Wampum

Convergences and Divergences

Would the U-boats bring Britain to its knees before American power could make itself felt on the battlefronts? That was the question to Generals Ludendorff and Hindenburg, in February, 1917, and the production/interdiction/consumption curves came within six weeks of famine for the UK, and then the curves diverged.

By July 1943, the Americans were building ships far faster than the Germans could sink them. The point of closest approach of the production/interdiction/consumption curves was Spring, 1943. "The Battle of the Atlantic was the only thing that really frightened me" - Winston Churchill.

The visual most often cited to convey the sense of strategic blunder is this.

At some point, Napoleon knew. At some point Donitz knew. At some point Hindenburg knew. The other side was winning the race. The other side had solved the logistics problem. The other side was producing lowest cost counter-force, and nothing could change the outcome.

RAC just pointed out on MtP that 90% of the population of Morocco and Algeria, who's governments are allies of the United States ... now hate the US. He mentioned Hosni Mubark's comments to the Egyptian Army at Suez, "Instead of having one (Osama) bin Laden, we will have 100 bin Ladens."

It is left as an exercise to the reader the percentage of the populations of the rest of North Africa, the Middle East, Arabia, Western and South Asia, (India excluded), that share this view.

At an approximate cost of $1,000,000 per unit, whether cruise missle delivered (targeting overhead and supporting forces costs not included), or a SOCOM op with force depletion of one or more, we can't possibly loose, neh?

At some point the light must have gone on in the Kremlin. At some point on the trajectory between K's "we will bury you" speach, which was intended as a production curve remark, not as it was spun by its intended audience, as a would-be gravedigger's hollow promise, and the spent-into-the-ground collapse of the Soviet economy under the last of the Commie Tsars, the intended by-product of which was dimminished command and control over strategic and tactical theater weapons, or at least the parts that make an impression when used as intended, at some point before it all augered in and rotors and parts went random happy directions, Red Players knew they'd lost, that the curves were diverging, not converging.

Set your watches. Slightly before 10am today, and Tweety and the Gang seem to have missed it, today, the Racoon, the only person at this point known to have reasonably clean hands, observed that OBL will be caught or killed soon, and that the curves are diverging, not converging. We are not winning. We're not likely to either.

Posted by at March 28, 2004 09:39 AM | TrackBack