Orwellian “right-think”, already required in so many places just to continue to work, will be pushed upon We the People in order for them to exist.
Let’s see what kind of pushback it will encounter.
Will all, or most, competent people flee, leaving their institutions essentially incompetent and useless?
But then, who would know if those institutions were to become incompetent and useless?—For this is precisely the reason for all these “Biden”-esque crises: incompetent and uselessness by design! An overwall, nation-wide softening up operation…so that we will slowly become inured to…disaster.
That’s right! Slowly boiling the frog has become official “Biden” policy. (Of course, it always was…which was why his opponents had to be—must be—absolutely and constantly demonized….)
We are living in interesting times…(whether this expression be an urban legend or not…).
…Still, might one wonder if the SCOTUS will declare such enforced indoctrination “Constitutional”…that is, if ever gets to them…that is, if they FIRST will have to undergo indoctrination…
One of the most poignant lines ever written:
“I could never see tomorrow—
No one said a word
About the sorrow.”
I found the second reading in yesterday’s Roman Catholic Mass especially relevant to our time. Although I know that is ludicrous. What could a primitive, dead, white man have to say that is worth our attention in these enlightened, modern times? Saul of Tarsus didn’t even own an iPhone.
Excerpt of an Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. (I moved the leading sentence to the end.)
Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you considers himself wise in this age, let him become a fool, so as to become wise.
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God, for it is written: God catches the wise in their own ruses, and again: The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.
If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.
Barry Meislin,
I spent the first 18 years of my life in Chicago where all city and county jobs were doled out as patronage to ward bosses. It was common knowledge that few of the employees were the best and brightest. Even then, in the ’70s, extrinsic attributes like ethnicity and skin color and especially which party one voted for, where much more important resume enhancers than aptitude or work ethic. We all just adapted and allotted extra time when having to deal with any civic agency. Incompetence and delays were the status quo (and still are).
Obama and Rice are simply bringing the Chicago way to the nation. Rejoice and be glad!
Rufus, I had the good fortune to live in Chicago for about a year and a half at the end of the 80s. Amazing place…though things have changed, certainly.
WRT incompetence, I think though that what you’re talking about is incompetence due to an “easy” culture of corruption.
Seems to me what’s coming down the pike is ideologically-driven totalitarianism in an attempt to make people conform—make them think things they don’t want do; make them DO things they don’t want to—out of fear for their future and their families’.
The results may be the similar in some ways, but the latter is far more systematic, far more pernicious, far more inhuman.
Especially if “competence”, “innovation”, “intelligence” and the “drive to excel” are all DEFINED as RACIST and punished accordingly.
Related:
“Pushing woke standards over meritocracy is going to get us killed”— https://nypost.com/2023/02/20/pushing-woke-standards-over-meritocracy-will-get-us-killed/
…running all of this, which is the largest racial tracking bureaucracy since the fall of Nazi Germany, will be former President Barack Obama (the third Barry in this thread) and he’ll be doing that as always through his long-time lackey and cut out Susan Rice. Rice’s goal, the goal of the entire initiative, is to place the federal government, all of it, in opposition to a very specific slice of the American population, not a foreign population, our own population…
as noted on the other thread, the however many hours of j6 footage will be released,
Wow. I didn’t realize DeSantis was a dirty Putin-lover. He just lost om’s vote,
Mike
So, racism is now the official policy of the federal government, and racial discrimination will be enforced in every department. Who knew, when voting for Joe Biden, they were really getting Woodrow Wilson?
Brandon has the cognitive function of late term Wilson.
And Pennsylvania selected Fetterman, so Woodrow laughs twice.
MBunge – I don’t know the right answer on Ukraine now, but, I think you’re right about DeSantis’s position. “No blank check” is a prelude to winding down our committments there. It’s hard to see how Ukraine prevails without a blank check. The “no blank check” position essentially tells Ukraine what they can expect and at least allows them to make a clear-eyed decision about how to proceed.
Whether you like DeSantis’s position or not, I think it compares favorably to Biden. Biden talks a hawkish game, but his actions don’t back that up. He and Kamala are still talking up Nurenberg-style trials for Putin and making grand symbolic gestures, like his trip today. In practice, though, they’re making a bunch of promises for tanks, artillery rounds, etc., that aren’t likely to be filled until after the war is over. (I.e., we’ll give Ukraine Abrams tanks, but not for 18 months. We’ll give them artillery rounds, but not for 28 months.)
Regardless of the atrocities committed during a war, you don’t get to run Nurenberg-style war crimes trials unless you unconditionally defeat your enemy. I think Biden knows that is not going to happen and is trying to project an image of hawkishness to deflect blame when Ukraine inevitably loses. It will be “lose Afghanistan and blame Trump” all over again.
If Putin is really Hitler 2.0, then we need to do whatever it takes to defeat him. We’re not doing that. I don’t think we ever intended to do that. It tells me that our leadership never really believed the “Putin is Hitler 2.0” narrative.
“I don’t think” is Bunge all the way. Is “no blank check” the same as forever and infinite money? To Mr. Strawman it is. Very concerned, Putin is his own manifestation of aggression and evil, but the “Putin is Hitler” strawman serves the Concerned Conservative in a pinch.
Roosia wants.
Time will tell. Foggy war is.
Time will tell.
One year anniversery of Vlad’s little adventure is comming up but the ADHD crowd can’t be bothered to pay attention. Look, squirrel!
Well he isnt xi is hes killed 10 million people (of or with covid doesnt matter) so when we need to fight him our cubbard will be bare, thats the big picture.
Miguel:
Pay attention. The authorization for DOD includes $$ for US ordnance. But you know that?
Concerned conservative may want to revisit his history regarding war crimes and perps from the breakup/war in Yugoslavia (Milosovitch and his band). Not that Russia was and is involved there. That was so last century. Look, squirrel!
“One year anniversery of Vlad’s little adventure is coming up but the ADHD crowd can’t be bothered to pay attention.”
I’m sorry, I really can’t make head nor tails of the rest of om’s blather but in case anyone missed it…
There’s an update on how things are going in Ukraine. Hint: Not as swimmingly as om and the people he blindly follows (like Joe Biden) are telling you.
Mike
“Concerned conservative may want to revisit his history regarding war crimes and perps from the breakup/war in Yugoslavia (Milosovitch and his band).”
Is om advocating the U.S. bomb Russia (or Roosia as he infantilely puts it), because that was a pretty key element in the breakup/war in Yugoslavia?
Mike
China also kills 100,000 a year through fentanyl but putin!
A new study has linked black holes to dark energy via something called “Cosmological Coupling”. If I’m understanding this correctly (which I’m probably not), it’s like black holes are enclosing all this vacuum energy. But I don’t undertand how this energy ends up being distributed across the universe in such a way that it results in this repulsive force that’s pushing everything apart on a grand scale.
We interrupt the ongoing local skirmishes with this non-local announcement.
(Make of it what you will):
“The war upon us all – it’s the war we will win”— https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-02-19/war-upon-us-all-its-war-we-will-win
Opening graf:
“Mayhem. We have train derailments, massive toxic fires (at least ten counted around the world in the last few days), destruction of food production facilities, hysteria about genders, domestic terrorists and balloons, the relentless war escalation and nonstop pandemic fearmongering… What otherwise would be regarded as random incidents now seems so frequent and pervasive, it’s hard not to be suspicious. Something’s up….”
Sounds like it’s jam-packed with Conspiracy Theory(TM). OTOH, Conspiracy Theory(TM) has been enjoying a pretty decent track record over the past six (or more) years….
– – – – – – – – – – –
The Don Surber post linked to by Miguel, above, is full of typically sardonic observations about “Biden” & Co.
But some of the comments to that post by train and environmental (e.g., water) experts are eye-opening and very helpful in understanding what happened in that catastrophe, who’s really responsible, and the and the Federal Government’s response to it.
@Kate
Honestly the comparisons are uncanny with Wilson. With the exception being that Wilson was legitimately smart or at least intellectual/clever in a way Biden never, ever was. Both were remorseless racists. Both were corrupt and prone to patronage. Both engaged in widespread smearing of their opponents and authoritarian nonsense. Both were basically invalids in office (though Wilson in his case was towards the end of his second term). Both simped for a manifestly anti-constitutional, anti-democratic, anti-republican foreign dictatorship.
That said, as much as I hate to say it I’d take Wilson over Brandon. Wilson at least had enough personal and national pride to turn on his Prussian idols when they kept pushing. Biden seems to not be doing so with the CCP and even has soft pedaled a lot on the Kremlin. And Wilson at least had some ideas and ideals – bad as they were – in a way Biden doesn’t.
A bit disappointed in DeSantis, but not seriously. He is still by far one of the best politicians in the world today, and especially in American life, and that’d remain so even if he by some chance did turn out to be some dirty RINO squish (somehow) upon taking higher office. Like, on the grand scale of staggering government waste I’d much rather have the Brandon Regime pour money into the Ukrainian War than into the countless over-bloated domestic bureaucracies because I wager the former will give us more bang for our buck and be harder to twist against American freedom. But that’s a personal belief and I can fully accept anybody disagreeing with that.
I’d be ok with a Blank Check personally, but some more vetting to deal with graft is pretty useful. But again, I am something of a Neocon Hawk on the matter and my calculation is that it’s better that the Biden Regime spends money and war material helping the Ukrainian Loyalists blow up Russian troops and vehicles than they do blowing us up, or empowering bureaucracies at home that have been shown to be utterly corrupt and anti-American in nature.
om – I don’t understand your reply at all. Milosovec was tried for war crimes because the US military got involved and made sure that Milosovec’s government lost the war.
I’m not saying it is inconceivable that the Ukrainians could defeat Russia on their own and/or trigger such a catastrophic fall of the Putin government that high ranking former officials would be turned over to western war crimes tribunals, but that doesn’t appear likely.
So about the Biden administration – Do they believe that Ukraine is going to utterly defeat Russia without direct US military involvement? Do they intend to directly involve the US military at some point? Or, is all the tough talk just virtue signaling in advance of inevitably leaving the Ukrainians to their fate?
I think it’s got to be one of those three. Is there any other explanation?
From the “Unbelievable” File (which is getting rather thick):
Wherein NYC’s Mayor decides he must school Ron DeSantis.
On NYC “values” no less.
“DeSantis team fires back at Eric Adams after he offers to teach Florida governor about NYC ‘values…”‘— https://www.foxnews.com/politics/desantis-team-fires-back-eric-adams-nyc-values
How much should we spend 200 billion a trillion its a reasonable question, how many have been killed and maimed in afghanistan and iraq and for what?
Barry Meislin,
I’m sorry if it didn’t come across in my comment, but I was being the opposite of hyperbolic (hypobolic?). I generally agree with your take: “…ideologically-driven totalitarianism in an attempt to make people conform.”
I’m much better at non-comforming.
@Bauxite
MBunge – I don’t know the right answer on Ukraine now, but, I think you’re right about DeSantis’s position. “No blank check” is a prelude to winding down our committments there. It’s hard to see how Ukraine prevails without a blank check. The “no blank check” position essentially tells Ukraine what they can expect and at least allows them to make a clear-eyed decision about how to proceed.
The issue I see is that of all the places to wind down our commitments, Ukraine is probably one of the less profitable ones. I really do not see much good coming out of it now, especially not before the Kremlin loses more striking power.
Whether you like DeSantis’s position or not, I think it compares favorably to Biden. Biden talks a hawkish game, but his actions don’t back that up. He and Kamala are still talking up Nurenberg-style trials for Putin and making grand symbolic gestures, like his trip today.
On that much we absolutely agree, with a caveat. Nuremburg-style trials can happen in a less than complete defeat if the country in question undergoes a revolution and is willing to turn over previous leadership to it (whether doing it at home or turning them over to Den Haag or the like), like Serbia did with Milosevic. Which is probably what Biden and co at least superficially claim is the ideal situation (and as I would), but I find it unlikely to the extreme. Milosevic didn’t have nukes. He also had undermined the credibility of his government in a way far beyond that of every single Russian leadership, so while I could (DIMLY, VAGUELY) see Great Tsar Shoigu agreeing to extradite Putin or trial him domestically in order to eliminate a rival and patch up relations, I don’t see the entire regime and the assorted factions going down.
In some ways I find the closer parallel to Putin’s Russia lies with Imperial Japan during the “Dark Valley” from 1931 to 1945, with a sort of united central body but deep factionalization and nowhere near the strong totalitarian center of gravity we saw with Shicklegruber, Stalin, or even Ludendorff.
In practice, though, they’re making a bunch of promises for tanks, artillery rounds, etc., that aren’t likely to be filled until after the war is over. (I.e., we’ll give Ukraine Abrams tanks, but not for 18 months. We’ll give them artillery rounds, but not for 28 months.)
Honestly I can’t agree. This war has been waging for nearly a decade to one degree or another, and while most of that time was relatively dormant positional warfare on a smaller scale and less intense burn than what we’re seeing now, I do figure there is still quite a lot of time. Especially since we see similar turnover rates for raising new line units which both Ukraine and Russia are struggling with. The fact that this was a RELATIVELY quiet, mild winter outside of Kherson and Bakhmut so there wasn’t the kind of intense attacks we expected from ground freezings means there’s more sand in the hour glass.
Sure, it’s possible the war won’t last another 30 months, and that might be because Ukraine folds in some way. But I wouldn’t bet on it. It took the Soviets and their combined proxies about a decade after WWII ended to crush the last embers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the famous Banderaists the Kremlin likes blathering about) holding out in Galicia. And that was with a near complete isolation of their enemy from the outside world. I just do not see the Kremlin obtaining a conventional victory over Ukraine in that time frame being very likely.
Regardless of the atrocities committed during a war, you don’t get to run Nurenberg-style war crimes trials unless you unconditionally defeat your enemy. I think Biden knows that is not going to happen and is trying to project an image of hawkishness to deflect blame
Agreed with the caveat Re: Milosevic and a revolution.
when Ukraine inevitably loses.
Honestly I think the assumptions about Ukraine inevitably losing are overstated. Of course it is worth not falling for the opposite that Ukraine will inevitably win. Both sides have seriously burned through much of their standing combat power but the Kremlin’s suffered that worse than the Ukrainian ones due to the nature of the offensive. One might think a grinding war of attrition might help strengthen the Kremlin’s had to some degree, but if sanctions held and casualty rates remain I don’t think it would. The Russian public has accepted some truly heavy losses and remained decently supportive of the war effort so long as mobilization does not stretch too far, but even they will have a breaking point and it is probably significantly less than the Ukrainian government, let alone assorted Ukrainian Loyalist paramilitaries or guerillas in waiting.that might step out if Ukraine doesn’tt
It will be “lose Afghanistan and blame Trump” all over again.
I wish I were surprised.
If Putin is really Hitler 2.0, then we need to do whatever it takes to defeat him. We’re not doing that. I don’t think we ever intended to do that. It tells me that our leadership never really believed the “Putin is Hitler 2.0” narrative.
Agreed to a large degree, and even I – who am one of the most caustic critics of Putin – do not think he is Hitler 2.0. If anybody deserves that title it is Xi, or perhaps the Ayatollah. If I had to torture the analogy further I would compare Putin closer to Mussolini or Tojo, or Conrad von Hoetzendorff as the dangerous and bellicose but ultimately supporting actor. But that certainly doesn’t make them Not-Dangerous.
I don’t understand your reply at all. Milosovec was tried for war crimes because the US military got involved and made sure that Milosovec’s government lost the war.
I’d argue that might be giving Milosevic’s government too little credit.
Milosevic actually had lost the war by 2000 at the very latest, and usually it is reckoned as being 1999 in Kosovo (with Bosnia and Croatia seeing defeats earlier) but he still hung onto power for about a year and wasn’t arrested by the new Serb government for several months after that. You can make a good argument he lost the Yugoslav Wars due to US and other NATO intervention (though I think this is overstated), but he probably wouldn’t have gone to the Hague had his domestic opposition not thrown him out and then pushed him on a plane.
I think that’s unlikely in Putin’s case but the most likely situation where he faces charges.
I’m not saying it is inconceivable that the Ukrainians could defeat Russia on their own and/or trigger such a catastrophic fall of the Putin government that high ranking former officials would be turned over to western war crimes tribunals, but that doesn’t appear likely.
Agreed.
So about the Biden administration – Do they believe that Ukraine is going to utterly defeat Russia without direct US military involvement? Do they intend to directly involve the US military at some point? Or, is all the tough talk just virtue signaling in advance of inevitably leaving the Ukrainians to their fate?
I think it’s got to be one of those three. Is there any other explanation?
Addendum RE Yugoslavia: A better example of how leaders might end up in tribunals even without complete defeat might be the war criminals from Serbia’s enemies, Croatia, Bosnia, and the KLA, who all won their wars to one degree or another but who also had significant amounts of their leadership wind up at Den Haag due to extradition.
The big issue i see is the size of the fish. Milosevic was the main avatar and nominal leader of the losing side and (correctly, I think) fingered as the chief architecht of the Yugoslav wars, but neither Tudjman nor Izetbegovic ever had to see the insides of a Dutch Cell during their lives in spite of it being clear they were little better than Milosevic and his ilk, in large part because they were the “Good Guys” and on the winning side.
Bunge:
Concerned conservative (Bauxite) raised war crimes trials (Vlad?, inconceivable) because this isn’t a post WWII Nuremberg situation.
Now pay attention, Milosovitch and Radovan Kraditch (sic) were tried in the Hauge for war crimes. Got that?
Russia has been involved in Balkan wars for hundreds of years, even encouraging Serbia to get aggressive again this year. Got that?
Now if you wish to advocate bombing Russia, well that’s on you Bunge. Not in keeping with your usual bleats from the bunker though.
Don’t be a Bunge.
turtler, I am in agreement with most of what you say, as usual. But about this:
Like, on the grand scale of staggering government waste I’d much rather have the Brandon Regime pour money into the Ukrainian War than into the countless over-bloated domestic bureaucracies because I wager the former will give us more bang for our buck and be harder to twist against American freedom.
I’m afraid it’s not either/or, it’s both/and.
I am worried about our disarming ourselves to support Ukraine, and then having to deal with something in the Pacific. My husband points out, however, that the supply chain has already been activated, and at this point we will be better off to win the damn thing. I think Putin’s strategic objective, the relatively painless acquisition of all of Ukraine, has failed badly, and I don’t see the Ukrainians turning tail now. I still do not want to see US forces directly engaged.
Kate:
Well said and agree with your husband.
@Kate
I’m afraid it’s not either/or, it’s both/and.
A very true, horribly sobering fact. At the very least in most cases a dollar spent on AMRAMs for Ukraine is a dollar that can’t directly go to expanding the FBI to play Stasi, but that is still cold comfort. And why even as something of an anti-Putin hawk I’ll be the first to acknowledge that the struggle at home is more important.
I am worried about our disarming ourselves to support Ukraine, and then having to deal with something in the Pacific. My husband points out, however, that the supply chain has already been activated, and at this point we will be better off to win the damn thing.
Agreed on the whole with I think an important note. Most of the equipment we are sending to Ukraine isn’t stuff that would be the primary concern in a Pacific boondoggle. Especially since it is pretty much inconceivable that the PRC will be anything but the aggressors in this case, and unless we’re looking at invasions of Korea or India they’d need to sail in order to get anywhere. And for all of the many, many, MANY problems with the USN and its allies we still dominate the seas in way the CCP does not and they know it. Which is why the CCP plans for a multi year long naval buildup. Which is a danger the USN and others badly need to adjust for and I fear for our shipbuilding capacity, but it is still a potent deterrent.
We’d still need anti-tank missiles and tanks to fight in the Pacific, but relatively fewer than a European War. WWII and the commitments there I think are useful guidelines. So I do think that we aren’t particularly at risk of disarming ourselves or leaving the cupboard bare.
Another side benefit is that it will make it harder for the left to reject funding the military…. Though how much of a benefit that is in a world where Milley and co rule the roost is another kettle of fish Altogether.
I think Putin’s strategic objective, the relatively painless acquisition of all of Ukraine, has failed badly, and I don’t see the Ukrainians turning tail now. I still do not want to see US forces directly engaged.
Agreed there.
neither Tudjman nor Izetbegovic ever had to see the insides of a Dutch Cell during their lives in spite of it being clear they were little better than Milosevic and his ilk, in large part because they were the “Good Guys” and on the winning side.
Neither Tudjman nor Izetbegovic were responsible for manufacturing a charnel house in Bosnia. The violence in Yugoslavia was initiated by Serb forces for their own objectives. Tudjman can be held responsible for the mass expulsion of Serb civilians in Krajina, but that occurred four years into the fighting.
==
NB Tudjman died before Milosevic was ever tried.
Good point, turtler, about the different needs of a conflict in the Pacific. Alas for the condition of the US Navy.
@Art Deco
Neither Tudjman nor Izetbegovic were responsible for manufacturing a charnel house in Bosnia.
They were not the primary movers of it but Tudjman in particular was called out after his death by ICTY staff and argued he would have been tried had he lived long enough. And Izetbegovic’s Islamist sympathies and sponsorship of terrorism have usually been glossed over.
It says something about the Yugoslav Wars where they were not only the lesser evils compared to Milosevic, Karadzic, and co, but that there was a decent sized gap. But they were no saints and on merits probably should have been tried.
The violence in Yugoslavia was initiated by Serb forces for their own objectives.
Agreed, though paramilitary violence by assorted sides had begun beforehand and Tudjman had even talked with Milosevic about a possible Molotov-Ribbentrop style partition of Bosnia-Herzogovinia in 1991. But once the war started things quickly got worse and while the Bosnian Muslim and Croat forces were not really able to compete with their Serb rivals on an even footing in the war crimes olympics (due to starting out at a firepower and number disadvantage, being restrained to some degree by Western sponsorship, etc) it was certainly not due to lack of “zest” by many among their ranks. Izetbegovic and Tudjman were apparently nowhere near the worst in their own ranks but they were still quite unpleasant and murderous people who often gave political cover to their more vile underlings.
Tudjman can be held responsible for the mass expulsion of Serb civilians in Krajina, but that occurred four years into the fighting.
Agreed, though that was just his most notable sin.
In any case, I am no Serbian Ultranationalist apologist and the Hague did make efforts to prosecute war criminals relatively even handedly, but there were some pretty glaring gaps in enforcement all the same.
“at this point we will be better off to win the damn thing.”
Win what? The right to spend billions or hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding a shattered Ukraine? The right to deal with a humiliated and enraged Russia? The right to continue being the world’s policeman? What exactly does the United States “win” in this situation?
Mike
Bunge wants Roosia.
Russia looses the urge to attack it’s neighbors.
Don’t be a Bunge
“Milosovitch and Radovan Kraditch (sic) were tried in the Hauge for war crimes.”
How did those guys wind up being tried? Magic? Space aliens? Did Jesus return from Heaven on a golden chariot and deliver them to the Hauge?
There’s some intelligent discussion of the Russia/Ukraine war around here. Sadly, I think om is more representative of the (lack of) thinking in DC.
I flatly do not understand how anyone can look at U.S. military interventions over the past two decades or so, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya and Syria, and believe “Yup. Getting involved in a proxy war against Russia is a great idea and JOE BIDEN is just the one to lead us in such a noble endeavor.”
Mike
“Russia looses the urge to attack it’s neighbors.”
Again, Russia has for decades (if not longer) considered a neutral or Russia-allied Ukraine to be vital to their national security. There’s really no dispute about that. om is proposing that a defeated and humiliated Russia seeing Ukraine become a de facto member of NATO will result in Russia becoming a more peaceful and passive nation.
Remind me…how did the U.S. respond when the Soviet Union tried to put nukes in Cuba? Or how did that whole “We will be greeted as liberators” thing in Iraq work out?
Mike
There’s no dispute that Roosia (or the Russian Federation) does not get to dictate the foreign affairs of it’s neighbors. Unless of course you are Bunge, then Roosia wants.
But Bunge brings back the Cuban Missile Crisis. Been there done that argument months ago. And of course his favorite of all time, Iraq. Because, Bunge.
BTW Bunge, GWB wasn’t Hitler either(Bushitler).
Because Russians may learn that invading neighbors isn’t tolerated by the rest of the world, excepting its moxies, proxies, and cottontails (Bunge).
A commentator on NPR says that the results of Biden’s recent physical (any cognitive test results conspicuously absent ) demonstrates that the shuffling wreck who often can’t remember where he is or people’s names, who wanders around, hand out, to shake hands with invisible people, the guy who has to be pulled back from walking off raised stages, whose mumbled, whispered, or mush mouthed speech is often unintelligible, and who makes up a lie about his supposedly praiseworthy background practically every time he opens his mouth, is actually a “strong and vigorous man.”*
This is the essence of a dictatorship, in which we are all supposed to accept and testify to a false reality, one which is contradicted, every day, by what we actually see and experience.
My current educational French podcast is on Johnny Hallyday, the greatest French rocker of all. He was called the “French Elvis.” He died in 2017 and Macron declared a national holiday of homage to the fallen rock star.
Huh? I *think* Hallyday was mentioned in a Stones bio I once read, but that’s all I had. So I looked up his YouTubes and found this performance from Ed Sullivan.
He had a 50s pompadour, a big voice, sexy long-leg dancing, and yes, he rocked. But good lord what was he singing?. Half the words sounded like non-French gibberish, as opposed to the usual French gibberish I would have to work out painfully to hear even with the lyrics. I worried my road to French was longer than I thought.
Turns out “Kili Watch” was a novelty song and half the words were gibberish! The narrator has developed a contagious mental illness in which a nonsense song keeps playing in his mind and he infects everyone he meets with the song.
Kili watch!
He’s worth a look and a listen. Good fun. He sold 110 million records. So, you know, try to show a little respect.
@ turtler and kate
We may have disagreements about the wisdom of NATO expansion over the past few decades, but that die is cast. Given the situation we’re in, I tend towards Kate’s husband’s point of view, but I still worry about escalation. Putin is on record as believing that the fall of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe. Would Putin sit idly by and become the second Russian leader in the past half-century to preside over the total emasculation of Russia? Would Putin prefer a world in which Russia is a humiliated third-class power, or WWIII? Perhaps playing Mussolini to Xi is Putin’s best play.
That’s what concerns me. I wonder if telegraphing the winding down of our involvement (i.e., “no blank check”) is a strategy to avoid that scenario.
I’m watching excerpts from the Pelosi hidden J6 House “Insurrection” video trove, newly unleashed to Tucker Carlson. (Actually, a livestream by Robert Gouveiea on YT.)
Taking a break, I see Just The News reporting on Rep MTG calling for a National Divoce on Pres Day. Her tweet thread gets me to share a thoughtful substack piece from (a black conservative?), posted October 1, last year.
He’s says he’s been in conversation with libertarian Michael Malice and Trump philosopher Michael Anton, among others. Hence, my share, here.
Dave Reabois properly notes that nations eventually do end. Just not all choose their time to do so.
He then goes on to counter the difficulty argument by adding that what’s at first difficult and thus impossible becomes less and less so through detailed consideration and repetition.
He then closes with this appeal to necessary and reasonableness:
“For more than a century, Progressives have dedicated themselves to abolishing the legitimacy of federalism, and then reconstituting the federal government and the courts in order to make its application and practice all but impossible. Over time, as their fanaticism grew, the Left’s position hardened, from the mere undesirability of local differences and state sovereignty to the illegitimacy, unjustness, and unfathomable evil of such an arrangement.
“In order to return to a time of relative public consensus on these things, one side must impose its will on the other. While Red America isn’t really interested in imposing its will on Blue America, it’s clear that the reverse is emphatically not true.
“In a famous 1964 speech, Ronald Reagan said about last century’s Cold War, ‘there’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace, and you can have it in the next second: surrender.’ This might be the unstated solution proffered by mainstream right commentariat, but is this the best we can do?
“Because it’s just over the horizon of what we can imagine from our vantage point, National Divorce isn’t at all an immediate action plan–or, at least, I don’t see it as such. Rather, it is a rhetorical strategy to prepare the ground for crucial discussions about what comes next in America, as the country grows even more divided, bitter, and angry.
“More than anything else, it is a reminder for Red America to think about economic and cultural autonomy for itself, and what it would take to get there.
“Autonomy for Red America is of crucial importance, regardless of the status of political or real separation. It is the ability for Americans to be self-sufficient from the financial, educational and cultural institutions that are hostile to its beliefs and way of life, and make reconciliation increasingly impossible.“
He makes a far better case than I recall encountering in a long, long while — not even here.
This is the essence of a dictatorship, in which we are all supposed to accept and testify to a false reality, one which is contradicted, every day, by what we actually see and experience.
==
It’s not the essence of a dictatorship. It’s an indicator that NPR is staffed by people with zero integrity. A Republican Congress should long since have revoked the charters of both NPR and PBS, and shut down the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The local pubic stations can purchase syndicated programming. If there’s to be public financing, state governments can provide enabling legislation for consortia of counties to set up arts councils on which each member county has a share-vote representation derived from the voluntary contribution of the county to financing the council over the previous six years. The arts councils can distribute the patronage to various projects, including the local public stations. No need for state or federal financing.
“There’s no dispute that Roosia (or the Russian Federation) does not get to dictate the foreign affairs of it’s neighbors.”
Uh…why not? We certainly take that approach. Every great power, or those who think they’re great powers, expects and demands to exert influence over their neighbors. How much does the rest of the world bend over backwards to avoid calling Taiwan a country? Or maybe ask Ireland about what it’s been like living next to England over the centuries? Ou ask Central and South America about living in the same hemisphere as the United States?
And as far as “teaching Russia a lesson”…how did it work when they “taught Germany a lesson” after WWI?
That a grown adult in 2023 is utterly incapable of imagining or acknowledging potential negative consequences to waging a proxy war right on the border of a nuclear power makes me despair for our future as a species.
Mike
C’mon, Art — we all know that NPR, however minimally funded Federally, is a mouthpiece for the Apparatchik Class or New Class that Lords Above us.
It issues Good Thought and Wrong Thought dicta every day.
The authoritative number of arms of the Federal Octopus was put at above 250, and it’s expanse beyond that is known only to Astrologers.
Because rollovers and derailments are expected, hazardous transport tanks are designed to survive them. They are also designed with rollover protection so that fill connections are protected to remain accessible and functional in the case of these accidents. This would have allowed responders to connect to and empty the tanks into alternates such as over-the-road tanks and then hauled away. Why was this approach rejected?
Yes, connect and empty the tanks. Why not? That was my first thought and question about the accident, but then unlike this author, I didn’t know anything about rail tank practices.
________
A possible partial answer: Because over 55 workers are cashing out their valuable homes (or planning to) and retiring.
. . .from (a black conservative?)
I believe Dave’s ancestry is Jewish, his people coming from Hungary.
Meanwhile, Mayor Pete is trying to make up for being AWOL for ten days after the East Palestine train derailment: he’s sent a sternly worded three-page letter to the Norfolk Southern railway company– most likely as an attempt to head off calls for his resignation as Transportation Secretary:
OTOH, maybe he’s trying to position himself to be Brandon’s next VP . . . .
Bunge:
You certainly seem all in on Roosian excuses, do they get to dictate your responses? Seems so. Does Roosia get to dictate the foreign policy of Poland, Finland, China, Norway, the USA …. get the pattern, or do I need to write in block letters with a Sharpie? Because Roosia is a special country? Care to explain why they are so special to you? Or just because they threaten to nuke everyone, cottontail?
Russia lost to the Germans (Central Powers) in WWI, Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 1918. That happened before the Commies took over. Any other wisdom Bunge? They also lost to Poland in the early 1920s but got their revenge on Poland with the help of the Nazi Germans in 1939. Forgot that too Bunge? Anything else you need to know about recent European history and the Russians is not hidden (try the Interwebs, or a book, or reading Turtler’s comments again).
So now Bunge goes down the path of historical nation bashing, not to exclude his own country, and my country the United States of America. Shows where his fealty to Vlad leads him.
Don’t be like or be, a Bunge.
@MBunge
I’m sorry, I really can’t make head nor tails of the rest of om’s blather but in case anyone missed it…
There’s an update on how things are going in Ukraine. Hint: Not as swimmingly as om and the people he blindly follows (like Joe Biden) are telling you.
Not a terrible article and Kotkin makes many good points. We should certainly be mindful of the historical track record and avoid wishful thinking. That said, I do think there are a few points I take issue with.
. What then? We’re in a war of attrition right now, and in a war of attrition there’s only one way to win. You ramp up your production of weaponry, and you destroy the enemy’s production of weaponry—not the enemy’s weapons on the battlefield, but the enemy’s capability to resupply and produce more weapons. You have to out-produce in a war of attrition, and you have to crush the enemy’s production.
World War I and most Ethiopian-Eritrean Wars called. They want their money back.
Yes, production of weaponry is crucial. But manpower is the one indispensable weapon, and the only one you cannot produce from any factory or workshop. Specifically, WILLING manpower is indispensable.
The Central Powers didn’t lose WWI because they ran out of the capacity to produce weapons (though that ability did wane). They didn’t even lose it because they ran out of warm bodies to throw into the meat grinder. They lost it because the number of warm bodies grew so thin on the ground that – along with abusive and misguided strategies – morale snapped and what relatively few soldiers on hand either decided that if they were going to die fighting they might as well do so fighting the people sending them to death or capture, or that they weren’t going to stick their necks out for the governments that did so.
In general manpower and public will matter for far more in an attritional war than weaponry. Not because equipment isn’t important (because otherwise you get onesided slaughters like what happened to the Madhists in the late 19th century or Saddam’s army in 1991 and 2003) but because a population with willing, available fighters can generally continue to resist, even if it involves cultivating opium in marginal soil and buying Khyber Pass Rifles on the Black Market on the off chance aiming at a Coalition soldier and pulling the trigger will blow the soldier away rather than the person holding the gun.
Likewise, we didn’t strategically lose Vietnam because we ran out of war material, but out of public support.
Destroy the will and/or capacity to fight and the rest falls in line.
And so think about this: We haven’t ramped up industrial production at all.
This is manifestly untrue and I wonder where Kotkin is getting his information. In practice the US and the rest of the West IS Ramping up production, it is just that doing so usually has sizable lead times. Which isn’t surprising since it is hard to go from peacetime production to meet high intensity war. For starters while you can have wonderful theories and approximations of the rate of consumption for equipment and ammunition (and they might even be accurate) you don’t actually KNOW rate of consumption for a given conflict until it is happening (and even there’s usually lag as you have to get accurate counts and correlate the data).
At peak, the Ukrainians were firing—expending—upward of ninety thousand artillery shells a month. U.S. monthly production of artillery shells is fifteen thousand. With all our allies thrown in, everybody in the mix who supports Ukraine, you get another fifteen thousand, at the highest estimates. So you can do thirty thousand in the production of artillery shells while expending ninety thousand a month. We haven’t ramped up. We’re just drawing down the stocks. And you know what? We’re running out.
This is true but also INCREDIBLY unsurprising for a pitched conventional war, and indeed it is one reason why the stocks exist. To buy time for the logisticians and government critters to take stock of the situation and evaluate how much production needs to ramp up.
That would be a great thing, if we could do that. But there’s nothing like that in sight. You win the war on the battlefield.
Wait, what was that about having to destroy the enemy’s weapons productions Kotkin?
Again. It is nice and greatly shortens the war, but it is not strictly necessary. Again, in WWI the only Allied power to launch major strategic bombing operations on the Central Powers was Italy, and those had some success but were hardly decisive. Ironically the Central Powers (especially the Germans) engaged in more bombing of their enemies than vice versa, it just wasn’t anywhere NEAR enough.
And sure, you’d be right to argue this is just WWI, at the very dawn of flight, and the world has greatly changed and so have the calculations. And you’d be right. But it proves my general point. Ultimately there aren’t many acceptable substitutes for victory on the field, or at least sustaining the effort there.
There are some shortcuts that could potentially enable you to get to a victory more quickly—for example, if the Russian Army disintegrated in the field. I said, a year ago, that that seemed unlikely, and there hasn’t been any evidence that the Russian Army is disintegrated in the field. In fact, the call-up of the several hundred thousand new recruits—they’ve been deployed, they’re on the front lines, and they’re fighting.
Agreed. At most we have seen fraying on both main sides (though I would argue the Donbas “Separatists” are in the early stages of disintegration). Though having to mobilize and expedite the deployment of raw troops as both sides have done is a first step towards disintegration and one the Russians in particular have been complaining about. Nothing too decisive yet though.
The other shortcut we talked about was an overthrow of the Putin regime in Moscow and his replacement by a capitulatory, not an escalatory, Russian leader. But there was no evidence that the regime was in trouble. Authoritarian regimes can fail at everything—they can even launch self-defeating wars—so long as they succeed at one thing, which is the suppression of political alternatives. He’s very good at that.
Agreed, though failure in external conflict often greatly undermines and destabilizes the ability to repress internal opposition. Granted they still succeed more often than they fail, as a close examination of Russian history shows, but it is still an issue.
And then the third shortcut was the idea of the Chinese exerting pressure to force Russia to climb down. We didn’t think that China had this leverage, and we certainly didn’t think they would use their imaginary leverage.
I half-agree. I think Kotkin is underestimating the amount of leverage the CCP has over Russia due to the pipelines and diplomatic and military support, but not its willingness to support the Kremlin under the table.
So, without the shortcuts, we’re at the battlefield. And the problem with the battlefield is that victory is misdefined here. You have to win on the battlefield, but how do you then win the peace as well? What would winning the peace look like?
Probably a Ukrainian reconquest of all or at least the vast majority of its occupied territory (with possible leeway for extremely pro-Russian areas on the borders of the Donbas that can be ceded as part of a border boundary clarification) and successful consolidation of Ukrainian gov’t authority over those areas and integration (official or unofficial) with the West’s diplomatic and defense institutions.
We know you can win on the battlefield and lose the peace, right? Sadly, we’ve experienced that in our own country, with some of the wars that we’ve been involved in.
Indeed, though ironically I’d argue the Kremlin suffered something like this before, including in the first stage of this war in 2014-2015, where it thought Minsk would help cement its dominance in the Donbas and Crimea only for the former to be undermined by costly attacks and Ukrainian pressure.
Everything in our stocks is going right out the door, right past his desk.
Provably false, as a cursory look at things like planes, tanks, and Air-to-Air missiles show.
And it’s not going to Taiwan, which is a place that we want to send it.
Because the Taiwanese do not need Anti-tank missiles nearly as much as the Ukrainians do, while conversely the Ukrainians do not need as many anti-ship missiles as the Taiwanese do. While there will be terrestrial combat in a South Pacific War and Air and Naval conflict in the Ukrainian War or another European War, the weighting is going to be significantly different.
And so we would have to radically ramp up production, us and our allies, to fight a war of attrition.
Agreed, and the governments in question – for better or worse -are at least making indications they can. And their ceilings and room for improvement are much, Much higher than that of Russia.
And, at the same time, the sanctions were supposed to destroy Russia’s ability to produce weapons, and that’s not happening.
Agreed, but it is UNDERMINING it, both in terms of quality and quantity.
Russia can produce about sixty missiles a month under sanctions. So that’s two horrible barrages against Ukrainian civilian homes and infrastructure, their energy infrastructure, their water supply—sixty missiles a month.
And that’s really bad.
But now compare that to the actual usage of missiles.
We ROUTINELY see the Russians fire off more than a hundred -and often hundreds- of missiles at Ukraine in this war DAILY.
That’s costly.
There’s a REASON why the volume of Russian missile fire sways so drastically. Because they need to conserve their missile stockpiles and keep their powder dry so they have something to fire off in the metaphorical rainy day. Precisely because their usage rates so FAR outstrips production at current, and probably matches or exceeds the possible production under ideal circumstances under the present level of mobilization.
I find it ironic Kotkin is talking in grave detail about us sending “everything” and are running our stocks down in things like artillery shells, but is not making such a great deal about it in terms of the Russian military. In spite of how it is generally far easier to ramp up production of artillery shells than missiles.
That doesn’t include what they’re buying back from Africa that they previously sold. What they’re trying to get in deals with North Korea or Iran.
Absolutely true and that is a matter of concern and a way for them to get more munitions than they can produce, likewise with Ukraine. But that comes at its own cost, namely depletion of currency stocks and in the case of Russia reputation as reliable weapon wholesaler.
The Soviet arsenal, the biggest arsenal ever assembled—a lot of it is rotting, but not all of it is rotting.
Agreed. Though nobody is quite sure HOW much of it is rotting versus how much is not.
Some of the production is still ongoing, not as much as Russia would like, but enough to carry out the strategy of “If I can’t have it, nobody can have it.”
Not really no, for the reasons I’ve mentioned before. Which is one reason why the Kremlin was ultimately forced out of Kherson in a textbook battle of attrition.
If you’re in a war of attrition, you’ve got to be bombing the other side’s production facilities.
Again, if this were true we’d expect half the planet to be speaking German under a dystopian Neo-Nordic Pagan hell state courtesy of Herr Ludendorff. That didn’t happen. And lest anybody complain about me citing ancient history unfairly, we would have also seen very different outcomes for the Iran-Iraq War (where the Iranians held aerial superiority for most of the war) and a prosperous, free Afghanistan.
You have to be denying the other side the ability to resupply on the battlefield.
Ideally yes, though even that is ultimately optional to some degree.
Moreover, in a war like this it is MUCH MUCH Easier to deny the other side the ability to resupply on the battlefield than it is to deny the enemy the ability to produce equipment. This is especially true for the Ukrainian side but also applies to Russia.
And you have to be ramping up your production like we did in the previous wars where we were directly engaged, but we haven’t done here.
Already addressed this before, because this is simply untrue. Whether it is ENOUGH is another question.
So tell me: How do you fight a war of attrition with your left hand tied behind your back and your right hand tied behind your back?
By lashing out with your knees and pounding the other guy’s shins and ankles to bring them down. Which the Ukrainians have had significant luck in doing vis a vis hitting Russian supplies on the “Second” and “Third” Miles of getting the stuff from the places where it is produced to the front lines.
The Ukrainians are amazing. It’s just so inspiring to see what they’re doing. But if we get every inch of territory back—and we’re not close to that—we still need an E.U. accession process.
Agreed.
Ukraine will need a demilitarized zone, no matter how much territory it gets back, including if it somehow gets Crimea back. It’s got the problem that, next year, the year after, the year after next, this could happen again.
Agreed, though the Ukrainians have significant experience in fortification work and the Russians do too. The issue is the sheer LENGTH of the real estate to cover, even if we just counted Russian borders alone without including Belarusian ones (Which we should). But even that isn’t strictly speaking impossible. Issue is if there will be enough resources and commitment to make it stick.
My problem is material. I don’t have a military-industrial complex on the scale to continue this indefinitely. I’m running my own stocks down. I’m not supplying my other allies, including Taiwan. And I have an opportunity-cost issue here.
True but again, for the umpteenth time, unsurprising precisely BECAUSE almost nobody has the military-industrial complex running on a scale to continue this ALL THE TIME. It would be prohibitively expensive even for a hawk like me. Which is why you build up stock as a buffer and use it while evaluating what you need to do.
Russia is much bigger; it has many more people. Also, the Russian leadership doesn’t really care about its people. If the Russian leadership throws twenty thousand untrained recruits into the meat grinder and three-quarters of them die, what do they do? Do they go to church on Sunday and ask forgiveness from God? They just do it again.
Agreed with CAVEATS. While the Russian leadership doesn’t really care about its people per se, it DOES have to care about the fact that its people care about said people on some level. Which is why if you actually look at the origins of casualties from the war and Mobiks, they tend to DISPROPORTIONATELY come from places like Buryatia and not from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In other words, they are essentially mining the Russian equivalent of “Flyover Country but on Steroids” to avoid having to mobilize the families of people who either have connections or a level of affluence and audibility to cause problems. Which so far has worked because outside of the sort of standing military professionals that Russia has relied on for its hard striking power, the casualties on the Russian side are generally people who will not be widely missed.
But how much can that continue?
People talk about Stalin and the big sacrifices that the Soviet people made in World War Two, losing twenty-seven million people. They were enslaved collective farmers. He had millions and millions more of them. He threw them into the meat grinder and they died. Then he threw more into the meat grinder!
Russia in 2023 is not the USSR of 1943.
For starters, millions willingly or unwillingly went to their deaths in the meat grinder because they quite literally had no better options. Hitler’s mass murder of even common Soviet nationals and even refusal to allow capitulations in places like Leningrad meant that you either had the choice of dying on your feet fighting as a martyr to the Soviet Union/International Communism/Holy Mother Russia/ The Glory Of God/Your Family/Your Loved Ones/ Fill In The Blanks Here…. or you died on your knees in a murder pit because Oskar Dirlewanger’s penpal wanted to test out the new Tokarov or in the gas chambers of Auschwitz so the SS could test them*.
* = Yes, that really happened.
In contrast in WWI the Central Powers – while headed up by deranged mass murderers scarcely less evil than Shicklegruber – were far more pragmatic and skilled at co-opting dissidents in the Russian Empire and playing divide and conquer. While in the wars with Finland and Afghanistan there was not the kind of messianic Do-Or-Die incentive.
So the appetite to continue the slaughter waned quicker.
Sort of. You saw tens of thousands of people resist and flee. You also saw a couple of hundred thousand get deployed. You know, Leonid Bershidsky, of Bloomberg, got this right. He said we focus on those who resist the call-up, the conscription. We don’t focus on those who are actually deployed.
This is very true, and well worth remembering. Though it is worth noting that even among the mobilized there have been problems such as fragging.
The Russian leadership has no trouble expending its weaponry and sending its people to death.
Maybe, but making due AFTER such expenditures is a problem of its own.
The value of life in the Putin regime is just not there.
Not from a moral or theoretical level, but on a practical level Russia cannot sustain World War style losses.
When you talk about Roosevelt not wanting to take Berlin before Stalin did, because he didn’t want to sacrifice human lives—and then people complain that he should have done it anyway?
Well that and because he knew he would not be able to secure it or get much tangible results from it due to the occupation arrangements.
Democracies don’t fight wars which are intentionally a meat grinder, to just throw their people away.
Intentionally no, though honestly the tolerance for suffering can be a useful survival skill.
And a war of attrition is what we’re asking of the Ukrainians. They’re doing the fighting. We’re not doing any of the fighting.
Agreed with the caveats of volunteers. And by and large the Ukrainians are the ones happy to fight, judging from polling and other statements. After all, if they do not who will fight for them?
Much of the challenge here comes from the fact that President Biden and the European allies have decided that there will be no direct engagement between nato forces and Russian forces. There’s been a ceiling on how far we would go in assisting the Ukrainians. We don’t want an escalation of direct confrontation with the Russians or Russians using some of the capabilities that Putin has, that we all know about—and we’re right to be concerned about.
Which has its own benefits because it limits quite how much Putin can wave the NATO card around and have it stick.
People say, “It would be irrational if Putin were to use nuclear weapons. It would be self-defeating. He would just get destroyed himself in retaliation.” And the answer is: from our point of view, certainly that would be really stupid. Just like this war. Starting this war looks really stupid, from our point of view.
Agreed. But there is also the issue that doing so would not only lead to a greatly isolated Russia (even in comparison to now) and destroy much of what Putin claims to want to secure.
Even stupidity usually has its own rationales.
Yeah. And who knows what the actual number is? What was Ukrainian G.D.P. before the war? About a hundred and eighty billion dollars. So you’re talking double G.D.P., in reconstruction funds, has to somehow enter that country and not disappear, not vanish. What happened to the covid funds in our country? We’re still trying to find some of them. Billions disappeared. And so you’re talking double their prewar G.D.P. So for that you need functioning institutions, not wartime resistance institutions. You need a civil service. You need an independent judiciary. You need a lot of stuff—a banking system—to manage that type of reconstruction and doing that honestly, fairly, and smartly. Right now, there’s no prospect of those reconstruction funds being able to be used well, because they don’t have those functioning institutions. They’re at war. And they didn’t have such functioning institutions before the war started, as you know.
Agreed TO A POINT, though the pressures of survival usually mean states and societies have to have institutions functioning on Some level in order to sustain the war.
And so we have a Russia which looks more and more like the Putin regime as a society, not just as a regime, potentially. We have all the flotsam of the xenophobic hard right in Russia complaining that the war is not being fought properly, wanting to nuke Ukraine, nuke the West, as they go on social media and express the extremism that unfortunately social media facilitates and encourages. And so that’s the Russia we have already. Russia has already been transformed utterly. Wars are transformational in all ways.
So the advent of a hot war causes a spark of Rally Around the Flag. Color me amazed, simply AMAZED.
But we’re already seeing cleavages and dissatisfaction about HOW said war is being waged, which is usually a waystation for broader complaints of the war itself, as we have seen multiple times over from Jurganthine War era Rome to the US in the War on Terror.
This war is just—it’s so painful. My whole life was writing about Stalin, and I would get absorbed in that. But then I put that down, and I had kids to hug, and I had a wife who loved me, and I had students that I could harangue in the classroom. Now I put the Stalin thing down—and then I got the Stalin thing again. In the real world. In real time. So it hurts. This whole thing hurts a lot. There’s no relief from this part of the world. ?
Maybe, but it’s worth remembering that Putin is not Stalin, for both good and bad. He simply lacks the power and men to mobilize.
He is not a strategic figure. People kept saying he was a tactical genius, that he was playing a weak hand well. I kept telling people, “Seriously?” He intervened in Syria, and he made President Obama look like a fool when President Obama said that there would be a red line about chemical weapons. But what does that mean? It means that Putin became the part owner of a civil war. He became the owner of atrocities and a wrecked country, Syria.
Honestly while I agree Putin has FAR too high a reputation as a chessmaster big brain, I think Syria largely worked out for him. He took a chaotic civil war and steadily – if brutally – helped his friend in Damascus straighten it out, to the point where there is no serious prospect of Assad being overthrown as is, or Russia losing Tarsus and its interests in the Levant. Moreover, brutality worked a lot better when the Kremlin and its Baathist friends were either fighting Literally IS or people it could paint as such or not that much different from it, and razing Hama again doesn’t attract the same kind of controversy as striking Kyiv.
There’s a reason why Putin used the Russian involvement in Syria as a propaganda mast for the revived Russian military and its achievements, and I think it worked out for him.
He didn’t increase the talent in his own country, his human capital. He didn’t build new infrastructure. He didn’t increase his wealth production. And so if you look at the ingredients of what makes strategy, how you build a country’s prosperity, how you build its human capital, its infrastructure, its governance—all the things that make a country successful—there was no evidence that any of the things that were attributed to his tactical genius, or tactical agility, were contributing in a positive way to Russia’s long-term power.
Agreed, which I think dovetails with what I have observed before. Putin is largely burning Russia’s stored capital in more ways than one, and has been remarkably short-sighted even by the standards of Eastern European siloviki. That’s starting to come back to bite him.
I notice that nowhere does om deny that every nation which sees itself as a great power, economically and militarily, expects and even demands to have influence over its neighbors. He also at no point denies what is widely agreed to by just about every historian, which is that the harsh treatment of Germany after WWI was a contributing factor to the rise of Hitler and WWII. Did it cause it? No. Did it help grease the skids? Everyone says yes.
Instead of addressing the points I make, om either just babbles nonsense or starts talking about something almost entirely unrelated. He just keeps repeating “Putin bad” like it is some sort of Viagra placebo that’s going to make his tiny dick work. Yes, Putin is bad. He can also end the war in Ukraine within a day with a few tactical nukes. That’s a possibility I would like to stay away from. om seems bound and determined to make it a reality.
The truly pitiful thing is that I’m pretty sure a few million dead Ukrainians wouldn’t bother om at all. They wouldn’t make his tiny dick work, but they’d probably take his mind off it.
Mike
Bunge:
Contrary to your assertion, everyone does not buy into Keynes’ theory that the Treaty of Versailles led to (causation implied) Hitler and WWII; stuff you heard in High School. Yep, John Maynard Keynes, that guy.
But here you go. Maybe you will learn something.
No, the Treaty of Versailles did NOT lead to hyperinflation OR the Nazis -TIKhistory
And once again don’t project your problems onto the interweb. There is a little blue pill for you.
Don’t be a Bunge.
@MBunge Part 2
Win what? The right to spend billions or hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding a shattered Ukraine?
Sure, and getting whatever kickbacks and influence we or our pols can get from it, as well as firmly removing much or all of Ukraine from the Kremlin’s sphere of influence for the forseeable future.
The right to deal with a humiliated and enraged Russia?
We’ve already been dealing with that since the early 90s, and that’s putting it lightly. I still remember 2008 in Georgia. I still remember multiple waves of attempted detente with the Kremlin, most infamously the snubbing of our Georgian allies in Obama and Clinton’s reset. In any case, Putin and those capable of being allowed to succeed him have shown they are manifestly untrustworthy and unwilling to be reconciled.
Ergo, I find it much safer and preferable to deal with a humiliated and enraged Russia that will need a decade or two to recover and cannot credibly post a purely conventional threat to our interests than to deal with an arrogant and emboldened Russia. That is of course my opinion, but I think history stands by it.
Because frankly Putin’s regime is going to be enraged, humiliated, and butthurt no matter what we do. So we might as well give it as little in the way of confidence and resources to encourage it to do something truly reckless.
The right to continue being the world’s policeman?
Correct. To decide whether or not to continue being the world’s policeman or not to. Because the flexibility to voluntarily relinquish a position or not is better than being forced out of it. Especially since I REALLY do not see any better alternatives on the horizon, and ironically the mobilization of support for Ukraine is helping to set in stage some possible foundations for a decline or even withdrawal of the US from the global police role, such as Europe at least paying lip service to gearing up and pulling its weight.
What exactly does the United States “win” in this situation?
A humiliated, embittered, and generally weaker Russia, prestige for our weapons and practical lessons on them and the war economy, and hopefully some breathing room to adjust.
How did those guys wind up being tried? Magic? Space aliens? Did Jesus return from Heaven on a golden chariot and deliver them to the Hauge?
Jesus may have returned from heaven, but not on a golden chariot. But most visibly it was because the Serbian dictatorship so discredited itself from defeats, corruption, and internal repression that it turned the public against itself, resulting in Milosevic being turned out by the opposition and then thrown to the Haag
There’s some intelligent discussion of the Russia/Ukraine war around here. Sadly, I think om is more representative of the (lack of) thinking in DC.
I can believe it.
I flatly do not understand how anyone can look at U.S. military interventions over the past two decades or so, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya and Syria, and believe “Yup. Getting involved in a proxy war against Russia is a great idea and JOE BIDEN is just the one to lead us in such a noble endeavor.”
I don’t think it is a good idea, but we didn’t decide to spark the war. Putin did. And in light of that I think it is better to see it through.
Put it this way: What message would it send to Russia or the PRC or other enemies if the Putin regime gets into a proxy war WITH US (which is again what happened; the Kremlin is the aggressor here) under a senile coot and his corrupt cabal, and fails to win? Or at least decisively so? What will it say to our allies?
We are hurting for credibility after Afghanistan and others, so I do not see how giving way in the name of peace or out of extreme fear of escalation will help.
Again, Russia has for decades (if not longer) considered a neutral or Russia-allied Ukraine to be vital to their national security. There’s really no dispute about that.
This is correct and indeed it does go earlier. However we can say the exact same thing about what is currently the Baltics. And yet the Russian government was repeatedly forced to relinquish its quest to control them, most decisively for now in the 1980s. Aleksandr Nevaskoy was conducting mass executions of Baltic peoples levied into the armies of the Teutonic Order on grounds of treason against their “rightful” Novgorodian leaders for much, much longer than Moscow has had any kind of influence in Ukraine.
om is proposing that a defeated and humiliated Russia seeing Ukraine become a de facto member of NATO will result in Russia becoming a more peaceful and passive nation.
Frankly it’s worth a try. Peace through strength is a much sounder policy than pretty much every policy we have tried with the Kremlin since the Soviet Coup of 1991. And again it has a decently positive track record.
Remind me…how did the U.S. respond when the Soviet Union tried to put nukes in Cuba?
We responded by blockading the island and pressuring the Soviets to withdraw them (helped by their own concerns about the Castros starting a nuclear apocalypse without their say so) and then de-escalated, limiting ourselves to “subtle’ attempts to coup the dictatorship in Habana or assassinate one or another Castro rather than trying Playa Giron 2.0
Which is why this REALLY is not the argument you seem to think it is. Because the results of the Cuban Missile Crisis resulted in the US tacitly accepting a quasi-Stalinist, ultra-anti-American dictatorship just a few miles of Florida’s coast, where it has remained for most of a century. Hell, we struggle to sustain a consensus about keeping the embargos going.
And again, Russian troops have not set foot in Estonia in force for a quarter of a century.
Or how did that whole “We will be greeted as liberators” thing in Iraq work out?
Not as good as planned, but nowhere near as badly as meme memory has it.
The truth is, we WERE Greeted as liberators in the Kurdish North, the melting pot West, and the Sunni South and Eastern Fringe. The only serious opposition to the downfall of Saddam came from the Shiite core around the Two Rivers (which is why they joined the likes of Baathist remnants and AQII in droves).
The issue being that while the Kurds, Assyrians, etc. largely stayed the course, the Sunni nuts were not interested in gratitude and particularly saw the chance to capitalize on the chaos to seize their own power.
But it’s well worth realizing how dependent on foreign fighters most of the “insurgent” groups were, and how fickle even many of the rebel locals were (such as the diplomatic surge that saw many of them turn their coats).
Uh…why not?
See: Astana Accords, among others.
We certainly take that approach.
Nowhere near as much as you like to claim.
Please identify the last time USMC troops landed in
A: Nicaragua
B: Venezuela
and
C: Cuba.
I’ll wait.
The US has been de-emphasizing forcing its influence on the Western Hemisphere and unfriendly regimes there for quite some time (something I view as a grave mistake given the likes of the Bolivarians), ESPECIALLY in a kinetic, Boots-on-the-Ground way (which is probably for the best).
Attempts to draw a parallel to “If we were in Russia’s situation we’d be doing the same” fall fallow on examinations of the Mexican Revolution and Castro’s Cuba.
Every great power, or those who think they’re great powers, expects and demands to exert influence over their neighbors.
Sure, but there are limits to how much influence that can be, and especially how much tolerance there is to open invasion.
How much does the rest of the world bend over backwards to avoid calling Taiwan a country?
A fair amount, and a decent point. But how unsuccessful has the PRC been in other ways?
Or maybe ask Ireland about what it’s been like living next to England over the centuries?
What is this even supposed to mean? Even the most genocidal, fanatical Irish Republican ultranationalist can entertain only the most far-fetched fantasies of destroying “England”, and often times Irish factions have welcomed English/British influence. There simply isn’t the appetite or means to go further.
You ask Central and South America about living in the same hemisphere as the United States?
Yes, and the result has been remarkably simple.
And as far as “teaching Russia a lesson”…how did it work when they “taught Germany a lesson” after WWI?
Not well enough, and frankly a large part of the problem with the post-WWI settlement was that it was the ugly middle ground of being both too lenient and too stern, and I frankly believe the bigger problem was the former. How did it work when teaching Germany and Japan a lesson after WWII? or Italy?
Frankly, the entire Imperial Cabinets of Berlin, Vienna, and Constantinople, the staffs of the CUP leadership, the OHL, and AOK should have been taken out and publicly shot for their actions in WWI. With a side helping of having Wilhelm II hanged until dead, Ferdinand I flamethrower’d, and Fritz Haber gassed.
And lest anybody think that is excessive, I DARE you to read self-confessed accounts of Grenzers raping and beheading Serbian and Montenegrin villagers, Belgian refugees going back to their home only to die because of drawing water from an intentionally-poisoned well, or the effects of poison gas on soldiers and civilians in 1915.
Beyond such actions being RICHLY warranted by their conduct (and if anybody wishes to dispute that, WHOA boy will I have something to tell you), it would have also underlined who won and who lost the war, and also had welcome side effects such as limiting the ability of the German economists to screw with their printers (and thus devastate the global economy for half a decade until 1923).
But that isn’t what happened. Meaning you had the same people who had murdered millions of Serbs, Belgians, Armenians, and others to A: Claim to they hadn’t REALLY been defeated, B: Claim they were not responsible for waging what was then one of the most nakedly destructive and unjust wars in history (and indeed it has been more than a century and large parts of German academia STILL lie and claim the Russians are responsible for the war), and C: Learn how they had been defeated to try and avoid it (which is why the Wehrmacht’s doctrine in the early war is UNCANNILY like that of the late war, 1917-1920 Western Allies).
Oh yeah, and
D: Pal up with the world’s great Ne’er-do-wells like the Bolsheviks to illegally rearm and help recreate a terminal cancer within German society in the form of the Reichswehr and its “Black Reichswehr” adjuncts.
That a grown adult in 2023 is utterly incapable of imagining or acknowledging potential negative consequences to waging a proxy war right on the border of a nuclear power makes me despair for our future as a species.
I can imagine the potential negative consequences in waging such a proxy war. But I also point out that it was Putin who started the war, and I fail to see how completely abdicating the challenge will help avoid such a prospect. That doesn’t mean I’m in favor of giving Gaidar a suitcase nuke and a free ticket to Moscow, but it does mean that I think the old, allegorical statement from Lenin’s of “When you meet Mush, Push, when you meet Steel, Stop” is worth considering.
PS: In general proxy wars against Russia/The USSR’s borders have generally had a decent track record. The Baltic and Polish insurgencies were ultimately unsuccessful but tied down the Red Army and their proxies for about a decade, and Afghanistan had plenty of bad cast off consequences but it also devastated the Soviet military and society, especially in terms of morale.
@MBunge Part 3
Sorry, didn’t mention that.
I notice that nowhere does om deny that every nation which sees itself as a great power, economically and militarily, expects and even demands to have influence over its neighbors.
Fair.
He also at no point denies what is widely agreed to by just about every historian, which is that the harsh treatment of Germany after WWI was a contributing factor to the rise of Hitler and WWII.
Honestly there has been a sea change in that, especially with a few things such as the time to digest the East-of-the-Wall archives relevant to the matter like Prussian State Archives as well as a willingness to look sharply at the claims of German and Austrian historiography, and the role of state-sponsored propaganda by not just the Third Reich, the KPD, and assorted nationalists but also the “Good” Weimar Governments’s Foreign Office’s Kriegsschuldreferat (War Responsibility Office), aka “The Office for dodging responsibility about the war, curating the image of it, and insisting Germany fought a defensive war in spite of being literally incapable of doing so due to not having any mobilization or war plans for a defensive two front war.
That and remembering the Weimar 20s existed and the influence of men (and I use that term loosely) like von Seeckt.
The consensus is generally shifting much more strongly in a pro-Versailles direction and even that the Second Reich’s leadership was not punished as seriously as either they warranted or was as pragmatic. This is still a minority POV of course, as most new research is, but I think at least much of the evidence is compelling.
Likewise, there’s the fact that Russia tends to go dormant in expansion for about a decade or two after a serious defeat on its frontiers, especially the Western ones. Ivan IV’s attempts to conquer the Baltics and establish a puppet “Kingdom of Livonia” was beaten so sharply by an unlikely alliance of Poles, Swedes, Danes, Hungarians, and Norwegians that Russian expansion would not only stall out but it would face invasions by the Swedes and Poles that in the latter case would occupy Moscow. The tactically successful but strategically frustrating Seven Years’ War saw Russia falter into a series of palace coups that saw it gain no territory from Prussia and indeed saw it forced to come to terms with Prussia to retain influence in Poland. Defeat in the Crimean War forced Russia to play nice on the European stage for about 20 years until the rise of Germany and Turkish brutality undermined the peace treaty of Paris. The failure in WWI and Lenin’s attempt to do world revolution “live” at the turn of the decade saw even the Soviets – whose entire ideology was based on world revolution through armed subversion or conquest – lick their wounds for about a decade, if not two.
Did it cause it? No. Did it help grease the skids? Everyone says yes.
Not everybody, and even those who do are increasingly divided on how it did so. In particular Hindenburg should never have been in a position to be President of Germany after his actions as Dictator during 1916-1918.
Instead of addressing the points I make, om either just babbles nonsense or starts talking about something almost entirely unrelated. He just keeps repeating “Putin bad” like it is some sort of Viagra placebo that’s going to make his tiny dick work. Yes, Putin is bad. He can also end the war in Ukraine within a day with a few tactical nukes. That’s a possibility I would like to stay away from. om seems bound and determined to make it a reality.
Fair, which is also why I will try and respond.
The truly pitiful thing is that I’m pretty sure a few million dead Ukrainians wouldn’t bother om at all. They wouldn’t make his tiny dick work, but they’d probably take his mind off it.
Possible, and I don’t know. In any case om could do much better.
Bunge:
Some more homework, ignorance can be cured they say, stupid is another matter;
“Few have a better national understanding of Russia than the Estonians, and it shows;
Most of Russia’s attention is currently focused on its ruthless war in Ukraine, but Putin has not lost sight of the bigger objectives. In fact, in Russia’s view, success in Ukraine serves as a major stepping stone for reaching further goals.
Russia’s long-term strategic aims remain unchanged: to dissolve the rules-based world order. Putin has written and talked about this for the past 15 years, and Russia’s actions have brutally proved it. Re-establishing spheres of influence in Eastern Europe and recreating buffer zones are the key steps in turning the current international order around for Russia. This is the most important reason why Russian tanks rolled over the Ukrainian border on February 24, 2022, and why similar scenarios have unfolded
…
Putin and his policies enjoy widespread support in Russia, which has only strengthened during the war in Ukraine.
…
Should Russia manage to gain any territory as a result of this war – either de iure at a negotiation table or de facto by freezing the situation in its current state, keeping the occupied areas under its authority for a longer time – it will have essentially moved closer to its goal. The Kremlin will have demonstrated that altering national borders with military force is feasible and the West and its rules-based world order can be weakened.
Hence, as long as the territorial integrity of Ukraine has not been fully restored, it is the rules-based order of the West that is facing a strategic failure. It may have come at a higher cost than expected, but Russia is still on track towards its strategic aims. Historically, political concessions are only a fast track to another “special military operation”, possibly against Allied countries.
If it works, why stop?”
That is just an excerpt from the post, which cites Russia’s War in Ukraine: Myths and Lessons from Kaitseministeerium The Republic of Estonia Ministry of Defense. You know, those folks who lived under the tender mercies of the USSR and before that Imperial Russia.
So learn something Bunge. Your choice. I added bold font to the quote so you would catch the point, Bunge.
@Bauxite
We may have disagreements about the wisdom of NATO expansion over the past few decades, but that die is cast.
Agreed, for better or worse.
Given the situation we’re in, I tend towards Kate’s husband’s point of view, but I still worry about escalation.
Likewise, and especially given our weak, corrupt, tyrannical leadership and war weariness. Which is also why I will not prioritize supporting Ukraine over sorting out our domestic issues.
Putin is on record as believing that the fall of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe.
Indeed, and to be fair he is far from alone in that, especially given the nascent Soviet nostalgia. Not helped by many Russian governments intentionally cultivating a sort of nostalgia about the Soviet period and blaming all that went wrong on the West to avoid embarrassing issues such as Russian demography and the Brezhnev Stagnation.
Would Putin sit idly by and become the second Russian leader in the past half-century to preside over the total emasculation of Russia?
I’d count at least three, but a good point.
That said, I think he has already accepted some emasculation. Including a growing dependence on the PRC and allowing Kadyrov to run riot not just in Chechnya but also in wider Russian politics (which would be a grotesque mockery of all Russian sacrifices in the Chechen wars and their castoffs if anybody thought much about it). That and sub par attempts to even *Try* and address matters like corruption, drug use, and demography don’t help.
Of course one can argue we are in similar issues, and that might be true. But it still fits.
Would Putin prefer a world in which Russia is a humiliated third-class power, or WWIII? Perhaps playing Mussolini to Xi is Putin’s best play.
Agreed, and I honestly think on some level he already has. Which is also why I do think dealing him a defeat or at least a bloody nose will help on the grand scale, so long as it can e done without things escalating.
That’s what concerns me.
Understandably.
I wonder if telegraphing the winding down of our involvement (i.e., “no blank check”) is a strategy to avoid that scenario.
I can believe that. And I’m not even entirely opposed to it. Ultimately America has to come first, and while I do think supporting Ukraine’s defense will benefit American interests in many ways if that changes it is only responsible to cut losses.
@Snow on Pine
A commentator on NPR says that the results of Biden’s recent physical (any cognitive test results conspicuously absent ) demonstrates that the shuffling wreck who often can’t remember where he is or people’s names, who wanders around, hand out, to shake hands with invisible people, the guy who has to be pulled back from walking off raised stages, whose mumbled, whispered, or mush mouthed speech is often unintelligible, and who makes up a lie about his supposedly praiseworthy background practically every time he opens his mouth, is actually a “strong and vigorous man.”*
This is the essence of a dictatorship, in which we are all supposed to accept and testify to a false reality, one which is contradicted, every day, by what we actually see and experience.
I’m not sure it is the essence of a dictatorship; I think the essence of dictatorship is rule by decree. But we are getting there with disturbing speed. And the ability of the media and other propaganda outlets to push a “Post-Truth” Atmosphere only hurts us.
@om
“I don’t think” is Bunge all the way. Is “no blank check” the same as forever and infinite money? To Mr. Strawman it is.
Honestly you are acting more like Mr. Strawman here than Bunge or Bauxite are.
Very concerned, Putin is his own manifestation of aggression and evil, but the “Putin is Hitler” strawman serves the Concerned Conservative in a pinch.
Sure, but it also serves as a useful measuring stick. Is Putin as existential a threat to us as Hitler was?
And it’s worth noting Hitler had no nukes, no weapons capable of directly hitting the US, and a less than favorable strategic position.
Concerned conservative (Bauxite) raised war crimes trials (Vlad?, inconceivable) because this isn’t a post WWII Nuremberg situation.
Now pay attention, Milosovitch and Radovan Kraditch (sic) were tried in the Hauge for war crimes. Got that?
Sure, but they were the product of a remarkable situation where the Serbian government that came after them threw them out. Most war crimes tribunals have happened similarly or were conducted by the home government.
Russia has been involved in Balkan wars for hundreds of years, even encouraging Serbia to get aggressive again this year. Got that?
Fair, but still worth noting it hasn’t been nonstop so.
Now if you wish to advocate bombing Russia, well that’s on you Bunge. Not in keeping with your usual bleats from the bunker though.
There’s no dispute that Roosia (or the Russian Federation) does not get to dictate the foreign affairs of it’s neighbors. Unless of course you are Bunge, then Roosia wants.
Well, the Kremlin clearly disputes it, at least unofficially (because it’d be hard to justify otherwise).
Because Russians may learn that invading neighbors isn’t tolerated by the rest of the world, excepting its moxies, proxies, and cottontails (Bunge).
I mean, it is tolerated by a lot of countries including India and Saudi Arabia, and outright supported by the likes of the PRC, Venezuela, and North Korea. So the risk is there.
But fortunately few have been willing to be TOO explicit in their tolerance of it, let alone support.
Turtler:
That was a tome. Brevity is the soul of wit, Yeah when you’ve lost North Korea and Venezuela it is truly worrisome.
The Russia-Ukraine war is Europe’s problem. Their response indicates they don’t think it’s an existential crisis.
It’s time for them to defend themselves. The debt to GDP ratio of the EU zone is 79%. Germany’s ratio is 70%. They can afford to pay for their own defense.
We, meanwhile, are swimming in debt. Every dollar we send Ukraine is borrowed. We will pay interest for the rest of our lives, our children’s lives and their children’s lives.
The interest on the Afghan war is already $500 billion. It will never be paid.
At some point someone must realize the parties over.
Braine E:
Every hear of penny wise pound foolish?
@om
That was a tome.
Indeed,
Brevity is the soul of wit,
And I freely admit brevity is not a strong part for me.
But while brevity may be the soul of wit, length provides room for depth.
Yeah when you’ve lost North Korea and Venezuela it is truly worrisome
True though we never had them. But the fact is that even the Kremlin is not entirely absent.
@Brian E
The Russia-Ukraine war is Europe’s problem.
I fear it is also our problem, albeit not as directly as it is for them.
Their response indicates they don’t think it’s an existential crisis.
Some of them certainly do. And even among most of the more dovish or typical EU types it has gotten a reaction.
It’s time for them to defend themselves. The debt to GDP ratio of the EU zone is 79%. Germany’s ratio is 70%. They can afford to pay for their own defense.
We, meanwhile, are swimming in debt. Every dollar we send Ukraine is borrowed. We will pay interest for the rest of our lives, our children’s lives and their children’s lives.
The interest on the Afghan war is already $500 billion. It will never be paid.
At some point someone must realize the parties over.
Agreed there, but I think that dovetails with the general insanity of modern finance and credit. War debt and other military spending is just a small portion of that.
Turtler:
I do appreciate your thoroughness and clarity.
Though sometimes I wouldn’t mind a little TLC in the form of a TL;DR… 🙂
@huxley
A fair point. I’ll have to try that sometime.
Freshly revealed J6 video — text reads “Nothing to see here
“Just a guy wearing an earpiece physically forcing people inside the Capitol on J6 & a woman calling him out on it
“I’m sure he wasn’t a Federal Agent of any kind [/sarc intended]
Listening to more Johnny Hallyday, the “French Elvis.” The guy was a force.
I adore the French chanteuse goddesses. But the French male singers have been a tougher sell. So many hit my ear and eye as unspeakable lounge lizards like the oil-oozy character Christopher Walken played on SNL in “The Continental” sketches.
By design…
“Is the Government About to Create a Massive Debt Crisis?”— https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-02-18/government-about-create-massive-debt-crisis
Well, we’ve all learned that the more crises there are—and the more massive they are—THE BETTER! (For whom, though?? Um…oh right. You’re not supposed to ask that…)
To be sure, anyone paying attention might just believe that there already is a “Massive Debt Crisis”.
(I guess the question, therefore, is actually whether there will be an even Massiver Massive Debt Crisis”. But as they say, “To ask the question is to…”.)
– – – – – – – –
+ Bonus:
This little curiosity from the powers that be in a tiny little country that seems to have been punching far above its weight (at windmills)…
‘How New Zealand Dealt With “Disinformation”‘ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/how-new-zealand-dealt-disinformation
Short version: Anything we say is true, even if it changes: everything you say is false.
@ Turtler > “And for all of the many, many, MANY problems with the USN and its allies we still dominate the seas in way the CCP does not and they know it. Which is why the CCP plans for a multi year long naval buildup. Which is a danger the USN and others badly need to adjust for and I fear for our shipbuilding capacity, but it is still a potent deterrent.”
The balloons themselves are a side-show for the full three-ring circus that China is erecting around the world.
The thread (as usual) is very long, very detailed, and very scary.
Tl;dr: The Chinese have been building or buying access to shipping ports around the world, including major cities in the US; the purpose is to have a stash of shipping containers outfitted with missiles and other military goodies, ready to launch on command. That’s in addition to the economic infrastructure that the CCP is now controlling (farmland around our bases is almost a minor part of the plan).
The core of the argument is in the middle of the post; the balloons are at the end.
Some key grafs (an excerpt that is as long as most pundits’ normal posts):
AesopFan:
I meant to reply to your earlier OT comment, but suddenly it was a new day with new topics.
I’ve no doubt the CCP has been a remorseless adversary up to all sorts of mischief for decades. Their goal is to become the dominant superpower. They have strategy and plans. They are not nice people. We are properly concerned.
However…so did the USSR. They did not have the technology, the economy, the agile leadership, the solid support of their peoples. The USSR is gone. Putin’s Mini-me attempt to defeat the neighboring Ukraine has even hit a few snags.
Try this five-and-a-half minute Peter Zeihan video on China and Taiwan, hitting on China’s weaknesses and popping the balloons … er bubbles … of what he considers the myths of China’s threats.
________________________________
China is the world’s largest importer of [foodstuffs and energy] especially for the input necessary to grow food which means that if we put the sanctions on China that we put on Russia you would have a de-industrialization of the entire Chinese system in under a year.
The inevitable axe has fallen.
“Joe Biden Picks Obama Enforcer Susan Rice to Implement Critical Race Theory Throughout the Federal Bureaucracy”—
https://redstate.com/streiff/2023/02/19/joe-biden-picks-obama-enforcer-susan-rice-to-implement-critical-race-theory-throughout-the-federal-bureaucracy-n705660
H/T Powerline blog.
Orwellian “right-think”, already required in so many places just to continue to work, will be pushed upon We the People in order for them to exist.
Let’s see what kind of pushback it will encounter.
Will all, or most, competent people flee, leaving their institutions essentially incompetent and useless?
But then, who would know if those institutions were to become incompetent and useless?—For this is precisely the reason for all these “Biden”-esque crises: incompetent and uselessness by design! An overwall, nation-wide softening up operation…so that we will slowly become inured to…disaster.
That’s right! Slowly boiling the frog has become official “Biden” policy. (Of course, it always was…which was why his opponents had to be—must be—absolutely and constantly demonized….)
We are living in interesting times…(whether this expression be an urban legend or not…).
…Still, might one wonder if the SCOTUS will declare such enforced indoctrination “Constitutional”…that is, if ever gets to them…that is, if they FIRST will have to undergo indoctrination…
One of the most poignant lines ever written:
“I could never see tomorrow—
No one said a word
About the sorrow.”
I found the second reading in yesterday’s Roman Catholic Mass especially relevant to our time. Although I know that is ludicrous. What could a primitive, dead, white man have to say that is worth our attention in these enlightened, modern times? Saul of Tarsus didn’t even own an iPhone.
Excerpt of an Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. (I moved the leading sentence to the end.)
Barry Meislin,
I spent the first 18 years of my life in Chicago where all city and county jobs were doled out as patronage to ward bosses. It was common knowledge that few of the employees were the best and brightest. Even then, in the ’70s, extrinsic attributes like ethnicity and skin color and especially which party one voted for, where much more important resume enhancers than aptitude or work ethic. We all just adapted and allotted extra time when having to deal with any civic agency. Incompetence and delays were the status quo (and still are).
Obama and Rice are simply bringing the Chicago way to the nation. Rejoice and be glad!
Rufus, I had the good fortune to live in Chicago for about a year and a half at the end of the 80s. Amazing place…though things have changed, certainly.
WRT incompetence, I think though that what you’re talking about is incompetence due to an “easy” culture of corruption.
Seems to me what’s coming down the pike is ideologically-driven totalitarianism in an attempt to make people conform—make them think things they don’t want do; make them DO things they don’t want to—out of fear for their future and their families’.
The results may be the similar in some ways, but the latter is far more systematic, far more pernicious, far more inhuman.
Especially if “competence”, “innovation”, “intelligence” and the “drive to excel” are all DEFINED as RACIST and punished accordingly.
Related:
“Pushing woke standards over meritocracy is going to get us killed”—
https://nypost.com/2023/02/20/pushing-woke-standards-over-meritocracy-will-get-us-killed/
Barry Meislin:
Per Tucker Carlson, You’re now required to judge a book by its cover
…running all of this, which is the largest racial tracking bureaucracy since the fall of Nazi Germany, will be former President Barack Obama (the third Barry in this thread) and he’ll be doing that as always through his long-time lackey and cut out Susan Rice. Rice’s goal, the goal of the entire initiative, is to place the federal government, all of it, in opposition to a very specific slice of the American population, not a foreign population, our own population…
as noted on the other thread, the however many hours of j6 footage will be released,
DeSantis slams “blank check” for Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/1627677033747689473?cxt=HHwWgsC92e3o1ZYtAAAA
Wow. I didn’t realize DeSantis was a dirty Putin-lover. He just lost om’s vote,
Mike
So, racism is now the official policy of the federal government, and racial discrimination will be enforced in every department. Who knew, when voting for Joe Biden, they were really getting Woodrow Wilson?
Brandon has the cognitive function of late term Wilson.
And Pennsylvania selected Fetterman, so Woodrow laughs twice.
https://donsurber.substack.com/p/a-cabinet-of-tokens
MBunge – I don’t know the right answer on Ukraine now, but, I think you’re right about DeSantis’s position. “No blank check” is a prelude to winding down our committments there. It’s hard to see how Ukraine prevails without a blank check. The “no blank check” position essentially tells Ukraine what they can expect and at least allows them to make a clear-eyed decision about how to proceed.
Whether you like DeSantis’s position or not, I think it compares favorably to Biden. Biden talks a hawkish game, but his actions don’t back that up. He and Kamala are still talking up Nurenberg-style trials for Putin and making grand symbolic gestures, like his trip today. In practice, though, they’re making a bunch of promises for tanks, artillery rounds, etc., that aren’t likely to be filled until after the war is over. (I.e., we’ll give Ukraine Abrams tanks, but not for 18 months. We’ll give them artillery rounds, but not for 28 months.)
Regardless of the atrocities committed during a war, you don’t get to run Nurenberg-style war crimes trials unless you unconditionally defeat your enemy. I think Biden knows that is not going to happen and is trying to project an image of hawkishness to deflect blame when Ukraine inevitably loses. It will be “lose Afghanistan and blame Trump” all over again.
If Putin is really Hitler 2.0, then we need to do whatever it takes to defeat him. We’re not doing that. I don’t think we ever intended to do that. It tells me that our leadership never really believed the “Putin is Hitler 2.0” narrative.
“I don’t think” is Bunge all the way. Is “no blank check” the same as forever and infinite money? To Mr. Strawman it is. Very concerned, Putin is his own manifestation of aggression and evil, but the “Putin is Hitler” strawman serves the Concerned Conservative in a pinch.
Roosia wants.
Time will tell. Foggy war is.
Time will tell.
One year anniversery of Vlad’s little adventure is comming up but the ADHD crowd can’t be bothered to pay attention. Look, squirrel!
Well he isnt xi is hes killed 10 million people (of or with covid doesnt matter) so when we need to fight him our cubbard will be bare, thats the big picture.
Miguel:
Pay attention. The authorization for DOD includes $$ for US ordnance. But you know that?
Concerned conservative may want to revisit his history regarding war crimes and perps from the breakup/war in Yugoslavia (Milosovitch and his band). Not that Russia was and is involved there. That was so last century. Look, squirrel!
“One year anniversery of Vlad’s little adventure is coming up but the ADHD crowd can’t be bothered to pay attention.”
I’m sorry, I really can’t make head nor tails of the rest of om’s blather but in case anyone missed it…
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/how-the-war-in-ukraine-ends
There’s an update on how things are going in Ukraine. Hint: Not as swimmingly as om and the people he blindly follows (like Joe Biden) are telling you.
Mike
“Concerned conservative may want to revisit his history regarding war crimes and perps from the breakup/war in Yugoslavia (Milosovitch and his band).”
Is om advocating the U.S. bomb Russia (or Roosia as he infantilely puts it), because that was a pretty key element in the breakup/war in Yugoslavia?
Mike
China also kills 100,000 a year through fentanyl but putin!
A new study has linked black holes to dark energy via something called “Cosmological Coupling”. If I’m understanding this correctly (which I’m probably not), it’s like black holes are enclosing all this vacuum energy. But I don’t undertand how this energy ends up being distributed across the universe in such a way that it results in this repulsive force that’s pushing everything apart on a grand scale.
We interrupt the ongoing local skirmishes with this non-local announcement.
(Make of it what you will):
“The war upon us all – it’s the war we will win”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-02-19/war-upon-us-all-its-war-we-will-win
Opening graf:
“Mayhem. We have train derailments, massive toxic fires (at least ten counted around the world in the last few days), destruction of food production facilities, hysteria about genders, domestic terrorists and balloons, the relentless war escalation and nonstop pandemic fearmongering… What otherwise would be regarded as random incidents now seems so frequent and pervasive, it’s hard not to be suspicious. Something’s up….”
Sounds like it’s jam-packed with Conspiracy Theory(TM). OTOH, Conspiracy Theory(TM) has been enjoying a pretty decent track record over the past six (or more) years….
– – – – – – – – – – –
The Don Surber post linked to by Miguel, above, is full of typically sardonic observations about “Biden” & Co.
But some of the comments to that post by train and environmental (e.g., water) experts are eye-opening and very helpful in understanding what happened in that catastrophe, who’s really responsible, and the and the Federal Government’s response to it.
@Kate
Honestly the comparisons are uncanny with Wilson. With the exception being that Wilson was legitimately smart or at least intellectual/clever in a way Biden never, ever was. Both were remorseless racists. Both were corrupt and prone to patronage. Both engaged in widespread smearing of their opponents and authoritarian nonsense. Both were basically invalids in office (though Wilson in his case was towards the end of his second term). Both simped for a manifestly anti-constitutional, anti-democratic, anti-republican foreign dictatorship.
That said, as much as I hate to say it I’d take Wilson over Brandon. Wilson at least had enough personal and national pride to turn on his Prussian idols when they kept pushing. Biden seems to not be doing so with the CCP and even has soft pedaled a lot on the Kremlin. And Wilson at least had some ideas and ideals – bad as they were – in a way Biden doesn’t.
A bit disappointed in DeSantis, but not seriously. He is still by far one of the best politicians in the world today, and especially in American life, and that’d remain so even if he by some chance did turn out to be some dirty RINO squish (somehow) upon taking higher office. Like, on the grand scale of staggering government waste I’d much rather have the Brandon Regime pour money into the Ukrainian War than into the countless over-bloated domestic bureaucracies because I wager the former will give us more bang for our buck and be harder to twist against American freedom. But that’s a personal belief and I can fully accept anybody disagreeing with that.
I’d be ok with a Blank Check personally, but some more vetting to deal with graft is pretty useful. But again, I am something of a Neocon Hawk on the matter and my calculation is that it’s better that the Biden Regime spends money and war material helping the Ukrainian Loyalists blow up Russian troops and vehicles than they do blowing us up, or empowering bureaucracies at home that have been shown to be utterly corrupt and anti-American in nature.
om – I don’t understand your reply at all. Milosovec was tried for war crimes because the US military got involved and made sure that Milosovec’s government lost the war.
I’m not saying it is inconceivable that the Ukrainians could defeat Russia on their own and/or trigger such a catastrophic fall of the Putin government that high ranking former officials would be turned over to western war crimes tribunals, but that doesn’t appear likely.
So about the Biden administration – Do they believe that Ukraine is going to utterly defeat Russia without direct US military involvement? Do they intend to directly involve the US military at some point? Or, is all the tough talk just virtue signaling in advance of inevitably leaving the Ukrainians to their fate?
I think it’s got to be one of those three. Is there any other explanation?
From the “Unbelievable” File (which is getting rather thick):
Wherein NYC’s Mayor decides he must school Ron DeSantis.
On NYC “values” no less.
“DeSantis team fires back at Eric Adams after he offers to teach Florida governor about NYC ‘values…”‘—
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/desantis-team-fires-back-eric-adams-nyc-values
How much should we spend 200 billion a trillion its a reasonable question, how many have been killed and maimed in afghanistan and iraq and for what?
Barry Meislin,
I’m sorry if it didn’t come across in my comment, but I was being the opposite of hyperbolic (hypobolic?). I generally agree with your take: “…ideologically-driven totalitarianism in an attempt to make people conform.”
I’m much better at non-comforming.
@Bauxite
The issue I see is that of all the places to wind down our commitments, Ukraine is probably one of the less profitable ones. I really do not see much good coming out of it now, especially not before the Kremlin loses more striking power.
On that much we absolutely agree, with a caveat. Nuremburg-style trials can happen in a less than complete defeat if the country in question undergoes a revolution and is willing to turn over previous leadership to it (whether doing it at home or turning them over to Den Haag or the like), like Serbia did with Milosevic. Which is probably what Biden and co at least superficially claim is the ideal situation (and as I would), but I find it unlikely to the extreme. Milosevic didn’t have nukes. He also had undermined the credibility of his government in a way far beyond that of every single Russian leadership, so while I could (DIMLY, VAGUELY) see Great Tsar Shoigu agreeing to extradite Putin or trial him domestically in order to eliminate a rival and patch up relations, I don’t see the entire regime and the assorted factions going down.
In some ways I find the closer parallel to Putin’s Russia lies with Imperial Japan during the “Dark Valley” from 1931 to 1945, with a sort of united central body but deep factionalization and nowhere near the strong totalitarian center of gravity we saw with Shicklegruber, Stalin, or even Ludendorff.
Honestly I can’t agree. This war has been waging for nearly a decade to one degree or another, and while most of that time was relatively dormant positional warfare on a smaller scale and less intense burn than what we’re seeing now, I do figure there is still quite a lot of time. Especially since we see similar turnover rates for raising new line units which both Ukraine and Russia are struggling with. The fact that this was a RELATIVELY quiet, mild winter outside of Kherson and Bakhmut so there wasn’t the kind of intense attacks we expected from ground freezings means there’s more sand in the hour glass.
Sure, it’s possible the war won’t last another 30 months, and that might be because Ukraine folds in some way. But I wouldn’t bet on it. It took the Soviets and their combined proxies about a decade after WWII ended to crush the last embers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the famous Banderaists the Kremlin likes blathering about) holding out in Galicia. And that was with a near complete isolation of their enemy from the outside world. I just do not see the Kremlin obtaining a conventional victory over Ukraine in that time frame being very likely.
Agreed with the caveat Re: Milosevic and a revolution.
Honestly I think the assumptions about Ukraine inevitably losing are overstated. Of course it is worth not falling for the opposite that Ukraine will inevitably win. Both sides have seriously burned through much of their standing combat power but the Kremlin’s suffered that worse than the Ukrainian ones due to the nature of the offensive. One might think a grinding war of attrition might help strengthen the Kremlin’s had to some degree, but if sanctions held and casualty rates remain I don’t think it would. The Russian public has accepted some truly heavy losses and remained decently supportive of the war effort so long as mobilization does not stretch too far, but even they will have a breaking point and it is probably significantly less than the Ukrainian government, let alone assorted Ukrainian Loyalist paramilitaries or guerillas in waiting.that might step out if Ukraine doesn’tt
I wish I were surprised.
Agreed to a large degree, and even I – who am one of the most caustic critics of Putin – do not think he is Hitler 2.0. If anybody deserves that title it is Xi, or perhaps the Ayatollah. If I had to torture the analogy further I would compare Putin closer to Mussolini or Tojo, or Conrad von Hoetzendorff as the dangerous and bellicose but ultimately supporting actor. But that certainly doesn’t make them Not-Dangerous.
I’d argue that might be giving Milosevic’s government too little credit.
Milosevic actually had lost the war by 2000 at the very latest, and usually it is reckoned as being 1999 in Kosovo (with Bosnia and Croatia seeing defeats earlier) but he still hung onto power for about a year and wasn’t arrested by the new Serb government for several months after that. You can make a good argument he lost the Yugoslav Wars due to US and other NATO intervention (though I think this is overstated), but he probably wouldn’t have gone to the Hague had his domestic opposition not thrown him out and then pushed him on a plane.
I think that’s unlikely in Putin’s case but the most likely situation where he faces charges.
Agreed.
Same.
https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2023/02/20/netanyahu-chides-biden-envoys-call-to-pump-the-brakes-on-judicial-reform-calls-for-respect-among-democracies/
Addendum RE Yugoslavia: A better example of how leaders might end up in tribunals even without complete defeat might be the war criminals from Serbia’s enemies, Croatia, Bosnia, and the KLA, who all won their wars to one degree or another but who also had significant amounts of their leadership wind up at Den Haag due to extradition.
The big issue i see is the size of the fish. Milosevic was the main avatar and nominal leader of the losing side and (correctly, I think) fingered as the chief architecht of the Yugoslav wars, but neither Tudjman nor Izetbegovic ever had to see the insides of a Dutch Cell during their lives in spite of it being clear they were little better than Milosevic and his ilk, in large part because they were the “Good Guys” and on the winning side.
Bunge:
Concerned conservative (Bauxite) raised war crimes trials (Vlad?, inconceivable) because this isn’t a post WWII Nuremberg situation.
Now pay attention, Milosovitch and Radovan Kraditch (sic) were tried in the Hauge for war crimes. Got that?
Russia has been involved in Balkan wars for hundreds of years, even encouraging Serbia to get aggressive again this year. Got that?
Now if you wish to advocate bombing Russia, well that’s on you Bunge. Not in keeping with your usual bleats from the bunker though.
Don’t be a Bunge.
turtler, I am in agreement with most of what you say, as usual. But about this:
I’m afraid it’s not either/or, it’s both/and.
I am worried about our disarming ourselves to support Ukraine, and then having to deal with something in the Pacific. My husband points out, however, that the supply chain has already been activated, and at this point we will be better off to win the damn thing. I think Putin’s strategic objective, the relatively painless acquisition of all of Ukraine, has failed badly, and I don’t see the Ukrainians turning tail now. I still do not want to see US forces directly engaged.
Kate:
Well said and agree with your husband.
@Kate
A very true, horribly sobering fact. At the very least in most cases a dollar spent on AMRAMs for Ukraine is a dollar that can’t directly go to expanding the FBI to play Stasi, but that is still cold comfort. And why even as something of an anti-Putin hawk I’ll be the first to acknowledge that the struggle at home is more important.
Agreed on the whole with I think an important note. Most of the equipment we are sending to Ukraine isn’t stuff that would be the primary concern in a Pacific boondoggle. Especially since it is pretty much inconceivable that the PRC will be anything but the aggressors in this case, and unless we’re looking at invasions of Korea or India they’d need to sail in order to get anywhere. And for all of the many, many, MANY problems with the USN and its allies we still dominate the seas in way the CCP does not and they know it. Which is why the CCP plans for a multi year long naval buildup. Which is a danger the USN and others badly need to adjust for and I fear for our shipbuilding capacity, but it is still a potent deterrent.
We’d still need anti-tank missiles and tanks to fight in the Pacific, but relatively fewer than a European War. WWII and the commitments there I think are useful guidelines. So I do think that we aren’t particularly at risk of disarming ourselves or leaving the cupboard bare.
Another side benefit is that it will make it harder for the left to reject funding the military…. Though how much of a benefit that is in a world where Milley and co rule the roost is another kettle of fish Altogether.
Agreed there.
neither Tudjman nor Izetbegovic ever had to see the insides of a Dutch Cell during their lives in spite of it being clear they were little better than Milosevic and his ilk, in large part because they were the “Good Guys” and on the winning side.
Neither Tudjman nor Izetbegovic were responsible for manufacturing a charnel house in Bosnia. The violence in Yugoslavia was initiated by Serb forces for their own objectives. Tudjman can be held responsible for the mass expulsion of Serb civilians in Krajina, but that occurred four years into the fighting.
==
NB Tudjman died before Milosevic was ever tried.
Good point, turtler, about the different needs of a conflict in the Pacific. Alas for the condition of the US Navy.
@Art Deco
They were not the primary movers of it but Tudjman in particular was called out after his death by ICTY staff and argued he would have been tried had he lived long enough. And Izetbegovic’s Islamist sympathies and sponsorship of terrorism have usually been glossed over.
It says something about the Yugoslav Wars where they were not only the lesser evils compared to Milosevic, Karadzic, and co, but that there was a decent sized gap. But they were no saints and on merits probably should have been tried.
Agreed, though paramilitary violence by assorted sides had begun beforehand and Tudjman had even talked with Milosevic about a possible Molotov-Ribbentrop style partition of Bosnia-Herzogovinia in 1991. But once the war started things quickly got worse and while the Bosnian Muslim and Croat forces were not really able to compete with their Serb rivals on an even footing in the war crimes olympics (due to starting out at a firepower and number disadvantage, being restrained to some degree by Western sponsorship, etc) it was certainly not due to lack of “zest” by many among their ranks. Izetbegovic and Tudjman were apparently nowhere near the worst in their own ranks but they were still quite unpleasant and murderous people who often gave political cover to their more vile underlings.
Agreed, though that was just his most notable sin.
In any case, I am no Serbian Ultranationalist apologist and the Hague did make efforts to prosecute war criminals relatively even handedly, but there were some pretty glaring gaps in enforcement all the same.
“at this point we will be better off to win the damn thing.”
Win what? The right to spend billions or hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding a shattered Ukraine? The right to deal with a humiliated and enraged Russia? The right to continue being the world’s policeman? What exactly does the United States “win” in this situation?
Mike
Bunge wants Roosia.
Russia looses the urge to attack it’s neighbors.
Don’t be a Bunge
“Milosovitch and Radovan Kraditch (sic) were tried in the Hauge for war crimes.”
How did those guys wind up being tried? Magic? Space aliens? Did Jesus return from Heaven on a golden chariot and deliver them to the Hauge?
There’s some intelligent discussion of the Russia/Ukraine war around here. Sadly, I think om is more representative of the (lack of) thinking in DC.
I flatly do not understand how anyone can look at U.S. military interventions over the past two decades or so, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya and Syria, and believe “Yup. Getting involved in a proxy war against Russia is a great idea and JOE BIDEN is just the one to lead us in such a noble endeavor.”
Mike
“Russia looses the urge to attack it’s neighbors.”
Again, Russia has for decades (if not longer) considered a neutral or Russia-allied Ukraine to be vital to their national security. There’s really no dispute about that. om is proposing that a defeated and humiliated Russia seeing Ukraine become a de facto member of NATO will result in Russia becoming a more peaceful and passive nation.
Remind me…how did the U.S. respond when the Soviet Union tried to put nukes in Cuba? Or how did that whole “We will be greeted as liberators” thing in Iraq work out?
Mike
There’s no dispute that Roosia (or the Russian Federation) does not get to dictate the foreign affairs of it’s neighbors. Unless of course you are Bunge, then Roosia wants.
But Bunge brings back the Cuban Missile Crisis. Been there done that argument months ago. And of course his favorite of all time, Iraq. Because, Bunge.
BTW Bunge, GWB wasn’t Hitler either(Bushitler).
Because Russians may learn that invading neighbors isn’t tolerated by the rest of the world, excepting its moxies, proxies, and cottontails (Bunge).
A commentator on NPR says that the results of Biden’s recent physical (any cognitive test results conspicuously absent ) demonstrates that the shuffling wreck who often can’t remember where he is or people’s names, who wanders around, hand out, to shake hands with invisible people, the guy who has to be pulled back from walking off raised stages, whose mumbled, whispered, or mush mouthed speech is often unintelligible, and who makes up a lie about his supposedly praiseworthy background practically every time he opens his mouth, is actually a “strong and vigorous man.”*
This is the essence of a dictatorship, in which we are all supposed to accept and testify to a false reality, one which is contradicted, every day, by what we actually see and experience.
* https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2023/02/19/npr-touts-biden-strong-and-vigorous-man-hails-his-state-union-lies
My current educational French podcast is on Johnny Hallyday, the greatest French rocker of all. He was called the “French Elvis.” He died in 2017 and Macron declared a national holiday of homage to the fallen rock star.
Huh? I *think* Hallyday was mentioned in a Stones bio I once read, but that’s all I had. So I looked up his YouTubes and found this performance from Ed Sullivan.
–Johnny Hallyday, “Kili Watch” (1962)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ID-7SVqv8
He had a 50s pompadour, a big voice, sexy long-leg dancing, and yes, he rocked. But good lord what was he singing?. Half the words sounded like non-French gibberish, as opposed to the usual French gibberish I would have to work out painfully to hear even with the lyrics. I worried my road to French was longer than I thought.
Turns out “Kili Watch” was a novelty song and half the words were gibberish! The narrator has developed a contagious mental illness in which a nonsense song keeps playing in his mind and he infects everyone he meets with the song.
Kili watch!
He’s worth a look and a listen. Good fun. He sold 110 million records. So, you know, try to show a little respect.
@ turtler and kate
We may have disagreements about the wisdom of NATO expansion over the past few decades, but that die is cast. Given the situation we’re in, I tend towards Kate’s husband’s point of view, but I still worry about escalation. Putin is on record as believing that the fall of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe. Would Putin sit idly by and become the second Russian leader in the past half-century to preside over the total emasculation of Russia? Would Putin prefer a world in which Russia is a humiliated third-class power, or WWIII? Perhaps playing Mussolini to Xi is Putin’s best play.
That’s what concerns me. I wonder if telegraphing the winding down of our involvement (i.e., “no blank check”) is a strategy to avoid that scenario.
I’m watching excerpts from the Pelosi hidden J6 House “Insurrection” video trove, newly unleashed to Tucker Carlson. (Actually, a livestream by Robert Gouveiea on YT.)
Taking a break, I see Just The News reporting on Rep MTG calling for a National Divoce on Pres Day. Her tweet thread gets me to share a thoughtful substack piece from (a black conservative?), posted October 1, last year.
He’s says he’s been in conversation with libertarian Michael Malice and Trump philosopher Michael Anton, among others. Hence, my share, here.
Dave Reabois properly notes that nations eventually do end. Just not all choose their time to do so.
He then goes on to counter the difficulty argument by adding that what’s at first difficult and thus impossible becomes less and less so through detailed consideration and repetition.
He then closes with this appeal to necessary and reasonableness:
“For more than a century, Progressives have dedicated themselves to abolishing the legitimacy of federalism, and then reconstituting the federal government and the courts in order to make its application and practice all but impossible. Over time, as their fanaticism grew, the Left’s position hardened, from the mere undesirability of local differences and state sovereignty to the illegitimacy, unjustness, and unfathomable evil of such an arrangement.
“In order to return to a time of relative public consensus on these things, one side must impose its will on the other. While Red America isn’t really interested in imposing its will on Blue America, it’s clear that the reverse is emphatically not true.
“In a famous 1964 speech, Ronald Reagan said about last century’s Cold War, ‘there’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace, and you can have it in the next second: surrender.’ This might be the unstated solution proffered by mainstream right commentariat, but is this the best we can do?
“Because it’s just over the horizon of what we can imagine from our vantage point, National Divorce isn’t at all an immediate action plan–or, at least, I don’t see it as such. Rather, it is a rhetorical strategy to prepare the ground for crucial discussions about what comes next in America, as the country grows even more divided, bitter, and angry.
“More than anything else, it is a reminder for Red America to think about economic and cultural autonomy for itself, and what it would take to get there.
“Autonomy for Red America is of crucial importance, regardless of the status of political or real separation. It is the ability for Americans to be self-sufficient from the financial, educational and cultural institutions that are hostile to its beliefs and way of life, and make reconciliation increasingly impossible.“
He makes a far better case than I recall encountering in a long, long while — not even here.
https://davereaboi.substack.com/p/national-divorce-is-expensive-but
This is the essence of a dictatorship, in which we are all supposed to accept and testify to a false reality, one which is contradicted, every day, by what we actually see and experience.
==
It’s not the essence of a dictatorship. It’s an indicator that NPR is staffed by people with zero integrity. A Republican Congress should long since have revoked the charters of both NPR and PBS, and shut down the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The local pubic stations can purchase syndicated programming. If there’s to be public financing, state governments can provide enabling legislation for consortia of counties to set up arts councils on which each member county has a share-vote representation derived from the voluntary contribution of the county to financing the council over the previous six years. The arts councils can distribute the patronage to various projects, including the local public stations. No need for state or federal financing.
“There’s no dispute that Roosia (or the Russian Federation) does not get to dictate the foreign affairs of it’s neighbors.”
Uh…why not? We certainly take that approach. Every great power, or those who think they’re great powers, expects and demands to exert influence over their neighbors. How much does the rest of the world bend over backwards to avoid calling Taiwan a country? Or maybe ask Ireland about what it’s been like living next to England over the centuries? Ou ask Central and South America about living in the same hemisphere as the United States?
And as far as “teaching Russia a lesson”…how did it work when they “taught Germany a lesson” after WWI?
That a grown adult in 2023 is utterly incapable of imagining or acknowledging potential negative consequences to waging a proxy war right on the border of a nuclear power makes me despair for our future as a species.
Mike
C’mon, Art — we all know that NPR, however minimally funded Federally, is a mouthpiece for the Apparatchik Class or New Class that Lords Above us.
It issues Good Thought and Wrong Thought dicta every day.
The authoritative number of arms of the Federal Octopus was put at above 250, and it’s expanse beyond that is known only to Astrologers.
Why bother?
A couple interesting articles I read today.
Why was the East Palestine tank car blown up?
Because rollovers and derailments are expected, hazardous transport tanks are designed to survive them. They are also designed with rollover protection so that fill connections are protected to remain accessible and functional in the case of these accidents. This would have allowed responders to connect to and empty the tanks into alternates such as over-the-road tanks and then hauled away. Why was this approach rejected?
Yes, connect and empty the tanks. Why not? That was my first thought and question about the accident, but then unlike this author, I didn’t know anything about rail tank practices.
________
Why are so many Americans not working?
A possible partial answer: Because over 55 workers are cashing out their valuable homes (or planning to) and retiring.
I believe Dave’s ancestry is Jewish, his people coming from Hungary.
Meanwhile, Mayor Pete is trying to make up for being AWOL for ten days after the East Palestine train derailment: he’s sent a sternly worded three-page letter to the Norfolk Southern railway company– most likely as an attempt to head off calls for his resignation as Transportation Secretary:
https://nypost.com/2023/02/20/pete-buttigieg-blasts-norfolk-southern-after-ohio-train-derailment/
OTOH, maybe he’s trying to position himself to be Brandon’s next VP . . . .
Bunge:
You certainly seem all in on Roosian excuses, do they get to dictate your responses? Seems so. Does Roosia get to dictate the foreign policy of Poland, Finland, China, Norway, the USA …. get the pattern, or do I need to write in block letters with a Sharpie? Because Roosia is a special country? Care to explain why they are so special to you? Or just because they threaten to nuke everyone, cottontail?
Russia lost to the Germans (Central Powers) in WWI, Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 1918. That happened before the Commies took over. Any other wisdom Bunge? They also lost to Poland in the early 1920s but got their revenge on Poland with the help of the Nazi Germans in 1939. Forgot that too Bunge? Anything else you need to know about recent European history and the Russians is not hidden (try the Interwebs, or a book, or reading Turtler’s comments again).
So now Bunge goes down the path of historical nation bashing, not to exclude his own country, and my country the United States of America. Shows where his fealty to Vlad leads him.
Don’t be like or be, a Bunge.
@MBunge
Not a terrible article and Kotkin makes many good points. We should certainly be mindful of the historical track record and avoid wishful thinking. That said, I do think there are a few points I take issue with.
World War I and most Ethiopian-Eritrean Wars called. They want their money back.
Yes, production of weaponry is crucial. But manpower is the one indispensable weapon, and the only one you cannot produce from any factory or workshop. Specifically, WILLING manpower is indispensable.
The Central Powers didn’t lose WWI because they ran out of the capacity to produce weapons (though that ability did wane). They didn’t even lose it because they ran out of warm bodies to throw into the meat grinder. They lost it because the number of warm bodies grew so thin on the ground that – along with abusive and misguided strategies – morale snapped and what relatively few soldiers on hand either decided that if they were going to die fighting they might as well do so fighting the people sending them to death or capture, or that they weren’t going to stick their necks out for the governments that did so.
In general manpower and public will matter for far more in an attritional war than weaponry. Not because equipment isn’t important (because otherwise you get onesided slaughters like what happened to the Madhists in the late 19th century or Saddam’s army in 1991 and 2003) but because a population with willing, available fighters can generally continue to resist, even if it involves cultivating opium in marginal soil and buying Khyber Pass Rifles on the Black Market on the off chance aiming at a Coalition soldier and pulling the trigger will blow the soldier away rather than the person holding the gun.
Likewise, we didn’t strategically lose Vietnam because we ran out of war material, but out of public support.
Destroy the will and/or capacity to fight and the rest falls in line.
This is manifestly untrue and I wonder where Kotkin is getting his information. In practice the US and the rest of the West IS Ramping up production, it is just that doing so usually has sizable lead times. Which isn’t surprising since it is hard to go from peacetime production to meet high intensity war. For starters while you can have wonderful theories and approximations of the rate of consumption for equipment and ammunition (and they might even be accurate) you don’t actually KNOW rate of consumption for a given conflict until it is happening (and even there’s usually lag as you have to get accurate counts and correlate the data).
https://www.defensenews.com/land/2023/01/26/with-demand-high-in-ukraine-us-army-ramps-up-artillery-production/
https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/02/19/us-boosts-artillery-round-production/
This is true but also INCREDIBLY unsurprising for a pitched conventional war, and indeed it is one reason why the stocks exist. To buy time for the logisticians and government critters to take stock of the situation and evaluate how much production needs to ramp up.
Wait, what was that about having to destroy the enemy’s weapons productions Kotkin?
Again. It is nice and greatly shortens the war, but it is not strictly necessary. Again, in WWI the only Allied power to launch major strategic bombing operations on the Central Powers was Italy, and those had some success but were hardly decisive. Ironically the Central Powers (especially the Germans) engaged in more bombing of their enemies than vice versa, it just wasn’t anywhere NEAR enough.
And sure, you’d be right to argue this is just WWI, at the very dawn of flight, and the world has greatly changed and so have the calculations. And you’d be right. But it proves my general point. Ultimately there aren’t many acceptable substitutes for victory on the field, or at least sustaining the effort there.
Agreed. At most we have seen fraying on both main sides (though I would argue the Donbas “Separatists” are in the early stages of disintegration). Though having to mobilize and expedite the deployment of raw troops as both sides have done is a first step towards disintegration and one the Russians in particular have been complaining about. Nothing too decisive yet though.
Agreed, though failure in external conflict often greatly undermines and destabilizes the ability to repress internal opposition. Granted they still succeed more often than they fail, as a close examination of Russian history shows, but it is still an issue.
I half-agree. I think Kotkin is underestimating the amount of leverage the CCP has over Russia due to the pipelines and diplomatic and military support, but not its willingness to support the Kremlin under the table.
Probably a Ukrainian reconquest of all or at least the vast majority of its occupied territory (with possible leeway for extremely pro-Russian areas on the borders of the Donbas that can be ceded as part of a border boundary clarification) and successful consolidation of Ukrainian gov’t authority over those areas and integration (official or unofficial) with the West’s diplomatic and defense institutions.
Indeed, though ironically I’d argue the Kremlin suffered something like this before, including in the first stage of this war in 2014-2015, where it thought Minsk would help cement its dominance in the Donbas and Crimea only for the former to be undermined by costly attacks and Ukrainian pressure.
Provably false, as a cursory look at things like planes, tanks, and Air-to-Air missiles show.
Because the Taiwanese do not need Anti-tank missiles nearly as much as the Ukrainians do, while conversely the Ukrainians do not need as many anti-ship missiles as the Taiwanese do. While there will be terrestrial combat in a South Pacific War and Air and Naval conflict in the Ukrainian War or another European War, the weighting is going to be significantly different.
Agreed, and the governments in question – for better or worse -are at least making indications they can. And their ceilings and room for improvement are much, Much higher than that of Russia.
Agreed, but it is UNDERMINING it, both in terms of quality and quantity.
And that’s really bad.
But now compare that to the actual usage of missiles.
We ROUTINELY see the Russians fire off more than a hundred -and often hundreds- of missiles at Ukraine in this war DAILY.
That’s costly.
There’s a REASON why the volume of Russian missile fire sways so drastically. Because they need to conserve their missile stockpiles and keep their powder dry so they have something to fire off in the metaphorical rainy day. Precisely because their usage rates so FAR outstrips production at current, and probably matches or exceeds the possible production under ideal circumstances under the present level of mobilization.
I find it ironic Kotkin is talking in grave detail about us sending “everything” and are running our stocks down in things like artillery shells, but is not making such a great deal about it in terms of the Russian military. In spite of how it is generally far easier to ramp up production of artillery shells than missiles.
Absolutely true and that is a matter of concern and a way for them to get more munitions than they can produce, likewise with Ukraine. But that comes at its own cost, namely depletion of currency stocks and in the case of Russia reputation as reliable weapon wholesaler.
Agreed. Though nobody is quite sure HOW much of it is rotting versus how much is not.
Not really no, for the reasons I’ve mentioned before. Which is one reason why the Kremlin was ultimately forced out of Kherson in a textbook battle of attrition.
Again, if this were true we’d expect half the planet to be speaking German under a dystopian Neo-Nordic Pagan hell state courtesy of Herr Ludendorff. That didn’t happen. And lest anybody complain about me citing ancient history unfairly, we would have also seen very different outcomes for the Iran-Iraq War (where the Iranians held aerial superiority for most of the war) and a prosperous, free Afghanistan.
Ideally yes, though even that is ultimately optional to some degree.
Moreover, in a war like this it is MUCH MUCH Easier to deny the other side the ability to resupply on the battlefield than it is to deny the enemy the ability to produce equipment. This is especially true for the Ukrainian side but also applies to Russia.
Already addressed this before, because this is simply untrue. Whether it is ENOUGH is another question.
By lashing out with your knees and pounding the other guy’s shins and ankles to bring them down. Which the Ukrainians have had significant luck in doing vis a vis hitting Russian supplies on the “Second” and “Third” Miles of getting the stuff from the places where it is produced to the front lines.
Agreed.
Agreed, though the Ukrainians have significant experience in fortification work and the Russians do too. The issue is the sheer LENGTH of the real estate to cover, even if we just counted Russian borders alone without including Belarusian ones (Which we should). But even that isn’t strictly speaking impossible. Issue is if there will be enough resources and commitment to make it stick.
True but again, for the umpteenth time, unsurprising precisely BECAUSE almost nobody has the military-industrial complex running on a scale to continue this ALL THE TIME. It would be prohibitively expensive even for a hawk like me. Which is why you build up stock as a buffer and use it while evaluating what you need to do.
Agreed with CAVEATS. While the Russian leadership doesn’t really care about its people per se, it DOES have to care about the fact that its people care about said people on some level. Which is why if you actually look at the origins of casualties from the war and Mobiks, they tend to DISPROPORTIONATELY come from places like Buryatia and not from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In other words, they are essentially mining the Russian equivalent of “Flyover Country but on Steroids” to avoid having to mobilize the families of people who either have connections or a level of affluence and audibility to cause problems. Which so far has worked because outside of the sort of standing military professionals that Russia has relied on for its hard striking power, the casualties on the Russian side are generally people who will not be widely missed.
But how much can that continue?
Russia in 2023 is not the USSR of 1943.
For starters, millions willingly or unwillingly went to their deaths in the meat grinder because they quite literally had no better options. Hitler’s mass murder of even common Soviet nationals and even refusal to allow capitulations in places like Leningrad meant that you either had the choice of dying on your feet fighting as a martyr to the Soviet Union/International Communism/Holy Mother Russia/ The Glory Of God/Your Family/Your Loved Ones/ Fill In The Blanks Here…. or you died on your knees in a murder pit because Oskar Dirlewanger’s penpal wanted to test out the new Tokarov or in the gas chambers of Auschwitz so the SS could test them*.
* = Yes, that really happened.
In contrast in WWI the Central Powers – while headed up by deranged mass murderers scarcely less evil than Shicklegruber – were far more pragmatic and skilled at co-opting dissidents in the Russian Empire and playing divide and conquer. While in the wars with Finland and Afghanistan there was not the kind of messianic Do-Or-Die incentive.
So the appetite to continue the slaughter waned quicker.
This is very true, and well worth remembering. Though it is worth noting that even among the mobilized there have been problems such as fragging.
Maybe, but making due AFTER such expenditures is a problem of its own.
Not from a moral or theoretical level, but on a practical level Russia cannot sustain World War style losses.
Well that and because he knew he would not be able to secure it or get much tangible results from it due to the occupation arrangements.
Intentionally no, though honestly the tolerance for suffering can be a useful survival skill.
Agreed with the caveats of volunteers. And by and large the Ukrainians are the ones happy to fight, judging from polling and other statements. After all, if they do not who will fight for them?
Which has its own benefits because it limits quite how much Putin can wave the NATO card around and have it stick.
Agreed. But there is also the issue that doing so would not only lead to a greatly isolated Russia (even in comparison to now) and destroy much of what Putin claims to want to secure.
Even stupidity usually has its own rationales.
Agreed TO A POINT, though the pressures of survival usually mean states and societies have to have institutions functioning on Some level in order to sustain the war.
So the advent of a hot war causes a spark of Rally Around the Flag. Color me amazed, simply AMAZED.
But we’re already seeing cleavages and dissatisfaction about HOW said war is being waged, which is usually a waystation for broader complaints of the war itself, as we have seen multiple times over from Jurganthine War era Rome to the US in the War on Terror.
Maybe, but it’s worth remembering that Putin is not Stalin, for both good and bad. He simply lacks the power and men to mobilize.
Honestly while I agree Putin has FAR too high a reputation as a chessmaster big brain, I think Syria largely worked out for him. He took a chaotic civil war and steadily – if brutally – helped his friend in Damascus straighten it out, to the point where there is no serious prospect of Assad being overthrown as is, or Russia losing Tarsus and its interests in the Levant. Moreover, brutality worked a lot better when the Kremlin and its Baathist friends were either fighting Literally IS or people it could paint as such or not that much different from it, and razing Hama again doesn’t attract the same kind of controversy as striking Kyiv.
There’s a reason why Putin used the Russian involvement in Syria as a propaganda mast for the revived Russian military and its achievements, and I think it worked out for him.
Agreed, which I think dovetails with what I have observed before. Putin is largely burning Russia’s stored capital in more ways than one, and has been remarkably short-sighted even by the standards of Eastern European siloviki. That’s starting to come back to bite him.
I notice that nowhere does om deny that every nation which sees itself as a great power, economically and militarily, expects and even demands to have influence over its neighbors. He also at no point denies what is widely agreed to by just about every historian, which is that the harsh treatment of Germany after WWI was a contributing factor to the rise of Hitler and WWII. Did it cause it? No. Did it help grease the skids? Everyone says yes.
Instead of addressing the points I make, om either just babbles nonsense or starts talking about something almost entirely unrelated. He just keeps repeating “Putin bad” like it is some sort of Viagra placebo that’s going to make his tiny dick work. Yes, Putin is bad. He can also end the war in Ukraine within a day with a few tactical nukes. That’s a possibility I would like to stay away from. om seems bound and determined to make it a reality.
The truly pitiful thing is that I’m pretty sure a few million dead Ukrainians wouldn’t bother om at all. They wouldn’t make his tiny dick work, but they’d probably take his mind off it.
Mike
Bunge:
Contrary to your assertion, everyone does not buy into Keynes’ theory that the Treaty of Versailles led to (causation implied) Hitler and WWII; stuff you heard in High School. Yep, John Maynard Keynes, that guy.
But here you go. Maybe you will learn something.
No, the Treaty of Versailles did NOT lead to hyperinflation OR the Nazis -TIKhistory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR-4RTSJ_yo
“Bunge, you ignorant sl*t” apologies to Jane Curtin and SNL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c91XUyg9iWM
And once again don’t project your problems onto the interweb. There is a little blue pill for you.
Don’t be a Bunge.
@MBunge Part 2
Sure, and getting whatever kickbacks and influence we or our pols can get from it, as well as firmly removing much or all of Ukraine from the Kremlin’s sphere of influence for the forseeable future.
We’ve already been dealing with that since the early 90s, and that’s putting it lightly. I still remember 2008 in Georgia. I still remember multiple waves of attempted detente with the Kremlin, most infamously the snubbing of our Georgian allies in Obama and Clinton’s reset. In any case, Putin and those capable of being allowed to succeed him have shown they are manifestly untrustworthy and unwilling to be reconciled.
Ergo, I find it much safer and preferable to deal with a humiliated and enraged Russia that will need a decade or two to recover and cannot credibly post a purely conventional threat to our interests than to deal with an arrogant and emboldened Russia. That is of course my opinion, but I think history stands by it.
Because frankly Putin’s regime is going to be enraged, humiliated, and butthurt no matter what we do. So we might as well give it as little in the way of confidence and resources to encourage it to do something truly reckless.
Correct. To decide whether or not to continue being the world’s policeman or not to. Because the flexibility to voluntarily relinquish a position or not is better than being forced out of it. Especially since I REALLY do not see any better alternatives on the horizon, and ironically the mobilization of support for Ukraine is helping to set in stage some possible foundations for a decline or even withdrawal of the US from the global police role, such as Europe at least paying lip service to gearing up and pulling its weight.
A humiliated, embittered, and generally weaker Russia, prestige for our weapons and practical lessons on them and the war economy, and hopefully some breathing room to adjust.
Jesus may have returned from heaven, but not on a golden chariot. But most visibly it was because the Serbian dictatorship so discredited itself from defeats, corruption, and internal repression that it turned the public against itself, resulting in Milosevic being turned out by the opposition and then thrown to the Haag
I can believe it.
I don’t think it is a good idea, but we didn’t decide to spark the war. Putin did. And in light of that I think it is better to see it through.
Put it this way: What message would it send to Russia or the PRC or other enemies if the Putin regime gets into a proxy war WITH US (which is again what happened; the Kremlin is the aggressor here) under a senile coot and his corrupt cabal, and fails to win? Or at least decisively so? What will it say to our allies?
We are hurting for credibility after Afghanistan and others, so I do not see how giving way in the name of peace or out of extreme fear of escalation will help.
This is correct and indeed it does go earlier. However we can say the exact same thing about what is currently the Baltics. And yet the Russian government was repeatedly forced to relinquish its quest to control them, most decisively for now in the 1980s. Aleksandr Nevaskoy was conducting mass executions of Baltic peoples levied into the armies of the Teutonic Order on grounds of treason against their “rightful” Novgorodian leaders for much, much longer than Moscow has had any kind of influence in Ukraine.
Frankly it’s worth a try. Peace through strength is a much sounder policy than pretty much every policy we have tried with the Kremlin since the Soviet Coup of 1991. And again it has a decently positive track record.
We responded by blockading the island and pressuring the Soviets to withdraw them (helped by their own concerns about the Castros starting a nuclear apocalypse without their say so) and then de-escalated, limiting ourselves to “subtle’ attempts to coup the dictatorship in Habana or assassinate one or another Castro rather than trying Playa Giron 2.0
Which is why this REALLY is not the argument you seem to think it is. Because the results of the Cuban Missile Crisis resulted in the US tacitly accepting a quasi-Stalinist, ultra-anti-American dictatorship just a few miles of Florida’s coast, where it has remained for most of a century. Hell, we struggle to sustain a consensus about keeping the embargos going.
And again, Russian troops have not set foot in Estonia in force for a quarter of a century.
Not as good as planned, but nowhere near as badly as meme memory has it.
The truth is, we WERE Greeted as liberators in the Kurdish North, the melting pot West, and the Sunni South and Eastern Fringe. The only serious opposition to the downfall of Saddam came from the Shiite core around the Two Rivers (which is why they joined the likes of Baathist remnants and AQII in droves).
The issue being that while the Kurds, Assyrians, etc. largely stayed the course, the Sunni nuts were not interested in gratitude and particularly saw the chance to capitalize on the chaos to seize their own power.
But it’s well worth realizing how dependent on foreign fighters most of the “insurgent” groups were, and how fickle even many of the rebel locals were (such as the diplomatic surge that saw many of them turn their coats).
See: Astana Accords, among others.
Nowhere near as much as you like to claim.
Please identify the last time USMC troops landed in
A: Nicaragua
B: Venezuela
and
C: Cuba.
I’ll wait.
The US has been de-emphasizing forcing its influence on the Western Hemisphere and unfriendly regimes there for quite some time (something I view as a grave mistake given the likes of the Bolivarians), ESPECIALLY in a kinetic, Boots-on-the-Ground way (which is probably for the best).
Attempts to draw a parallel to “If we were in Russia’s situation we’d be doing the same” fall fallow on examinations of the Mexican Revolution and Castro’s Cuba.
Sure, but there are limits to how much influence that can be, and especially how much tolerance there is to open invasion.
A fair amount, and a decent point. But how unsuccessful has the PRC been in other ways?
What is this even supposed to mean? Even the most genocidal, fanatical Irish Republican ultranationalist can entertain only the most far-fetched fantasies of destroying “England”, and often times Irish factions have welcomed English/British influence. There simply isn’t the appetite or means to go further.
You ask Central and South America about living in the same hemisphere as the United States?
Yes, and the result has been remarkably simple.
Not well enough, and frankly a large part of the problem with the post-WWI settlement was that it was the ugly middle ground of being both too lenient and too stern, and I frankly believe the bigger problem was the former. How did it work when teaching Germany and Japan a lesson after WWII? or Italy?
Frankly, the entire Imperial Cabinets of Berlin, Vienna, and Constantinople, the staffs of the CUP leadership, the OHL, and AOK should have been taken out and publicly shot for their actions in WWI. With a side helping of having Wilhelm II hanged until dead, Ferdinand I flamethrower’d, and Fritz Haber gassed.
And lest anybody think that is excessive, I DARE you to read self-confessed accounts of Grenzers raping and beheading Serbian and Montenegrin villagers, Belgian refugees going back to their home only to die because of drawing water from an intentionally-poisoned well, or the effects of poison gas on soldiers and civilians in 1915.
Beyond such actions being RICHLY warranted by their conduct (and if anybody wishes to dispute that, WHOA boy will I have something to tell you), it would have also underlined who won and who lost the war, and also had welcome side effects such as limiting the ability of the German economists to screw with their printers (and thus devastate the global economy for half a decade until 1923).
But that isn’t what happened. Meaning you had the same people who had murdered millions of Serbs, Belgians, Armenians, and others to A: Claim to they hadn’t REALLY been defeated, B: Claim they were not responsible for waging what was then one of the most nakedly destructive and unjust wars in history (and indeed it has been more than a century and large parts of German academia STILL lie and claim the Russians are responsible for the war), and C: Learn how they had been defeated to try and avoid it (which is why the Wehrmacht’s doctrine in the early war is UNCANNILY like that of the late war, 1917-1920 Western Allies).
Oh yeah, and
D: Pal up with the world’s great Ne’er-do-wells like the Bolsheviks to illegally rearm and help recreate a terminal cancer within German society in the form of the Reichswehr and its “Black Reichswehr” adjuncts.
I can imagine the potential negative consequences in waging such a proxy war. But I also point out that it was Putin who started the war, and I fail to see how completely abdicating the challenge will help avoid such a prospect. That doesn’t mean I’m in favor of giving Gaidar a suitcase nuke and a free ticket to Moscow, but it does mean that I think the old, allegorical statement from Lenin’s of “When you meet Mush, Push, when you meet Steel, Stop” is worth considering.
PS: In general proxy wars against Russia/The USSR’s borders have generally had a decent track record. The Baltic and Polish insurgencies were ultimately unsuccessful but tied down the Red Army and their proxies for about a decade, and Afghanistan had plenty of bad cast off consequences but it also devastated the Soviet military and society, especially in terms of morale.
@MBunge Part 3
Sorry, didn’t mention that.
Fair.
Honestly there has been a sea change in that, especially with a few things such as the time to digest the East-of-the-Wall archives relevant to the matter like Prussian State Archives as well as a willingness to look sharply at the claims of German and Austrian historiography, and the role of state-sponsored propaganda by not just the Third Reich, the KPD, and assorted nationalists but also the “Good” Weimar Governments’s Foreign Office’s Kriegsschuldreferat (War Responsibility Office), aka “The Office for dodging responsibility about the war, curating the image of it, and insisting Germany fought a defensive war in spite of being literally incapable of doing so due to not having any mobilization or war plans for a defensive two front war.
That and remembering the Weimar 20s existed and the influence of men (and I use that term loosely) like von Seeckt.
The consensus is generally shifting much more strongly in a pro-Versailles direction and even that the Second Reich’s leadership was not punished as seriously as either they warranted or was as pragmatic. This is still a minority POV of course, as most new research is, but I think at least much of the evidence is compelling.
Likewise, there’s the fact that Russia tends to go dormant in expansion for about a decade or two after a serious defeat on its frontiers, especially the Western ones. Ivan IV’s attempts to conquer the Baltics and establish a puppet “Kingdom of Livonia” was beaten so sharply by an unlikely alliance of Poles, Swedes, Danes, Hungarians, and Norwegians that Russian expansion would not only stall out but it would face invasions by the Swedes and Poles that in the latter case would occupy Moscow. The tactically successful but strategically frustrating Seven Years’ War saw Russia falter into a series of palace coups that saw it gain no territory from Prussia and indeed saw it forced to come to terms with Prussia to retain influence in Poland. Defeat in the Crimean War forced Russia to play nice on the European stage for about 20 years until the rise of Germany and Turkish brutality undermined the peace treaty of Paris. The failure in WWI and Lenin’s attempt to do world revolution “live” at the turn of the decade saw even the Soviets – whose entire ideology was based on world revolution through armed subversion or conquest – lick their wounds for about a decade, if not two.
Not everybody, and even those who do are increasingly divided on how it did so. In particular Hindenburg should never have been in a position to be President of Germany after his actions as Dictator during 1916-1918.
Fair, which is also why I will try and respond.
Possible, and I don’t know. In any case om could do much better.
Bunge:
Some more homework, ignorance can be cured they say, stupid is another matter;
cdr salamander https://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/
Monday, February 20, 2023
A View from Tallinn
“Few have a better national understanding of Russia than the Estonians, and it shows;
Most of Russia’s attention is currently focused on its ruthless war in Ukraine, but Putin has not lost sight of the bigger objectives. In fact, in Russia’s view, success in Ukraine serves as a major stepping stone for reaching further goals.
Russia’s long-term strategic aims remain unchanged: to dissolve the rules-based world order. Putin has written and talked about this for the past 15 years, and Russia’s actions have brutally proved it. Re-establishing spheres of influence in Eastern Europe and recreating buffer zones are the key steps in turning the current international order around for Russia. This is the most important reason why Russian tanks rolled over the Ukrainian border on February 24, 2022, and why similar scenarios have unfolded
…
Putin and his policies enjoy widespread support in Russia, which has only strengthened during the war in Ukraine.
…
Should Russia manage to gain any territory as a result of this war – either de iure at a negotiation table or de facto by freezing the situation in its current state, keeping the occupied areas under its authority for a longer time – it will have essentially moved closer to its goal. The Kremlin will have demonstrated that altering national borders with military force is feasible and the West and its rules-based world order can be weakened.
Hence, as long as the territorial integrity of Ukraine has not been fully restored, it is the rules-based order of the West that is facing a strategic failure. It may have come at a higher cost than expected, but Russia is still on track towards its strategic aims. Historically, political concessions are only a fast track to another “special military operation”, possibly against Allied countries.
If it works, why stop?”
That is just an excerpt from the post, which cites Russia’s War in Ukraine: Myths and Lessons from Kaitseministeerium The Republic of Estonia Ministry of Defense. You know, those folks who lived under the tender mercies of the USSR and before that Imperial Russia.
https://kaitseministeerium.ee/en/mythsandlessons
So learn something Bunge. Your choice. I added bold font to the quote so you would catch the point, Bunge.
@Bauxite
Agreed, for better or worse.
Likewise, and especially given our weak, corrupt, tyrannical leadership and war weariness. Which is also why I will not prioritize supporting Ukraine over sorting out our domestic issues.
Indeed, and to be fair he is far from alone in that, especially given the nascent Soviet nostalgia. Not helped by many Russian governments intentionally cultivating a sort of nostalgia about the Soviet period and blaming all that went wrong on the West to avoid embarrassing issues such as Russian demography and the Brezhnev Stagnation.
I’d count at least three, but a good point.
That said, I think he has already accepted some emasculation. Including a growing dependence on the PRC and allowing Kadyrov to run riot not just in Chechnya but also in wider Russian politics (which would be a grotesque mockery of all Russian sacrifices in the Chechen wars and their castoffs if anybody thought much about it). That and sub par attempts to even *Try* and address matters like corruption, drug use, and demography don’t help.
Of course one can argue we are in similar issues, and that might be true. But it still fits.
Agreed, and I honestly think on some level he already has. Which is also why I do think dealing him a defeat or at least a bloody nose will help on the grand scale, so long as it can e done without things escalating.
Understandably.
I can believe that. And I’m not even entirely opposed to it. Ultimately America has to come first, and while I do think supporting Ukraine’s defense will benefit American interests in many ways if that changes it is only responsible to cut losses.
@Snow on Pine
I’m not sure it is the essence of a dictatorship; I think the essence of dictatorship is rule by decree. But we are getting there with disturbing speed. And the ability of the media and other propaganda outlets to push a “Post-Truth” Atmosphere only hurts us.
@om
Honestly you are acting more like Mr. Strawman here than Bunge or Bauxite are.
Sure, but it also serves as a useful measuring stick. Is Putin as existential a threat to us as Hitler was?
And it’s worth noting Hitler had no nukes, no weapons capable of directly hitting the US, and a less than favorable strategic position.
Sure, but they were the product of a remarkable situation where the Serbian government that came after them threw them out. Most war crimes tribunals have happened similarly or were conducted by the home government.
Fair, but still worth noting it hasn’t been nonstop so.
Now if you wish to advocate bombing Russia, well that’s on you Bunge. Not in keeping with your usual bleats from the bunker though.
Well, the Kremlin clearly disputes it, at least unofficially (because it’d be hard to justify otherwise).
I mean, it is tolerated by a lot of countries including India and Saudi Arabia, and outright supported by the likes of the PRC, Venezuela, and North Korea. So the risk is there.
But fortunately few have been willing to be TOO explicit in their tolerance of it, let alone support.
Turtler:
That was a tome. Brevity is the soul of wit, Yeah when you’ve lost North Korea and Venezuela it is truly worrisome.
The Russia-Ukraine war is Europe’s problem. Their response indicates they don’t think it’s an existential crisis.
It’s time for them to defend themselves. The debt to GDP ratio of the EU zone is 79%. Germany’s ratio is 70%. They can afford to pay for their own defense.
We, meanwhile, are swimming in debt. Every dollar we send Ukraine is borrowed. We will pay interest for the rest of our lives, our children’s lives and their children’s lives.
The interest on the Afghan war is already $500 billion. It will never be paid.
At some point someone must realize the parties over.
Braine E:
Every hear of penny wise pound foolish?
@om
Indeed,
And I freely admit brevity is not a strong part for me.
But while brevity may be the soul of wit, length provides room for depth.
True though we never had them. But the fact is that even the Kremlin is not entirely absent.
@Brian E
I fear it is also our problem, albeit not as directly as it is for them.
Some of them certainly do. And even among most of the more dovish or typical EU types it has gotten a reaction.
Agreed there, but I think that dovetails with the general insanity of modern finance and credit. War debt and other military spending is just a small portion of that.
Turtler:
I do appreciate your thoroughness and clarity.
Though sometimes I wouldn’t mind a little TLC in the form of a TL;DR… 🙂
@huxley
A fair point. I’ll have to try that sometime.
Freshly revealed J6 video — text reads “Nothing to see here
“Just a guy wearing an earpiece physically forcing people inside the Capitol on J6 & a woman calling him out on it
“I’m sure he wasn’t a Federal Agent of any kind [/sarc intended]
“*This* is why they don’t want more video footage released”
https://twitter.com/DC_Draino/status/1627783256287375361?cxt=HHwWgsCzpemPhpctAAAA
Listening to more Johnny Hallyday, the “French Elvis.” The guy was a force.
I adore the French chanteuse goddesses. But the French male singers have been a tougher sell. So many hit my ear and eye as unspeakable lounge lizards like the oil-oozy character Christopher Walken played on SNL in “The Continental” sketches.
But not Johnny.
Patrick Swayze singing French.
–Johnny Hallyday, “Unchained Melody” (French/English)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFUHDJGI_j0
RE sdferr — and Dave Reaboi — Thank you!
By design…
“Is the Government About to Create a Massive Debt Crisis?”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-02-18/government-about-create-massive-debt-crisis
Well, we’ve all learned that the more crises there are—and the more massive they are—THE BETTER! (For whom, though?? Um…oh right. You’re not supposed to ask that…)
To be sure, anyone paying attention might just believe that there already is a “Massive Debt Crisis”.
(I guess the question, therefore, is actually whether there will be an even Massiver Massive Debt Crisis”. But as they say, “To ask the question is to…”.)
– – – – – – – –
+ Bonus:
This little curiosity from the powers that be in a tiny little country that seems to have been punching far above its weight (at windmills)…
‘How New Zealand Dealt With “Disinformation”‘
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/how-new-zealand-dealt-disinformation
Short version: Anything we say is true, even if it changes: everything you say is false.
@ Turtler > “And for all of the many, many, MANY problems with the USN and its allies we still dominate the seas in way the CCP does not and they know it. Which is why the CCP plans for a multi year long naval buildup. Which is a danger the USN and others badly need to adjust for and I fear for our shipbuilding capacity, but it is still a potent deterrent.”
I would be interested in your reaction to J.E. Dyer’s analysis of China’s Long Game here:
https://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/2023/02/12/china-goes-down-to-the-sea-putting-the-hybrid-in-warfare-bonus-update-bidens-excellent-balloon-adventure/
I posted some excerpts earlier here:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/02/17/open-thread-2-17-23/#comment-2667241
AesopFan:
I meant to reply to your earlier OT comment, but suddenly it was a new day with new topics.
I’ve no doubt the CCP has been a remorseless adversary up to all sorts of mischief for decades. Their goal is to become the dominant superpower. They have strategy and plans. They are not nice people. We are properly concerned.
However…so did the USSR. They did not have the technology, the economy, the agile leadership, the solid support of their peoples. The USSR is gone. Putin’s Mini-me attempt to defeat the neighboring Ukraine has even hit a few snags.
Try this five-and-a-half minute Peter Zeihan video on China and Taiwan, hitting on China’s weaknesses and popping the balloons … er bubbles … of what he considers the myths of China’s threats.
________________________________
China is the world’s largest importer of [foodstuffs and energy] especially for the input necessary to grow food which means that if we put the sanctions on China that we put on Russia you would have a de-industrialization of the entire Chinese system in under a year.
–Peter Zeihan, “Taiwan and China: War on the Horizon?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1hmvF8yiY8