Dean
1yr ago
I think there is an active media psyop when it comes to German-US relations that aims to hide or obscure that there is substantial mistrust between the two. How quickly did the people forget about this https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spied-merkel-other-top-european-officials-through-danish-2021-05-30/
No one forgot, since those are the same period revealed by the Snowden leaks, the Germans just stopped trying to make an issue of Americans spying on Merkel as a breach of trust or friendly relations when someone leaked information that the Germans had been doing the same on other European allies and partners hand-in-hand with the US for years, so Merkel's protests were a little hypocritical.
The previous German government was a wee bit preoccupied with other events at the time- the European migration crisis, the rise of the right in Europe, and Crimea amoung them- and once the effort to get into the FVEY alliance failed, the German government didn't have much reason to keep re-elevating the topic when their own sins would be very easily revealed as well.
Post-war Germany is allowed to prosper economically and have a semblance of independent foreign relations, but always within limits that the Americans set. When they exceed these limits (as in the case of Nordstream 2 or trying to negotiate a peace in Ukraine through the now forgotten Minsk processes), the US has many open or covert ways to correct the course.
In normal parlance, this is called 'lobbying' and 'diplomacy.' If you'd like the publicly-facing website of how the Germans do it in reverse, their website is below. https://www.germany.info/us-en
The reason the Minsk process was forgotten is that the Russians and the German/French-backed Ukrainians had divergent interpretations. When Russia gave up the effort of having the Germans and French back its interpretation of Minsk- which would have functionally broken Ukraine as a unified state due to the special status and veto rights to be given to the Russian-backed parts- there was no use for it. In so much that the US had a role in the failure of the Minsk proposal, it was in backing either the Germans or the French or both, not in overruling them.
Who knows if the Americans did this pipeline leak? But it certainly benefits them and wouldn’t be that unprecedented.
Lots of things benefit the Americans, which certainly wouldn't be without precedent, but this is a pretty vague and unspecific note. The US isn't exactly known for doing direct actions on treaty-ally infrastructure, though, but then that's not what you're claiming so shrugs.
Dean
1yr ago
Well if you envision it as a game of chicken, the exchange has gone something like this:
EU: Stop invading Ukraine, or at least do it more quietly, or we're going to stop buying gas
RF: You're bluffing. You won't stop buying gas, you'll freeze to death. You don't care about the Ukies that much. Give us your money and shut up.
I approve of the game of chicken metaphor, but raise that it doesn't need to be a game of chicken between EU and RF, but could be between Germany and other members of the EU (or NATO) trying to constrain Germany's options.
While unlikely, it could also be an action by someone else trying to constraint Russia's options. As in- 'Russia, don't put your hopes on the Germans breaking ranks, they can't do so now.'
Dean
1yr ago
US set a new, very expensive precedent. Expect small drones flying into LNG liquefaction facilities, time bombs going off near pipelines, that kind of thing.
You, uh, realize that drone attacks on gas infrastructure has been going on for years in the middle east, right?
Dean
1yr ago
Yawn? Sabotage and targeting energy infrastructure is old news in this war.
Russia's claimed energy infrastracture sabotage operations since they seized the Zaphorizhzhia nuclear power plant in early March (easy to find articles around 4 March), and it was barely two weeks ago that Russia outright bombed Ukrainian energy infrastructure after the Kharkiv offensive. The whole Nord Stream turbine shutdown pretext may not be sabotage in the normal concept, but it absolutely was by general definition of deliberately destroying, damaging, or obstructing something for political or military advantage, which definitely applies to the pretextual closures. Nord Stream 1 actually was actively used energy infrastructure.
This is less 'the Russians are mad and in no mood to play' and 'this precedent is long dead in this war, and Russia's been killing it for some time now.'
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.
Dean
1yr ago
In one year they;
Destroyed every possible reconciliation between Europe and Russia
Now now, give Russia some credit. Putin worked quite hard to discredit every alternative-seeking Europeans.
Became a next exporter of natural resources and the ones from who a lot of allies depend
That one was already in effect. US has long been a food exporter, and has been edging natural gas exports for some time.
They basically sent a fuck off to Germany, and the Germans not only are not complaining, but are applauding
I think this reaches a bit too far. After all, one of Biden's earlier moves in office in July 21 was to drop the opposition to the Nordstream 2 pipeline as a gift/favor/trade with Merkel, in favor of the German government making promises to take national level action, including sanctions and energy cutoffs, should Russia attack Ukraine.
"Should Russia attempt to use energy as a weapon or commit further aggressive acts against Ukraine, Germany will take action at the national level and press for effective measures at the European level, including sanctions, to limit Russian export capabilities to Europe in the energy sector, including gas, and/or in other economically relevant sectors," it said.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-us-strike-nord-stream-2-compromise-deal/a-58575935
In so much that the Germans are complaining, it's complaining that the German-American deal is being upheld when the Germans were betting it wouldn't need to be. While this is consistent with the last few decades of German national strategy regarding Russia, the very German parties that committed to the agreement a year and some change ago are still the parties of government now, plus the greens.
Now, you could make a case that this is an American flex in a different way- that the US made the concession to Germany already knowing that Putin was likely to escalate the conflict with Ukraine, thus making a concession they knew they wouldn't have to leave for long in order to secure future compliance by Germany with sanctions it had already agreed in principle to on the belief that it wouldn't have to follow through- but this is a bit of a reach, and denies the Germans the agency to have been paying attention to Ukraine.
They strongly limited the military of power of Russia with few money.
This is true, relatively.
China is slowing her growth, and they created a ring of allies in the Pacific
This is also true, though not recently, since the US has been treaty allies with South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia for decades.
The cultural grip on the West is becoming stronger, and the US successfully fused Neoliberalism and Leftism in a zombie ideology who is, against all odds, successfully working
This is not so true, because it conflates a lot of things. The cultural grip of 'the West' doesn't exist, since the Europeans aren't the cultural center and two of the main pillars that have tried to claim more cultural/soft-power independence from the US- France and Germany- were discredited in their regions of desired influence over failures in advance/response to Ukraine.
That neoliberalism 'works' to some extent isn't exactly surprising, as the discreditation of it after the financial crisis was a puncture to infalibility, not to inherent tendency to failure.
The pro-Atlantist view have never been so strong.
This one is true, if only because the European Atlanticists are using this conflict as an opportunity to clean house and settle political scores for their domestic political needs. It's never been easier to defang an opposition party- or coalition rival- who was ambivalent about Russia than it is now.
Dean
1yr ago
If you're a fan of unstable nuclear equilibria and mass nuclear proliferation, maybe. Personally I'm not a fan of 'wars of territorial conquests will be accepted if you have nukes' as a basis of international norms, as it seems slightly possible that it skews incentives of everyone on any side of a nuclear conflict to race for nukes.
Now, if your proposal is that someone in the world is supposed to pre-emptively invade, occupy, and dismember any government that tries to start a covert nuclear program, by golly this is an interesting proposal but I'm curious as to who is supposed to doing this and why the international community shouldn't simply accept their conquests to also be annexations based on tail risk theory.
Dean
1yr ago
Non-proliferation isn’t a stable equilibrium, sorry.
If that's the stance you wish to make, sure, but that rather undermines the basis of concession on the grounds of tail-end nuclear risk. Accelerating nuclear proliferation is itself a source of tail-end risk. If tail-end nuclear risk is unavoidable, tail-end nuclear risk ceases to be a meaningful objection to resistance to a nuclear power.
But I was referring to nash equilibrium between two nuclear powers as the stability, not proliferation solely. Hence the 'and' as an additional category. Stable nash equilibrium, just bilaterally, requires assumptions of rational actors that recognizing that 'I have nukes, no take backs' won't actually be supported by nuclear deterrence models.
If you don't believe in the value of nash equilibrium models, sure, but then tail-end risk stops being a meaningful consideration either, since risk management decision making requires consistency to avoid being just a fallacious example of bias justification.
The time to stop that from becoming the basis of international norms was before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That ship has sailed.
Territorial wars of conquest being acknowledged on the basis of nukes sailed before nukes were introduced to the world? Neat.
The rest of your post seems like word salad.
It was making light of the implicit localization of risk to solely the Ukraine conflict by using non-standard vernacular pulled from theories of statecraft that aren't localized to Ukraine by application of second and third order effects opposed to the premise that localized risk outweighs global considerations that...
...I was making fun of their argument for trying to use technical-sounding language to bolster their position without considering the same theories that actually employ such language have implications far beyond Ukraine that counter the premise of the argument.
Dean
1yr ago
I do see that there is room for company F to improve its market share while there is competition from companies G, H, I and J in the cut-throat world of grape peelers, but there surely can't be infinite room for growth forever?
Growth isn't gross production for a reason.
If the market can't support companies F, G, H, I, and J all in the cut-throat world of grape peelers, but only four of them, then company F might expand the market by executing the sub-market of grape-peeler production, and support it's growth instead via the grape-peeler advertisement market to increase the market efficiency of one of the remainers, or the grape-peeler delivery market to expand the size of the consumer market who can be sold to, or offer grape-peeler-throat-cutting-protection services to protect corporate secrets (and throats) against cut-throat competition.
In many cases, growth isn't about gross production increasing at all, but efficiency increasing or upkeep reduction. Say you do have a maximally-saturated equilibrium where everyone who could possibly want a grape peeler has one, and no more should be made. At this point, market growth can come from cutting costs- whether the application of a material science for cheaper handles, or international trade deal market access for cheaper peeling-blades, or removing the now-excess grape-peeler production-expansion parts of your business, so that the freed up capital can go into the next great thing, pear-peelers.
At which point, the market continues to grow again, as having maximized profit in the current equilibrium in one area, capital can be invested to grow in another. But as we do that, things may (will) change in the old equilibrium. Maybe the market capacity for grape peelers grows again, because we uplifted our fellow primates and now monkeys are consumers. Maybe the market capacity shrunk more, and now we need to dismantle existing market infrastructure to re-allocate capital.
Well, that deconstruction is going to require capital, which markets will compete over to offer, and re-allocate the dismantled capital, which market actors will seek to repurpose, and that will feed other markets and submarkets as the entire ecosystem of managing this transition supports expertise and industrial specialists who can do the task more efficiently than the competition, who will be consuming tools and systems developed for that purpose, which-
Dean
1yr ago
What is unsound about, “I have nukes, no take-backs” as a deterrence strategy?
Because it's not a credible claim in practice or theory, and a claim that lacks credibility is not an effective deterrence strategy.
On precedent alone, it fails because Russia already has demonstrated that attacks on claimed russian territory are not nuclear retaliation criteria, in this very conflict. There have already been attacks on Crimea (legally claimed as core territory) and in pre-2014 internationally-recognized territory.
In practice, the failure of nuclear deterrence to prevent counter-attack or refusal to abide by demands is more generalizable. We call it the nuclear taboo, but it remains a true fact that the Soviets did not nuke Afghan rebels, or their non-nuclear middle eastern enablers, or the Warsaw Pact uprisings, or the Warsaw Pact dissolution. These weren't because Russia lacked the ability, or their foes had nuclear deterrence, but because in practice nuclear usage has very real costs- diplomatic, and subsequently economic and political- that can easily outweigh the gains. Functionally, the only costs that justify the risks are regime survival... but regime survival isn't at stake with the 'no take-backs' clause. Nuclear states can lose their empires and still survive. Russia's own existence in it's post 1990-borders demonstrates this.
For the practical threat of Russian nuclear retaliation to conventional defeat over non-existential territory to hold any credibility, there needs to be reason to believe that regime survival is at stake if the Ukrainian conquests are reversed. But this is not at all aparrent, for Putin or the oligarchy. For Putin, personally, losing claimed Ukrainian territory is very bad, but not existential- if the territory itself were existentially required, he wouldn't have existed without it. Instead, for Putin the risk is domestic politics... but here Putin's survival isn't based on territory, but the control of the security state aparatus, which he maintains control of. Putin continue to regularly remove, rotate, and demonstrate effective control of his internal state security aparatus. The Army may have been destroyed by the war, but the internal security serves have not, and the Russian exodus and crackdown on anti-war protestors and high-ranking officials falling out of windows are demonstrations of a lack of credible opposition force.
'I must be granted [concession] or I face a coup if I don't use nukes' is not a credible deterrence strategy. If Putin's hold on power is so tenuous, he faces risk of a coup no matter what, and permitting an annexation encourages him to take further actions to solidify his station with the same threat. If Putin's hold on power is stable enough, there is no actual existential risk he needs a concession to ward against, and thus no reason to give a concession.
This is the drawback of effective state security regimes. Having dedicated significant blood, treasure, and cracked skulls to dismantling any credible domestic opposition, they have no credible opposition to claim need to placate. Putin can always just crush more Russian protests...
...if there were any of scale to note, instead of his dissidents fleeing the nation and making his risk of a popular uprising (or popular champion) less, rather than greater.
On the game theory side, strategic deterence model- which will generally turn to Nash equilibrium paradigms explicitly or implicitly- it fails the very basic premise of acknowledging that current events are repeat games, and you do not get to arbitrarily separate action-reaction-reaction to action-reaction in order to avoid another party's reaction to your initial action. Deterrence models work on the construction of action-reaction in multi-phase considerations, not in pure isolation.
The basic premise of nuclear deterrence is 'if you nuke me, I nuke you back.' This is an isolated instance whether no other context is really needed. However, nuclear weapons also work as a substitute to conventional deterrence capability for allowing 'if you invade me and beat me on the field of battle, I nuke you back.' These two premise are not separatable, because they represent the same core premise- nuclear deterrence is deterrent to the other party posing existential threat, whether it's nuclear or conventional.
The issue here is that while nuclear weapons provide the deterrence for existential threats- that the enemy will not provide an existential threat to you- the difference in gradiants and nuclear worst-case outcomes does produce a stepped effect. Before you resort to nuclear defense, you resort to conventional defense. If you can win conventionally, you demonstrate you neither need the nukes to win... and that you are cognizant of the costs involved in nuclear use, not just of nuclear retaliation but other costs as well. These might be justified in case of existential threat, but that doesn't apply here for the reasons of both precedent and practical.
What this means is that the theoretical construct of annexing the territories is not 'if you attack my territory [pose an existential threat of invasion], then I nuke you.' It is 'if I attack you [conventionally], but am unable to gain my goals [conventionally], then I nuke you.' Action (invasion) - reaction (conventional defeat and loss of occupied territories) - reaction (nuking), not action (attack on occupied territories) - reaction (nuking).
The issue at this point isn't the practical irrelevance of demanding annexation via WMDs. There's an entire cold war of how, and why, things didn't work like that in practice. No, the theoretical credibility problem is that smuggling the action-reaction shift is hiding the fact that you were already trying to avoid nuclear weapons out of consideration of the nuclear costs by committing to conventional force in the first place.
These other costs still exist, and they are higher in the action-reaction-reaction model than an isolated action-reaction model. If you were already considering the cost too high before, they are higher now.
If Russia's position was that the territory was so existential that nuclear use was warranted, the time for nuclear use in the service of conquest was not even months ago, but years or even decades ago. Russia choosing to meander through decades of political influence loss, years of proxy warfare, and months of stalemate at massive cost to not pay the expected costs of nuclear weapon use.
On a model level, this remains true. Russia is in a worse position to use nuclear weapons now than it was a month ago, because there is the context and intermediary stages of the nuclear decision model that brought to this point. Annexing territory doesn't reset the clock and wipe away the prior decision games that were non-nuclear every previous month.
On a model level, Russian nuclear threats aren't credible. Credibility would have to come from the practical level, based on precedent (not used) or existential threat (not credible, as Putin is firmly in power).
Now, you COULD argue that both the theoretical and practical reasons that Putin wouldn't should be thrown out, that This Time is Different and Putin should be considered as an irrational actor because something changed in the last month or so...
...but if you're treating Putin as an irrational actor in nuclear deterrence theory contexts, that throws away most of your reasons NOT to press harder. Madmen are not placated by rational concessions- if they could be placated by rationality, they wouldn't be madmen.
The basic premise of dealing with mad things that pose danger is to reduce their capacity to cause harm as able, whenever able, as aggressively as possible. As irrational actors do not react rationally to reasonable threshold criteria, and they are irrational anyway, their stated views become irrelevant to consideration. What matters is the views of the critical enabling actors beneath them, and their own rationality/irrationality tradeoffs.
Now, that is the sort of thing that might cause a rational actor to believe their means of existential-threat deterrence is under attack. But, notably, Russia's nuclear deterrence is NOT under attack. Nor does losing the annexed territories endanger it.
And I’m not sure how you managed to so badly misconstrue such an obvious point: The US used nukes against Japan to secure their conquest of the country, thereby establishing the precedent of conquest via nuclear arms.
The US did not conquer Japan and annex its territory, which is the rather obvious construction of conquest in the context of 2rafa's 'keep some of his gains' and the resulting reply. Nor did the US secure it's nukes to secure its 'conquest' against a counter-invasion/liberation/defense, because there was no such attempt: the Japanese did not launch an insurgency, let alone a counter-occupation force.
And that's if you accept the framing of Japan's defeat in WW2 as a 'conquest' in the first place, which is just a tad of a reach.
Meanwhile, within a decade of WW2's resolution, the US very nearly lost the Korean War, and accepted a stalemate after (technically two) reversals that lost the war again and certainly lost huge amounts of 'conquered' territory, rather than use nuclear weapons.
This is, in fact, the origin of the nuclear taboo, and the US went on to lose several more conflicts- including Vietnam, Afghanistan, and arguably Iraq- rather than use nuclear weapons to defend it's conquests.
The norm is already there, hence it wouldn’t be a new innovation on the part of the Russians. Of course the time to prevent a norm of nuclear weapons being used to conquer others is before they’re used to conquer others, that’s literally tautological.
I will submit the norm is there, and you are playing rather weak semantics to walk back an embarassing and obvious misread and overreach.
Dean
1yr ago
I'd point out that despite the perceived lack of ethnic Germans, just about everyone in that picture seems okay with each other.
Just about everyone in the picture is only engaging with one other person, generally the one they're banging, and ignoring the rest. Notably, not one person is actually helping someone else, or improving the community.
They don't 'mind' anyone, but neither is anyone helping the cripple in the street in front of them, or cleaning up the graffiti, or supporting the local businesses repair the damage that still leaves metal shutters instead of windows. This is a government that might pave the roads, but isn't clearing out the hornet nest between residential housing projects. If the utopian vision of the future isn't helping the less fortunate or past victims in times of relative plenty, what is the expectation when things go bad?
There's a saying that the opposite of love isn't hate, but apathy. The opposite of a cohesive identity isn't hatred of all other identities, it's indifference. Socially indifferent, atomized people don't create strong communities, or support strong social networks, because when the primary unit of caring is yourself and what matters to you, subsidizing someone else's welfare is a burden on you, and other people's misfortune is their own problem. The wheelchair person in the road may be getting a disability check, but no one is is offering her a push so that (s)he can go outside and walk the dog without pushing forward with one hand alone. No one is clearing a path on the side walk out of consideration, so that they one-free handed wheelchair-bound person isn't literally in the middle of the road, relying on bikers or vehicles to not hit them.
A cohesive social identity poster wouldn't have had everyone ignorring eachother, but people doing things as a group, not just with maybe one other person. Groups sharing a meal, or playing team sports, or cleaning up their communities, or helping eachother in small ways like helping a wheelchair person cross the road or use a sidewalk.
I mean, that's something of strawman. To say "I have nukes, you don't" is absolutely an example of a fundamental power imbalance and to quibble otherwise is naive at best.
'If you do not agree with my foundational premise, you're dumb' is a pretty dumb argument, especially when the history of the cold war doesn't support that nuclear power- as opposed to a host of other conventional great power capacities including economic and conventional military capacity- provided fundamental power imbalances in negotiations.
A power imbalance that doesn't affect someone's decision making or render them unable to resist isn't a power imbalance- it's an irrelevant expenditure of resources that could have been invested into capabilities that would have give you power over someone. It doesn't matter if this is because the power is so asymmetric it can't be applied (a world-beating land army unable to cross a natural barrier) or if it won't be out of consideration of second and third order effects.
No one would nuke Russia over Kiev.
Why wouldn't Kiev use totally-not-NATO cyber weapons with nuclear-level economic costs to Russia, including destruction of Russian energy infrastructure required for economic viability, in retaliation for a nuke over Kiev?
Or, alternatively, why wouldn't Kiev use a totally-lost-Soviet-Nuke-totally-not-from-NATO to counter-nuke?
No one would nuke Russia over Kiev for the same reason no one would nuke Russia outright- direct retaliation. But precedent is already established that indirect harm to Russia is not going to result in direct retaliation if it comes via the country Russia is fighting, at least so long as the capacity is equivalent to capabilities Russia has already brought to bare in the conflict.
It's incredibly irrational that so many politicos are grand standing and stating otherwise. This isn't some kind of turn based strategy game where Russia nukes Kiev on turn 1, then the US nukes Moscow on turn 2 before Russia can respond on turn 3.
It's likewise irrational for Russia to nuke Kiev over taking the loss in Ukraine, precisely because the game is not 'over' on the turn Russia deploys nukes.
Nuclear deterrence modeling will, of course, inevitably break down if you give license to one side to be an irrational nuclear actor, but then insist on 'rational' response modeling that is unsustainable in the face of irrational escalations.
I have very little faith in our leaders, but I don't think they're suicidal and willing to self-immolate to own the Russians.
Why would they have to do so? They could just hand a nuke over to Kiev for retaliation, with the nuclear deterrence model of MAD applying if Russia nuke them. If nuclear MAD logic is to apply, it still applies to the Russians to 'only' take 1 counter-nuking from Ukraine. If nuclear MAD logic does not apply, they are not being suicidal or self-immolating, but faced with an irrational actor.
You can't have Russia be both rational and irrational in the same paradigm. This is just a substitution for rational to personal bias, not logical consideration.
I am once again asking why any Russian leader would believe the Americans might sacrifice Washington and New York for Kiev. If you read the literature the French seriously doubted whether the US would sacrifice New York for Paris during the Cold War, let alone Kiev. That's why they have a nuclear arsenal. Paris >>>>>> Kiev.
Why would any Russian leader base their evaluation of the Americans based on French literature, except to pursue confirmation bias?
Why do you think the US would decide to commit national suicide over Ukraine? It is irrational to make such a bluff. It wouldn't be believed. That's why the US didn't even make it.
Nor has Russia made a claim it would nuke Ukraine.
Working that parallel backwards, because Russia hasn't made the claim, it isn't being believed, and taking a bluff-that-wasn't-made seriously is being dismissed as irrational.
If they did, why wouldn't the US say this to the world? If you genuinely think that the US would do this, why wouldn't they say 'if you nuke Kiev we will nuke you'? What kind of madman would decide to sacrifice his country to defend another and not even make a single clear, public warning that he'd do such a thing?
I believe the American opposition party likes to accuse Biden of being senile in his old age. This certainly wasn't helped recently by the probably-not-staged asking why dead former politicians weren't speaking up on a topic, or the various statements on Taiwan, or challenging much younger constituents to push up contests, though whether these are real lapses of the mind or 4D chess usage of strategic ambiguity is for Putin to decide.
So, there's your answer. Old, grandfatherly, possibly senile Biden is Putin's potentially genuine madman in the game of nuclear posturing.
(By contrast, Putin's own history works against him as a madman actor.)
I'll tell you what's actually happening. The US makes vague threats of 'catastrophic consequences' if Russia uses nuclear weapons and says 'oh we told them privately'. That means they're not willing to use nuclear weapons, as is immediately obvious - Ukraine is not under the US nuclear umbrella. You don't put someone under a nuclear umbrella and then not tell anyone about it. That defeats the whole point.
This would be a competent argument if we also applied it to the Russians, who have also not made an explicit nuclear threat, or extended the nuclear umbrella to ward against conventional attacks or Russian defeats on claimed-annexed territory. Which, of course, is consistent with their doctrine, in which nuclear use is for matters of the survival of the state, of which defeat in the annexed territories isn't in a way that nuclear deterrence models works for.
Now, there are reasons for that- reasons equivalent to why the US wouldn't want to make a falsifiable nuclear guarantee that could be tested- but this is an argument of why Russian nuclear ambiguity shouldn't be taken seriously, as opposed to why it should. After all, strategic ambiguity defeats the whole point, and given that the Russians are currently facing multiple front failures in claimed territories but still aren't using- or even explicitly threatening to use- nukes, their nuclear criteria for eastern Ukraine is certainly ambiguous.
If we don't extend the argument to all strategically ambiguous actors, then it becomes an incompetent argument of isolated rigor.
Dean
1yr ago
For the same reason that Putin is supposed to be simultaneously an irrational madman in madman theory, but also someone who can be placated by via rational concessions: internal incoherence between rationals gives way to allowing evaluators to express their personal bias on the pretext of objectivity.
It's outsourcing personal opinions to theory, without testing theory to practice or from other perspectives. How / why, specifically, should any other party believe that there's such a precise information awareness that Putin can know the consequences of use / not use, and will act accordingly, when the consequence of a coup is only possible as a result of lack of internal information needed to make the evaluation?
'You have to let me do this, or else I face a coup' is naturally going to be responded to with 'Well, if you know that, why don't you crush the coup plotters instead?'
Dean
1yr ago
Now now, give other people at least some agency. One imagines the opinion of the Libyans had something to do with the fate of the Libyan dictator who just weeks prior had been trying to kill the Libyans who were engaged in an uprising.
Dean
1yr ago
Nuland is the one that engineered the 2014 coup.
That is unsupported by the evidence, especially if referencing the Nuland call. The Nuland call was after Yanukovych's 25Jan offer to include opposition members of the government, and discussed... opposition figures who might be approached, in what order, for a viable government with moderate democratic elements within.
Yanukovych fled after his security forces refused to continue violent crack downs against protests, not because the opposition took him on his own offer that he likely hoped would lead to opposition infighting.
We have a leaked phone call from her where she is discussing arranging Ukraine's government without asking them,
The phone call is literally her discussing who in the Ukrainian political sphere should be approached and asked to support a viable government, in the context the ruling party and President's invitation/concession to include members of the opposition into his government.
instead of the democratic process of the Ukrainians doing it.
Even if you wish to subscribe to the coup conspiracy, one of the first actions of the post-Yanukovych government was to continue the concession the Euromaidan opposition itself had wrested from Yanukovych for early elections, which were carried out within 3 months of Yanukovych's flight.
She's not a good person. When she says we're going to end it, she means a state-sponsored terrorist attack.
The second sentence does not follow from the first, let alone the previous ones.
Dean
1yr ago
It's trivial to find other sources and transcripts of it, but you decided not to. Weird, eh? It's like you wanted to rely on innuendo instead of the transcript or the actual context of Ukraine at the time influencing the discussion.
Dean
1yr ago
How is a Polish MEP publicly attributing a secret US activity Poland aiding the US in said secret activity?
Dean
1yr ago
Your motivation was already fulfilled from your own source's context. You need to make an argument that the motivation was to carry out the threat twice, not once, for the 'speaks to motivation' to be relevant to your prior argument.
Your initial and broader argument that it's important to carry out one's threats is rendered moot if the threat has already been carried out. Arguing that the NS explosion was the threat being carried out requires an implicit argument that the prior action- the German decertification under American pressure- was not the Americans carrying out their prior threat.
If it was the American carrying out their motivation, then the stated motivation/threat was already fulfilled. NS2 was stopped. It wasn't in any imminent risk of being reactivated. Further action would require a different justification, because the stated justification- 'you must carry out a threat' - is not the same as 'you much carry out a threat twice', which is required unless you reject the relevance of German decertification under pressure.
The defensible claim is 'the Americans have opposed Nord Stream in the past and threatened to work against it, and their credibility would be worsened if they didn't.' The expansive claim is 'the Americans have to be the ones blowing up the pipelines to maintain credibility, because decertification doesn't count.' This is just a motte and bailey that serves to justify a pre-arrived bias, it doesn't actually support that the (successful!) pressure to decertify and stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline wasn't actually a proof of capability that would meet credibility needs.
Dean
1yr ago
Except your claim was the original story, which you refuse to validate, so...
I just don't understand how there's any confusion as to who's behind the sabotage.
The argument that Putin blew up his own pipeline that gives him leverage over Europe is silly. The US has both the means and the motive.
This sort of limited imagination is why you won't understand.
A lot of people have both the means and the motive, including the Russians, despite your protests otherwise and past arguments that NATO presence in the Baltic means that all of it is constantly and effectively monitored and thus couldn't possibly happen without American sanction or agency. This sort of prescription of American omniscience and incapability of anyone else is a rather blunt indication you're not actually familiar with the capabilities that would be required, as is self-centered style of dismissing other actors as candidates because you deem the cost-benefit silly or unreasonable... as if this weren't happening in the context of a Ukraine conflict that was only a surprise to so many Very Serious People because it seemed silly and unreasonable Russia would ever try such an obvious strategic mis-stake and mis-read as invading Ukraine.
And shooting down an airliner. And expecting pro-Russian candidates to win elections and deliver pro-Russian negotiations after taking the most pro-Russian regions out of the Ukrainian electorate. And invading Ukraine again, but bigger, and expecting a lot of things that were really, really silly in both prospect and retrospect. And this is without the other silly things, like using radioactive poisoning assassinations in countries with capabilities to detect it, or drilling holes in walls to steal piss to dope your people for the Olympics, or sacking your own military reformer for political expedience in the midst of a major military modernization campaign.
'There's no way that someone would do something really, really stupid' is not the defense you seem to think it is, especially it's not even the second, third, or fifth time said person would have done something really really stupid. And especially not when, from other perspectives or considerations you reject, may not even be as stupid as that.
Other actors make decisions based on their perception of the context and conflict and relative cost-benefit, not yours. That people do not share your cost-benefits-contexts does not mean the premise that they did it is any sillier than the idea that the US used an overt exercise months ago to lay mines to sabotage German infrastructure in response to for a checks notes Russian partial mobilization, as opposed to any actual sign that the Germans were actually going to restart a pipeline the Americans had already pressured them to stop. Or only laying mines, covertly, after such a resumption, thus mitigating the risk that other actors/collectors, including the Russians might discover the mines in routine maintenance/monitoring over the course of several months.
This is, whether you feel it is or not, very silly. Which is fine, in and of itself, but if silly can be applied in one direction, it's not an objection in another.
Dean
1yr ago
What do your priors expect to see if it were true?
There's a lot of problems to overcome just in terms of getting to the point of publicizing. Who, specifically, is detecting this violation, and how? If it's spying on the NSA, the NSA would presumably be able to discovery/track/identify the culprit... but if they're identifying the culprit through their covert means, that would implicitly mean spying on the culprit in terms. In otherwords, 'in the course of spying on X, we discovered X was spying on us.'
Probably not a good start, but also- why would you publicize it? What's the gain?
If, hypothetically, the French were discovered trying to infiltrate the NSA, what's the gain in publicizing it? They already were willing to assume the risk of discovery. Are you going to try and escalate retaliation, break the US-French alliance, so that they... presumably spy on you less, having broken the partnership and thus increasing the need of the French government to know what the Americans intend to do? Why not try and blackmail/leverage the secret information instead, to get concessions/favors? Why reveal this to anyone at all, when you can use the discovered attempt as free security testing and patch the hole in your system, without telling the French you know that they knew, or telling anyone else 'HEY GUYS THERE'S AN EXPLOIT THAT YOU MIGHT FIND ELSEWHERE.'
And this is without the risk of retaliation. One of the dynamics of spy partnerships is not just the shared capabilities and benefits, but the shared complicity. The NSA partnerships with various countries in Europe are a matter of public record, and it's probably not a coincidence that Merkel conspicuously dropped the 'friends don't spy on friends' line and her government conspicuously dropped the subject of NSA spying on German leaders after German media in 2015 started breaking stories of German espionage on Europeans friends and partners for the US.
So, hypothetically, let's say that a European country spies on the US/NSA. What, specifically, do you think the US government would do upon discovery? Publicize it, or utilize it?
There were German protestors demanding the pipelines be turned back on. I don't know if you've seen German gas prices recently - they're pretty high!
Yes. And? Were you going to actually going to try and imply that an unspecified number of protestors in a democratic society meant an imminent government reversal of its own policy?
The fact that the Germans have high gas prices is not news, and neither is the point that general German popular opinion was not in favor of activating Nord Stream 2, nor is it now.
Nor does this actually serve as evidence of who bombed the pipeline in the way you seem to imply it does. This observation is absolutely compatible with a Russian-responsible-but-trying-to-divert-the-blame-to-divide-the-west hypothesis argument, especially since trying to encourage energy concerns political movements more favorable to Russian strategic interests has been a long-running Russian strategic line of effort. That does not make it proof, but it is compatible.
This would not serve as proof of a US-does-this-to-prevent-Nordstream-Reactivation, however, as there is not immediate cause-and-effect of higher energy prices- or even anti-government protests- and the German government re-activating the pipeline, let alone why- if the imminently divided German political establishment WAS coming to a pipeline consensus- the US wouldn't do other actions to keep the status quo, which was no pipeline activation, if the bombs were allegedly planted months ago with a command-activation capability.
If the bombs are supposed to be remote-activated, triggering them before they are needed would be a bit of a goof.
The US was testing sophisticated underwater unmanned vehicles along with its mine-clearance exercises, exercises which presumably involve laying mines. It's easy to imagine that a few of them stay under, hidden to the best of their ability on the seabed, awaiting the order to strike.
Substituting your imagination for evidence or other people's rationals that might drive their own decisions is why you are being silly.
If they're discovered by anyone before they strike - well the US was conducting exercises there and they lost a few drones! Mechanical problems, these things happen. If you think I'm envisioning big obvious mines stuck directly onto Nordstream, visible to any inspection, then perhaps your familiarity with these capabilities is less than you think.
You're suggesting that American mine sweepers in a NATO exercise are covering specialized American underwater mine-laying drones, in an announced military exercise with multinational participation and observation including by the same state you alleged they were deploying the drones against. You're not even alleging anyone saw these drones, or even what mine-laying drones they are, when mine-laying vessels and mine-clearing vessels have, shall we say, slightly different functions and thus forms, none of which you claim were observed for any modifications to mine sweepers suggesting they were modified to carry/deploy said unspecified drones. You offers no rational for why- if it were the Americans- they wouldn't just let an unmarked CIA boat do it during a German federal holiday while everyone's distracted and no one else is looking. The exercise itself has been your proof.
This is silly, as it's just an isolated demand for stupidity to conflate correlation with causation without actually proving a causal relationship.
This is, whether you feel it is or not, very silly.
You know perfectly well that there's a difference between false knowledge 'the Ukrainians will collapse easily', cruelty such as 'let's ensure this guy we hate has a torturous half-life' and random bizarreness like 'let's blow up our own pipelines'. The latter is not like the former.
Well, yes. Two actually happened, establishing a pattern of spiteful strategic incompetence, and the third is an accusation you've expressed confusion about why people won't accept as true without evidence.
As far as trying to waive away a charge of selective appeal for stupidity goes, this is pretty silly.
Dean
1yr ago
It wasn't making money. That was rather the a point of why it didn't affect gas prices mechanically as much as emotionally.
The pipelines destroyed were filled (pre-pressurized), but not active, and had been inactive so long that they were likely due for a long and expensive maintenance period before they could be activated anyway.
Nor has not-making good money exactly stopped Putin's pipeline strategy, given the rather implausible maintenance shutdowns and refusal to accept claimed required maintenance parts. Putin's strategy is to hurt the Europeans, not make the most money for himself.
Yes? And? So what?
This is a 'correlation is causation' argument. It provides not temporal relevance, since it does not address why the three months is relevant. If- as seems implied- the argument is that 3 months ago the US used a highly publicized, visible mine warfare excercise as the pretext for laying mines to sabotage the pipes, it doesn't imply why now. Why didn't these mines go off a month ago? Or two months ago? Or three months ago, and cite a training accident?
Nor does it explain why bother with a public training exercise as the pretext for mine laying. If the bombs are deliberatly placed- as they seem to be in their position just outside territorial waters- there's no need for a military ship of any sort. You place that sort of precision via scuba, so you just need an underwater GPS, a scuba team, and a boat big enough for the explosive.
If the argument is that the timing was delayed 3 months (again- why?) to provide deniability, why use a publicly announced training exercise in the area as the means to emplace?
Your other arguments via tweet are at least better soundclips that, without context, could easily support this context (though why a Polish twitter account of someone who is supposed to know of the event is immediately revealing the actor, you still haven't explained), but this 'three months ago the US was in proximity' is a really dumb argument. Everyone who sails through the Baltic Sea has been in proximity in the last three months, and had the opportunity to send small boats through the area.
Give the French some credit. Rainbow Warrior wasn't even 40 years ago.
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