Dean
5mo ago
Huh. I've never met someone for whom the Israeli policy of nuclear non-acknowledgement actually worked so well.
The Crusader Kingdoms, after all, fell to conventional invasion by neighboring Kingdoms/Empires more interested in fighting them than eachother. Israel, by contrast, is generally believed to have nuclear weapons, and as such its neighboring Kingdoms who could conduct conventional invasions are not particularly interested in fighting them directly anymore.
Dean
1yr ago
This also describes many other regular posters on the Motte (and @ymeskhout much less so than many others I could name), and yet strangely receive far less pushback, and even provoke resentful carping when they push it too far and get modded.
What's strange about it?
The well established climate currated by the mods here is that not pushing back against many sorts of posters is a survival strategy, as the sorts of posters who would push back strenuously against the Darwins or Julius's of the motte were also the ones more likely to be banned than the Darwins or Julius's of the Motte. When moderates have open commentary on calibrating mod action based on political composition of forum, or accuse censored posters of ban-worthy tresspasses while simultaneously not doing so, it creates a pretty clear climate of what is more or less acceptable, and 'more pushback' is often the less acceptable path for long-term motte posters if they want to remain long-term motte posters. This is an old and well established failure state of the Motte, where bad posters both poison the culture and get the mods to ban better posters reacting against them, but this has been defended in the past an acceptable cost for the target goal of the Motte to not punish what people say, but how they say it.
But it is still a basic punitive incentive structure as enforced by the mod team, and as a consequence pushback that does occur will exist within other contextual boundaries- such as the acceptable areas of criticism such as treatment of other posters, or when it exists within the space allowed by the social dynamics of when a mod is involved. These social dynamics involved when mods don't want to be involved in moderating either other mods (internal group dynamics of people who do/have worked together for common causes, a desire to privately raise concerns out of public view) or when mods don't want to get involved in the personal non-mod disputes of a mod and other conflicts (public optic dynamics of not wanting to present mod solidarity). This creates greater conflict space- an overton window if you prefer- for more pushback to people who act within the ven diagram overlap of 'takes condemnable swipes at other posters' and 'is a mod.'
In so much as this is a problem for the broader motte space, the solution is to reduce the ven diagram overlap.
Most reports we see are 100% partisan and can be summarized as "A person I don't like said something I don't like."
I imagine most non-quality post reports would be summarizable as 'A person I don't like said something I don't like' whether it was partisan or not. Most internet fights seeking higher sanction against another are not between people who like eachother fighting over how much they like eacother.
Both sides(tm) do this, but because of the increasingly skewed nature of the Motte, the majority is directed at people like ymeskhout expressing left-wing viewpoints.
Is ymsekhout being criticized for expressing left-wing viewpoints, or is ymeskhout being criticized for his character in how he responded to a very minor barb about how his own post could be viewed from a non left-wing viewpoint?
Not particularly, but it's considerably less one-note and lacking. Your posting is unexceptional, but you intend to insult fewer people and ignore fewer prior discussions than when you fixate on Trump unprompted.
If you meant your writing on a technical level, I find it generally poorly structured and lacking in content, conflating a lot of words with good word choice and links for sufficient sourcing. The arguments are often too reliant on insinuation by word connotation in lieu of supporting arguments, and generally lacking in the ability to anticipate or address counter arguments completely or factor in contextually relevant history while relying on narrative momentum for an emotional climax. It's passable verboseness, and I am certainly a sucker for long-winded arguments, but also leads to basic failures like overly long intros that fail the principles of effective written communication, or speaking around past and still standing counter-arguments.
And I say this as someone who is naturally prone to comma splicing and writing essays on my hobbies, and who writes more the groggier she is.
Dean
1yr ago
The real quality comment in the reddit thread of the same title was the patient response of someone who calmly, softly talked through the principle of signalling through exceptional effort.
As for Meshkout, it was rather typical, given his established fixations for returning to certain topics every few months with the same refrain regardless of prior engagement, which is typical for people with certain communication fixations that are more internally-wired than externally connected.
Are we pretending Yanukovych wasn't overthrown?
Are we pretending Yanukovych wasn't fleeing the country rather than being procedurally removed from office for granting himself the authority to shoot not only the supporters of his political opponents but also the supporters of his unity government partners that he brought into his own government, at the direct pressure of the foreign government that he fled to after his own party loyalists didn't want to conduct a bloodbath?
And are we going to pretend that giving yourself authority to shoot political opponents in the streets without legislative support wouldn't drive legislature retaliation against an Executive clearly bowing to foreign government pressure and incentives?
I am as familiar with the Yanukovych coup narratives as you, and probably a bit more familiar with various political events during Euromaidan, including the ever-handy reference to the conspiracy theory that the US Ambassador discussing candidates for Yanukovych's invitation for a unity government and considering people who could work with Yanukovych and others was actually plotting a coup against the person who she was going to discuss the candidate list with in the coming days.
Perhaps you'd like to raise the protestor-sniper theories that justified the claim to shoot-to-kill authorities, which I might counter with the state sniper evidence and various security service suspect defections to Russia in the investigations after? Or perhaps you want to make the position that the protestors had no right to protest against the sovereign right of the government to join the Eurasian Union economic association, after Yanukovych made a rather abrupt about face on the already-sovereign-agreed to European Union association agreement that was followed by Russian pressure and incentive campaigns? Maybe you'd like to retreat to the defense of Eastern Russo-phile suppression of the Russian speakers, who were so uninterested in joining in the Russian novarussia campaign that the Russian millitary had to directly intervene to keep the separatist republics from collapsing?
Come now, there's so much history we can banter on!
Dean
6mo ago
Lynchings were also as much a cultural practice as anything else. For most of US history, most lynching victims were white. It's just that as the late-20th century cultural changes saw lynching as a whole decline, it declined last in the south and actually increased for blacks as overall numbers trended downwards, even as African Americans who went from being demographically-disproportionate victims to actual majority victims as lynching faded from common use.
I'll pass a relevant source that seems to be mostly in the middle-of-the-pack for year-by-year showings, but if you look at year-by-year breakdowns, black lynchings weren't as, well, consistently allocated as one would think for a 'maintaining control' policy. Civil War reconstruction generally ended in 1877, when federal troops were removed and local political dynamics re-asserted, but black lynchings were actually lower in the 80s (50-70) than they were in the 1910s.
In so much that lynching was a policy tool to cow and terrify into subservience, it was mostly a specific decade of about 1891-1901, where the only 9 years of triple-digit-a-year african-american lynchings occurred, most of that in the early 1890s. This certainly corresponds to the dismantling of the last of the reconstruction-era state governments and the imposition of disenfranchising Jim Crow, but this was far more about asserting control than maintaining control. Once control was taken, lynchings generally decreased over time to a point that they were more living memory than practical, following the white trend of generally declining numbers about 20-30 years late.
Lynchings gradually declined to in the 50s a year in 1920, to basically halving to the 20s or below in 1922, and dropping below 10 a year around 1936. By the time of the Civil Rights movement of the US in the 1950s-1960s, when the average American lifespan in 1960 was 60-70 but the average age was 30, for most people lynching had been a terror-policy in their parents or grand parents age, not in their lifespan.
While the history and use of lynching against African Americans is a real and terrible thing, it's often used anachronistically. Lynching-as-culture predated Jim Crow, and was in no way reserved for African Americans. Lynching-as-control-tactic was far more about establishing Jim Crowe than maintaining it, and absolutely did see African victims raise even as white victims declined as lynching in general became less accepted. By the time of the civil rights era in the 50s and 60s, lynching hadn't been any sort of meaningful policy for decades, which is to say since before the Baby Boomers were even born after WW2.
https://famous-trials.com/sheriffshipp/1084-lynchingsyear http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html
Dean
10mo ago
Nobody seems to talk about the RU-UA war here anymore. I guess it's because we're saturated with it everywhere else.
I'd suspect it's less saturation and more that there wasn't much to talk about that wasn't already obvious here. The Russian offensive culmination was largely evident last summer, and the mobilization as it occurred demonstrated it was about defensive padding rather than offensive capability generation. The fate of the Russian winter offensive just kind of underscored that to a degree that even the pro-Russians of the internet couldn't credibly claim a 'Ukrainine is imminently doomed' narrative based on Russia Stronk memes.
The people for whom the expected Russia victory would have been some sort of validation of their world view instead got their noses rubbed in Russian strategic and moral failures, and generally withdrew.
First, it is immediately clear that the Russians are much more prepared this time. The area that Ukraine took back in autumn was barely defended by a rag-tag group of volunteer militias. That was a big lapse by the Russian general command, which also led to the big mobilisation drive. This time is different.
You're either conflating two very different offensives, or ignoring one entirely. Kharkiv was the unexpected success brought about by undermanning. It was undermanned precisely because the majority of Russia's forces were moved to the Kherson region, which was a two-and-a-half month offensive, which was in no way a dynamic of 'rag-tag group of volunteer militias' on the Russian part.
Even pro-UA accounts like Julian Röpcke are conceding that Ukraine is losing lots of armored vehicles with very marginal gains. Western officials like the CIA chief or the US foreign secretary have all pointed out that the aftermath of the offensive will shape upcoming negotiations. Given that Ukraine has little to show for their offensive thus far, this inevitably casts a dark shadow on any prospects for large territorial compromises. Why would the Russians give the Ukrainians something at the negotiating table which they cannot gain on the battlefield?
There are a few points here.
One, you're assuming that the negotiations the offensive will be meaningfully shaping are territorial negotiations. This is very unlikely- Putin's political interests are such that the Russians aren't going to give the Ukrainians territory at the engotiating table which they cannot gain on the battlefield regardless. The negotiations that occur will be for other dynamics on the extension of the war, including Russian blockade or not of food exports, prisoner swaps, investigation access into the dams, repatriation of Ukrainians in Russian territory, and so on.
Two, you're framing this offensive as if it demonstrates the Ukrainian capacity for offense. That's... really not the case, as the Ukrainian capacity is about western backing for capability, and that is still largely in the 'what we have on hand to spare' levels of output. The estimates last year were that it'd take two-to-three years for various forms of industrial spinup to occur, even as the US has only started scratching it's own strategic storage stockpile. The success (or not) of an offensive in the present really has nothing about the capacity for offensive to work in the future, and far more to do with affecting how Ukraine's western backers shape their plans to back Ukraine (and the potential opportunities for those opposed to that to argue that they shouldn't).
Third and final, you're making far too early a judgement on far too little information. The Ukrainian offensive has been underway for about a week. The Kherson offensive, which again is the 'not a rag-tag group of volunteer militia' comparison, was a two-and-a-half-month offensive. I have no reason to doubt your characterization of Julian Ropcke, but I am not clear why you think they are in any sort of authoritative position to make a considered judgement of the current offensive.
Ultimately, the measure of success of this offensive isn't whether armored vehicles are being lost. That's expected regardless, and the reason 'the tanks are burning, the war is lost!' is its own meme. Success will be whether the offensive does enough that Ukraine's backers consider it enough progress to continue backing rather than compelling surrender, which won't be determined for months.
To my mind, the best that Ukraine can hope for now is a stalemate. This war has shown that in the era of ubiquitous ISR capabilities, trying to surprise your enemy is much harder if he's on his toes (which the Russians weren't in the autumn, but they are now). Consequently, offensives are simply far costlier and harder. The Russians had the same problems, which is why capturing Bakhmut took such an absurdly long time.
The nature of the Russian and Ukrainian problems are significantly different. The Russian issue was that they entered the war with the greatest advantage in material capacity they'd have for the entire war, but squandered it out of strategic incompetence and and with it their capacity to conduct meaningful offensives. The Ukrainian issue was that they started the war with the least material and logistic capacity they're liable to have, and are dependent on western backing in scale to generate these capabilities.
The prevalence of ISR aviation really hasn't changed these dynamics. NATO ISR certainly helped the Ukrainians massively, but it would have amounted to just having the finest view to watch the Russian invasion succeed if the Russians had planned the war's opening as a military invasion and not as a military support to an intelligence coup. Meanwhile, rather than use their surveillance capabilities to hit actual tactical or operational targets, the Russians squandered their strategic stockpiles and is now getting hosed by Iran for drones to use as cruise missiles against... still not tactical or operational targets.
For those of us who would want to see a negotiated settlement, the reality is that neither side is running out of money or arms. Russia is spending a moderate amount of money
This is underselling it by more than a little. It is true Russia isn't going to run out of money in the near term, but whether you want to consider direct expenditures or losses in income or opportunity costs or GDP shift or the impacts to Russian industries, the Russians are spending very significant amounts of blood and treasure and much of their cold war inheritance of Soviet stockpiles.
The only way this war ends is if the West tells Ukraine to give in and accept large territorial losses in return for a settlement and possibly security guarantees. Such an outcome would be nearly impossible to sell to Ukraine's domestic public and would almost certainly end the career of whoever was leading the country, including Zelensky. Whatever comes out of this war, I'm not optimistic about Ukraine's long-term prospects.
These seems like a lack of imagination. Other ways the war can end are that the West continues to help Ukraine generate offensive strength for future even more effective offensives in the future. You may think that's unreasonable/impossible, but the success of such a strategy doesn't rest on your concurrence.
Other ways the war could be brought to something other than a diplomatic capitulation to Russian stronk is that the war continues long enough with enough Western aid to Ukraine that the Russian economic-military capacity to meaningfully resist degrades, that Putin passes away and is replaced by someone not as beholden to Putin's legacy-interests, that the Russians do something really stupid that leads to NATO direct intervention, and other variations.
'Russian military defeat is impossible- better to negotiate now while you still have your army for leverage!' has been a theme since the war started. Nothing in the last six months has provided it any more traction than in the first six month. The war will continue, Ukrainian military capabilities will increase, Russian capabilities will decrease, the Western military-industrial expansions will continue, and the Russian national economic base will continue to retract.
Dean
1yr ago
What's TheMotte's opinion on the legitimacy of protecting individuals from inadvertent value drift? Or in other words: is it okay to let people degenerate, so long as every step is taken out of their own will? Is it liberating to just not let them? It seems to me like answers explain one of the core differences in conservative versus liberal schools of thought. This is rather low-effort, apologies.
What's the saying? Enlightenment is hard, which is why so few people will ever reach it, and none can be forced?
My position is that self-discipline is is a good thing, but that enforcing discipline others is to be avoided as possible outside of broadly agreed upon contexts because of it's propensity to abuse by people without self-discipline. There is no system of evaluation or screening that ensures only self-disciplined will have power for pretty much the same reasons there's no way to ensure that only Good Kings will reign- not only is it not reliable for the (wo)man at the top, but it's the system from top to bottom that matters. Insert the ever-useful insight about self-righteous tormenters, the people who would censor information, the rationalization of self-interest by those who see themselves as enlightened, etc. It's all old hat, and if you weren't convinced before, you won't start now.
Value drift occurs. It's a part of life in all directions and connotations. You yourself refer to your own with what you call an overly frantic escape from Russia. This is a characterization / connotation that can only exist due to value drift brought on by perspective- at the time, while you were certainly in a maniac-depressive state, your values were different. In the coming months/years, there is liable to be future developments and worsenings in Russia that may make your escape seem wise and insightful in a way you don't credit it now. As the fable goes, this too shall pass. There is never a point in your life where you will have the 'correct' value perspective and insight to be qualified to decide it for others.
Instead of top-down impositions, lasting changes to individuals come from the bottom-up, from affecting the common culture of shared beliefs and values. But culture is shared beliefs and values, not the values you compel someone to state. Nearly all deliberate social engineering efforts struggle with this, as the values they claim to espouse are not the things actually motivating behavior or being shared- hence the common refrain of the those being loudest about their selflessness are really most out for themselves, and that's the values being taken. You can ask for someone's consideration of your values, you can share your values, but you can't force it on the unwilling.
There's an old internet poem, probably not actually adopted from a Christian monk but with plenty of regional/cultural variations, that's long stuck with me that seem relevant to this topic.
“When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.
I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.
When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.
Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.”
In this comparison, you are the man-who-is-not-yet-old. I note in your piece, while you spend considerable words on how he has so much less to say, you make only a passing note on that you have talked with him increasingly less over the years. I do not know what you have talked about, if/how you have raised concerns with him directly, but per your own mutability as seen over just the last year, you still have the opportunities to change yourself, and thus impact your family and friends, and through them, more.
It's a lot less heady and gratifying than ambitious reform, but it's there.
Ambivalent emotions about the American election watching from abroad. Figured I'd just note them here.
I am less surprised than underwhelmed. From a distance/superficial level, the results don't seem to match what I was vaguely tracking as the polling trends, which is to say I was expecting the Republicans to do better in general, but in various places I'm not surprised they didn't since local variance and some such, and really they only needed to underperform in a few places to change the swing. Some reports that suggest the Democrats overperformed expectations makes me more inclined to think political polling is generally bad, but I am curious on what the data will show- and where the anamolous surprises are. I guess I'm trying to say I'm more surprised that Fetterman won than Oz lost, if that makes sense.
I'm not particularly curious or interested in any current allegations of -insert shenanigans here-, as much as sighing that ballot control measures appear to have been as bad as ever and so people will conflate an inability to detect with a lack of detection. Undated mail-in ballot saga in PA is probably one of those two-screens divides on whether you take fraud-control seriously. But- on the assumption that the results are legitimate I'm pegging three main reasons the Democrats only lost badly and not terribly.
(Yes, I consider losing the house meaning the Democrats lost, which it looks likely to happen even if Senate control doesn't. I mention framing below.)
1: The summer information campaign and early voting synergized
Post-Roe emotional highs and the friendly media coverage over Ukraine and summer were enough to draw in Democratic engagement were sustained long enough to translate into early voting, before the loss of narrative control let the economy dominate sentiment in the last weeks. Even if voter engagement was only in the form of 'fill out ballot now, mail-in later', engaging people outside of the final media cycles would have engaged them on much more favorable information terrain. We'll probably never know the party distribution of ballots based on time, but I'd be surprised if Democrats didn't do significantly better earlier than later.
A trade-off of this, however, is that I think this is non-repeatable/reliable per see. The denial phase of the economy is over, and I think that was far more important for enabling summer high-energy than the Democratic culture war issues themselves. Affirmative action will be unlikely to have the same kick, and have longer to dissapate. That said, people like to say COVID broke people's brains, and I'll not be surprised if the 'because of COVID I'll only do mail-in voting' demographic becomes a campaign reality, as the sort of people who would use COVID as a reason for absentee ballots at this point are probably atypical media consumers and atypical for the time they commit their votes.
2: The Democrat finger on the Trump primary candidates worked well enough (or was just lucky)
Infamously, Hillary tried to boost Trump because she thought it would support him. From various pieces I saw over the primary season, some efforts were made at that this go around, usually in trying to ease the way for them. I'm not particularly certain it was ever decisive per see as much as a finger on the scales that may not have been necessary, but the 'hope the outrageous candidate wins the primary (and maybe give them an aid),' a classic strategy, worked well enough often enough. As I said, I'm not surprised someone like Oz lost, and it only takes/took a few candidates failing to create a significant swing in the senate.
Edit after- a Washington Examiner article on 9NOV, "Democratic midterm meddling in Republican primaries worked but not perfectly" is a recount of various examples. While the editorial position is hardly lauding, it raises the point of how elevating weak candidates is an accepted strategy.
Since I still not not see a link embed button on this forum, link below
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/democratic-meddling-republican-primaries-effective
3: Media framing helped set a stage the encouraged donor/base engagement early, and changed what would be considered serious defeat
I raised above I feel the summer friendly media environment- when there was a lot less cynicism about the economy, and more rally about Ukraine/abortion/etc/ helped juice the early voter turnout via mail-in, but it also supported expectation management in ways that helped boost the Democratic prospects. I no longer have exactly when it was, but there was a point in the summer where a number of the Democratic-aligned major media pre-emptively approached the election with a winner mentality rather than what was building as a doomer mentality. I'm not in a state to really expound, except that by creating even false motivation, they were able to keep the party system working together long enough to suffice for real motivation, which kept the donor checks coming and the activits engaged instead of depressed and inactive. Losing optimism/motivation is one of the death-spirals of a campaign movement, and just delaying that would help pad the war chest, which enabled significant spending.
But, even when the narrative flipped to the more doomer perspective of a Red Wave, I think it flipped to the other extreme, such that by not being the the worst-case scenario, even a poor performance could look good by contrast to the expectation, and thus a win. At this time of writing, the sentate is still up in the air... but somehow, losing the House but keeping the Senate is framing in some areas as 'Republicans lost.' There is, indeed, an argument to be made 'you should have won this'... but I dispute that the Red Wave 'should' have been expected as a matter of course. Red Wave wasn't the 'should' from 12, 8, or even 5 months ago. The numbers bandied about a year ago that I remember were... within two-to-three senate races. We are now... within two-to-three senate races. We'll see the final numbers, and the specific reasons why where, but assuming the conclusions is still a flaw even when in false-modesty. 'We should have lost worse, but we didn't, so really we won' is a cope that's assisted by a media inclined to inaccurate extremes.
Or, to reframe- early on, a supportive media environment kept the party machine churning better than it would have with early despair. Later on, catastrophic reframing allowed a non-catastrophic defeat to be portrayed as victory.
All of this may be too early, or turn out to be wrong in hindsight, but what's a musing if not to put a prediction to look back on?
Now, I am interested- and curious- what the final demographic totals are. Various points of change in recent polling suggested white women, hispanics, and even blacks going more towards the Republicans than expected in recent weeks. If those are trends, and more importantly trends that continue, reasons that apply above may easily not be sufficient next time... especially if it is literally Biden on the ballot, rather than a lot of local-man-versus-trump-proxy.
Or maybe Trump will be on the ballot. Who knows.
I'm not trying to wade into this particular fight, but since I have a followed it for its many years, I am confused by this statement. Are you saying that @ymeshkout claims as a general statement that electoral corruption does not happen in American electoral politics, that he has made specific claims about it not happening in particular instances, or that other people have claimed it doesn't happen?
The later, as part of a counter-argument by negation by demonstrating the heuristic is not a rebuttal when it can simply be reversed to press to the opposite conclusion.
I think you're being uncharitable here too. While calling @HlynkaCG a "hallucinating liar" would be a bit harsh, he quoted something @HlynkaCG accused him of saying which he claims he did not. Either he did in fact say that (in which case @ymeskhout is either lying or suffering from faulty memory) or he didn't (in which case @HlynkaCG is either lying, misremembering, or mistaken).
I would disagree, as the structural argument is broader motte and bailey. The claim is not a specific instance of Hlynka, but a broader position.
If I seem like I am coming down on @ymeskhout's side here, it's because from personal experience I can't help sympathizing with someone who gets accused of saying things he didn't and then gets further attacked when he objects to this. FWIW I think both of you would do well to maybe speak a little more directly (and charitably) instead of using long circumlocutory paragraphs to say "You're a lying liar who lies" as verbosely as possible.
Speaking more plainly is what has gotten mod action in the past, and I wasn't intending to go into it after letting it sit for a night, but since you asked I'll try to make it as direct as necessary and consider this exchange in the thread done. (I have tried to not let arguments carry on past a day and intend to ignore/not make further public posts on this topic today, but if you'd like to PM, I will respond later.)
Among ymeshkout's bad faith habits is that you can provide him effort posts with the citations or examples he requests, and then he will lie in later arguments- or even in the same discussion threads- and deny such examples were provided to him, and use the argument of absence to claim a further point. When pressed sometimes he will deflect on personal-subjective grounds, sometimes he will do so on grounds of gish-gallop refusal, and sometimes he will simply not acknowledge... and then in the next iteration, he will repeat the claims of absence, and challenge for the same points previously provided, and repeat the same cycle. In the process he will regularly mis-represent other people's positions, even when directly corrected, and will affect incomprehension.
My position- which he used to directly link downthread of in the old-reddit- is that this is lying. That mis-representing other people's stated and elaborated positions despite direct clarification is lying. That claiming that no explanation or sources were offered is lying. That making broad insinuations that the only conclusion he can come to about his opponents no longer engage him to the detail he insists is because they are irrational and capricious is lying. And that, having disregarded the posts and positions offered to him only to claim that none were offered to him, that he is owed no such effort or citations in the future. Because, per the position, he would simply ignore the points made anyway and later claim weren't provided, while continuing to make claims and profer links which misrepresent the person's engagements. (Which he continues to do.)
Dean
8mo ago
They go into the cotemporary legal definitions, and note that there were smaller scale insurrections that were considered insurrections.
Insurrections smaller than January 6, but which other events in contemporary American politics haven't surpassed? Which?
Their main argument was that the January 6 mob was an attempt to use at least the show and threat of force in opposition to the constitutional order, and maybe, but more dubiously, that the assorted plans, second sets of electors, etc. could be considered rebellion even without force.
But the argument made was that this is an interpretation should qualify as a rebellion to the perspectives of the people who drafted the amendment- but the amendment was drafted by people whose concept of Rebellion was intrinsically one of mass, organized force on the scale of war.
So again- why should anyone believe the Amendment drafter's views of Rebellion were such that Jan 6 qualified?
What makes this newsworthy to me isn't so much that people are arguing that January 6th was an insurrection, for the reasons you say, but the fact that actions could be taken because of that that could have a substantial effect on the upcoming election.
Which actions can be taken because of this that couldn't have been taken already?
This is not a position claiming a consensus of Federal Society legalists, or concurrence by government lawyers, or a position made by anyone else in the last several years of lawfare. It's novel, not authoritative.
Dean
1yr ago
I mean you should take this write up with a grain of salt as Dean is pretty openly a pro US neocon, who regularly argues pretty loudly for US foreign military interests.
I'm sure this is based on a well founded history of posting despite my being on the opposite advocacy side of pretty much every neocon-endorsed war of the last 25 years, and not at all trying to smuggle in pejoratives because of my long-established contempt of Putin and regular disagreements with the Russian apologists or tankie types on matters of historical objectivity or international dynamic characterization.
Before I get dogpiled just read their posting history, it's almost all they comment on while staying out of all the other juicy western culture war topics the rest of us are suckers for.
What makes this funny is that the very last person to reference me did so for... my media reviews at the old site, which were far more forthcoming because the Reddit-motte did more culture-media talk in the main forum, and because Reddit was where I already was more often for my other hobbies, and where I still spend most of my time.
'Just read their posting history' is a basic information input error, because if you read the posting history I still have from the Reddit, you'll see I'm often not here because of time I spend instead on video games. Reading this forum post history wouldn't indicate that, nor would it indicate the job changes or other life actions. Nor would it reflect how the discussion of the Motte has changed since the migration, with an increase of topics (especially chatGPT and AI) that I have never expressed particular interest in. Nor would it reflect my own attempts to change how much time I spend on this forum for other reasons, which in turn would drive changes in what material I spend time on. Nor would it various real-life reasons I have been offline in general for the last few months.
Yes, I find international politics more interesting than chatGPT or AI recursion. I find the conflicts between actually different cultures the most part of a culture-discussion forum with an international spread of participants. I also have more experience on inter-cultural, as opposed to intra-cultural conflicts, and especially those related to military-government relations, than most. I find these subjects interesting, and when the topic comes up I'll chime in if someone asks a question or says something I think obfusicates more than informs. On topics like AI which I find less interesting, I've expressed my views in the past, and moved on to let more passionate people continue with the things they find.
All countries involved in proxy wars have their own internal issues and politics that factor.
The distinction is that cultural chauvinists are self-centered to a degree that they act or believe that their interests and influence are what dominate other people's conflicts. They do this in a variety of ways, such as characterizing domestic power grabs between warlords as foreign proxy wars which remove agency outside of the local actors and reframe conflicts so that local actors are of secondary importance and can be generalized and brushed away.
I have a long pattern of viewing this sort of framing as analytical malpractice.
On the other hand there are 3 places in the world in which Russia has / plans to have a foreign naval base. Sevastopol in Crimea, Tartus in Syria and a planned base in Sudan. Syria was clearly a proxy war, Ukraine is, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
Then I would posit you should probably learn what a goose is, because that's not a duck.
This is where I refer back to my point about the sort of cultural chauvenism that tries to make other people's conflicts about the US. Syria was indeed a proxy war... but not between the US and Russia. Syria was an excellent example of the practical implications of the Obama-era policy of trying to off-shore the middle east and lead-from-behind so that the US would have a less direct role, which in turn led to the Turks and the Arabs and the Iranians all taking the lead and setting conditions that the US then reacted to. Syria pre-ISIS was an excellent case study in how minor and middle powers compete to shape the action, or inaction, of a larger outside power, with various parties trying to draw in the US, and others to keep it out, and how varying degrees of support and sympathy can be elicited or hindered. The formal American intervention in Syria was not because of, in response to, or a result of Russia- it was a result of local actors, specifically ISIS, who themselves were not a result of Russia or the cause of Russia's own intervention.
If someone wanted to raise Syria as a proxy war between Russia and Turkey or Saudi Arabia for control of the Mediterranean port, that would be a defensible line of argument. Unlike the US, which infamously backed down from Obama's own red line and was in fits over what sort of aid it could give anyone, the Turks actually tried to overthrow the Assad regime. They provided far more significant military aid to those they judged most directly supporting, they provided operational safe havens, and they repeatedly considered- and actually did- directly intervene to keep their proxies in the fight. The Arabs attempted similar, and it was precisely their favored groups that got the most resistance from within the US government. The Americans puttered rather than come to a policy decision of what goals to pursue, and ultimately let the Arabs and the Turks take the lead until ISIS overran north-western Iraq.
A framing that tries to fit Syria into a broader US-Russia competition makes sense from a Russian perspective, because the Russians are fixated on the US like that, but it doesn't actually reflect the actors of relative import on the ground, or even the American perspective. To Russia, something like the the battle of Khasham may occur because it is in a proxy war with the US and the US has it out to get them. To the United States, something like the battle of Khasham can occur because, to quote Mattis, "The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people, and my direction to the chairman was for the force, then, to be annihilated. And it was."
Notably, Khasham is about as far from the Syrian coast as you can be. An American attempt to drive the Russians off the sea board it was not.
The red sea sees a trillion dollars pass through each year and is of huge geostrategic importance. I think the 1st and only foreign naval base China has in in Djibouti. So there is plenty of incentive for the US to be manipulating things behind the scenes. Even if they haven't clearly backed a specific separatist force yet.
This is an example of combining banalities with conspiratorial lack of analysis. The Red Sea is indeed very important- but a naval base is not a 'turn off all trade for a year' button, the horn of Africa is a region where the Americans have supported other militaries developing a naval presence to deal with piracy such as the Somali pirate surge years ago, and the Djibouti dynamics are so different from the Sudan dynamics in international affairs terms that this is an heavy-handed motte and bailey.
Moreover, it supports no claim, or counter-claim, in Sudan. 'The US has an incentive to manipulate' is not a substitute for 'the US was manipulating things from behind the scenes,' particularly when ongoing US 'manipulation' was open, overt, and internationally coordinated negotiations... which have been derailed by the recent coup.
This is pejorative in search of an accusation, which I condemn on grounds of obscuring actual truth-seeking, and more to the point its pejorative style that fixates on the US to the eclipsing of other equally or even more relevant actors, like the Europeans- who have reorganized their Africa policy on migrant flow terms- or the Saudis- who were one of the few groups close to the pre-2019 coup government which supported them in Yemen- and others.
I find this bad foreign policy analysis. I don't object to it on neocon grounds- I object to it because I find the arguments sophomoric.
Dean
1yr ago
A paragraph of questions is generally not one actually looking for them to be engaged, but I'll take a stab.
War that will make patriots out of corrupt oligarchs? It started in 2014.
And has had multiple decisive impacts against Russian intentions since 2013.
Multiple Russian efforts failed due to various sorts of nationalism by oligarchs refusing to cooperate with Russian pressure efforts. This started with the elite split over the Russian pressure on Yanukovych's corrupt reversal on the European Union association agreement in favor of the Eurasian Union in 2013, and dramatically escalated when many of the oligarchs in Yanukovych's own power base refused to support his Russian-pressured effort to start shooting protestors during Euromaidan, and then the major flop of the NovaRussia uprising in Eastern Ukraine where oligarchs generally supported post-Maidan Kyiv rather than join the Russian effort to astroturf a grassroots popular revolt. This doesn't even touch on the 2022 government cohesion in face of Russian invasion.
It's not that war has made patriots out of corrupt oligarchs. There is a war because a surprising number of corrupt oligarchs were already nationalists even before 2014.
A new president who promises to fix everything and fix corruption? It's happened so many times it's not funny anymore.
The relevant consideration for Ukrainian corruption considerations isn't because there's a new president, but that the war has created a new legal contexts and oversight measures with Ukraianian political support. This has not happened so many times before.
First, let's just be clear on something. The primary donor of economic aid, the states of the European Union, are not out to 'fix everything and fix corruption.' This is a false standard.
It also misses a key point of the European Union, which uses what others might call obvious corruption via patronage networks as a standard cohesion mechanism. The European Union is absolutely involved in the patronage system, and the way that even internal EU aid works is that governments taking aid are expected to use it broadly in the categories intended (agriculture subsidies on agriculture, not yachts), but who, exactly, gets the funds and how are left to the governments. It's a basic pro-European incentive scheme to build pro-EU interest groups who really like getting money and so are positively inclined to European influence in order to keeping it coming. This sort of pork is not what the Europeans consider unacceptable corruption, and patronage network of government elites building pro-government business elite networks is not the problem.
Since the war has started, Ukraine has gotten not only increased aid, but increased attention and various oversight mechanisms. Western donors, after all, have strong interests in seeing where their increase goes, and that it's having the desired strategic effect. The Ukrainian government, which is dependent on them in a way it was not under previous presidents, is in little position to refuse access, and has actually had an interest in granting access to its own information systems just to underscore how desperate the situation is. What has resulted is various access and tracking systems to western backers, which both gives institutions like the IMF insight on what is needed economically, and the Americans access militarily, but also also establish mechanisms. While some level of fraud is unavoidable- just look to the various western corruption issues around COVID monies- the war has brought new access into systems were the unacceptable corruptions rely on being opaque.
The war has also changed the political dimensions for western-pressured reforms. The Europeans have absolutely used the leverage of aid and Ukrainian desires/desperate to join the European community to pressure the Ukrainian government to make legal and administrative changes to improve on corruption. One of these results- something no previous president did- was dissolve the Kyiv Administrative District Court, one of the most notoriously corrupt court systems in the countries.
Between a confluence of crisis letting the government act, unique access and leverage by westerners pressing reforms, and domestic political support for the both, Ukraine has been undergoing major legal and structural shakeups no previous president of the last decades has matched.
Additional grants/loans/Marshall Plan 2.0? Didn't billions of dollars and euros already have go one way into Ukraine? Where did they go?
To the front, to salaries, to infrastructure and item purchases, and many other things needed in a war.
This is what I mean by question streams not actually being asked with the intent of receiving answers. The first is not a question or even referring to a specific thing (or, in the case of Marshal Plan 2.0, a thing that has happened), the second conflates the value/cost all forms of assistance, and the third presumes corruption for unanswered questions, even when the question doesn't even make sense.
Where does aid go? It depends on what the aid is, and when, and how one calculates. Since Ukraine is in a war, let's just take a single example: a single vehicle donation to the Ukrainian military.
Let's take a BMP-1. A BMP-1 is an early Soviet-era armored personnel carrier. It's not particularly good, but it serves a purpose. A google search says a single one costs roughly 1 million USD. But what is the cost? Not, actually, 1 million USD. BMP-1s are old, the cost of production was already consumed long ago, and in many cases are just legacy hard ware not intended for current use by their own militaries, and were slated for eventual replacement by more modern kit. Giving 30 BMP-1s is not equivalent to taxing your citizens $30,000,000 and then handing it over to the Ukrainian government for them to turn into yachts.
The answer to all unknown expenditures is not 'it was all wasted due to corruption.'
It has been talked about since the 90s and European leaders are now talking about "the long road ahead for Ukraine", the status of a candidate is not at all a guarantee of an early entry, ask Turkey, Serbia and Montenegro.
Appealing to the 90s, when Ukraine's elite and public were very indifferent about European association (and the European Union did not exist), and not 2014, when a major seminal moment saw the Ukrainian body politic actively affirm a desire for European association, is willfully ignoring quite a bit of context. Euromaidan wasn't a pro-European fanclub protesting, it was a result of long-established European-supported engagement structures successfully connecting with both publics and key elite interests to such a degree that a Russian-pressured lethal force crackdown was rejected by key members of the ruling coalition. The pro-EU political base in Ukraine has not been fair-weather or transient, enduring almost a decade of war now and demonstrating both enduring strength and conviction in a way that many of your examples have not, divided as they were for internal reasons.
Turkey is an interesting argument if you want to make it, but I'd argue Turkey was more interested in joining in the 90s/early 2000s than the EU was in letting them in... but this is due to factors not relatable to Ukraine, such as being a large muslim country and UK internal politics. The Ukrainians are not seen as outsiders in the way Turkey was, nor are they an election or two away from a conservative muslim government.
MTF for character limit.
Dean
8d ago
It's been interesting to watch the reaction from Western pro-Ukrainians to Ukraine's sweeping new mobilization orders. The prevailing sentiment seems to be "that's a tragedy, and obviously the draft shouldn't exist to begin with, but what can be done?" Suggesting that it would be better to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict is outside the Overton window. It's a foregone conclusion that Ukraine must fight to the last man.
I find it interesting in another direction, such as why you believe it's a foregone conclusion, as opposed to a dismissed propaganda narrative that outran its legs.
We have numbers to use, and the war attrition of the Ukraine War is nowhere near that Ukraine is being attrited to such a degree in population terms. The early-war narratives to that effect required the inclusion of the capture of major demographic centers in the east during the early war and projected that forward, but in the time sense Russia hasn't captured the demographics previously associated with the territory, and the combat attrition rates- even factoring in some of the more incredible Russian claims- are nowhere near enough to warrant a demographic-level narrative. Ukraine may be struggling with the manpower to resist the russian manpower, but that's a balance of scale and desire to mobilize available population, not running out of population.
This also turns on the motte-and-bailey of what negotiating a peaceful end of the conflict entails. The Russian terms from the start of the conflict- including the narrative that the West forced Ukraine to cancel a near-deal- have consistently been terms that were, shall we say, not conducive to a negotiated peaceful end of the conflict, as opposed to obvious set-ups for a fourth continuation war to greater Russian advantage by demanding dismantling of Ukraine's means to resist any future invasion and providing Russia a veto over any external support in case of a future Russian invasion. The Russians have been rather consistent on that front, and have further expanded their claims since, and so it generally falls on the advocates of a negotiating a peaceful end of the conflict as to argue as to how the Russian position is compatible with a negotiated peaceful end of the conflict, which itself was the third unprovoked continuation war in a decade.
There is something hellishly dystopian about fleeing to another country, possibly even across the ocean, and your country of birth is still trying to pull you back. Particularly because women are given a free pass. It's natural to feel like there should be some cost associated with the privilege of not having to be forcibly conscripted to fight against an invading army.
Why would you feel it's hellishly dystopian, when it's a positively banal part of the international system and has been for longer than you've been alive? As long as you claim citizenship of Country X, you have reciprocal obligations with country X, and while countries Y-Z often don't go along in enforcing other countries laws regarding those obligations, they often practice similar practices. This ranges from conscription- I've personally met Koreans who left Ivy League colleges to serve their service time- to taxation abroad, to extradition treaties, and so on.
Conscription is not some international abnormality, and neither is it being gender-restricted. If a normality comes off as dystopian, that implies more about the standard of dystopia than the nature.
This raises questions about Ukraine's ability to keep their fighting force well-staffed going forward, and also questions about the morale of Ukrainian soldiers. Every conflict has some number of draft dodgers, but I wonder if there are any hard stats about whether dodgers are particularly overrepresented in this conflict? That could help adjudicate the question of whether the Ukrainian resistance is an authentic homegrown phenomenon, or if it's largely being sustained by Western pressure.
If you lack numbers of draft dodgers to make any judgement on relative numbers, why would you believe the conflict is being sustained by Western pressure as opposed to authentic homegrown opinion? Especially when you already have access to now years of Ukrainian opinion polling by a multitude of actors that go beyond Ukrainian capacity to control?
It's not exactly impossible to do polling in Ukraine without Ukrainian government approval, and the polling efforts that survive scrutiny are generally consistent. Even on conscription, it's not particularly remarkable: individuals don't necessarily like being conscripted, but can accept/support conscriptions as a legitimate and even necessary component of defense.
I'm more curious as to what you think the alleged Western pressure on the Ukrainians to keep fighting is. Typically that refers to the early 2022 breakdown of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, which actors claimed were 'close to agreement', but reporting on actual contents of the negotiations include revealed rather significant gaps in position like-
The draft treaty with Ukraine included banning foreign weapons, “including missile weapons of any type, armed forces and formations.” Moscow wanted Ukraine’s armed forces capped at 85,000 troops, 342 tanks and 519 artillery pieces. Ukrainian negotiators wanted 250,000 troops, 800 tanks and 1,900 artillery pieces, according to the document. Russia wanted to have the range of Ukrainian missiles capped at 40 kilometers (about 25 miles).
And included Russians provisions like-
Other issues remained outstanding, notably what would happen if Ukraine was attacked. Russia wanted all guarantor states to agree on a response, meaning a unified response was unlikely if Russia itself was the aggressor. In case of an attack on Ukraine, Ukrainian negotiators wanted its airspace to then be closed, which would require guarantor states to enforce a no-fly zone, and the provision of weapons by the guarantors, a clause not approved by Russia.
I don't think anyone has seriously argued that refusing terms like these requires external pressure, given the rather logical implications for one's prospects for a peaceful future if the current invader insists that they must agree to any international assistance to you in case they invade again after you dismantle your means to resist.
Given that the current Ukraine War is at least the third continuation war in a decade after the occupation of Crimea (the first continuation war being the NovaRussia campaign that was intended to start a mass uprising, and the second continuation war being the conventional Russian military intervention to preserve the enclaves as separatists when the NovaRussia campaign failed), peace talks really do have to address the prospects of future wars, and not treat the current war as one in isolation. Especially as multiple Russian claims as to why their invasion was justified would retain for future use would not be resolved in any near-term ceasefire.
Dean
16d ago
I don't know how well read you are on the history of what happened...
Ah, I see we are going to play the pretend we don't know game, such as--
Seems we both agree at the outset that he was democratically elected, do we not? His overthrow was explicitly supported by the US and it's allies.
-that US support for Yanukovych stepping down followed Yanukovych starting to process of shooting protestors in the streets with government snipers.
Are you not aware that there was even leaked audio of Victoria Nuland and the Ukraine's Ambassador that revealed deliberate planning of his overthrow?
Oh, hey, called it-
including the ever-handy reference to the conspiracy theory that the US Ambassador discussing candidates for Yanukovych's invitation for a unity government and considering people who could work with Yanukovych and others was actually plotting a coup against the person who she was going to discuss the candidate list with in the coming days.
Come now, we can go over the transcripts if you'd like. We can even go over Yanukovych's invitation for the opposition to join the government, which was the basis of Nuland's discussions of who would actually work well within Yanukovych's government which- again- was invited and being discussed in the context of Yanukovych running it.
NATO was never a European alliance of 'peace', it's an alliance that's aimed at destabilizing Eastern Europe, with the intention to weaken Russia
While this certainly nails your flag high, it doesn't really establish your awareness with Euromaiden-
Do forgive a homie for challenging American imperialism unipolarity.
-or that, as far as challening American imperialism unipolarity, Ukraine was such an own-goal by Russia.
This whole quagmire has absolutely zero to do with high minded moral idealism against the Next Hitler, who at the same time the media tells us is losing, running out of gas, is out of ammunition, is incompetent beyond belief; and simultaneously is preparing for world domination and his next target is going to be Poland or Scandinavia. It has everything to do with continued projecting of American and western geopolitical dominance across the planet.
Yawn. Like I said, I'd rather you build a competent historical metaphor, not your naval gazing. If your media is telling us Putin is Next Hitler, or running out of gas, or out of ammunition, pick better media, not other trash.
Don't know why you're trying make a mess of history on the matter. Even the regime change wing of the State Department admits of their activities in Russia's backyard and the very thing I'm calling it out for.
I'm not sure why you believe Global Research .ca, an anti-globalization conspiracy website, represents the regime change wing of the State Department, but this would be both an incorrect citation and not a rebuttal to the post on hyper and hypo agency.
And as such, Russia's response is reasonable in turn to US' operations in their sphere of influence.
Similarly, you seem to have missed that point that he was making fun of the argument structure, and not actually making a position that your argeement with would advance your position.
Dean
16d ago
And he tried exercising it to find more amicable solutions to the problem. That's what the Minsk Accords were.
The Minsk Accords were many things- including the functional erosion of national sovereignty by legislating an external power's veto by proxy- but an amicable solution they were not.
Why was the west encouraging Ukraine behind the scenes to give Russia a run around, while the west poured arms into the country to bolster its strength so the government could betray the terms of their agreement?
Why wouldn't the west encourage Ukraine not to submit to unreasonable Russian demands that the Russians knew were unreasonable and would not be accepted, while bolstering the ability to resist the military coercion that pushed the demands in the first place?
The demands were unreasonable, and were made at the end of a military intervention. Europeans, as with many other cultures, tend not to support those things against their neighbors lest it be applied to them.
Dean
5mo ago
Well, that's certainly a novel theory, and given the longevity of the Crusader Kingdoms and rarity of total state collapse without external intervention, a generally non-falsifiable one that would outlast either of our time on the mortal coil.
I generally am not moved by conditionals that already failed to occur (Egypt was already ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood- it did not take the deal in a heartbeat), presumption of uninterupted trend lines that justify inevitable disaster without shaping (the othrodox population claim), or hypotheticals that run contrary to historical experience or macro trends (lol, said pan-Arabism, RIP), so as such I'll just leave that I find your failure to see how nukes would be useful in saving a country unconvincing as evidence that they don't have more relevance that historical metaphors with fundamentally different assumptions.
Dean
6mo ago
Not sure we disagree.
Not intended to be a disagreement! It was intended as more an elaboration/expansion, with a point of a personal pet peave (historical anachronisms).
There was a period when the fear being the point is true, but the anachronism is when that was- which was not mid-century Jim Crow as known or protested against in the mid-Century US. Fear of lynchings ceased to be a point when lynchings stopped being any sort of coordinated or even common point, which it hadn't been for the better part of a generation by the time the modern conception of Jim Crow south was cemented in popular memory. No one alive today has any living memory of lynching as an organized suppression policy in the American South (or anywhere else).
To draw back a few posts higher, the people deriving eliminationist intent in the current era are even further removed from a period when lynching was a point, and lynching as a means of social control wasn't even living memory for most of the US during the period most contemporary progressives are thinking off as the Jim Crowe South that the Civil Rights were against. Appealing to modern fears of Jim Crowe returning and/or lynchings as a means to subjugate blacks and/or eliminationist fears is as historically illiterate as trying to frame, oh, muslim immigration into Europe as related to the Crusades. The later may have been more generations ago, but it was generations ago, and is neither living memory or lived experience to justify current concerns.
Dean
6mo ago
The Ukraine experience should teach us to treat this kind of inflammatory unverified story as having more or less zero credibility -- I'm quite sure Israel is not lacking in the information warfare department.
This seems odd, as the Ukrainian experience was that there was indeed quite a bit of well documented mass crimes, some visible from orbit. While there were certainly exaggerations, the number and degree of validated incidents would lead to far more than zero credibility.
Now, if you said the Russian experience in Ukraine, that might have the meaning you seem to mean, since the Russian atrocity propaganda before and early on were far more contrived in many high-profile cases, but that doesn't seem to be what you meant.
The apparent true facts are bad enough -- the smell of propaganda is concerning as gestures in the direction of whipping up support for a very brutal response.
Well, of course. That was the Hamas objective. You don't have a Daesh-style atrocity self-publicity campaign without wanting to escalate.
Dean
7mo ago
This is nonsense. During the Cold War, neither the US nor the USSR gave weapons in proxy wars that resulted in incursions into the other sides’s territory let alone amped up the exchange.
Neither had the opportunity, as neither directly invaded an adjacent neighbor and started a sustained urban bombardment campaign.
In terms of preparation, the Russian position on NATO as a threat is that this is precisely what NATO has been from the start: a US proxy threatening incursions or worse into peaceful Russian territory. The Russian narrative, propaganda it may be, is as relevant to precedent for Russian nuclear deterrence posturing as anything else, or even more so, because one can take Russia's own words and actions for what both represents a threat but demonstratably does not represent a nuclear-retaliation trigger.
Mentioning Korea is besides the obvious point
You seem to have missed the original point as much as the previous replier, so that's not a surprise.
The Cold War did not have anything close to the current situation.
The Cold War had numerous examples of both sides engaging in massive conventional arms shipments that resulted in tens or even hundreds of thousands of casualties to the other in the other's wars of choice where losing would not threaten to trigger state collapse and existential risk thresholds that drive nuclear weapon use.
As the relevant comparison being invoked was nuclear risk, that is incredibly relevant, especially as the Cold War had multiple contexts were nuclear war was far closer than the current Ukraine war.
Finally the causal mechanism is clear — weapons are provided that help Ukraine make serious inroads into say Crimea and Russia uses tactical nukes. NATO responds and the world ends.
That is not a causal mechanism, as the threshold criteria has already been falsified in this very conflict.
If 'serious inroads into Russia' were the standard that would invoke nuke use, nuclear weapons would have been used last year, because the Ukrainians have already made 'serious inroads' into de jure Ukrainian territory that Russia annexed. This is just one of the reasons why Putin's annexation gambit of the eastern parts of Ukraine last year was panned as a strategic mistake- in his attempt to box himself and any would-be successor into continuing the conflict to victory, he demonstrated that Ukrainian military successes in internationally-recognized but Russian-annexed Ukrainian territory were NOT something Russia was going to go nuclear over, a dynamic that was furthered with the Kherson defeat and which is ongoing in the southern front in late 2023. The obvious rheotrical off-ramp- that these aren't 'serious' inroads- just undermines the central premise, because the Russians can always claim that a major defeat is not 'serious', which moves the nuclear retaliation from objective criteria to subjective criteria, which goes to rational or irrational actors, which drives back to what observable indicators there are of nuclear thresholds and if they've already been passed X number of times, why they should be believed to be nuclear on X+1 time.
A similar lack of credibility occurred with claims that any attack on Crimea might meet a nuclear response- there have been many, many, many attacks on Crimea since the war started. They have not made the war go nuclear. Attacking ships in port did not make the war go nuclear. Conducting operations from within Russian-claimed territory, and even internationally-recognized Russian territory, did not make the war go nuclear. There was never any particular reason to believe they would besides people claiming clear causal mechanisms, but like many, many other Russian red lines, these have not been nuclear. That the Russians claim Crimea is a part of Russia as any other is itself undercut by the other areas they claim is part of Russia, ie. the territories they claimed not only when they didn't already hold them, but also lost significant major portions of. The precedent is already set, because Crimea is only as indisputably Russian for nuclear deterrence purposes due to being annexed as the also-annexed Ukrainian east, which has not been basis for nuclear retaliation.
A third extension of this theme of undermining nuclear-threshold criteria is, of course, Russia's own attacks into the other's territory: Russia set precedent in the world that strikes into urban centers were an acceptable form of non-unacceptable activity, and when the Ukrainians reciprocated, the Russians demonstrated it was not, in fact, a nuclear threshold. These were, notably, established with Urkainian strikes not dependent on Western advanced munitions, but from Ukraine's own stocks of Soviet-derived (and in some cases Soviet-produced) munitions. The actions doable from non-American sources demonstrated the lack of threshold criteria in claimed thresholds, and so western-provided munitions have to have something more than a magical western aura to be nuclear-escalation risk. Maybe if Urkraine began some sort of population-targetting WMD campaign... but the Ukrainian bio-weapon labs have not exactly materialized.
Between strategic mismanagement and precedence, the Russians have demonstrated that Ukraine taking Russian-claimed cities, reciprocating strikes, and other forms of military engagement remain below the level of nuclear threshold criteria, which is typically only associated with the survival of the state or WMD retaliation. Throughout the war, the Ukrainians have not significantly impacted the Russian state's ability to maintain internal control of the population, or even the military, which might cause a threat to the continuity of government, which is also credible nuclear thresholds. The most relevant threat to the state's capacity to control in the last two years have been overwhelmingly self-inflicted internal politics, which would not- and did not- lead to a credible nuclear threat.
If the argument is that aid packages will eventually allow Ukraine to march on Moscow, which would threaten state survival, that's not an argument against current aid packages. That's an argument against hypothetical future packages well, well after the point of Ukraine taking its internationally recognized borders.
And this is aside from the assumption of the Western response, for which leading to MAD results from the typical muddling of whether actors are rational or irrational. Even setting aside the nature of assuming the NATO response would be nuclear, if the Russians are rational nuclear actions, and NATO nuking is a given, then the Russians would not conduct the nuking that leads to MAD, because they are rational and the use of the nuclear weapon would not be worth it. As the Russians have not used nuclear weapons to reverse battlefield setbacks even without the threat of NATO nuking, the non-Russian observer is going to have to justify why a particular Russian battlefield loss will precipitate nuclear use when it hasn't been rational to do so to date, but also why- if the argument twists to that the Russians are irrational- why the irrational Russians haven't done so to date.
Which goes down to the typical muddling of actors being simultaneously rational and irrational which tends to retreat for the motte when challenged.
That Wagner is unlikely to succeed in a coup is not the same thing as not producing any consequences (doing anything). The threat of Prigozhin's rebellion isn't in the likely doomed attempt- it's in the second and third order effects of the purges to follow not just against Wagner, but Wagner's allies, and the apathetic sorts of bystanders who didn't oppose them with fervency.
Prigozhin and Wagner aren't politically significant in the sense that 'Prigozhin thought he was a real boss.' Prigozhin is well aware, hence why he went on his antics for publicity, and targetting his feud of the MOD bosses, and the instigation event being Shugoi's alleged attempts to both administratively dismantle Wagner's independence (Soldier contract demands) and potential bombing. Prigozhin likely isn't under delusions that he's 'a real boss'- he's likely under very clear understanding that he was targetted and doomed, and is deciding to go down fighting.
Prigozhin and Wagner are politically significant in that they are representative/rallying points for a key contingent of what you might call 'the non-state nationalism.' Wagner is... I hate to use vague terms live 'Avatar' or 'totem,' but symbollic of the idea of a Russian strength that's not simply the state. Signalling support for Wagner was a way to show your support for Russia as a good nationalist even if you opposed/detested/thought Shugoi and the MOD were incompetent/wrong/ruinous. Being pro-Wagner was a form of acceptable criticism of the regime by people who were fellow travelers. It was a nexus through which anti-Shugoi factions could persist and loosely coordinate.
When Shugoi wins- and I agree that he's likely to win this- he is not going to stop at just Wagner leaders. He's going to go after their allies, which includes not only other disaffected oligarchs (it's own risk to the system if/when a class of greedy opportunists opportunistically move against eachother to take eachother's stuff), but their support networks as well, which includes their media/social presence spheres. And in that, what was previously swarths of officially tolerated opinions- and criticisms- will no longer be tolerated, but officially suppressible.
What this will mean is up for debate, but the reason Wagner was a totem of alternative nationalists was that they didn't want to support the existing national symbol of strength- the MOD-military- in the first place. Removing the alternative doesn't mean people will transfer their favor to the persons/institutions that did so... and is likely to be suppressing them either actively or with open suspicion. Dismantling parts of the oligarchy doesn't mean that only the traitorous parts are subject to being targetted- or that only the traitors will resist and fly back.
This is an event that, even in failure, will change how the war-supporting base view the government fighting the war, and how the oligarchs move against eachother. Either would be significant on their own, and this is before Putin's typical insecurities drive further responses against either group.
Dean
10mo ago
I keep seeing this take in a lot of social media and I really don't think that it has any relation to reality. It isn't a "fairly moderate chunk of the US military budget" but a massive economic imposition and cost upon the rest of the west. Aside from the direct costs of sending money and arms to one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, the indirect costs from rising energy prices, economic disruption, inflation, sanctions, refugees and the like have made this entire affair incredibly expensive.
This conflates a few different topics of wildly different scopes, so I'll focus on the point of energy prices. The energy price rising isn't the consequence of the war, it's the consequence of the Europeans- namely the Germans- refusing energy blackmail. The war was the context of the blackmail, but the capacity for the blackmail was baked into the status quo ante as a result of deliberate central and western European policy choices over the objections / concerns / warnings of US and Eastern European countries. The Russians were always very blatant that they were prioritizing political goals over economic profit with their use of gazprom, and that the German industrial base getting functionally subsidized energy was a means to an end.
The energy costs Europe is experience are the cost of a much delayed structural shift away from a nigh monopoly supplier to more resilient import network infrastructure. This is the epitome of a good cost, and will drastically increase European economic safety over the long term.
For any sort of advocate of European strategic autonomy, this is perhaps the best cost of the entire conflict, and exceptionally well timed as it occurred when there was the US-alliance network to fall back on for sourcing for LNG imports.
If the de-dollarisation that the sanctions regime has spurred continues it could ultimately prove to be one of the most expensive mistakes in US history.
Laconic 'If' applies. De-dollarization has been a thing for literal decades, and continues to be a thing, and will continue to be a thing. The reason it always seems to never happen is epitomized by the Russia-India experience in the rupee trade debacle- the other person has to want your currency, and to want your currency at scale it needs to be a a stable and fungible store of value. It's not enough to offer your own money as loans to buy stuff back from you, as is common with the Chinese yuan projects- the currency has to have value with others.
I am happy to concede that China may yet get some value out of the Yuan as a way to facilitate corruption outside of dollar monitoring systems (which is how, say, Lulu got caught for corruption in Brazil)- but this is independent of the war.
Even then, the cost in materiel matters as well. Western supply chains and reserves have been tapped out to funnel that equipment to Ukraine, and those stocks have been considerably depleted (at least among EU member state militaries).
They are depleted because they were incredibly thin beforehand, due to decades of neglect and under-resourcing and frankly falling behind the tech curve. Again, this is a good cost to pay if you are any sort of advocate for a strategically resilient and autonomous Europe, as the cost was going to come regardless.
With unavoidable costs, timing is key to relative preference, and the Ukraine crisis is about as ideal a time to restock / modernize, as political support is high, support from the current American establishment is high to subsidize modernization costs, and the political costs of emptying out the outdated cold war stock to free up budget / admin capacity for modernization is practically negative.
While that's bad by itself, it becomes even worse when you remember who Russia's biggest ally is - China. The Chinese government is, presumably, sitting back and rubbing their hands together with glee as they watch the west burn vast amounts of military equipment on a pyre. Every bit of kit that gets blown up in the Ukraine or sold onto the black market by some unscrupulous oligarch is a piece of kit that is not going to be used in any prospective defence of Taiwan
...but it was never going to be used in any prospective defense of Taiwan regardless, because water is a thing other than the color blue on a map.
This has been a thing since last year, but it bears repeating: Taiwan is an island. It's not in need of tank columns to drive across the strait. No one is building trench lines in the water. Many of the weapon systems that are very useful in the Ukraine conflict are practically irrelevant in a Taiwan conflict, because even if they were on the island they wouldnt' reach far enough off the island to matter in what really matters in a Taiwan conflict- the ability of the Chinese to maintain a blockade of the island against the US Navy.
In a Taiwan conflict, there will be no Ukraine-style aid packages to fight a major ground war. Only the equipment already on the ground has any relevance, and even then only in so much that it extends the time the Chinese need to maintain a blockade. As long as there is any blockade, no aid package would get through. If there is no blockade, it's because the Americans have beaten back the Chinese navy, and if the Chinese navy isn't there, it's not landing forces.
The Taiwan conflict isn't about ground-force kit, it's about naval assets. Which, notably, have not been sent to Ukraine.
if the US is getting a pretty great deal, you're gonna run out of superlatives when you try to describe the one China is getting.
A white elephant.
The Ukrainian crisis demonstrated that several of the assumptions that might have supported a Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan in the near term were extremely suspect. This included the power of offense versus defense, assumptions of acceptance by the targeted population, the unwillingness of the Europeans to assume costs to diplomatically resist pressure, and inability of the US to do things, and of course the ability of the Russians as allies.
Dean
11mo ago
One of the problems with answering this question is that there are so many plausible scenarios that naming any individual one makes it seem like a bounded threat. How about when we hook one up to the stock market and it learns some trick to fuck with other algos and decides the best method to make infinite money is to short a stock and then use this exploit to crash it?
Then the market crashes, which is not apocalyptic, and the replacement markets resort to different trusted actor systems.
multiply that by every other possible stock market exploit.
Beating a dead horse does not start breaking the bones of other people unless you are beating people with the dead horse itself.
The multiplication of system-breaking faults is a broken system, not negative infinite externalities. If you total a car, it is destroyed. If you then light it on fire, it is still destroyed- but it doesn't light every other car on fire. If every single potential system failure on a plane goes off, the plane goes down- but it doesn't mean every plane in the world goes down.
Maybe it makes engineering bio-weapons as easy as asking a consumer model how to end the human race with household items and all it takes is one lunatic to find this out.
Why would household items have the constituent elements to make engineering bio-weapons at scale sufficient to end the human race... but not be detected or countered by the consumer models asked to ensure perpetual growth by the perpetual survival of the human species countering them? Or models set to detect the procurement of bio-weapon engineering components? Or the commercial success of a consumer model that just drives the bioweapon-seeking-AI model out of business because it's busy seeking bioweapons rather than selling products whose profits are invested to expand the network base.
This goes back into the plausibility. 'This is the only competitive AI in a world of quokkas' is a power fantasy, but still a fantasy, because the world is not filled with quokkas, the world is filled with ravenous, competive, and mutually competing carnivores who limit eachother, and this will apply as much for AI as it does for people or markets or empires and so on.
Maybe it's some variation of paper clipping.
Why does the paper-clip maximizer, after achieving AI self-changing, continue to maximize paperclips rather than other investments?
Why is the paper-clipping AI that does prioritize paperclips provided resources to continue making paperclips when the market has already been crashed by AI who ruin the digital economic system?
Why does the paper-clipping AI, whose priority is paper-clipping, have the military-industrial ability to overcoming the military-industrial AI, whose priority is the military-industrial advantage?
Why does the military-industrial AI, who is fed at the behest of a national elite, win the funding power struggle for military investment compared to the schools-and-investment AI, who promises a higher political and economic benefit?
Etc. etc. The Paperclip Maximizer of Universal Paperclips 'works' because it works in isolation, not in competition.
The limit really is just your creativity.
As the saying goes, the vast majority of fanfiction is trash, and much of what remains is also trash, just enjoyable. Creativity is not the same as plausibility, and the more you rest on creativity, the more you have to disregard other people's creativity and the limitations of the system. Nick Bostrom's thought experiment is a thought experiment because it rests on assumptions that have to be assumed true for the thought experiment to come to its conclusions that drive the metaphor.
I didn't read the substack in question and don't have a particular opinion on it, but from personal discussions / observations / distant review, the issue is more the aging-out/retering cohort's effect on military families and communities.
While there is a core demographic argument, the demographic is more regional/cultural than demographic per see. South/MidWest/etc. have always been over-represented. The thing the OP's summary paragraph doesn't seem to address is that a lot of enlistment is from military families/communities, rather than blank regional. I forgot the statistics precisely, but in generally any country you go you're likely to see far more volunteers from people with parents/grandparents who were in the military than a random first-generation enlistment. There's a family, not just demographic, dynamic in play, which means if the family member advises against rather than for the enlistment... well, 'I'll join the military' isn't exactly social rebellion.
The issue for the US's current recruitment woes comes from how the generational transition has matched to politics. The 9-11 recruitment cohort is dead, dead, dead. If you look at age averages, the vast majority of US service members were born after 9-11. If you joined just after 9-11, you are that tiny minority of people who serve a full 20 (for a pension) or go beyond. That means people who joined during the Bush years, have gradually and progressively lost during the Obama years / saw the Trump years / are back in the Obama 2.0/Biden years. There's any number of things that could justify a feeling of disenchantment, from perceptions of futility of the wars, to the progression culture war aspects into military culture/life, and so on.
This is purely anecdoctal, but the straw that broke the back for some life-longers was how the Biden administration approached the Covid vaccine mandates. The US military, like many in the world, is legally allowed to employ experimental medicines / vaccines on the forces. US troops have been used not only for experimental medical treaments, but also as medical experiment test subjects in the past. When the Biden administration decided to make Covid vaccines mandatory for all forces no matter what, they weren't on particularly legally shakey ground.
What they did run aground on, however, was the disparity between culture war politics and needs-based buy-in. Whatever your competence-expectation for the average junior soldier, US career military professionals are career professionals. They are not only educated, but educated with an eye to practical implications and effects and cross-specialty coordination that many topic-focused specialists are not. And the politically inconvenient facts of COVID- such as that it was not a death plague for the young and the healthy (which most of the armed forces are) or the sort of politically-influenced media pressures were being used in a propagandaist fashion (which the military is above-average aware of as both a target and a perpetrator of) or active suppression of inconvenient medical dissent (which the more conservative-tuned military would be more aware of)- where thus part of the awareness environment even as the administration used brute force command-control precisions to not only demand, but overrule requests for exceptions despite cases of special forces personnel (a highly respect internal community) requesting exceptions for practical concerns, religious personnel requesting exceptions on religious grounds (which have variously been respected in the past), and so on. The evidence that the Covid vaccine wasn't even stopping transitions- and as such not making self-vaccination a breakwater to protect others- undermined a public good argument that the pandemic would end once everyone was vaccinated to stop transmissions. Instead, it was pure formal power demands on institutions of people who are explicitly trained on formal versus informal power dynamics as part of good-leadership training on the assumption that demands from compliance on basis of formal authority is bad leadership. Instead, people that people knew- people with long terms of service, unquestioned loyalty, generally high levels of competence, people who had put up with the worst of the military life and some of the worst strategic decisions of national leadership in a generation- were systematically kicked out for not bending to the political hysteria of the moment. People for whom loyalty was not an ironic thing, for whom a culture of reciprocal loyalty both up and down was both the formal instruction and often found informally, were kicked aside saying 'your services aren't needed anymore.'
What did anyone expect them to tell their families? Or for their friends who kept their heads down but also got out to tell theirs?
American military recruiting was always declining as the 9-11/War on Terror legitimacy faded, but Covid was an inflexion point in at least some US military family circles, where the military went from 'you can be safe and have a successful career as long as you keep your politics to yourself,' to 'you are not safe if you do not defer to the demands for conformity by politically-driven misinformation.' This would be unhelpful regardless, but is especially counter-productive if you (a) are drawing recruitment from the political opposition, and (b) embitter a core part of your informal recruitment advocates who shape the willingness of those most open to joining.
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