Albert Einstein warned us that you cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war, and so, I’d like to ask you if you’ve been watching the amazing military build-up in the last five-years in The Middle East? Are we on the brink of WWIII?

Not long ago, I mentioned this to an arm-chair general acquaintance of mine, and he stated; “Oh hell yes, and I fear it will all hit the fan.” Unfortunately, so do I, and so do a good many other geo-politics analysts of the region.

And we can only wonder what our own Pentagon Analysts and risk assessment analysts are thinking. And I guess most of us including us arm-chair generals, probably would be scared crapless if we did?

These are scary times, and the United States is involved, we are in Iraq, and Afghanistan in the middle, with Israel as an ally too. But are our interests enough to stop a World War? And do we have the balls to do something about the inevitable? Things are reaching a flash-point.

It’s unbelievable.

Worse, every major arms dealer and nation is selling all they can; the Russians, Chinese, US, UK, EU, and the nations in the Middle East sell to

I have some opinions on the topic of Army General Officers education and selection. I am interested in how we improve the capability of Army colleges to support life long learning in our student officers (and faculty). I argue that our college should be as flexible as the organizations we are telling these officers they will have to create and lead when they leave our building.

Marshall fired a ton of old guys prior to WW2 who were optimized for their peacetime positions based on their experiences and the nature of the pre-war environment. The discontinuity that was WW2, in Marshall’s judgment, required a bold shift in selection criteria for GO. It’s a young man’s game? But is there a substitute for the years of practical experience and intuition honed by the career paths of GOs prior to their promotion? Doesn’t the top leader have to go through all those formative experiences to develop the skill sets required for the thorniest problems? Perhaps, if you believe that we are looking for leadership to be contained within a single node inside the network organization.

But if you believe we are in a world of complex adaptive systems, filled with wicked

People think that Syria is next on the list like the curent conflict between Israeli and Hezbollah playing out in Lebanon. You all know that there are 10-International Terrorist Groups represented in Syria and all the weapons coming into Lebanon from Iran go through Syria. Iran funnels some 100-million dollars to Hezbollah. Syria and Iran have a War-Pact now.

 

As the EU, IAEA, US and UN work on convincing Iran that it is in their best interests to stop making nuclear weapons to give to International Terrorist Groups like Hezbollah; Israel may have no choice but to go after Syria. Yet, how tough is the Syrian war machine? We know Israel has 500,000 troops, 1250 Aircraft, 15,000 tanks and 2800 missiles systems, as well as very advanced smart munitions technology, a huge Navy and the THEL.

 

But realize Syria is no light-weight in its Army either, their force is Russian trained with 10,000 tanks and 1070 aircraft.

They also have in the Syrian Army 225,000 military soldiers on active duty with over 4700 Missile Systems to shoot multiple missiles most of which is Russian Technology. Suffice it to say that Syria is no push over, but Israel could take