that he would be able to sense a Rebel presence from parsecs away. Mitigating Force-based black swans might be a nice idea for the armchair analysts, but faced with the prospect of frightening devastation, the Alliance’s strategy of delay and withdraw was virtually their only option.

Graham W. Jenkins is a defense analyst on nuclear issues, scenario planning, and infrastructure protection. He tweets too much and blogs less.

The Battle of Hoth and Grand Strategy

The key to understanding the Battle of Hoth is not in tactical minutia on the icy surface of the planet, nor in confused imperial strategic objectives or even in the quixotic leadership of Lord Vader, but in grand strategy. As a self-contained polity facing no external foes and only a scattered and poorly armed insurgency, the greatest potential threat to the Empire’s two-man Sith regime would likely emerge from the ranks of the imperial military itself. It was not that the Galactic Empire could not have fielded a vast, overwhelmingly powerful and incomparably competent armada against the Rebellion, it was that Darth Sidious did not dare to do so.

What is most remarkable in the Star Wars-Clone Wars saga is not the size and might of the military forces of various belligerents (Separatist, Republican and Imperial) but their relative paucity and weakness for a galactic-scale political community. On Hoth we see underequipped Rebels numbering in the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands facing off against an Empire fielding six At-Ats, a division or two of stormtroopers and a small flotilla of Star Destroyers. Compared to the forces on Hoth battling to decide the fate of the galaxy, the tiny European armies of the 18^th century cabinet wars were akin to Genghis Khan’s horde. This is curious. Certainly a Galactic Empire composed of thousands of star systems that in a short span of years built two incredibly expensive Death Stars, could have alternatively fielded a fleet of fifty thousand Star Destroyers and a ten billion-clone army to crush the Rebellion. That they did not was a strategic choice by Emperor Palpatine.

The closest historical Earth analog to the Empire in Star Wars was the Roman Empire, which was utterly dominant in the West between the conquest of Gaul and the migrational invasions of the Goths in the 4^th century AD. During this time, the greatest threat to peace wasn’t the Parthians or barbarians but mutiny by provincial legions and Praetorian coups, which removed and installed Caesars, often in blood. Only when the legions were stretched thin and kept busy defending the frontiers did the Empire and Emperors enjoy peace and security. By extravagantly building Death Stars, Darth Sidious kept his military forces small and on a tight budget and drained all the major systems of the credits needed to build their own military forces with which they might have mounted a challenge to the Sith regime.

The poor performance of the Empire on Hoth against the Rebellion was a strategic feature, not a bug.

Mark Safranski runs Zenpundit.

May the Tech Be With You

The Star Wars world is a bleak one. Aside from the standard strata of humans, the aristocrats like Leia to the paupers like Solo, there exists a more distinct separation. The Force-enabled and the not. Able to summon electricity from thin air, jump great heights, wield weapons of light, it is no surprise that the Empire is run by those able to use the Force. Or that the Rebel Alliance, filled with battle-hardened veterans who fought day in and day out, for days, months, years in some of the most challenging environments the universe has to offer, suddenly promote the Force-empowered Luke Skywalker despite his lack of combat experience.

In a world where a wave of a hand can change minds, it is hard to say technology matters. But as the Battle of Hoth demonstrates, it invariably does. That particular engagement was an exercise in terrible technology decision making. Tanks with weapons that don’t rotate, raised onto legs reminiscent of ostriches, and move with all the finesse of an overweight wampa. Laser blasts that detonate on impact without consistent grouping. A lack of even basic infrared overlays on a ice-covered planet. The Empire’s foot-soldiers, otherwise decent men pulled from their homes and families to wage war in forsaken lands, were abandoned to the tools provided by the lowest bidder. Minor modifications could have addressed a vulnerability to harpoons. Major platform changes could have wiped out the rebel force in minutes.

But in a world that bleak, what else can we expect?  A geriatric Force-abusing Emperor can hardly be expected to understand weapons systems or platforms for lowly foot soldiers. His primary advisor, however, a man/machine that relies on an advanced medical chestboard apparatus to stay alive, should have a deeper appreciation for the technology that enables him to continue breathing (albeit in a more belabored kind of way than one would want). Without getting too much into Darth Vader’s childhood trauma, suffice it to say, the man/machine took a young Obi Wan Kenobi’s advice to never give up the high ground too literally, in the form of two moon-like weapons of mass destruction. Vader’s Force-receptors blinded him to making quality technology choices, ultimately resulting in the loss of his mentor, son, men, and empire.

Shlok Vaidya is a New Orleans-based tech entrepreneurs with a counter-terrorism background.