Dean
10hr ago
According to the Russians, 0%, because Ukrainians aren't a real nation, just Russians with wrong politics.
To an abstract Realist, not enough to change a position without ascribing to non-Realist values.
He does on equipment, specifically: "there is a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 in their favour..."
Which is not a reflection of how ratios have changed since the war began, when the ratios were significantly more in the Russian favor.
I don't think this is true with regards to heavy armaments – the simple fact that Europe has a finite amount of tanks to donate makes it very easy to stop donating them. I find this more persuasive with economic aid and lighter armaments (small caliber ammunition, etc.) However, economic aid appears to be dwindling from some quarters – Germany is reducing its donations, specifically. So clearly cutting Ukraine a blank or even large check isn't set in stone going forward, although perhaps that's merely a German position (Germany of course being one of the most relevant EU nations!)
For the purpose of attrition- which is the strategy of both sides- the 'lighter' armaments are considerably more important, particularly as the Russian strategy militarily relies on offensive victory, but the Ukrainian strategy relies on defensive atrition until Russia's production / refurbishment rates burn through the stockpiles.
The Russians are still using cruise missiles (although the Iranian drones are very good for draining Ukrainian air defense stockpiles) and they are improving the quality of the missiles used. (See e.g. the Kyiv Independent). While I certainly believe that the Russians have brought a lot of less-capable vehicles out of stockpiles (T-62s being the headliner item) the Russians are continuing to develop and iterate their weapons capabilities, and they are continuing to manufacture and iterate new weapons systems. The biggest development is probably the Russian glide bomb, which were neglected in the run-up to the war (a huge Russian L!) but is now being used in numbers.
The position on Russian cruise missiles isn't that they aren't using them, but their rate of usage. Russian precision munition usage rate dropped precipitously from the start of the war, when they burned through their operational and strategic stockpiles, and is now gated by their production rate.
Which, in turn, is why the Shahed drone imports were as significant as they were: the Russians accessed the Iranian production rate at a cost-premium. But the increase in Iranian-sourced or style drones did not make up for the volume or efficacy of the precision munitions previously expended, nor did they deliver upon the drain on air defense stockpiles that was expected to enable Russia to operate freely over Ukrainian airspace. Hence the Russian reliance on glide bomb kits, as opposed to more proximal drops.
This seems plausible to me wrt Russian motivations, but I've still seen no signs that NATO industry is ready to catch up to Russia in mass production within a relevant timeframe. The United States aspires to get to 100,000 shells a month by 2026. Russia is currently producing 250,000 shells a month.
What you've just described is the relevant catchup.
For the purpose of the attritional strategy / flow of the war, what matters isn't the absolute difference, but the relative difference. This is because Russian advances to date have been extremely dependent on massive artillery-overmatch ratios, often of 5-to-1 or higher. This has been the level of overmatch needed for the Russians to suppress Ukrainian artillery and positions in order to do offensives that- despite the artillery overmatch- been relatively costly for relatively marginal gains. Without those ratios, results were worse.
As Russia's degree of artillery advantage decreases, so does it's prospects for even it's slow advances. This is why we've seen this year the Russian adoption of things like golf cart-conveyance in light infantry rushes- this is the strategic window of opportunity before more munitions make those less feasible, and gains now matter most.
This matters because while Russia's artillery production would remain such to enable it's own defensive operations to counter Ukrainian pushes for some time, potentially freezing the line, freezing the line is a losing position for Russia as it's sustainment rate hinges on the stockpiles, without the prospects of compelling a military defeat.
(This doesn't address points such as South Korean or European artillery production beyond the US's own, or the Russian's counting ammo-refurbishment as production for time-limited production rate, or the value of other systems for efficacy of use.)
This seems reasonable to me. My low-economic-IQ take is that sanctions may have helped Russian cashflow in the short term by raising oil prices. Of course it might have hurt them in other areas (microchip access) but that still can translate as a raw economic boost.
This is based on first-year data and regular media conflation of different energy-export products, as well as what sanctions actually did. In terms of sanctions, sanctions are unrelated to the year-1 energy cost spike, and over time have been significantly cutting the Russian income prospects, but not their ultimate access to market (with exception of natural gas as an over-time basis).
Russian natural gas exports, which are primarily by pipeline had the bumper profits in the first year due to market-shocks even before sanctions were levied. In short- the Russians pre-war arranged for the Europeans to have a natural gas shortage (by not filling gas storage tanks in the summer per normal practices), and the Europeans lacked the LNG-gas terminals to import natural gas at scale via sea routes due to the multi-decade reliance on pipelines. Sanctions didn't target gas pipeline imports, and now the russian natural gas prospects are cratering because the Europeans are disconnecting from the Russian-pipeline network and Russian natural gas exports are gated by their terminal export capacity, which is nowhere near enough to cover the pipeline loses. Europeans paid higher gas import prices to free themselves from the blackmail mechanism, and Gazprom is having bad prospects.
Russian (unrefined) oil is what sanctions have been designed to limit profits but keep going to markets. This is where sanctions are designed to make Russia sell at lower margins, and while Russian attempts at sanction-evasion are ocurring, these are implementing the design goal because Russia's partners can- and have been- demanding Russian concessions on prices / mediums of exchange as conditions of transaction. See here the Indian-Russia trade dispute, in which Russia wanted India to pay in Rubles (providing external capital inflow into the Russian economy), and ended up paying in Rupees (which are broadly non-usable outside of India itself).
Russian (refined) oil / gasoline sanctions have also been about reducing Russia income from the value-added processes of refining raw oil into specialized products. This is what you are often seeing in the news in pieces about 'Europe is buying Russian energy via India.' This is Russia selling alternatively the refined products at a risk-premium discount, which the recipient re-sales on the global/European markets for the arbitrage margins that aren't going to Russia, or Russia just sells the inputs for refinement to get something rather than nothing, while the recipient refinery gets the value-added margins.
Again, publicly-available Western sources consistently attest to Russian shell production superiority, so even if most shells hitting the battlefield right now are conversion, Russia will win the shell production battle in the long run unless the West has either deeper stockpiles or deeper production capability – and it doesn't seem that they do. That isn't the only name of the game, but it's a very important part of it.
I will just re-emphasize that when it comes to things like artillery production, it is the ratio that matters considerably more than who has more. Russia at a 3-to-1 artillery ratio is losing the war of attrition, because Russia needs considerably more than 3-to-1 ratios to maintain significant offensive gains while Ukraine doesn't need any sort of artillery advantage to inflict unsustainable loss rates on Russian equipment.
Add to that how the Russian production hinge on the conversion of significant but finite Soviet-era stockpiles and Russian throughput is a not an indefinite factor. It's not even a long-term advantage, as the western coalition still has many resources it hasn't even begun to meaningfully tap but which it has access to, such as the American boneyards, the pre-position stocks around the war, the South Korean ammo stockpiles, and so on. We may be talking years instead of months for the Russians to run out of cold war stocks, but at the same time we are talking years, not decades, and we aren't talking the same for the economic capabilities of the western coalition.
In my mind, this doesn't prove you wrong with regards to Russia's motives – they would prefer to win before the new US shell production hits, before the F-16s arrive, etc. They would have preferred to win on Day One, and tried such a strategy, and failed. But if they can maintain superior force generation and weapons production, there's every reason to think they will defeat the Ukrainians in the long run, and there's every reason to think they are superior now, because Syrskyi says they are. If they are superior now, then Ukraine needs a massive influx of foreign aid to reach parity, otherwise – even if Russia is at their peak strength, as you suggest (and you may be correct!) – they will both degrade in strength over time, with Russia retaining its edge, which it's maintained on the ground (as seen in its slow gain of territory) after smashing up the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Ukraine doesn't need military parity with Russia in the near or medium term to win the war.
This gets into the abstract, but Russia's decision to keep spending bodies and money and stockpile isn't a force of nature, it's a policy choice that that depends on the pre-condition to afford it. If it can't be afforded, it won't, and no matter who had the military advantage beforehand, if Russia doesn't pay for the required inputs for an Army to continue functioning, it won't. There are any number of ways it could functionally collapse before literal resource starvation- coups, mutinies, negotiations, or just Putin dying of old age/other reasons and a change of leadership- but Russia's ability to wage war at an industrial scale requires it to have the industrial output to continue doing so, and when it no longer can, the only question is how it no longer does.
The issue / crux of the conflict continuing is that Russia's ability to continue doing so at its current rates is not, in fact, indefinite. Putin might be willing to continue reactivating Soviet stockpiles of tanks and APCs and artillery ammunition from now until the end of time, but he can only do so as long as those stockpiles exist. They are depleting at a rate at which the next US president could see their functional end, if said US president was willing and able to continue supporting Ukraine.
This is why the opposing strategies for the attritional conflict have evolved, with the Russians driving for a political end to the conflict in the near term, but the pro-Ukrainian coalition driving for an end of the Russian's ability to wage the conflict over the long-term. Putin doesn't just want a political change in the western governments to lead to negotiations in the near term- he needs it, because his expenditure rates aren't sustainable over the long term, but the western economic-industrial capacity support to Ukraine is.
This is why Putin has actually accelerated his loss rates this year for marginal territorial gains- not because these fundamentally change the military balance of power, but because they can shape the political narrative in the leadup for the hoped for change in political fortunes. Putin's strategy is basically hoping 'and then the enemy loses the will to fight / keep supporting Ukraine,' with near-term minor gains leading to the loss of political support for Ukraine.
Which may happen! But if it does, it can happen despite- or even because of- efforts to push Ukraine to military parity with Russia (i.e. due to high political costs for massive military aid without political buy in from opposition figures, such as Biden holding out for an endorsement of the last US aid package). And if it doesn't, his strategic loss is regardless of whether Ukraine is at parity, or 'only' half as strong, or a fifth. Unsustainable over time is unsustainable over time, to whatever that time is. More is better, but not required.
And the time limit on this is Russia's material capability to continue feeding the machine, versus the Europeans and Americans willingness to feed the Ukrainian resistance such that Russia has to keep feeding the machine.
Dean
13hr ago
That reminds me of a book that came out during the Trump administration on the Korean peninsula. Nominally a 'how it could go wrong' scenario around Trump got the US into a nuclear exchange with North Korea, but with things like North Korea lacking the magical technology of 'radios' to figure out if the capital city had been nuked or not (it hadn't been- the narrative relied on a loss of phone lines to justify the belief), and with a scene of Trump being beaten up by his military officers over use of the nuclear football.
It was very much a mix of gratuitous fantasizing, but also assuming incompetence / unrealities to push the story forward that revealed a general lack of understanding of the Korean peninsula.
Naturally, it was highly recommended in some circles at the time of the rocketman tweet saga.
Dean
13hr ago
I think we have differing understanding of the facts on the ground. I don’t think Russia’s military capacity has been degraded significantly. I think they seem to be able relatively to resupply.
Resupply what, specifically? The same thing, or inferior substitutions that would entail a drop in capacity?
We can look at the usage of equipment that shows up in loss data, and the change of sourcings. There's a reason that the Russian tanks and APCs have reverted to a Cold War rather than post-Cold War standard, why long range precision munitions and cruise missiles have given way to glide bombs and shahed drones, and why the Russians resorted to the North Korean supply deal.
Around 2020, there was a joke about Russia in that it had a large army, and a modern army, but not a large modern army. No one characterizes the Russian army as particularly modern anymore, as beyond it's drone and glide bomb capability, it's largely resorted to pre-Desert Storm soviet-era capabilities. These are still dangerous- scale matters- but these are dangerous in significantly different ways than the more modernized force of 2022 started out as.
I also think your description of the history of Russian involvement in Ukraine is a bit one sided.
Truths, and especially the most relevant truths, aren't always even-sided.
Russia's involvement in Ukraine has been a series of strategic blunders by Putin for more than a decade of unforced errors, escalations built on erronious assumptions, and then doubling-down to produce more unforced errors. Putin has turned a nominal sphere of influence conflict over a voluntary association agreement into a generational strategic disaster for the Russians politically, socially, economically, and diplomatically.
You also ignore that Ukraine’s military has been heavily limited. So if the war goes on, not sure they will be in a better position in a year.
The Ukrainian's limitations aren't such that prevents their ability to attrit the Russians at strategically significant rates, and their domestic limitations are less important than their backers economic capabilities and willingness, as their relative position is based on the ability on the west to support, and the stockpiles Russia has to continue to draw from.
The current question mark / hope for the Russians is that the Americans under Trump will withdraw support. That would certainly shape how much support is available, but also presumes results.
Also if the US support drops out, then that would be a material blow to Ukraine unless Europe substantially increases their assistance to Ukraine. I’m not sure Europe can militarily or financially. The US could also offer to Europe more military supplies to be in nato countries if they are worried Russia won’t stop. Of course, I’ve always found this argument interesting (Russia military is collapsing but if we don’t stop them in Ukraine they will roll into Paris — the two are incompatible). In any event, I’m sure our allies would be more comforted by putting US boots on the ground in their countries as a deterrent to Russia compared to this endless funding of Ukraine that won’t go anywhere.
You can be sure from an American perspective, but that's not the European perspective, and whatever else their flaws the Europeans are not so American-centric.
This is without justifying the conclusion of why said Europeans would be comforted by Trump putting American boots in Europe, after Trump cut aid to Ukraine, when the concern of Europeans is that Trump wouldn't use the American boots in Europe in a crisis, but continued support to Ukraine would both keep attriting the Russians .
And the reasons I think the sanctions were a bad idea is because it could lead to de dollarization / FDI into the US—both of which I see as bad things.
Why do you think the Ukraine War sanctions would lead to de-dollarization when that has been an explicit policy goal for more than a decade prior by various powers including the Russians? Particularly when the Russian experience of separating from the dollar-based system has been such a visible non-preferable state, and even Russian traditional allies have been leveraging maintaining their own access to the dollar system to exploit the Russians?
Moreover, why do you believe a breakdown of the global security order would decrease FDI into the US, when the North American continent is the least exposed to insecurity disruptions to energy, food, or maritime trade routes?
It is worth noting that the United States applied a lot of pressure to make this happen.
It's also worth noting that, having made this happen, the same dynamics that make it difficult to occur (entrenched political consensus, established interest groups for the status quo) also make it even more difficult to reverse (not only entrenched political consensus, but the active dismantlement of the pro-Russian interest groups in key economic sectors).
The pre/early war resistance to supporting Ukraine depended on factors that are no longer prevalent in the European political decision making.
It is not. As per Ukraine's commander-in-chief:
It is. Note that Ukraine's commander-in-chief does not actually make a position on relative assets, i.e. what Ukraine has gained since the war started in 2022.
Russia's military edge in 2022 hinged on relative quality, relative quantity, and the industrial/economic capacity to support it. These have changed, and not in Russia's favor, as the expenditure of advanced military capabilities has been substituted by less quality, the quantity of support Ukraine has received has jumped remarkably, and the industrial-capacity spinup has begun to move against the Russians who also were always behind on the economic capacity.
We are nearly three years into a war in which Ukraine was believed to be imminently about to run out of artillery ammunition, air defense ammunition, vehicles, and so on. We've long since passed the point of 'Ukraine is about to run out', to 'Ukraine doesn't have enough relative to the size of the force it wants,' even as the Russians have increasingly transitioned from internal-economic stockpiles and production to relying on imports of Iranian drones instead of cruise missiles, and North Korean artillery ammunition instead of their own production. There are still questions of if Ukraine has enough, but its shortages are nowhere near the level that Russian planners and advocates were expecting in the opening years of the war when a good part of the strategy hinged on expecting Ukraine to just run out of resources and ability to resist.
Russia's biggest period of industrial advantage is/was this year, due to having started a deliberate industrial mobilization before the Americans and especially the Europeans 2 years ago. This period of first-mover advantage is concluding, hence why the Russian strategy this year has been about trying to shape impressions before the American political election season, without regard to sustainability over another 4 year period vis-a-vis achieving a nearer-term ceasefire.
I agree that it probably hampered Russian access to certain high-end stuff (microchips) that it needs for war production. But the World Bank upgraded its economic status this year. So it seems like the Russian economy is "fine" (although perhaps they're running an internal house of cards to keep that up somehow and it can't last forever - I don't have any particular reason to believe this, though.)
Sure you do- the nature of the economic interventions that have been employed over the years to prop up public metrics, the obfusication and removal of economic data to validate metrics, the Russian-acknowledged reallocations of the war economy as a share and level of government spending, and the dynamics around the ongoing labor shortage. You can even just look at migration data, both in terms of Russian external-migration which hasn't been re-captured despite efforts to, and the relative weakness of immigrant workers due to both currency weakness and recruitment-pressures.
Russia's economy is 'fine' in the sense that increasing government spending boosts GDP. Russia's economy is not fine for all the old reasons that government-war-spending driven growth is anti-reliable over longer times and comes with real opportunity costs. This does NOT mean that Russia is anywhere near about to fail, but it is making future problems progressively worse, and much of the growth we are seeing is centered around converting stockpiles rather than producing from base materials.
And this is why the 'I'll trade stockpiles for production capability' defense of Russia is a misnomer. Because the Russian military-industrial production is primarily conversion, the production numbers only stay high as long as there are material inputs to convert. Once those stockpiles go, you either produce from scratch- which the Russians have not demonstrated they are set up to- or you import new inputs for conversion- which there is relatively minimal sourcing for- or your don't produce at all.
Russia's war economy is dependent on increasingly less-large stockpiles. These will last for some time yet, but once expended, Russia isn't getting them back with its current or forseeable economic capacity. The Russian production rate will be tied to it's (considerably lower) inputs for from-scratch production, which is nowhere near the current expenditure rate of conversion-production, which itself isn't enough to inflict decisive defeats.
People have been trying to sell this line since the beginning of the conflict and yet Russia is militarily in a better position now than it was then. Especially with respect to its military industry.
Not really. The Russian military industry numbers- specifically the production rate of vehicles implying mechanized warfare capability- are depending on counting re-mobilized assets as new production, hence why production numbers go up but loss data reveals an increase in reactivated vehicle types. Russia isn't producing more new vehicles, its counting old vehicles refurbished as new production. Similar dynamics apply to munition production: Russia is relying on re-activating stockpiled dumb rounds (in terms of artillery) or modifying old kit (glide bombs), as opposed to producing new precision munitions.
Moreover, Russia's position is relative not to itself, but to the western supporters of Ukraine. This has gotten worse, as this last year was the peak of relative advantage due to earlier industrial mobilization. The gap has been closing since, and as such even though Russia is producing more stuff, that stuff is less significant both because of its own capabilities (general across-the-force downgrade outside of specific niches), and because the Ukrainians are in a position to receive more.
Russia's fields of considerable advantage have winnowed over time.
The only valuable thing the Russians are losing is manpower, which is plentiful but non-renewable given their demographics, and they are rightly taking a slow and methodical approach given the relative value of lives vs materiel.
The Russians aren't taking a slow and methodical approach. They are slow despite a hasty and aggressive approach. The Russians are using light infantry exceptionally aggressively, with relatively minimal mechanized support, with indications of prioritizing any degree of territorial gains over material efficiency.
The other valuable thing the Russians are losing / have lost is their latent mechanization and precision munition capacity. There's a reason that they are depending so much on glide bomb kit modernization and kamikaze drones, and the later isn't even an area of relative advantage.
Realism would note that the West has vastly overestimated its economic power and move the lines on the map accordingly because weak empires are dangerous. Otherwise reality will do it on its own.
Notably, Russia has not been able to move the lines on the map significantly, even when at a position of maximum relative advantage in capacity and willingness to expend to try and shape specific hoped-for negotiating opportunities which it cannot compel.
There's a reason that despite months of reporting of Russian continuous advance, the lines on map only appreciably move if you zoom in sharply. The narrative of advance, not the actual advances, is the key goal for this campaign season, because this campaign season is intended to be the lead-in to the hoped-for negotiations with Trump.
I agree that Ukraine was always a mistake. But you could say “we will provide XYZ (better weapons compared to what they have today)” while telling Ukraine “if we want you to take deal “ABC” and you don’t, then you get nothing.
Who do you think has the ability to ensure Ukraine gets nothing?
It's certainly no American- the Americans haven't even been the majority supplier of aid to the Ukrainians. The single biggest supplier, yes, the single most important yes, but EU institutions have given more financial aid to Ukraine than the US has given in value of all combined military / financial / humanitarian, and this is without addressing European national contributions.
Even if the US gives nothing, Ukraine still gets quite a bit. And if the cause of a cutoff is Donald Trump- and I'll just note that people have long downplayed his willingness to conditionally support Ukraine to take his opposition as a given- the Europeans are not going to meekly follow him, when both their own domestic-political interests and strategic interests remain with supporting Ukraine even, or especially in definace to, American pressure otherwise.
I could basically see it freezing the lines roughly where they are today. I guess that’s a surrender. But realism needs to hold sway here.
Why do you think Realism is any friend of freezing the fight along the current lines and surrendering?
Realism would note that the current war is at least the third continuation war Russia has pursued against Ukraine since the initial invasion of Crimea. (The first continuation war being the astroturfed Nova Russian campaign intended to spark a civil war, and the second continuation war being the direct military intervention when the Nova Russian uprising failed and was on the cusp of complete collapse.)
Realism would note that the Russia's leadership intentions and objectives that drove the current war are still unresolved, and thus the motivation basis remains for a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that Russia's terms of cease fire and negotiations have for years hinged around limiting Ukraine's ability to resist a future incursion, and thus been conditional on the conditional basis for a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that the center of gravity of Russia's conventional military strength at a strategic level, the Soviet inheritance of stockpiles, are being expended at unsustainable and functionally irreplaceable rates, and that once they are expended Russia's long-term capacity to conduct a fourth continuation war would be removed.
Realism would note that Russia's military edge is ebbing, that it's current rate of expenditures are unsustainable, and thus that relative negotiating position power will decrease away from Russia's favor of the coming years, and thus potentially create the conditions for negotiations that would not lead to a fourth continuation war.
Realism would note that the Western coalition, on the basis of supporting Ukraine against Russia, is actually mobilizing the political and economic capacity to scale military production, productions that must be greatly scaled to meet other major global competitors but which historically have observably not been invested in solely on the notional basis of those other competitors.
Realism would note a great many things that would work against arguments for a ceasefire in the near term.
'Realism' is no more a legitimization of 'what I want' than trying to claim to be a 'Rationalist' means your positions are any less monkey-brained than your opponents.
And yes, the sanctions removal isn’t a huge benefit for them (and was a massive mistake for the US) but it is some benefit.
It would be interesting in hearing why you think the sanctions strategy was a massive mistake for the US, given that the US/European sanction strategy has clearly delivered it's intended goals of limiting Russian economic capabilities (which is why Russia's only meaningful growth is now a result of a militarized economy rather than it's civilian economics), restrict access to global markets (which is why Russia has to pay significant mark-ups and risk-premiums on both imports and sales, and gets stuck with things like it's India Rupee savings), and done so in a way that didn't cripple the pro-Ukraine coalition's economic and political viability in the midst of major economic input rearrangements (the Europeans haven't cratered their own economies in the process of building up import-substitution infrastructure, and negated the Russian energy blackmail threats).
Is this going to hinge on arguments that the US didn't go far enough to try to enforce some sort of global embargo on Russian exports- which it wouldn't have had the political capacity to do? Or that the Europeans continued to import energy from the Russians- when building the physical infrastructure to import from other sources was going to take time? Or that Russia is expanding its economic dependence on China- a factor which has led the Europeans to be far more concerned and willing to distance themselves from China than they were before?
Dean
17hr ago
When I say she's providing a generic Democratic introduction, I don't mean she's providing an introduction that is generic, I'm trying to indicate that she's introducing herself as [Generic Democrat]. [Generic Democrat] is a concept / identity that regularly polls higher than [Specific Named Democrat], and so a stronger association to the party / position than to the identity as a person actually favors her in the immediate term of presenting herself as the new candidate.
Dean
1d ago
Because the video isn't based around shaping the general election and persuading the general electorate, it's about security the Democratic convention and indirectly introducing her to a largely unaware broader audience. General election stuff comes later.
Putting her face on the airwaves is putting her face and voice on the Democratic brand in lieu of Biden's. It's basically just planting a flag on the airwaves of Democratic political media, and doing so in such volume / pervasiveness that no one else can challenge. An informational show of force to deter anyone from trying to mount a meaningful challenge or threaten a contested convention.
The role for the broader (non-Democratic) audience is indirect association, a sort of 'Generic Democrat' introduction. Note that the videos don't mention or identify her name, but the voice and face are clear, and without the ominous music or slick visual effects a lot of negative/condemnation electioneering videos may do. This serves to make Kamela more familiar to less-politically-tuned-in audiences, but without directly associating herself with, well Biden. This sort of hazy-ambiguity is a way to deliver a 'generic Democrat' introduction, which is likely to be Harris's strategy for countering Trump vis-a-vis Biden's 2020 'you know me' familiarity.
(This is probably a better strategy, as the reported polling for Democrats show that generic democrat outperforms named democrats, and Harris in particular has a bad reputation with people/voters who pay much attention to her specifically.)
Dean
1d ago
It's been annoying, but also interesting.
First, it's surprisingly low-context. Kamela doesn't identify herself by name, her association with the campaign, and there's no time reference. More to the point, it doesn't mention Joe Biden, or his resignation.
This is interesting, because the nature of the timing (it started within 24 hours of Biden's resignation) is a clear indication that it was being planned / scheduled as part of the post-resignation media push that was being planned even before it succeeded, but that the video was being created in a plausibly deniable way, which could still have been used even if Biden didn't resign. In other words, a dual-use product that wouldn't necessarily have raised any alarms within the Biden Camp if they'd been internally linked, as- hey- this is part of her job.
But on the flip side, the videos are also relatively law quality in terms of production effects, which suggests haste. There's the sub-par audio quality, minimal (any?) audio background to stir emotions to the audience like most fear-themed electioneering despite that being the crux of the video openings (existential threat to democracy narrative). It's basically just... Kamela, sitting down and talking, but not self-identifying. The lack of polish could be indicative that they wanted this to be a lower-profile recording, and not go through the sort of review / focus testing that would lead to larger internal awareness before running, which fits the pre-planned release narrative.
The existential threat to democracy theme is notable, as the Democrats have largely dropped that since the assassination attempt. It's coming back in some ways, but had been much lower in priority/prominence than before. That suggests this fundraising video was possibly made before the assassination attempt- so more than a week ago- when the narrative was more in vogue, but that they didn't have the time / opportunity / desire to re-record. Which would make sense as the last week before resignation had Kamela under scrutiny by the Biden Camp, watching for disloyalty, when her ascent relied on other actors (coordinated by Party VIPs) acting without her in direct coordination.
The mass distribution is probably not accidental either. The Democratic Party is quite capable of tailoring messaging when it wants to, but this has been a full-blast to unrelated topic-media, including topics typically associated with the politically apathetic/unfamiliar who normally aren't targetted precisely because of said apathy and lack of return on monetary investment. That suggests that a non-monetary investment may be part of the goal, and one of the potential goals for such sudden pervasiveness is to raise the profile of Kamela herself to people who frankly likely wouldn't know or recognize her. Even without directly identifying her, it's putting her face and her voice in their mind to build familiarity when they do see her on national media.
Wow, that's an awkward interjection of a tired conspiracy theory for a pet topic. Really couldn't hold it in, could you?
For your parallel to hold, you'd have to change some things- like that instead of a Chinese politicians staging a coup in Canada to get a pro-Chinese government, it was the American president bribing, sanctioning, and then successfully pressuring the Canadian Prime Minister to start shooting supporters of his own government in the street, only to find that the Toronto Mayor wasn't willing to go along with a lethal party purge and then the Canadian PM fleeing the country for the United States before he could be impeached.
And then the United States conducting an invasion of one province, and then astroturfing an insurgency in another in an effort to start a civil war, and then having to intervene to sustain the insurgents when they start to fail, and then maintaining a frozen conflict for half a decade while attempting to coerce the Canadians into changing their constitution in a way to give the American proxies veto-authority over Canadian foreign policy but empowered them to have their own foreign policy with the US.
And then giving up, calling them all Nazis and not a real country anyway but actually American and outright invading with pre-made plans for all the pro-Canadian and anti-US advocates to go to the torture sites and mass graves.
Dean
1d ago
I get the 'whatever it takes' vibe from Kamala, and am a bit surprised that she doesn't. From her start as a the politically-appointed girlfriend to get the foot in the door, to her prosecutorial role in sketchy prosecutions that suggest political motive, to the bail fund for rioters during the mostly peaceful protest season, to her already-emerging narrative defense strategies pre-emptively accusing critics of sexism and racism, and to her implicit role in the ballot-coup against she has the whole variety from abuse of state power to anarcho-tyranny to culture warring to personal ethical quandries.
There's also a point that almost every single youtube inter-video add for the last few days feels to have been a Kamala fundraiser add... even when I'm nowhere near political topic matter.
Dean
2d ago
This is your reminder that you are literally on business day 3 since Biden dropped out, and still in the midst of the initial Democratic media campaign push. If you're vibing off of what you're seeing and hearing in the media, especially the larger share of which is already Democrat aligned, you're basically just partaking in anecdotal bias of a bandwagon effect.
The American political narrative machine has worked like this for years: a surge of high-tempo media insertions when there's a planned push, down to spamming the youtube commercial adds, and then an ebb as the narrative push ends and messages prepare to shift. It will occur again, and continue, and keep continuing throughout the election cycle. If you think the election is turning because the Democratic-aligned media is being optimistic rather than pressimistic, then you need a better barometer of the health of the parties involved.
On my side - Republicans are high on copium, seems to not have been prepared for Kamala, lack message and message discipline, and are on the defensive. JD Vance seems to be bombing. And for it - the election moved from landslide to at best narrow win. I still think that she is the second worst possible candidate after Joe Biden but probably ok enough to win.
If you ever thought the election was going to be a landslide, you were already high on hopium. The withdrawal effects may be nasty, but they don't make everything to the contrary copium.
Republicans don't have a message for countering Kamala yet, in no small part because Kamala doesn't have a message to be countered. Kamala Harris has been a practical non-entity for most of the broader electorate for the last few years, and even in her emergence as the Democratic nominee she still hasn't taken a meaningful stance on, well, anything. Right now she's the not-Joe Biden / not-Donald Trump candidate, but the former is not a policy position, and the later not being enough is precisely why Biden resigned.
The Democratic Party is not united simply because the party elites insist it is, and Harris is going to have to take positions for the sake of managing her party coalition. Joe Biden could be consistently attacked because his coalition politics were stable: Harris's is not, and attacking her for things that she's not taking a stand on is a waste of money and makes her job (putting the coalition back together again) easier, whereas Harris has a well-earned reputation of bad office/coalition politics to leverage over time.
The Democratic convention is right around the corner, and the Democratic-aligned media is going to present it as a success no matter what does or does not happen, just as they were intent on presenting the Republican convention a dismal failure from the start. The story for the next weeks is- regardless of Republican attack adds- going to be the Democrats coming back together and uniting and how this is a new chapter.
The Republican campaign, in turn, is going to find the things to pick at. But as this is Kamala's first real time for national attention, given her earlier flameouts, the national-level criticism is going to follower her taking national-visibility stances.
Dean
3d ago
Did the Supreme Court not just rule that even the President is exemption from real consequences (other than being fired, which of course happens by different mechanism) for “official actions”?
No, it didn't.
The Supreme Court's exemption (immunity) was bounded not only to official acts, but more narrowly official acts within the exclusive sphere of Constitutional authority of the President that was not shared with Congress.
The Secret Service does not have an Constitutional function in any since, and in so much that it does derive legal authorities, it does so via the Legislative branch, not unilateral-Executive.
Dean
3d ago
Another alternative that his reported health issue from last week is considerably worse than has been implied, in a 'man he looks like shit' sense.
If he physically looks weak / unable to function- say stuck to a bed with IVs- that would be an understandable reason to avoid any sort of visual media presence.
But yes, the conspicuous lack of presence- especially when tied to the immediate wave of pro-Harris election propaganda starting to go across the internet / into youtube advertisemenets that was almost certainly on hand and ready in advance- is 'he's not the one in control' vibes.
Dean
4d ago
The whole bury it on Friday thing is old-fashioned in our era of 24 hour news
The era of 24 hour news is precisely why the US political ecosystems continues to relies on the Friday news dump to bury bad news: because most people go home for the weekend, and by the time they come back the news cycle has passed on with at least 2x morning-news cycles having passed, minimizing the political impact. Not only the information proliferation muted due to fewer people tuning into it on the weekends, but the coverage is decreased as it's more 24-hour cycles out of date from being breaking.
Choosing to do it Sunday afternoon is the opposite, in that it makes it the primary topic of discussion for Monday morning news, which increases the political impact for shaping perceptions. It's an indicator that the people arranging for the timing didn't see it as bad news.
Dean
5d ago
There are some strong palace coup vibes here, in the sense that the decision of how to release the information wasn't Biden's, but on the part of whomever needed it released ASAP. If you want to put bad news, that'd typically be a Friday afternoon, not Sunday afternoon, and if you want a normal controlled release, you do it via press release on Monday business hours. Sunday afternoon is for if you want it done, and have a first-mover advantage when others are taken by surprise and not in work yet.
A more conspiratorial take might be that the release of the concession preceeded the actual capitulation- that Biden could have been shown the tweet and been forced into a position in which he'd have to reveal he lacked control of his own White House / social media platform if he wanted to compete against it, which would be further political kryptonite.
More likely, this is something more akin to the pro-Harris faction in the White House just marching it over to the Twitter-handler desk, which they could have access/control to, and releasing it as soon as Biden capitulated, but before any other planned event. This would allow the Harris-faction to steal that march on immediate coordinations to pressure others not to capitulate / not announce contestation this coming week.
(Harris has the lock on the Biden-raised money, reportedly, but several of the reported key players behind Biden dropping out are- allegedly- less committed to his replacement being her. Thus, the Harris-faction needs to work fast with the advantage of being the first aware of the concession.)
Not really. Your conception of how much it takes to launch drones like the Houthis is probably way, way, way more than is actually required.
Drones may fly, but they require nothing even within the same magnitude of care or capital and infrastructure as, say, your average commercial airport. When your requirements are that small-scale and ubiquitous- a 'maintenance facility' for a cheapo drone can be as minimal as a tarp on sticks- well, those tents in the desert are your hangers, maintenance facilities, and fueling depots. And well, precision munitions are expensive, and tarps and basic building materials are really, really cheap.
And that's just the monetary cost.
Dean
5d ago
Bomb who, the goat herders? Goat herders are already Stone Age tech levels.
Iran, in turn, is a power who is at nuclear breakout capacity, which is to say that by the time they could be bombed back to the stone age, doing so would not only be extremely expensive on multiple fronts- more expensive than the impact to the Suez Canal- but by the time it could be accomplished, the Mullahs would almost certain bite the bullet and produce nuclear weapons for use.
Dean
5d ago
More to the point- since when did it take a major power to block Suez transit?
The technology that the Houthis are using to disrupt shipping is not particularly advanced. Military drones are not the sole domain of great powers, and haven't been for nearly a decade. The technology is ubiquitous, and well within the capacity of small states, especially when backed/supplied by other states.
At this point this is just circular reporting of the Axios reporting, trying to present pressure as already successful without actually citing new developments.
Here's a link to Halperin's PBS Frontline interview. It's relying on anonymous 'Democrat sources', for which there are counter-soruces 'close to President Biden' rejecting the validity of.
Mark Halperin is a Newsmax reporter, and Newsmax's party line is part of the same 'Biden will resign, Democrat sources say' push that the Axios article above is. If you compare the Axios article and the Newsmax article, you'll see they are following the same themes and narrative beats, but also with the same end-point caveats.
This is not a coincidence- this is a coordinated end-of-week media push, of which Halperin is a part of, to build a consensus going into the weekend that Biden has already agreed to resign, during a period of his personal weakness/absence/inability to counter-narrative due to COVID.
Dean
8d ago
Reports are coming out that Biden will step down from the race this weekend.
ETA Here is a link https://www.axios.com/2024/07/18/president-biden-drop-out-election-democrats
Your own linked article doesn't say what you claim it says.
The very first paragraph of the Axios article is-
Several top Democrats privately tell us the rising pressure of party congressional leaders and close friends will persuade President Biden to decide to drop out of the presidential race, as soon as this weekend.
On its very own grounds, the framing of 'will persuade' (future action) indicates that President Biden has not already been persuaded, or else it would have been presented in past tense (has persuaded) to indicate success. Further, this action is to be taken by the Party congressional leaders and close friends (to persuade Biden). Biden is not the subject acting in this sentence, Biden is the object being acted upon.
Further, the grammatical structure of the claim is deliberately ambiguous in what, specifically, is supposed to occur by this weekend: you perceived it that Biden will drop out by the weekend, but the post-comma clause also refers to the persuaders, as in 'congressional leaders and close friends will persuade Biden as soon as this weekend.'
Which- from external context- we know they have to, because Biden has been pursuing and pushing forward a virtual roll call to affirm the nomination, which is supposed to kick off... Monday. Which is to say, if he didn't resign this weekend, it would be too late to convince him to drop out before he locked in the nomination. Hence this week's media reporting on the virtual roll call, and the internal party rebellion.
This puts the time suspense less in the 'he's agreed and waiting to announce it!' space, and more in the 'this is a last-minute effort we hope will succeed' space.
Which is why the article later acknowledges-
Reality check: Biden can't be forced out. He has the delegates. No one can physically pry them away. He needs to do it by choice and on his terms.
Which is to say- we're in the same position as before the article. Biden has to choose to not be the candidate, and there is no claim he's been convinced.
What there is a claim of if the attempts to try to do so-
A panic pressure campaign is pounding Biden. It has been relentless — and coordinated.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Biden in Rehoboth Beach, Del., on Saturday — the day of the assassination attempt on Trump — that it would be best if he dropped out, ABC News first reported. Dems on Capitol Hill want him out, and worry they'll lose winnable seats if not.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a mastermind of the campaign to get Biden out, told him that he could destroy Democrats' chances of taking back the House. We're told she's also worried about donations drying up.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) delivered a similar, if more subtle, message to Biden.
Former President Obama has spoken loudly with his silence — and his former aides trashing Biden in public.
Bill and Hillary Clinton are doing what Obama's doing. So are their former aides.
We increasingly hear top Biden aides, including ones who initially urged him to fight on after his disastrous debate on June 27 — 21 days ago — are saying it's now when, not if, Biden announces he's not running.
-but, again, we go back to the point that no one is claiming Biden has been convinced to not run.
Note, further, the absence of references to key counter-actors who would have to be overcome to convince Biden. There is no mention of Hunter or Jill Biden- who have been shaping access to Biden, and have been key advocates influential to him. There's no indication of change in, or pressure by, the Black Caucus leaders who are his key pillar of support. There isn't even a claim that Obama or the Clintons have asked him to- rather, their non-position is taken as a position by inference, which is assuming a conclusion of what their silence means (such as, for example, helping Biden by not joining in / bolstering the anti-Biden crowd).
In summary, this is a pressure piece trying to shape Biden's decision on whether to withdraw, not a claim that he has decided to withdraw. The only claim on his withdrawal made is that of the belief that the pressure efforts will work by this weekend- a confident claim, but you'd expect confidence from a pressure-piece.
Dean
8d ago
You still don't seem to have read the rest of the other posts either, so your projection is understandable.
Dean
8d ago
This is also itself a reflection / downstream of how the primary Democratic Party machines are based on relatively centralized City Machines, which tend to dominate state politics, but also themselves the have (relatively) clear power differentials. The NYC political node and the California nodes, by virtue of their monetary influence for the rest of the power, have a degree of leverage over the lower party organs via patronage networks that the Republican Party lacks due to the decentralization.
Sure it is. Neither the question or the answers are either an argument for or against a position born from Realism as an IR theory. Realism doesn't have any caveats or rules of 'if X% of your 18-35 population is killed, realism says do [policy], but if (X+1)% of your 18-35 population is killed, do [alternative policy].' The metric only serves if you bring in other models- which was the point of the critique of the appeal to Realism.
The Ukrainians have not and are not losing such a percentage of their fighting age population that they are unable to continue the war. Nor are their losses so grievous that continued resistance clearly inferior to accommodation in what started as a war of national destruction as well as the third continuation war by the Russians against them, whose proffered peace terms to date have consistently been structured to facilitate a fourth continuation war whose future losses absolutely are relevant to a realism paradigm.
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