The Manning Shortfall Bow Wave is Only Starting

It appears that the recruiting and retention challenges are breaking above the ambient noise at the start of 2QFY23. We go through these cycles, but if things seem a bit different to you this time, your instincts are right.

The ebb and flow of manning the Navy is a regular story - but there is one major cause that is different this time around and is beyond the control of anyone - it is an almost geographic or structural in nature as will be outlined later in the post.

Layered on top of this structural challenge to recruiting and retention are challenges of our own creation and are fully in our control - a headwind of our own creation via decisions and policies that even if changed overnight, their effects will linger for years...and their negative effect will increase with time unless changes are made sooner more than later.

Via Diana Stancy Correll at Navy Times;

There are about 9,000 operational sea-duty gaps, with the highest gaps appearing in the most sea-intensive ratings...

The first thing to came to mind when I read that were the "too clever by half" efforts to "solve" afloat manning that help lead to the horrible summer of 2017. I do believe that we have tried to address this problem of throwing unqualified people just to make the metrics work, but that temptation will always be there.

I would really like to see the data over time with that gap number. What has it been for, say, the last 20 years? I know that graph exists...I'd love to see it just so we know how the challenge in in FY23 than it was in FY2013, FY2003, etc. Ships that belong at sea need Sailors, so this multi-causal problem will require more than one effort to fix it.

Vice Adm. Roy Kitchener said the Navy is experimenting with a new pilot program aimed at eliminating the number of temporary additional duty, or TEMADD, sailors that are taken from their primary duty stations.

Again, this brings more questions than anything else. There is nothing "new" about this problem that would make it a cause of today's difficulties ... unless we have allowed a known problem to get worse. Where are those TEMADD Sailors going? How do FY2023 numbers compare to FY2020? FY2015?

If we're talking schools, well good googly moogly, this was a problem when I was a JO. Heck, back in 2011 when I was only 2-yrs post-active duty, in San Diego I asked the senior Lieutenant of a riverine craft doing a static display what was the number one thing he wanted from Navy leadership.

His answer was, roughly, "Don't have my Sailors show up only long enough to check in before they are sent off to school to be qualified to do their job. If I'm short an EN1 and Millington tells me, 'You have an EN1 I just sent you.' I tell them, 'Yeah, he checked in last week, will sit here for eight more weeks before going to a six month school. By then my most experienced EN2 is separating. Heck, he goes on terminal leave in two months. That EN1 not only is no good to me, the way he was sent to me only makes my problem worse."

We then spent a few minutes saying bad things about Millington before I asked him what his plans were. I'll consolidate and paraphrase roughly. "I'm getting out next year. I'm a Lieutenant in a riverine command. I have no competitive future on active duty."

Like I said, not a new problem.

So, back to the challenge we're talking about today. As we saw with previous shortfalls, everyone hits the "Easy Button."

“The reality is we need to buy more people,” Kitchener said. “And I think right now we’re committed to buying more people; we’re just having a hard time recruiting.”

The Navy is offering multiple enlistment and retention bonuses to recruit and keep sailors. For example, future sailors or veterans who re-up right now can combine the maximum enlistment bonus with a maximum student loan repayment to cap out at $115,000 — if they ship out before March. The Navy first introduced the policy last year and kept it for FY23. 

Well, yes, money helps, but it is only going to get you so far.

What is the structural problem I mentioned at the top of the post? 

2023 is not 2003 or even 2013. This is the most important graph for understanding our manning problem.

Demographics.

Demographics is destiny. Always was, always will be. Each year, the a new cohort of children born 18-20 years earlier become the source material to recruit in to the military.

Is it easier or harder to get more people from a shrinking pool? 
 

Yes, we have that problem - but like our geography and natural resources, the USA has this as a comparative advantage, in a fashion.

Compared to other developed nations, our demographics are rather good. Have you seen Korea's?

The People's Republic of China?

Germany?

Russia?

As a species, human society has never see such a demographic profile. The developed world and its militaries will have to figure out how work around it. So, yes, the USA and its Navy has a demographic challenge, but so do our friends and competitors ... we just look healthier.

Oh, in case demographics and population trees are new to you and you don't really understand how different things have changed for the USA, the below graph is helpful.

So much of how we think about manning and retention in our military is based on outdated assumptions about demographics. Look again at the first graph. The USA will have a slightly easier time with a larger cohort of 18-20-year olds in 2028, but then that pool shrinks again, fast.

The easiest time to recruit officers and enlisted in the last half century was ... 2011 - and that pool is simply not coming back.

Speaking of pools, this should give everyone pause;

The Navy met its active duty enlisted recruitment goals for fiscal 2022, but fell short among active duty and reserve officers, as well as reserve enlisted personnel. The service is also prepared for an even more challenging year in recruiting; it drained its Delayed Entry Program pool to the lowest the service has experienced in 40 years to meet its active duty enlisted recruitment benchmarks for FY22.

You can only do that once and that trick is done. Over at twitter retired Admiral John Harvey, USN made a solid point on this;

https://t.co/59Da39WAHM
This is a very big deal - with the DEP depleted to make last year's goal and if recruiting stays way down this year, manning shortages will grow at sea and training pipelines won't be adequately filled.
Afraid it's the tip of the iceberg.

— John C. Harvey, Jr, ADM USN (Ret) (@JohnHar05137790) January 15, 2023

I see a lot of reacting, pulling from the historical tool box and otherwise dealing with symptoms to try to move the needle inside a POM cycle. However, we got here for a variety of reasons years in the making that will not respond quickly to the degree we think they will as described above.

Some things, like demographics, we can't do anything about. As we face that shrinking pool we will see again in 2028, there are things we need to act on now to help change perceptions that can linger for years before they change. 

To make these changes, it will require admissions of error, and that is the problem. Feelings will be hurt. Rice bowls will be turned over. As that those feelings and rice bowls contributed to the problem we have, that shouldn't bother well meaning people.

Here they are; Image, Leadership, Reputation:

Image: What do our candidates see and hear? In the civilian world, every call is a sales call and every customer is a referral source for new business. In the military, every photograph, event, and gathering in uniform is a recruiting event. We have covered it here in detail previously so no need to point to examples, but who would want to join a service whose ships look uncared for? Whose Sailors are all wearing three or four different uniforms ... brown boots, black boots, camo, blue hat, tan hat ... etc? What messages do rusty ships and disheveled Sailors send to friends and enemies? Why does it seem that so many leaders in our Navy seem to want to dress like they are in the Army or the USMC when they are CONUS or afloat? Are they ashamed of being Sailors? Are they even recognized as being Sailors by potential recruits? Does any of this make the Navy an attractive place to join or stay in - or a place to avoid?

Leadership: What are candidates' future bosses saying? When senior leadership is seen and heard from, what are they talking about? Would you want to join an organization whose leadership seems mostly concerned that they employ a bunch of racists, sexists, rapists, and domestic terrorists? Do you want to work for leaders who never seem to defend their people ... who at first chance will defer to the latest slander and promise to "do something about it" when they know there really isn't an "it" but won't support their people by saying so? What about over a decade trying to act as if there were no costs, no down side to making 8, 9, 11-month deployments with a short turnaround as the "new normal?" What about the reality of people spending the balance of their first enlistment in a ship during overhaul because we can plan for the expected?  

Reputation: What do others think of their Navy a candidate may want to join? One of the worst examples of governmental corruption at scale this century in the United States was/is the "Fat Leonard" scandal. It has been 13-years, almost four times longer than it took to fight WWII, and the primary player, Leonard Francis, has yet to go to trial and even escaped from home arrest earlier this year. On a regular basis, we have IGs investigate someone for an accusation of X, X is never found, but they still dig until they find Y and then destroy a person's decade long service - often draining their personal funds defending themselves in the process. We burn a multi-billion dollar large deck amphib in port, blame it on an undesignated Seaman, drag his name, life, family, and fortune through a court system only to find him not guilty ... all while scrapping the evidence needed to find the cause in the process. The chief uniformed leader, the CNO, invests what little personal and professional capital he has left promoting the toxically divisive racial essentialism of Ibram X. Kendi. This is going on while at the same time parents all across Northern Virginia and the United States are in open rebellion against the public schools in their area for promoting the same Critical Race Theory adjacent racialist practices in their schools. Would those same parents want their kids to join an organization who admits they like having pictures in promotion boards so they can actively discriminate on the basis of race? Really?

These all add up. Drip, drip, drip ... the issues with the Navy's image, the defensive crouch and thirsty virtue signaling of its leadership, and the own goals degrading its reputation among the general public - a very different cohort than those the Potomac Flotilla socializes with - has etched a mark on the Navy's attractiveness that cannot be buffed out in a year or two. No, it will take a few years to stabilize the ship and to get it underway on a better course.

There are enough challenges out there in recruiting numbers that we need, we need to scrape off the self-applied accretions making the effort even more challenging. It won't come without other costs, but if the goal is to move the needle out of orange and in to yellow, then we need to focus on those things we can control. 

Start with image, leadership, and reputation. All three have lesser included actions that will come along if you can do these three things better to remove reasons not to join the Navy, and equally important, come off the list for those who want to leave the Navy. 

Russia's Last Gasp War?

It's been a couple of years since we visited Peter Zeihan, and two weeks ago he posted a video that just pulls it all together to make a solid point about the pivot point the Russo-Ukrainian war is ... at least for the Russians.

The Ukrainian economic and demographic numbers are a nightmare on their own, but let's put that struggling people to the side for a moment and look at the Russians. 

As interesting and informative are the tactical level efforts and changing "supply convoy" of the day pictures, the real interesting and informative to ponder are the larger movements in play; economics, geography, and demographics. 

The real frightening part is at the end as it covers a topic we discussed in part on yesterday's Midrats; fertilizer.

The full video below is worth your time, but I want you to focus on the second half. It is only around six minutes.

I would just like to make one little note; I put a "?" in the title as I do not fully buy in to the quasi-presentism of "Russia will disappear."

Russia has a history that goes back in to the mists of time. She has come back from the Mongol invasions of the Middle Ages and the depredations of the first half of the 20th Century on to be stronger.

While it takes a generation or two to recover from the demographic hole she is in, it can be done. It requires a national "great awakening" that may never come for Russia - but I am not of a mind to count the Russians out. I don't think the future would be that easy, or boring.

The New Way of War is the Old Way of War

There is a lot of wishcasting when it come to talking about "the next war." A lot of money is to be made in peace selling a vision of what people desire the next war to be; a fast war, an easy war, a war fought on our ethical spectrum with the weapons we like, on a timescale that works best for us. 

History teaches that war does not work this way. No one gets the next war exactly right, but some get it partially right. That is why you need to be suspicious of single points of failure or any cult-like following of concepts or personalities that make this historically hard seem easy.

There is one thing that you can count on when it comes to big or even medium wars; they will last longer than you think. You will also find out in the first few months what you bought in to works or does not work; what kit you need more of, what you have in excess.

In those few months you will also see something else come out in stark relief against the background; the hints about what this war would be like were there all along in bits and shadow from the small and medium sized wars in the decade or so prior to the big one. The longer an army or navy is at peace before the next war, the greater the delta will exist between theory and reality.

As we've discussed here, there are examples of small conflicts going on right now that are providing invaluable lessons that should be the center of our attention. Most of the lessons from these conflicts - Ukraine, Syria, and Libya are just three - are land centric, but in all three places there are some useful lessons in the maritime sector on the margins. 

While it is easy or comfortable to discuss things on the tactical level, or as in the above paragraph service specific topics, on Syria, what are a few things we should be looking at - on the strategic level?  

Eyal Berelovich over at Military Strategy Magazine has a great overview of the long Syrian Civil War. In line with the bias towards long wars, this one bit rang especially true;

Attrition-based warfare ... proved to be an operational concept that allows the Syrian army to overcome its enemies. The question is will it affect the future structure and military strategy of the Syrian army: 

...

...it is plausible to think that the army will be made of two armies: one that can execute offensive operations to limited geographical objectives and another that will be able to only do defensive operations. Both armies will have sufficient fire power to attrite enemy forces while minimizing the damage the enemy could cause them.

Other nations are learning this lesson. They have nurtured a briar patch they will love for someone to jump in to.

While some potential opponents will pay attention to these lessons - which parallel what we are seeing in Ukraine and Libya - I don't think we are likely to want to take these lessons onboard. They are unpleasant. They are not in line with how our republic likes to fight its wars.

Additionally, there is a modern twist here that I'm not sure how to fully see how it plays out. 

For all of modern history, waring nations were young and growing with high fertility rates. What if the nature of war has not changed as much as human demographics have changed? What is the impact of wars of attrition on ageing populations with many families only having one child, or at best one son? How do they respond differently based on the system of government they exist under?

If you properly examine these questions, how do you arrange your force structure and OPLANs?

Leaving the strategic questions and returning to a service specific question; does the 2021 USN look more like the IJN or USN prior to WWII when it comes to the ability to fight a naval war of attrition?

If wars of attrition are the old/new of the 21st Century ... how do we posture our military and industrial base to flex to that need?

Crossposted on substack.

Long War in Africa is Tomorrow's War Too

Let's stick with the long war in Africa today, as last night I came across this jewel from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, The Islamic State’s Strategic Trajectory in Africa: Key Takeaways from its Attack Claims. 

This heat map is superb and shows that the issue in northern Mozambique is a side show.

From the IS point of view, their main effort is Nigeria and the Sinai.

The Sinai is almost an, "of course..." but everyone should remember that it is the Egyptian military is the only thing keeping Egypt from falling to the Muslim Brotherhood again. As we've seen in Turkey, the West putting faith in modernizing military leadership can only get you so far.  

Nigeria is where the prize is, and not just for oil. Are you up to speed in Nigerian demographics? Let's start with just religion. 

In 2010, the population was 49% Christian and 48% Muslim.  Now?

Where will that stand at 2050?

Now let's look at numbers.

Where will that be by 2050?

~410 million - larger than the United States.

History is far from over and the future has all sorts of horrors it will visit on the planet.

Know the intersection of demographics, economics, and religion and how they relate to future conflict ... and they will all lead you back to Africa.

Disintegrative Phase II is Nigh

This is going to be a hell of a decade or two.

If you are in a big city, get out.

If you are in a lot of debt, get out.

If you find yourself in a large crowd, get out.

If you are in a career that is in decline, get out.

If you have your kids in bad public schools, get out.

Get ready. 

If we're wrong, you'll be fine. If we're right, you'll be in a place to help yourself and others.

More good news over at USNIBlog.

Come on over; clothes to rend and teeth to gnash not included.

What Do Old People Fight Over?

While history is a great guidepost to the future, there are inflection points where “today” really is unique period of time.

Demographics remain an underappreciated variable in national security, but is growing in importance as the global decoupling of regional trends and the resulting stresses on the international system are hard to ignore.

Unsustainable demographics and the migrations they are causing in Sub-Saharan Africa are one trend, but the world has seen this pattern before. Migrating ethnic groups generating conflict is THE oldest theme in human history, but today there is something new; the graying of the developed world.

We all love to fret about China’s return to the world stage economically and militarily. Volumes of work try to find a benchmark with the rise of Imperial Germany, Japan, or even the USA – but these are all imperfect in a myriad of ways – but the largest block to making them an effective benchmark is in demographics.

Via The Economist;

The pressure on China is mounting. The coming year will see an inauspicious milestone. The median age of Chinese citizens will overtake that of Americans in 2020, according to UN projections (see chart). Yet China is still far poorer, its median income barely a quarter of America’s. A much-discussed fear—that China will get old before it gets rich—is no longer a theoretical possibility but fast becoming reality.

According to UN projections, during the next 25 years the percentage of China’s population over the age of 65 will more than double, from 12% to 25%. By contrast America is on track to take nearly a century, and Europe to take more than 60 years, to make the same shift. China’s pace is similar to Japan’s and a touch slower than South Korea’s, but both those countries began ageing rapidly when they were roughly three times as wealthy per person.

Seen in one light, the greying of China is successful development. A Chinese person born in 1960 could expect to live 44 years, a shorter span than a Ghanaian born the same year. Life expectancy for Chinese babies born today is 76 years, just short of that in America. But it is also a consequence of China’s notorious population-control strategy. In 1973, when the government started limiting births, Chinese women averaged 4.6 children each. Today they have only 1.6, and some scholars say even that estimate is too high.
…

The economic impact is being felt in two main ways. The most obvious is the need to look after all the old people. Pension payouts to retired people overtook contributions by workers in 2014. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the national pension fund could run out of money by 2035. The finance ministry is taking small steps to shore the system up: in September it transferred 10% of its stakes in four giant state-owned financial firms to the fund. But far more is needed. Government spending on pensions and health care is about a tenth of GDP, just over half the level usual in older, wealthier countries, which themselves will have to spend more as they get even older.

The second impact is on growth. Some Chinese economists—notably Justin Lin of Peking University—maintain that ageing need not slow the country down, in part thanks to technological advances. But another camp, led by Cai Fang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has been winning the argument so far. A shrinking labour pool is pushing up wages and, as firms spend more on technology to replace workers, pushing down returns on capital investment. The upshot, Mr Cai calculates, is that China’s potential growth rate has fallen to about 6.2%—almost exactly where it is today. The labour shortage is hitting not just companies but entire cities. From Xi’an in the north to Shenzhen in the south, municipalities have made it easier for university graduates to move in, hoping thereby to attract skilled young workers.

Never before has a rising power had the headwind of an elderly population matrix. Young nations have different mindsets and priorities than aging nations. Nations are just collectives of people and more often than not reflect their concerns.

What are the concerns of old people relative to young people? Two areas come to mind; fear of poverty and fear of getting sick without help.

Young people think of status, setting a path for future success, and providing a better future for their children. They take more risks for potential long term gains.

Older people are more risk adverse and have a much shorter horizon of concern.

Does a nation with too few young people willingly send hundreds of thousands of them to their death in a war for … what exactly?

On October 1st China celebrated the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic. By the centenary in 2049, Mr Xi has vowed, China will have developed to the point that its strength is plain for the world to see. But as Ren Zeping, a prominent economist, tartly noted in a recent report, the median age in China in 2050 will be nearly 50, compared with 42 in America and just 38 in India. That, he wrote, raised a question: “Can we rely on this kind of demographic structure to achieve national rejuvenation?”

Africa in Three Charts and a Graph

Your regular reminder that you may not be interested in Africa, but Africa is very interested in you.

She is a poor, violent, and desperate continent. Structurally, that will not improve any time soon; probably just the opposite.

I will end my extended commentary there. I will let your higher brain functions and pictures do the rest.

In red, you have the ungoverned spaces;

Next you have religious distribution:

And finally, from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project;

The future belongs to, and will be influenced by, those who show up.

Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part LXXIX

If you don't keep an eye on the second and third order effects of Chinese demographics, start.

Nothing "breaking news" - but like a slowly retreating tide, you can't ignore it and it effects everything around it.

China's population is set to peak at 1.44 billion people in 2029 — but it then faces a long period of "unstoppable" decline, government scholars have warned.

Key points:
- China is grappling with demographic problems caused by its ageing population
- The country could be missing more than 200 million workers by mid-century
- The birth rate fell in 2017 despite the abolition of the one-child policy

The world's most populous country must now draw up policies to try to cope with a declining labour force and a rapidly ageing population, according to a summary of the latest edition of the Green Book of Population and Labour published by the China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

Note the timeline - the end of the Terrible 20s.

China is not alone in this challenge. Indeed, led by Japan, all of East Asia is feeling it. Europe is feeling it. Most of the developed world is. The USA, not to the same degree due to a different fertility rate and approach to immigration.

Declining population is something not seen in the modern era.

Watch.

Plague, 30-yrs War ... and Post-Modernism: Meet the Hard Math of Demographics

Depopulation and demographic collapse are not unknown concepts, disease and war have brought both on a regular basis to human civilization. Unless you are Mayan, Khmer, or other star-crossed civilizations, complete collapse is rare. What we are seeing now from Japan to China to Europe - especially former Communist Europe - is different. This is by peaceful choice.

People have simply decided not to have children.

Over at Bloomberg, Leonid Ragozin has a great write-up about what happened to the Baltic Republics since the fall of the Soviet Union. As is my wont, let's start with a graph.

This graph is almost standard throughout the former Soviet Union. The non-Muslim parts especially responded to economic and social chaos by doing two things; 1) Stop having families, 2) Emigration.

Several factors are contributing to the depopulation of Eastern Europe, and Latvia has all of them: low income, compared with more developed EU nations; insufficient growth; and strong anti-immigrant sentiment. The average annual take-home pay among all EU nations was 24,183 euros ($29,834) in 2015, according to Eurostat, while in Latvia it was only 6,814 euros ($8,406).

The young and educated are disappearing in the greatest numbers, shrinking the amount of working adults who can fund benefits for pensioners. Latvian demographer Mihails Hazans said that, as of 2014, one in three ethnic Latvians aged 25 to 34—and a quarter of all Latvians with higher education—lived abroad. In Moldova, that figure is more than 20 percent. In Ukraine—which other Eastern European nations look to for migrant labor—the state employment service said 11 percent of the population lives abroad.
...
With fewer young Latvians staying and getting married, buying houses or starting families, the school system is slowly shrinking. The population is skewing older. Classrooms give way to day rooms.

But Lakse stayed. He went on to college and is now pursuing a legal degree at the University of Daugavpils, Latvia’s second-largest city, which has a population of 86,000. Even for those who stay, though, the pull of the west remains. When students in his class were asked recently whether they were going to stay in Latvia after graduation, almost half said no.

Economics can take time, and in an international environment where educated and motivated people can easily move about, emigration will be an issue. The key is to build a nation your people don't want to leave.

If simple numbers are the issue, as this is Bloomberg and Leonid is Leonid, there is a paper thin discussion of the joys of an immigration fix.

Nine out of 10 countries with the lowest acceptance rate of immigrants are former members of the Eastern bloc. Of these, the three Baltic nations had been previously forced to accept Russian-speaking migrants. In Latvia, the issue is so controversial that in 2015, when the EU insisted it accept just a few hundred Syrian refugees, nationalists initially threatened to withdraw from the government. That same year, Latvia came in second to last in the Migrant Integration Policy Index, which ranks 38 democracies according to the quality of immigration policies. Only Turkey did worse. Latvia was fourth from the bottom in Gallup’s 2017 Migrant Acceptance Score list, which ranks countries in order of their populations’ attitudes to immigrants.

Anti-immigrant sentiment in Latvia is driven, in part, by the National Alliance party, one of three in Latvia’s governing coalition. Speaking in Parliament earlier this year, party official Janis Dombrava quoted polling agency Eurobarometer as showing that 86 percent of Latvians believe immigrants make no contribution to the state.

“Latvia must either completely abandon or minimize the number of migrants who come from third-world countries,” Dombrava said. In October, Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis rejected an EU plan to accommodate an additional 50,000 refugees from the Middle East and Africa. He also defended Poland, which refused to meet the EU-imposed minimum number of refugees it was obliged to accept.

Hazans, the Latvian demographer, has been researching the nation’s slow-motion implosion. Low wages, poor career prospects and poorer working conditions, he said, are the top reasons. He also warned of a parallel political cycle to match the economic one: Since the young leave and the old stay, the electorate gets more conservative, he said, further exacerbating anti-immigrant leanings.

Where can anyone find an example where mass immigration from the Middle East or Africa has been a net-positive to civil society in Europe? Where have any of these large masses produced a boom of per-capita income? What net positive attribute to a nation in 2040 will a critical mass of unemployable, unassimilable, ethnically, religiously, and linguistically people in an already existing ethno-state (Latvians are a distinct ethnic group as are Estonians, Finns, etc) have? 

Go ahead, I'll wait.

This isn't going to happen.

Let pause a moment and wonder if there might be a positive here. By chance, could the Baltic republics be bumping in to avoiding a rising future problem? Again, over to Bloomberg;

Meanwhile, some in the tech industry believe that as machine learning and other technologies continue to replace human labor, basic income will be the only way to guarantee large portions of the human race a decent standard of living.

No one argues this point; the future economic system in the developed world will need fewer people, not more. Machines will take many jobs that require low skills. There will be a higher standard of living on average, but jobs will be scarce. It will be a challenge to find jobs for the educated, the low-skilled? Nope.

Waves of immigrants from Muslim nations and Sub-Saharan Africa are not of skilled and educated people. In the modern economies of Europe, there is no place for them to prosper.

As populations shrink, they will eventually find their level as moods and norms change, as they do. Will they be 30% lower? 50% lower? Who knows, but it will level in the next few decades. What we do know is that there won't be a need more people to take what few low skill jobs there will be.

The best thing for these nations to do - if they wish to remain in peace this century - is to build a high-tech, highly educated people among those kids they do have.

Demographics, Migration, and the Coming Crisis

Tomorrow we're going to beat up on LCS some more with the FFG RFI because we can't beat up on the Little Crappy Ship every day, regardless of how much fun it is.

No, today we're going to return to a more serious topic - one that has no easy fix and will not get better with time in our lifetime.

This is a story slowly unfolding that will not have a happy ending. We are only in the second chapter, and everyone is already tired ... but you cannot put the book down and there are many chapters to go.

The waves of humans crashing on to mostly Western Europe's shores are not going anywhere. These masses of military aged, unaccompanied men with nowhere else to go are not just going to blend in to their new found land. No.

Let's start all official is a surprisingly clear eyed report from UNHCR;

...refugees and migrants in Libya are predominantly young men (80%), aged 22 on average and travelling alone (72%). Women tend to transit towards Europe over a short period of time and many of them, particularly those from West and Central Africa, are victims of trafficking. The number of unaccompanied and separated children travelling alone is rising, and now represents some 14% of all arrivals in Europe via the Central Mediterranean route. These children come mainly from Eritrea, The Gambia and Nigeria.

Refugees and migrants in Libya tend to have a low level of education, with 49% having little or no formal education and only 16% having received vocational training or higher education.

These are not refugees from Syria. Those are people who don't have the skills to do any job in a modern economy.

They come from diverse backgrounds but can be grouped into four different categories:

Nationals of neighbouring countries (Niger, Chad, Sudan, Egypt and Tunisia). Most of them report travelling to Libya for economic reasons, and many engage in seasonal, circular or repetitive migrations.

Nationals of West and Central Africa countries : mainly from Nigeria, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Senegal, Ghana, Mali and Cameroon. They report having left largely for economic reasons. Some are victims of trafficking, in particular Nigerian and Cameroonian women, and some might be in need of international protection.

Nationals of Eastern Africa countries: from Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan. They reported making the journey for a range of reasons, including political persecution, conflict and poverty in their countries of origin.

Individuals from other regions: Syrians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Moroccans, Bangladeshis and others. Some flee conflict and violence while others are looking for livelihood opportunities.

Look at the graph at the top. The supply is not going to slow, and with each passing year, these uneducated, untrained, unskilled people will continue to bulge from nations that do not have the educational or economic ability to gainfully prepare them for a modern economy, much less employ them.

European nations are fully developed. As with all developed nations, they cannot employ their own unskilled workers in their modern economies - what on earth will they do with more unskilled people? People who have no desire or ability to assimilate?

In an already crowded continent, a stabilized or even shrinking population would be very manageable, as technology will help maintain a standard of living. Those nations will not survive these masses of "the other" in the numbers they are coming in and still be the civilizations they once were. They will simply debase themselves in line with the unassimilable nations the masses are coming from. We are already seeing it from London to Malmo to the suburbs of Paris. If the numbers were smaller and the people more inclined to assimilate, it wouldn't be a problem.

Are nations required to commit suicide? No. Already we are seeing a growing percentage of the voting population firmly say "no." As the hard lessons of mass immigration of the last few years are hitting Western Europe, those people are starting to shut their borders - and the Eastern Europeans want nothing of it. If their mainstream political parties do not do anything, the people will turn to others. By the time they do that, all the easier solutions will no longer be an option.

How bad will it be? How tough will these nations have to be if they want their societies to survive?

Half the world’s nations have fertility rates below the replacement level of just over two children per woman. Countries across Europe and the Far East are teetering on a demographic cliff, with rates below 1.5. On recent trends, Germany and Italy could see their populations halve within the next 60 years.

The world has hit peak child, says Hans Rosling at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Peak person cannot be far behind.

For now, the world’s population continues to rise. From today’s 7.4 billion people, we might reach 9 billion or so, mostly because of high fertility in Africa. The UN predicts a continuing upward trend, with population reaching around 11.2 billion in 2100. But this seems unlikely. After hitting the demographic doldrums, no country yet has seen its fertility recover. Many demographers expect a global crash to be under way by 2076.

Even Elon Musk is worried - but he's not fully up to speed on the global challenge. 49 years to 2076 is both a short and a long time. A lot can happen. I won't be around to see it, but my kids will.

If, as I believe they will, nations move to protect themselves, then those nations with high birthrates and low economic potential will have no outlet for their demographic stress.

I see a lot of blood in line with what we see today in Syria & Yemen. Poor, desperate people slaughtering each other over what ever excuse there may be to remove their "other." The more modern nations involved from the edges and patrolling the seas to keep the problem contained until nature takes its course.

Advanced nations will have to make the choice; bring it in, or wall it out. A few may keep with "bring it in." The other nations will see what happens there, and will elect "wall it out." It is already happening.

People may have been taken aback from the French President's remarks that had the usual suspects heading for the fainting couch earlier this week - but he seems to know that his nation will be one of the first to be bathed in blood if they don't get this fixed. France knows Africa well, and no serious person who has studied the demographics and economics of Africa would disagree with the broader substance of his remarks.

 Some would argue it may be too late for France, but I think there is still time.

Macron says Africa's problems are "civilizational" and blames women with "7 or 8" kids. A repugnant speech.

pic.twitter.com/4BqwDb7fqE

— joe prince (@joeprince___) July 10, 2017

Europe's Empty Crib

Clichés exist for a reason - there is a bit of truth to it.

One thing throughout history that is a positive force for most is trying to leave a better world to their children than the one left to them.

Having children, natural born or adopted - or even nephews and nieces - triggers an instinct to look beyond your own "now." In a very basic, lower brain stem drive to keep your DNA going, people make sacrifices. They expend efforts now that may not show positive results until after leave their mortal coil.

There are childless people who do sacrifice for the long-term good but they are part of a mix of people, and in that mix are some that do have some posterity in the game. It is a healthy mix of motivations.

Like any mix, you need to be sure that you don't have an imbalance. When you look at the leadership in Europe, there is something not quite right, and it has to do with their perspective. 

James McPherson makes a good point;

Emmanuel Macron founded a new party, and his election as France's president is said to herald the "revival of Europe." Interestingly, Macron has no children.

This is not that notable in itself. After all, George Washington had no biological children. But across the continent Macron wants to bind closer together, there's a stark pattern:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also has no children. British prime minister Theresa May has no children. Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni has no children. Holland's Mark Rutte has no children. Sweden's Stefan Loumlfven has no biological children. Luxembourg's Xavier Bettel has no children. Scotland's Nicola Sturgeon has no children. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, has no children.

This is too remarkable to ignore. While Macron is young—39 years old—the rest of Europe is being governed by childless Baby Boomers.

Demographics is destiny. The future belongs to those who show up. The children are our future, etc, etc, etc.

Imagine being at a table with nine of your professional "peers" - and none of you have any children at all. Would that strike you as odd? How would that shape your decisions?

Heck, I just did a quick survey of 9 of my peers off of the top of my head and came up with 19 children. 

Mix that in with what Tom Wolfe had to say about Baby Boomers;

Most people, historically, have not lived their lives as if thinking, "I have only one life to live." Instead they have lived as if they are living their ancestors' lives and their offspring's lives and perhaps their neighbors' lives as well. They have seen themselves as inseparable from the great tide of chromosomes of which they are created and which they pass on. The mere fact that you were only going to be here a short time and would be dead soon enough did not give you the license to try to climb out of the stream and change the natural order of things.

McPherson goes in to more detail that is well worth your time.

The Future Belongs to Who Shows Up

Are your assumptions about China, India, and sub-Saharan Africa based on the right assumptions?

I'm putting a few things out there over at USNIBlog. Stop by and ponder with me.

The Waves Have Already Started

Throughout the undeveloped and the fail-to-launch world, there are teaming masses driven by war and economics to look for some part of the world where they can escape the dysfunction and violence from where they came.

They are taking advantage of modern transportation and porous borders to move at a scale and speed no one is prepared to deal with. Lacking the desire, ability, or ethos to stand where they are and change their home nations, they are instead hitting the trail, the rail, the open ocean, and even the aircraft to come to the only places on this planet that function and will take them in - the West and its global outposts, most notably, Western Europe and the primary Anglosphere (CANUKUS+AUS/NZD).

There are problems with this in the 21st Century, there are no more open spaces. There are no longer small diverse groups coming in manageable numbers to a nation where in a generation they can be absorbed in the vast underpopulated frontier, earn their own living by the fruits of their own labor, and assimilate in to the culture.

No, this is new. The migrants are coming in waves 100,000 strong, month by month to already crowded nations under economic stress and beset with welfare state largess.

These nations do not demand new arrivals assimilate, and in a large measure, the new arrivals don't want to. With modern communication and entertainment a satellite dish away, they don't have to break from the home language and culture they are bringing and keeping is the same culture of violence, sectarianism, corruption and dependence that caused the source country's dysfunction in the first place.

Their foreign and often hostile culture, if not checked to manageable numbers and smart policies, will overwhelm their target nations and inside half a century. Those nations as well will fail as their civil society fractures and loses its ability to function as designed for a nation and culture that no longer exists.

A few decades ago there was a SCIFI futurist novel, the title escapes me, where one of the pivotal points was a memorial on a beach in Australia where thousands of refugees died - more to the point, killed.

Forgot the reason, but it was an opening for to author to describe a new age of migration. Especially in Europe, and to a lesser effect and different context here, we are reaching that point outlined in the book. A point where a densely populated economically failed and violent world rushes, like drowning people all trying to get in the last remaining lifeboat, to the few places that work, and will force those working parts of the world to do what was in living memory unthinkable - kill to save their nations from being destroyed by charity.

Greece appealed to its European Union partners on Tuesday to come up with a comprehensive strategy to deal with a growing migrant crisis as new data showed 21,000 refugees landed on Greek shores last week alone.

That number is almost half Greece's overall refugee intake in 2014 and brings total arrivals this year to 160,000, even as it struggles with a debt crisis that has forced it to accept a third international bailout.
...
A spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR in Geneva said Greece needed to show "much more leadership" in dealing with the crisis.

But Greek officials said they needed better coordination within the European Union. "This problem cannot be solved by imposing stringent legal processes in Greece, and, certainly, not by overturning the boats," said government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili.

Nor could it be addressed by building fences, she said.

This is madness. What does the UN propose that the already bankrupt Greece do? Why Greece? Why not Turkey? Why not Iran. Of course we know why - those are not Western nations.

The West, you see, it must be ... well ...

"The situation is already volatile and we have started seeing increased tensions with the local authorities and between different refugee groups," said Kirk Day, the aid agency's emergency field director on the island.
...
The Greek state eventually charted a passenger ship to house and process migrants in an attempt to ease conditions onshore, where many are living in tents, some in shelters made from cardboard boxes.

Gerovassili said more reception centers were required.

"We must have new reception facilities ... We cannot continue to see these tragic images of children, people living under such circumstances."

This will not end well. The migration wave will not slow down any time soon. Growing anarchy, extremism, economic stagnation, and demographics will keep the pressure building.

Western nations are at the point where they must enforce firm policies now, or they will be forced to implement the harshest remedies later - that is, of course, if there is a desire to keep those nations together as founded.

The time for easy solutions is past. The last generation or two threw that opportunity away. Doing nothing is not an option because, eventually, this migration will shift to invasion in the mind of a plurality of each nation's citizens. When that happens, if good political leaders do not act, the people will turn to whatever leader promises actions. That rarely is the better outcome.

No nation is required to commit suicide, and leaders who desire to fundamentally transform their nations should not expect for their population to allow that change to be done against the will of the people - if indeed the people ever decide their national culture is worth defending anymore.

Some nations are already going Honeybadger and are taking the steps they need to.

Earlier this month construction began on a 175 km (110 mile) razor wire border fence in Hungary to deter migrants, ...

History if far from over - and is far from teaching the copybook headings with a ruler to the knuckles.

Generational Theft in One Graph

The general theory has been for most of recorded history, that the adults, the most experienced in the community, work and sacrifice in order to secure a better future for the younger generations.

Take a moment and review the graph to the right from The Economist and ponder the implications.

What are we doing to the young?

Migrants, economics, culture, and the growing challenge

Don't bother looking; Waldo isn't there.

From the Mediterranean to the waters of Southeast Asia – huge masses of people are on the move.

What is going on? Why is it going on? What are the implications?

I’m pondering it over at USNIBlog. Stop by and let me know what you think.

So, which States are doing best ...

I had a good snort of the USA Today article on the 5-best and 5-worst run states.

Let us see ... is there a common thread?

Top-5:
1. North Dakota: .7 million citizens; The Far West/Midlands.
- Governor: Republican since 1992
- State House: Republican
- State Senate: Republican
2. Wyoming: .6 million citizens; The Far West.
- Governor: Republican since 2011.
- State House: Republican
- State Senate: Republican
3. Iowa: 3.1 million citizens; The Far West/Midlands.
- Governor: Republican since 2011.
- State House: Republican
- State Senate: Democrat
4. Nebraska: 1.9 million citizens; The Far West/Midlands.
- Governor: Republican since 1999.
- Unicameral: Non-partisan, but 30 of 49 identify as Republican.
5. Utah: 2.9 million citizens; The Far West.
- Governor: Republican since 1985.
- State House: Republican
- State Senate: Republican

Bottom-5:
46. Nevada: 2.8 million citizens; The Far West.
- Governor: Republican since 1999.

- State House: Democrat
- State Senate: Democrat
47. Rhode Island: 1.1 million citizens; Yankeedom.
- Governor: Independent/Democrat since 2011.
- State House: Democrat
- State Senate: Democrat
48. Illinois: 12.9 million citizens; Yankeedom/Greater Appalachia.
- Governor: Democrat since 2003.
- State House: Democrat
- State Senate: Democrat
49. New Mexico: 2.1 million citizens; El Norte/Far West.
- Governor: Republican since 2011.
- State House: Democrat
- State Senate: Democrat
50. California: 38.0 million citizens; The Left Coast/El Norte.
- Governor: Democrat since 2011.
- State House: Democrat
- State Senate: Democrat

I think that tells a story quite well from a political party point of view. Nothing more for me to say than, "Bask in it."

A few sidenotes. Something I noticed in the years I lived overseas; smaller nations tended to be better governed and reflect the needs of their citizens than larger ones. That plays out here a bit.

Though a flawed book towards the end where his anti-Southern bigotry bled through, I've also included the one-to-two most dominate sub-national characters of each state as outlined in Colin Woodard's, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.


Hey, here is a radical concept. What if we actually followed Plan Salamander (AKA how this experiment in self-governance known as the USA is supposed to be run, I've stolen the idea from a bunch of dead white guys) to our challenges like health care - 50 experiments. If something works in one State, others will adopt it. If something is a complete Obamaesque trainwreck, then other States won't and the whole nation won't be hobbled as the State that made a bad decision tries to fix its mistake.

Crazytalk, I know.