Hells Angels on the March

War that is not between states

In order to understand warfare as it is today military theorists such as Israeli Professor Martin van Creveld and American William Lind pioneered new concepts of war such as Non-Trinitarian Warfare and 4th Generation Warfare respectively. In these concepts wars are not just fought between states (Allies against Axis), but also between states and nonstate forces (Israel against Hamas) and sometimes between just non-state actors (Northern Alliance against Al-Qaida in Afghanistan in 2001).

The concept of Non-Trinitarian War as Martin van Creveld calls Non-Trinitarian Warfare is becoming more widely debated lately as evidenced by lively discussions on blogs such as Gates of Vienna recently. The subject is gangwars in Danmark.

www.islamineurope.net has previously featured two stories on the Amsterdam Hells Angels by Snouck, one of

11 april 2007 Hells Angels "Banished from Eden" and
23 april 2006 Hells Angels "Organized Crime in constant state of reorganisation"

The Hell's Angels are a important organized criminal force in Europe. In Denmark the local chapters of the Hell's Angels are under pressure from gangs of immigrants who are fighting with them for territory. The Hells Angels have started a new organisation AK 81 to recruit Danes and add musle to their force, without diluting the cohesion and standing of the core Hells Angels. The cement of the alliance is the notion that both non-criminal ethnic Danes and the Hells Angels are under threat from immigrant gang violence. The Hells Angels can provide leadership and organisation for Danes who want security from the violent ethnic gangs.

Propaganda is the key to win the support of the population

In order to influence public opinion an unnamed author wrote an piece on the danger of the gangs of immigrant thugs to Danish society. The article was published on the website of the Danish Chapter of the Hells Angels and is called the "Jackal Manifesto". It was translated by Henrik Raeder Clausen and the translation was published on the Gates of Vienna (GoV) blog.

Development of Non-Trinitarian Warfare in Denmark and the Future

Next GoV published a piece by the hand of Baron Bodissey titled "Drawing the line".

In "Drawing the line" the Baron draws a parallel between the rise of feudalism after the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of Crime Organisations who become protectors of the people.

The debate

I forecast that we will see many more of the ideas of Martin van Creveld debated in the future. The concepts that belong to wars between states do no provide a lot of insight in the conlflicts the West is finding itself in as a result of the actions of Jihadists. This is worsened by the effect on society of Muslim colonisation of Western land as a result of mass immigration.

Our future: The Middle Ages

Professor Martin van Creveld, the expert on non-clauzewitzian warfare just published a new article on Defense and the National Interest

The past:

For a thousand years before 1945, the story of mankind had been one of political consolidation. To be sure, empires rose and receded, were created and fell to pieces. But however twisty the road, in the long run it always led toward larger and more powerful units. By 1914, virtually the entire Earth was dominated by just seven of them, six of them established by white men and five centered in Europe. Needless to say, they promptly fell to fighting each other on an unequaled scale and with an unequaled ferocity. By the time their struggle ended 30 years later, 80 to 100 million people had been killed.

The present and the growing power of transnational organisations:

From Indonesia to Scotland, and from the former Soviet Union to southern Africa, the process most characteristic of our age is political splintering, decentralization, even disintegration. Hardly a month goes by without some new state appearing on the map. And political transformation extends far beyond government. Each time a new user acquires a TV dish or links up to the Internet, the nature of politics undergoes a subtle change. Each time a new international organization arises, more states find themselves caught in its coils. The splintering process has led to vast increases in the power of organizations other than states, such as multinational corporations, nongovernmental organizations, and the media. With each passing day these groups are a little more independent of government. With each passing day, the influence they exercise in world affairs grows.

It is true that the public is resisting the power of some transnational organisations dreamed up by the political class (EU), but other social units other than states are increasing their in the minds of the subjects they seek to control, as we can see in the struggle in Iraq between a transnational alliance of Western nations to create a nation that would do their bidding and a legion of non-nation groups that fight them and each other for dominance over populations and territories.

The future:

There will be continued political decentralization accompanied by massive population movements from one political unit to the next. These political units will vary widely, from sovereign states to international organizations that are not sovereign, and from those with large territories to those that have very little territory or none at all. Operating within a very loose framework of international law, from time to time they will go to war against each other. But compared with the titanic struggles of the years 1914-45, these wars will tend to be small and, except to those directly involved, harmless.

Martin van Creveld wrote "The Transformation of War" in 1990 in which he showed the waning power of nation states and the inability of these states to perform their core duty: physical security. Rereading the book in 2006 it is uncanny how prescient he was at that time.

Another seminal book by Van Creveld is: "The rise and fall of the State"

Read more of Van Creveld's article at d-n-i.net.

Unpopular Message

The number of visitors to this blog rose steadily by about 10 percent per week. Yesterday the number of visitors took a 25 percent dent however, especially in visits from the USA. I guess my message about the lost war in Iraq was not a popular one.

Still I stand by my endorsement of Van Creveld's assessment.

The war in Iraq is not going well. There is no victory in sight. I saw some horrible footage yesterday from a film made by Jihadi's. It was shot of American soldiers on the streets in Iraq in armoured vehicles and humvees. They were getting shot by Jihadi snipers. The footage was accompanied by religious chanting in Arabic. The footage of well-equipped US soldiers with million dollar Equipment and sensors standing around seeing nothing is an illustration of the warnings of Van Creveld.

What to do against the Jihad against the West? The democratisation of the Middle East is not working. I have always maintained that it is impossible. Because Iraqi and most other Middle Eastern societies are too fractured along religious (Sunni, Shia) and tribal and ethnic lines to be able to live in a democratic society. Francis Fukuyama wrote a book "Trust" about the necessity of trust and understanding between citizens in a society in order for people to co-operate vulontarily. This is a necessary precondition of democracy. Middle Easterners do not trust one another. High levels of trust are only found in Europe, European derived societies such as Australia and Japan. That is why they need dictators to run societies. That is why civil wars break out.

That is why democracy in Iraq won't work. So if we pursue a defence against Jihad we must shed our illusions about the possibility of democratisation of reshaping the enemy in our own image. The US Army is not an instrument of social reform. Conservatives should understand this. There will be new terror attacks on Western targets. Globally. And something needs to be done. Otherwise people in Europe and the US will lose confidence in their governments and we get instability in our homelands.

A Fool's War

Martin van Creveld, the Israeli war guru who is an expert on warfare in these times we are living in and on the diminishing power of the state wrote a scating piece on Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq. Title: "Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War" The US troops have been in Iraq since 2003. Since then 2,000 soldiers have been killed and only a tine minority of Americans support the war. It is obvious that the US forces must be withdrawn. The question is when and how. Van Creveld ominiously compares the situation in Iraq to Vietnam. And Iraq will be more dear to the US then that war.

During the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam the American handed over their equipment to the South Vietnamese. This is no option now. The Iraqi Army is much weaker than even the ARVN and todays equipment is incomparable more complicated. After the victory of the Communists in 1975 the North ended up with mounains of sofisticated American weapons, which they used to devastating effect in the Vietnam Chinese war of 1979 and the ousting of the Khmer Rouge. Also Vietnam had a centralised government whereas Iraq is a jumble of competing groups.

Clearly, then, the thing to do is to forget about face-saving and conduct a classic withdrawal.

Van Creveld continues to state that first the US forces have to concentrate on Bagdad and then to pull back to Basra and Kuwait.

A withdrawal probably will require several months and incur a sizable number of casualties. As the pullout proceeds, Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war from which it will take the country a long time to emerge — if, indeed, it can do so at all. All this is inevitable and will take place whether George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice like it or not.

And

a complete American withdrawal is not an option; the region, with its vast oil reserves, is simply too important for that.

The reasons the presence is necessary is that Iran must be deterred from filling the power vacuum. Teheran will be the greatest benefactor from Saddam being toppled. Saddam was the US ally before the first gulf war used as a counterweight to the power of Iran. Now that counterweight is gone the US will have to do the work themselves in order to protect the Gulfstates.

A continued American military presence will be needed also, because a divided, chaotic, government-less Iraq is very likely to become a hornets' nest. From it, a hundred mini-Zarqawis will spread all over the Middle East, conducting acts of sabotage and seeking to overthrow governments in Allah's name.

So the second benefactor of the Second Gulf War is Al-Queda. Great news!

However, Turkey, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Israel are also likely to feel the impact. Some of these countries, Jordan in particular, are going to require American assistance. Van Creveld ends by naming the invasion the greatest mistake in 2,000 years (4 Roman legions massacred by the Germans in the Teutoburger forest). And calls for impeachment of Bush and his cronies.

A modern day prophet

Martin van Creveld is a Dutch born Israeli. He is widely regarded as an absolute expert on war in the modern era. It is obligatory to read his books on US military academies, although his idea's are make for depressing reading for any member of a modern military force.

Some of Mr. van Creveld's books conventional and take a more or less standard look at warfare, examples: "The Sword and the Olive" on the Israeli Defense Force and "Command in War".

However his "Transformation of War" and the "Rise and decline of the State" are ground breaking and have far reaching implications not just for todays and future warfare but also for the developments in societies world-wide.

We are going to take a look at what Martin van Creveld has to say on this blog in the weeks to come.