Dean
17d ago
NATO wouldn't do nothing in that scenario - given that the Baltics are members, an abrogation by the US of their mutual defense obligation to fellow members pretty catastrophically undermines their credibility with allies and vassals the world over.
Okay, but this doesn't actually say it's not plausible. There is a non-trivial number of Americans who don't want the US to have mutual defense obligations or vassals the world over, and their preferred candidate is one precisely lothed, and reciprocates the feeling, with the Europeans. That candidate- arguably the leading candidate- took a position that he would 'encourage' Russia to attack countries not meeting defense spending cutlines- a line that applied to a majority of NATO countries.
While I would be the first to note that Trump's criteria specifically would not ignore an attack on the Baltic states, and I doubt reading his characteristic hyperbole is worth that much, this is not a man who would particularly care about the credibility he has with allies he has characterized as parasites.
This is without noting that multiple NATO governments are variously politically aligned with Russia as-is (Hungary), or are a very plausible election scenario from coming into governments significantly less interested in EU or NATO as a strategic policy.
This doesn't even take into account that the rest of the EU would absolutely respond to an attack on a fellow member. At the very least Sweden, Finland, Denmark would become directly involved. Once you've got a hot war involving wealthy member states on their own territory I don't see France, Germany, the UK etc. just sitting that one out either.
The issue isn't whether they'd sit out, the issue is that most of them are militarily irrelevant to a war in continental Europe, because decades of mismanagement and capability cuts have rendered them unable to mobilize units at scale or supply them with ammunition to sustain fires at the scale Russia has and is.
Further, one of the significant factors of the Balkan scenarios is that the wealthy member states would not be fighting a war on their own territory: rather, they would be presented a fait accompli in a rapid Russian occupation of the much smaller (and poorer) Balkan fringe, and then faced with the question of whether they really want to pay the high cost in blood and treasure to try and fight their way through the Russian forces there.
This returns to the question of credibility, where while the Americans face the doubt if they would show up, most of the Europeans face doubts of if they can show up in enough scale to matter.
Dean
17d ago
Recently Ukraine changed their subscription doctrine that deployment to the front is one way ticket. You only come back dead or disabled. That both reeks of desperation
That's an odd perception, given how it's not only an incredibly common practice in any armed conflict of scale, but one the Russians adopted in the first year of the war.
The concept of stop-loss policies is a very basic policy common to volunteer and conscription militaries alike as manning demands increase. It's as much a sign of desperation as putting a water stop into a sink to soak dishes: militaries build up forces by increasing retention, not simply increase inflow, when numbers need to raise.
and will probably hurt Ukraine in the one area they had clear advantage over the Russians - their morale.
Setting aside that you and I remember the tenor of summer 2022 Russian offensive and spring 2023 rather differently, when the moral attrition of Ukrainian defenders outnumbered and outgunned was supposedly crashing moral, you don't consider the Western intelligence support for Ukraine a clear advantage?
So I guess the tonal shift is just regressing a bit to the reality on the ground.
Tone shifts in the war have been constant. Remember the swings that occurred during the Kharkiv offensive, which was a terrible disaster at least three or four times over the several months it occured?
For this year, as noted last year, the Russians are going to enjoy a relative period of maximum material advantage due to faster war industry mobilization, and they are demonstrating a higher casualty tolerance in the pursuit of territorial gains. This is also not surprising, and was predicted, as were the assessments that Russia's best chance to reduce foreign aid to Ukraine for the years to come is to shape perceptions this year in the leadup to the US election in hopes that presenting a strong showing would help the non-Biden (now Trump) candidate come to a conclusion to cut material support before the Ukrainians lost the willingness to fight.
Dean
17d ago
"The Ukrainians" would have no more to do with ratifying the peace than the average American has in constantly sending them weapons.
Hyperagent Americanism strikes again! Truly it was only because of them that the Ukrainian politicians decided to keep on fighting with over 80% popular support.
The US still spends more on research but they're not exactly growing their research spending like China is:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS?locations=US-CN
So long as the US economy has as much or more real growth than China- and there many reasons to believe it is- that is precisely what your own link indicates is happening.
Just at an initial look, both China and the US have been increasing their % of GDP to science at about the same rate for the last decade, with the US staying between .7 and 1% of GDP ahead of PRC. Not only would the US be spending nearly an entire % of GDP more, and not only would the GDP have grown faster, but the overall economy remains much larger, meaning the same % growth actually entails larger numbers of $ being spent.
Now, you could try to change the terms by arguing effective spending should be considered in PPP terms, and the general pro-China economic framing at the moment is to make PPP rather than nominal measures, but not only would you have to significantly re-do your money argument and support the implicit claim that science-per-PPP is a consistent metric worth using, you'd have to factor in the US's extended scientific partnerships with other countries, and how their money should be factored in.
Dean
5mo ago
I agree to a good degree, and even would argue Hezbollah is trying to calibrate the pressure precisely to distract Israel from focusing on Hamas, but states can very much downplay some casus belli factors when they don't want to engage a particular front.
Dean
5mo ago
You really did a multi-month necro just to get a last word and block, huh? That is sincerely amusing, thanks for making a good morning.
Last paragraph seems to have hit the nail on the head as far as predictions go, for just one example.
I was under the impression that they collapsed due to a deeply flawed economic system in combination with a dramatic over-expenditure on military spending in order to keep fighting the cold war.
Common misconception and oversimplification. Incorrect, but common.
But the main point is that they did in fact collapse and nuclear weapons weren't able to stop that from happening.
The actually relevant point, however, is that the Soviet Union didn't collapse from external invasion, or from people who already identified with the core identity unit wanting to leave. This is relevant, because the thing that will actually end Israel as a nation-state- and what ended the crusader states- is external invasion, not civil unrest in the national core. Civil Unrest can weaken a state's capacity for militarily resisting invasion, but if invasion is already negated by other ways- such as nukes- the you have a weak state, not a dead state.
The Soviet Union collapse is a poor historical metaphor because the parts of the Soviet Union who left the Soviets were the Russian imperial sphere that never wanted to be part of the Russian empire. The Russian national core was never challenged or militarily endangered. In the Israel metaphor, this is Gaza and West Bank not being occupied, and the Israeli core existing uninterrupted and without a military threat.
The crusader state metaphor from earlier is likewise bad because that was a case of military invasion destroying the state- which is precisely what did NOT occur with the Soviet Union, for a reason of (among other things) sustained nuclear deterence despite major economic and democraphic and social regression.
I still just don't see how nuclear weapons would be able to save Israel from an economic collapse or social unrest.
Because economic collapse or social unrest don't actually destroy nations, and this is so well established it's easier to identify the exceptions- which are almost universally states without an underlying national identity to bind the state.
This is basic not-understanding-why-states-fail, both historical and mechanically.
Dean
10mo ago
Would or wouldn't?
I'm fairly sure Sarker's point was that the point of relative spending favors the US.
Dean
1yr ago
So, the fact that US failed to act on what were likely spy blimps flying overhead for years undermines my claim that they'd be too incompetent to have a program that'd correlate flight radar data and actual radar data ?
Yes. It's the difference between ability and willingness. The argument that no one would notice is based on inability, even as the pipeline provides a willingness.
Do I have it right ? The fact of demonstrated incompetence* undermines my claim of their incompetence?
Since you claimed a different sort of incomptence not implied by the first, yes.
*there's a statement by Mattis claiming they 'knew about the balloons' but didn't tell Trump because his reaction could've been 'too combative'. Honestly have no clue why airforce intercepting unmanned suspicious manmade objects would ever require presidential authorisation so it seems like bullshit.
If you have no clue it would probably not make sense, sure.
Not like anyone's getting hurt, so why even ask ?
Allegedly, a risk of hurting people from falling debris was the basis for shooting down the balloon over the east coast, and not over the mid-west.
Do you really think that Russians, even for a moment, doubt it was the Americans ? It's not a court of law. It was Americans, or some US puppet/satellite did it with american approval.
Evidence needed, particularly for the framing.
Whether the Russians believe it was an American puppet/satellite is irrelevant to whether it was an American puppet/satellite. This presupposes that the framing of puppet/satellite is accurate, which is a model that rejects or diminishes the autonomy of other actors to act without American approval or foreknowledge.
I am not the sort of cultural chauvenist that presumes the Americans are the most important factor in the decision-making of American allies.
That's probably way beyond their competence and sophistication levels. E.g. wasn't NORAD recently caught with its pants down and spent next days flying expensive jets around and shooting down various small spy blimps ?
If air-monitoring is way beyond competence and sophistication, then much more difficult categories to monitor- such as surface-vessel and submarines- are even further beyond, thus furthering the incentive to using them rather than methods where a lower-level of competence would allow detection.
This is trying to have it both ways- that the actors involved are simultaneously incredibly capable but also incompetent.
Apparently, they tracked all these small blimps (there's even a NYT article now - the guy running the program also worked on Chinese stealth aircraft), but weren't paying attention to them because of overly aggressive filtering. Took a good look after civvies photographed the Montana balloon.
This undermines the claim of the inability to track, as it shows that they were tracked, but not acted upon at the time, but upon revisiting the available data were able to identify the at-the-time overlooked data. As a model for the Baltic space, this would support the importance of not having aviation data available for re-looking if you were trying to do a secret operation.
This is the conspiratorial argument trying to have it both ways: the simultaneous claims of hypercompetence beyond realism but incompetence in in select areas as needed to sustain the conspiratorial claims.
Dean
1yr ago
For one, the 'more armed, more violent' is vis-a-vis the Ukrainian forces, not the Jan 6 protestors. For another, you seem to still be skipping over the context that the Maidan protestors were being shot at with live ammo.
The January 6 metaphor is bad in a number of ways.
Dean
1yr ago
I asked before but I'll try again and hopefully get a more helpful answer: what information, context, link, source, claim, assertion, citation, whatever, etc. do you believe is missing from my post above?
This would be an example of you not accurately reflecting previous engagements, as the previous engagements precede your post above, and so obviously and temporally did not address it, and insinuating they did is the sort of mis-representation you stand accused of conducting on a regular basis.
Dean
1yr ago
I know this isn't the first time you respond with this line, but nevertheless it continues to be an amazing and revealing response. You keep claiming that I'm ignoring/denying feedback, but man oh man it would be so much easier for both of us if you just actually respond with this fictitious feedback I'm apparently ignoring instead of wasting your time thinking up increasingly creative ways of dodging the question.
I reject the request because you continue to act in bad faith and lie about other people's positions and past engagements for the sake of your current arguments.
You and I both know that you saved the very post where I detailed when I first wrote you off on grounds of character, because you have repeatedly linked to it since the migration while bemoaning that you have never been given feedback. You and I also both know that the same post was preceeded in the same post thread by object-level feedback of argument noting specific cases in context that you were doing what you were accused of. We both know you have been previously reminded of this, just as we both know that you will, in the future, claim that you have never been responded to and that claims of previous feedback that you yourself have linked to was fictitious.
See you on the next rotation buddy <3
Try not to conduct any more miscarriages of justice until then.
Dean
1yr ago
Can I? Sure. Will I? A waste of time when you are involved, given your pattern of conduct which has been noted repeatedly over the years even if you have also repeatedly denied the feedback. Improving your character to have fewer petty swipes at your other posters would be a start.
No, you don't, but the pettiness is not beneath you. Hence why you being called out.
Dean
1yr ago
This mistakes my contention. The contention is not that a position doesn't change and this should be banned- the contention is that the position is re-raised regularly without regard or even accurate reflection of previous engagements, and with poor conduct towards other in the process.
Ways to avoid this include not misrepresenting people's current positions, not mis-representing previous engagements, and not making one's hobby-horse a top level post with regular slights towards other posters.
Dean
1yr ago
Of course, it's a perfectly valid meta-level take... assuming it rests on some substance, such as there having been some earlier interaction when sources one can reasonably deem high-quality had been presented; and that's a big assumption which does not match my recollection of this discourse. That said –
you can find the link yourself, thank you kindly, and if you can't then this goes back to competence rather than faith
My recollection is probably retarded anyway.
Not that specific link, but for some of what was being referenced to in the thread chain were same-day postings by
motteposting
anti-dan had some relevant sources
There are some other posters there who are referring to then-contemporary news or events.
Further, that was a post chain that started from a position of explicitly referring to multiple prior exchanges. Reminder that this was 31May thread, so about 5 and 1/2 months after 6Jan, with nearly a third of a year of information degredation on the reporting contemporary to 6Jan itself, and over half a year since the election, with even more about the reporting (and prior culture war threads) about that.
And since navigating that chain is a nightmare, but since I may apparently need it in the future, the root-thread- including higher-level exchanges before what ymeskhout likes to link to but which cover the lead-up that was summarized- is here
Thanks to you and @Dean both for lessons in Advanced English.
My loquaciousness in english is proportional to my state of mind.
I accept your concession of your limited perception with good cheer.
Sure, you made a silly historical metaphor while trying to ignore the inconvenient parts that ruin it as a simile. History's hard. Fortunately, this is the motte, and asinine positions are for being flanked, spanked, and penetrated as a result.
Modern Russia is certainly doing things the modern US wouldn't approve of in its own defense, not least of which is invading adjacent countries in territorial expansionism on irredentalist grounds based in the past. American warmongers of the current generation, as everyone has familair examples of, invade far-away countries on ideological grounds driven far more by humanitarian considerations/rationals in the present.
Even if you wanted to appeal to the 1800s Americas, back when it was run by racist imperialist most Americans would be appalled by and oppose today if a mirror-US magically appeared, the expansionist era American imperialists didn't rely on claims historical conquest to justify their conquests. They just resorted to the sort of lovably mockable jingoism and manifest destiny that's parodied, and no one believes or particularly claims that the Mexican-American war was a defensive war.
The fact that you tried appeal to a war the better of a century ago- to a war that was declared against rather than by the US by the perpetrators rather than defendent of territorial aggression- to force some kind of equivalence between the modern US-Japan relationship and the ongoing attempt to subjugate Ukraine kind of shows you missed the mark on historical metaphors. The US-Japan relationship of 2020 isn't the relationship of 1950, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not aiming to establish a relationship of 2020 US-Japan.
Now, if you argument is instead that Japan is analogous to Russia, and that Russia should be nuked and forced into unconditional surrender in order to be occupied and forcibly reconstructed as Japan was, that might be an interesting historical parallel to make...
I'd rather you devise a competent metaphor than be introspective. Naval gazing and whataboutism is easy, but not particularly impressive. Competence is hard.
I will submit that you likely think you are far more informed than you are, but that you also don't care when you make a bad historical claim with more relevant differences than similarities.
If you care to disagree with my position on historical differences mattering... let's hear it!
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