WHAT'S ON BRITSKÉ LISTY

The Army's General Staff Headquarters Robbery

22. 7. 2010 / Karel Dolejší

The Czech Army, after all these years, has been reduced, without a concept, its discarded equipment sold for peanuts in tenders done by private companies, who then sold them abroad with a profit; units were cancelled.

Considering the amount of ammunition we have stocked, our military equipment, supplies and the current level of adaptation for the Central European battlefield, in case of need to hypothetically defend of our nation, our Army would be able to survive some few hours, at the most. So what do we have a General Staff for?

The institution of the so-called General Staff came as a Prussian improvement for the French office created to administrate the massive numbers of troops of the Revolution Army in 1795. The main function of the General Staff was to more effectively mediate the information between the commanding officers and their subordinate units. [The first modern use of a General Staff was in the French Revolutionary Wars, when General Louis Alexandre Berthier was assigned as Chief of Staff to the French Army of Italy in 1795. Berthier was able to establish a well organized staff support team. Napoleon Bonaparte took over the army the following year and rapidly came to appreciate Berthier's system, adopting it for his own headquarters, although Napoleon's usage was limited to his own command group.]

The Czech army of course doesn't have a truly realistic plan of action in those lines. The capacity of our Army is not enough for the hypothetical defense of our own territory. The Americans, in terms of NATO operations, count with the Czech forces primarily as a source of expeditions units, which are usually deployed as individual battalions and fall under the orders of some Allied country officer. So what are the Army headquarters in Prague for?

"It's always better if thieves are kept outside. I consider it good news that people at the General Staff don't steal. It would be much worse if the thieves were from the General Staff itself", premier Petr Nečas evaluated.

After such a declaration, which indicates that the prime minister considers the people from the General Staff as potential thieves, under normal circumstances would mean heads would roll.

If Nečas won't apologize and if the blood of today's military isn't made of water, then we may be missing some more complicated game that may be going on behind the whole thing. Nečas has to know, with all his political experience, that our military has been basically abolished and sacked by the Ministry of Defense, not from the people from the General Staff . General Picek is mysteriously quiet; only his spokesperson and his predecessor, Mr Šedivý, have talked to the media.

The General Staff can be robbed, that makes no difference. The thieves risked creating a huge problem, but in the end only some four commemorative coins were taken, together with the prestige of the officer responsible for the building's surveillance.

Because the surveillance of the headquarters is organized and done by people from the General Staff itself, then, in the final stance, who is responsible for it -- if I am not mistaken -- is Lieutenant General Picek himself.

The bummer caused by the robbery is not that big so that because of it NATO would get worried about us. But it is certainly big enough a problem to severely dent Picek's position.

If Mr Spock, from Star Trek, could observe this situation from a distance, he would probably have to called it "fascinating"...

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