Dean
1mo ago
You are probably thinking of the Icelink proposal.
This was a proposal as opposed to a project, and more or less died in the later 2010s at the Feasibility study level. There are probably three main reasons for that. One, cost-benefit on a technical level, as Icelink was more of an environmental proposal for UK governments to boast green credentials than an actual way to most efficiently use green energy in industry (as you could just invest the energy consumption infrastructure in Iceland). Two, related to cost and benefit, was Brexit, on top of the internal budget disruption to the UK governmental also put the UK and Iceland on opposite sides of the EU single market wall at a time when UK and EU relations at the regulatory and policy level were, shall we say, uninterested in major investments to the UK benefit. Third was the point that any UK investment in Icelink would land in territories with significant risk of separating from the UK over the medium/long term, as the cables would either naturally land in Scotland- where the SNP was having a strong period and polling near-majorities in hypothetical separation referendums- or in Northern Ireland- which the post-Brexit EU policy was to have economically segregated from the rest of the UK economic-legal architecture. A major, UK-level investment which would provide EU baseload power to territories with significant political interests who would rather be a part of the EU than UK would be a territorial integrity risk.
So, don't expect it to go through.
Which is a shame, because when it is available at economically viable rates, geothermal is one of the 'better' green power systems because it meets the baseload power requirements of predictable, non-swingy power. The economic viability is dependent on geography that isn't necessarily where you want it, but that's actually why long-range transmission makes sense in that context because you can't simply build a closer geothermal plant, but geothermal is good baseload generation and if you do build it, you don't have to build duplicative generation capacity like with intermittant green sources.
Given that Ukrainian opinions on European Union affiliation were a matter of public record, it certainly would be a far reach to deny that the EU was popular for the Ukrainians.
Just as the political controversy of Yanukovych granting himself the right to shoot protestors after public Russian pressure was also a well-apparent fact at the time. Just a mite consequential, when your own government is composed of people backed by those protestors.
But feel free to fluff up the American importance in things that weren't really about the Americans. I understand they feel insecure these days, and it makes both them and their haters feel better if they're the hyperagents in a Ukrainian political movement literally named after the Euro.
Dean
26d ago
It wouldn't be an imposition to them, and in fact they'd probably be thrilled to let you know if they had anything else. Researcher groups like that often love when their research is noticed, and policy-support research in particular loves to know when research they provided can change an opinion. You questions / testimony and reasoning why (concern of male disposability) and what assauged your concern (awareness of Ukrainian views on the subject) would be the sort of thing that might tailor future questions and such.
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.
Doesn't make for strange bedfellows when you understand the Minsk Accords mandated a similar relationship to Ukraine that the US imposed on Japan in the postwar period,
Which was not an amicable solution to negotiations, but a compulsory surrender punctuated by more than one nuclear weapon after years of unrestricted submarine warfare against an island that needed to import resources and firebombing of cities made of wood and paper... after the receiving country had launched a series of unprovoked invasions and a litany of warcrimes across the region.
The Minsk Accords were, again, many things, but the Pacific Campaign of WW2 they were not.
which remains today.
Alas, the Japanese-American alliance today does not remain an unconditional military occupation with overt censorship by the occupying authority.
Also, the Russians aren't interested in dismantling a warmongering oligarchy as much as installing one.
Dean
5mo ago
On the American-Mexican border, this year the Biden administration implemented a policy intended to allow a stronger/politically-more-viable legal basis for ejecting migrants. In short, they created a remote-asylum application system as part of broader remote-immigration-permit systems. The nominal position is that migrants are to request the migration / asylum remotely from their own country, and then wait for the response of yay/nay. If they attempt to illegally immigrate before their application is complete, their digital-application can be rejected and they can be immediately deported as bad-faith applicants, and if they attempt to apply for asylum at the border without trying the app, they can be sent back to their countries and told to apply via the system.
The premise was somewhat undermined by various Biden exceptions to give various groups special permissions to stay, and the sheer numbers that kept coming after a temporary pause after the number of deportation flights was contrasted to the number of arrivals, and the sanctuary city migrant-bussing fiasco.
South of the American border, a number of different dynamics are taking place, centered primarily on spreading awareness via social media of safe-ish and commercially available migration services that have increased both awareness and perception of safety, sometimes with government facilitation.
Among other things-
-The Darian Gap, the link between Colombia and Panama, has seen functional guide services and entire social media channels and migration-facilitation industries between boats and forest guides and supply traders. The social media awareness of viable routes, legal strategies such as claiming asylum, and analysis/assessments of the US permissiveness of migrants once you reach there, are widespread. As with most businesses, as businesses scale, they compete and improve in pursuit of profit and client-share.
-Local governments in the Darian Gap, Panama, and Costa Rica, being overwhelmed if they try to stop or hinder the flow and at risk of criminal malingering if they just ignore it, have gradually adopted policies of functionally regulating migration flow independent of national level (let alone American) desires. A migrant you stop is your problem; a migrant you charge for a clean hotel room before moving on is a revenue source, and less likely to be working with the cartels against you. Local governments are in some places functionally legalizing/displacing the more harmful criminal types.
-Nicaragua in particular has started a racket of direct migrant shuttle flights from high-migration capitals to Nicaragua. In much the same way of the Belarusian migration crisis bringing Iraqis to the Polish border while the Belarusian government got the money for the 'tour packages,' Nicaragua basically relaxed visa-arrival restrictions and starting flying in planeloads of migrants from countries like Haiti and Cuba, and then gives the migrants a short amount of time to get out of the country starting from halfway up central america. Naturally Ortega makes his cuts, and while the US has pressured some airlines to stop, there's still plenty of money.
-Building on public awareness, the US domestic squabble of the Texas bussing of migrants to sanctuary cities was an international highlight on the, well, 'free reception' on hand if you did arrive in the US and reach a Sanctuary city. When internationally recognizable cities like New York complain that they can't continue to spend thousands of dollars a month per migrant providing food, housing, job permisions, and etc., that's not a problem- that's an advertisement to get it while you can.
-Finally, there has been increasing regional coordination between migration-transit countries on the subject. Some of this has been urged by the US, and some has been about, well, using migration as a way to urge changes in US policy that interest the coordinating powers. Not too long ago, there was a Mexican conference with many of the migration-sources, with one of the resolution points asserting a general right to migrate- implicitly obliging the US to not only accept migrants in general, but actively facilitate safe routes and legal avenues into the US. (Other points included removing the current US legal structure that gives greater asylum weight to people from repressive/anti-US countries, like Cuba.)
Put it together, and migration to the US has become hybrid government-private commercial business, with spreading awareness and perceptions of safety and reliability, with highly public 'win' conditions and regional governments sympathetic to further facilitating it.
Dean
1mo ago
...?
By contrast, the power of Borris Johnson to coerce, compel, bewitch, or otherwise overturn the true desires of the Ukrainian political establishment was...?
Dean
12d ago
I mean, a lack of meaningful reliable information doesn't help theory making in a society where it's literally against the law to impugn the good reputation of certain institutions.
What, specifically is Putin's popularity absent the cultural context where various public criticisms can lead one to defenestrate themselves?
Dean
2mo ago
The identitarian wing most relevant here isn't the Arab-American community, but the faction within the democrats which tries to mantle the Arab-American community more broadly in the Progressive-Democratic spaces- specifically The Squad members Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American (per her wiki) who's power center is in Michigan, and who is closely associated with Representative Ilhan Omar, who is from Minnesotta as a Somali-American. Both women are openly muslim part of their taglines (the first two muslim women to serve in the US Congress), and both align/slot themselves as the Arab-American representatives in the Democratic progressive stack.
I wouldn't call this a power play per see- there is plenty of genuine dismay at the war- but it's less anti-war and more anti-side-Biden-supports. And the purpose is not to actually harm Biden- there is no meaningful harm from 'uncommitted' voters in a primary he wins- but rather as a warning shot to bolster political leverage. The implicit (and, by proxies, explicit) threat is that if Biden doesn't compromise to them and work to compel the Israelis to end the conflict, then they won't support him in the election against Trump. In effect, it's attempting to coerce a bribe for support. This flows from the principle that their support is needed for Biden to get the votes to win, and also that Biden meeting their terms won't lose him more votes in the process.
The issue for Biden is, of course, that where the votes are will matter. It's not a national-level issue, it's an issue of what matters in the electoral swing states. Michigan is one of those swing states- which increases the viability of the threat- but Minnesota is not- decreasing the national level argument.
As for whether Gaza will be a live issue by the time of the summer election season- probably not. I'd argue it's not even a live national issue now- it's a Democratic internal issue, and one that is in the process of being smothered by party-institutional power and connections. While things still come up about it- like this article wave related to a largely irrelevant pro forma primary- the institutional wing has largely asserted itself over the Squad-wing, both because of who runs the party (Biden's wing, where Biden is very pro-Israel) and in the name of not driving off the Jewish wing (which includes some key party influencers who were shook hard by progressive-wing acceptance/support for Hamas after Oct 7).
I'll stop you right here. No, the fall of the Soviet Union and the Yeltsin era was catastrophic for Russia in a way that Ukraine is not. Massive impoverishment of the population, economic collapse, social collapse, demographic collapse, military collapse. Gorbachev had a strategy to reform the Soviet Union with policies of perestroika and glasnost. He wanted socialism with a human face and to preserve the Union. It failed massively and disastrously. I'm not sure if Yeltsin had a strategy other than 'remain in power' but it certainly wasn't good for the country.
And yet, none of this challenges the point you are protesting, which is that of a catastrophe of strategy as opposed to a catastrophe of other forms. That the fall of the Soviet Union was catastrophic for Russia in a way that Ukraine is not a rebuttal- it is the original argument!
The distinction- and this returns to the original context of that quote you've chosen to focus on- is of the nature of choice and necessity. The commonality of Stalin being backstabbed by the Nazis after making an alliance with them, and Russia's decision to invade Ukraine on incredibly mis-informed impressions born, is that they were the results of unnecessary strategic decisions born of bad information (that the leaders themselves cultivated). Stalin disregarded numerous indicators and warnings of the attack before it occurred to the detriment of his military forces, and the choice to ally with the Nazis to partition eastern europe before that was equally unnecessary for Russian defense, making the direness of 41-42 a result of unnecessary decisions. Similarly, Putin disregarded numerous indicators and warnings that he was not going to be welcomed as liberators and warnings, including the fact that a previously astroturfed uprising failed to garner major Russophile-support a half-decade previously. The consequences of both, beyond being massively costly, were that they were the result of unforced decisions driven by bad strategic understandings, and would have been considerably better for the Russians had they had a more accurate understanding of the strategic situation.
By contrast, Gorbachev's decision to undertake reforms were taken because of accurately-identified issues, and the fact that many of the factors went on to undermine his desired result actually validates the strategic perception that went into them. Gorbachev wanted socialism with a human face not because that had never been done before, but because he recognized it was (rightfully) perceived as fraudulent by many across (and below) the system. Gorbachev identified that change would be needed to keep the system together as something other than a conquest-suppression state because that's how the system was built and enforced, as opposed to the ideological paeons that official position had been taking for decades. And Gorbachev identified a need for major economic system change, as the communist materialist rational had abjectly failed to the degree that the late-Soviet economy was taking perfectly good raw resources and turning them into inferior goods. That the 90s followed doesn't mean that the strategy of change was a wrong decision- it's reflective that any strategy taken for the 90s was starting from an incredibly bad position, and that the issues derived from those issues aren't the result of the strategy chosen, but the realities the strategy had to be chosen from.
It's possible to reform a socialist country into a market economy without shock therapy, without shelling Parliament, without a decade of chaos. China did exactly that. Ideology is a part of national strategy, if people stop believing that's a problem in and of itself. With better management of the economy and internal politics, the crisis of belief would've been mitigated. They could've transitioned to other sources of legitimacy in a more graceful manner. And hey, there are people in the West today who still believe in socialism. Indeed, the Russian communist party was quite competitive electorally - it took some trickery to keep them from ejecting Yeltsin.
When I referenced there is a common failure point to assume that historical states actually work like video games, with the results in control of the player's agency, this is the sort of rhetoric I'm alluding to. This demonstrates both an ignorance of the history and politics involved, as well as a conflation of the merits of the deciding on a strategy with the strategy's results.
The first point returns to the point of the original first question on the value of planning, and the importance of tying that to realistic understandings of the dynamics and actors involve. Come the late 80s/early 90s, there was no 'graceful' alternative to maintaining the Soviet Empire because from the start to the end the Soviet Union from the start was an incredibly ungraceful conquest-and-suppression state, that directly and violently both annexed its extremities, violently put down attempts to gracefully leave the imperial sphere, and systematically relies on pervasive surveillance states and systemic abuses to disrupt dissent. The result was a Union where even Crimea wanted to leave it, and when ungraceful suppression was ended, did. The constituent conquests were not looking for another source of Russian imperial legitimatization to be subjugated under, they did not want the Russian empire, and only continued ungraceful suppression would keep them in it as the Soviets were well on their way to yet another uprising come the late 80s. This is the strategic context Gorbachev was operating in, and from which any strategic decision on maintaining the broader union was being made from.
Similarly, the 90s was indeed an incredibly corrupt time and impoverished time... and was always going to be in transition, as the sort of corrupt leaders who led and looted Russia in the 90s were literally the sort of leaders the Soviet Union had on hand and was producing for decades, and their level of competence and public care was always going to be reflective of that no matter what style of reform onetook in a continuity of government effort because they were the continuity of leadership. The 90s didn't occur, and then a whole host of corrupt gangsters emerged to be corrupt and mismanage the system- the Soviet system had been run by the same sort of people for decades, and their mismanagement was what brought the situation to Gorbachev's position in the first place. The transition being run by gangsters wasn't a strategic choice, it was a limitation enforced onto the strategy by the previous generations of the Soviet Union being a suppression state led by, and selecting for, gangsters.
Which goes back to the point that strategies are chosen for addressing strategic problems, and not the implicit inverse where the strategic problems are a result of choosing the strategy. Unlike in some video games, there is no easily-identified 'corrupt politician' flag or a counterpart 'honest bueracrat' trait, and there is no magical anti-crime/encourage loyalty option. Strategies are chosen from the problems facing the chooser, and the failure of a strategy to pan out as desired is not the same as a failure of strategy, or that the strategic considerations that went into choosing it. Sometimes a bad hand of options is a bad hand of options, and the 90s were going to be a bad hand for the Russians due to many factors the Russians had stacked against themselves.
The reform of the Soviet Union was always going to be carried out by gangsters, for gangsters, after the same gangsters had looted Russia and the empire for decades.
You don't see the kinds of hysterically aggressive Western nationalists that are found in China.
If you mean 'see' as in that it's not covered by the media, this is because the general political tribal dynamics of the media class tend to see nationalism as uncouth and coded as their opposition parties.
If you mean 'see' as in 'it's not there,' this would be flatly incorrect, and anyone who lived through the early 2000s could probably recount more than a few American examples.
You seem to be under the impression that the national security strategy is only about the field of security, which is a very important indicator that you haven't read it. And are probably confusing it with the National Defense Strategy.
Above you were saying that the fall of the Soviet Union was a failure of ideology, unrelated to security issues
And above was a different topic, while this is on the American national strategy.
I realize it can be embarrassing to have been predicted and called out, but the sub-thread you are and were responding to was not on the fall of the Soviet Union, but the specific national policy documents the Americans use to present national strategy which you mis-characterized (your original second question), and your objection demonstrated your lack of awareness on the role of the document.
As we are back to the American national strategy, I will offer you a direct question to establish your familiarity with American national strategy, which in full forewarning I will call out if you try to evade.
Before I posted the link, and before you posted your opening thesis on American strategy, had you ever read or reviewed an American National Security Strategy?
(which is wrong, given how Chechens and Islamists immediately took advantage of Russian weakness).
No, not really. The Chechens are precisely the sort of release-or-suppress challenge that the Russians faced across the broader Soviet empire, validating strategies made with that consideration in mind, and the Islamists were fighting Russia even at the Soviet Strength, hence Afghanistan.
Come the late 80s, the Soviets were facing the buildup to a number of major uprisings as the Polish and Baltic independence movements gained steam, and come March 91 after the Americans cut through the Soviet-style Iraqi Army it was very apparent to the broader world that in a conventional conflict in Europe, the Russians were likely to be decisively beaten in any conflict with the Americans- including if the Americans intervened in any attempted Soviet suppression campaign in eastern Europe.
The Soviet strategic challenge of the early 90's wasn't simply that the state was decrepit and the economic system breaking and the society didn't want to be a part of it. It was also that the primary military competitor was not only ideologically inclined to intervene when the next anti-Soviet/pro-Western uprising occurred, but had demonstrated to a global audience that doing so was well within its martial capacity. The only credible model for contesting tactical defeat over non-existential imperial holdings would have been nuclear- and if you don't see the numerous ways that could have turned out worse for Russia than the 90s, you aren't trying.
Anyway, you were saying strategy was about security. Now you want to say that US strategy encompasses more than security?
Yes, and your attempt to play semantic on this demonstrates that you aren't familiar with the American strategy architecture, which undermines the credibility of your assessment of American strategy when you don't even know what it's based on or derives from. Hence the question if you'd ever read it before your opening post.
The National Security Strategy is a document whose publication is required by American law. The law specifies what the document is going to be referred to as. The National Security Strategy isn't called such because it focuses solely 'Security' in the framing you are appealing to, it is called such because in the 1980s 'National Security' was the buzzword de jure that was written into the law as what the document would be referred to.
This is classic example of (bureaucratic) semantic drift, in the same way that 'Homeland Security' refers to a framing that had a particular moment of emphasis in the Bush era US government and which Obama then diminished, and broadly refers to the same concepts that another set of words could. (Bush used Homeland Security to emphasize the implications to the north american continent, but other Presidents tend to National Security for it's broader implications for overseas interests and allies.)
I had a look through the document you nominate as the holy text of US national strategy and there's loads of ideological and legitimacy content in there, the need to defend democracy and human rights. Plus there's a fair bit of DEI stuff as well - they want more STEM for girls, there's anti-racism content, they affirm diversity as a national value...
And yet, 'more STEM for girls' is not the strategy, it is the identified policy to achieve a strategy. And not a particularly controversial policy objective, unless you think less STEM for girls is somehow the preferable end-state.
Come now, I know you've opened the document now. I also know which section you are pulling from, what higher-level goal that example supposed to advance, and how STEM is treated across the document.
The answer for the audience:
STEM for girls is in reference to page 15, as in
We are focused on strengthening the economy by building from the bottom up and the middle out. To that end, we know the most impactful public investments are the ones we make in our people. We seek to increase equitable access to affordable health care and child care; career-long training and skill building; and high-quality education and training, including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), especially for women and girls. These investments will boost our economic capacity by ensuring our workforce is better educated, healthier, and more productive. This stronger workforce will also build enduring advantages that bolster our strength and resilience. We are also supporting workers by promoting union organizing and collective bargaining, and improving workers’ job quality.
This is part of the "Investing in our People", which is a subset of "Investing in our National Power to Maintain a Competitive Edge," which itself is the first part of Part II: Investing in Our Strength.
In this context, STEM for girls is not the strategy- STEM "especially" for women and girls is one of multiple elements of the goal of developing the national workforce.
And if one values STEM over other degree fields, then the lower hanging fruit in terms of which gender could have STEM expanded more is...
Well, 'women are under-represented' is another way of framing 'the absolute and relative number of women who could be in STEM is low.' There is absolutely a reasonable policy debate to be had as to whether it's better to increase STEM by increasing the number of men doing it, or whether women in STEM is a relatively low-hanging fruit that should be encouraged, but DEI-esque systemic encouragement of "under-represented demographics" is, again, a way to frame 'the absolute and relative number of [demographic] in STEM is low' when bigger STEM number is considered better.
Given that additional references to STEM in the document are-
Attracting a higher volume of global STEM talent is a priority for our national security and supply chain security, so we will aggressively implement recent visa actions and work with Congress to do more.
[We are] Creating more effective and efficient hiring, recruitment, retention, and talent development practices, particularly in STEM fields, economics, critical languages, and regional affairs.
...and I think an accurate characterization of American STEM strategy is not 'DEI for its own sake,' or even 'STEM for girls,' but rather 'STEM from any source', with DEI-coded policies being a way to encourage an overall increase in STEM-participation not only by demographics in the United States, but demographics from outside of the US to be head-hunted into the United States.
In other words- the American National Strategy is to encourage STEM training (especially among the demographic least participating), attract more STEM talent from across the world, and improve the recruitment/retention of STEM.
This is indeed something very compatible with DEI-ideology. It's also the sort of policy you'd expect to see if you believe STEM should be increased as a matter of national strategy.
There's certainly an argument to be made on the strategic merits of quantity vs quality, but arguments that DEI fails this on a strategic level while PRC diploma-mills of STEM are uniquely successful are going to face internal contradiction. For people who believe the PRC has a STEM advantage because it's increasing the numbers of STEM graduates, and that Westoid commentary on the quality of PRC STEM education is suspect is just silly cope...
Congratulations. You officially won the argument and convinced key American elites years ago. DEI and migration policy are how the US government under a Democratic administration believe the US will long-term compete with PRC STEM diploma numbers, and it made it into policy.
Thank you for your service.
They don't outright say DEI is at the core of their ideology, they say many things they don't really mean. It's a public document, not to be viewed as a window into their innermost beliefs. Only in the implementation, in the specifics of outcomes do we see what they truly desire. That's what's important and why I brought up the DEI/CHIPS article in the first place.
While I am always pleased to see yet more flourishing psychics able to divine the True Beliefs of people they've never met, I will again conclude that this is demonstrative of the point that you do not understand American strategy, or how the most governments think of strategy or approach it at a state-level.
While it may strain your belief, the American strategy is indeed a public document, and it is indeed intended to be a window for others both inside and outside the US to understand the objectives and directions of the US government. This is for many reasons, ranging from that coordination of the US government and its allies and aligned civil society is hard if no one knows what the strategy is (and when most don't have security clearances to view classified items), to that secret national strategies are stupid for a host of reasons and liable to be posted online within a few weeks anyway.
Contra wiki-leaks founder, the American government (and Western governments in general) do not operate as a conspiracy, where the public motives are false and the true motives are state secrets. The West generally operate as democratic administrations with relatively high turnover of national leadership, often between parties with personal and partisan animosity and no particular interest in keeping their predecessors differing secret desires a secret. There are indeed classified policy documents out there- when you review them, you will find that they are consistently about the 'how' of implementing the strategy, not secret real strategies in and of themselves. The distinction between 'how' and 'what' is part of the endurance of continuity of activities: because the public intentions are generally non-controversial, there are rarely strong motives to unearth the more secretive 'how' programs. (However, it does occasionally happen- see the European government phone-tapping schedules, where upon realizing they were spied upon while in office, new governments have outed previously secretive political espionage programs. This sort of revelation is far less common in states with far less administration turnover.)
Ultimately, national strategies aren't just a plan of how to operate, they're also a signaling and communication device. A secret strategy that no one outside a select few knows is a bad strategy at the scale of the nation-state, because the scale of governments overseeing coalitions of hundreds of millions of people is too large to be coherent. Public strategies are far superior for the purpose of coordination, as in the absence of specific direction anyone can know a more general direction, and it has also been a way for governments to signal evolutions in their postures that mitigate the risks of strategic surprises to their allies and their enemies.
Dean
3mo ago
Edit: I forgot I should've mentioned this, but it would be really helpful if responses avoided motte-and-bailey diversions. This post is about TTV and their efforts specifically, and though I believe stolen election claims are very poor quality in general, I'm not making the argument that "TTV is lying, ergo other stolen election claims are also bullshit". I think there are some related questions worth contemplating (namely why TTV got so much attention and credulity from broader conservative movement if TTV were indeed lying) but changing the subject isn't responsive to a topic about TTV. If anyone insists on wanting to talk about something else, it would be helpful if there's an acknowledgement about TTV's claims specifically. For example, it can take the format of "Yes, it does appear that TTV is indeed lying but..."
Boring night before the long weekend? Fair enough, I suppose
In that case, I decline to defer your attempted gerrymander on grounds of being a motte and bailey diversion by a repeated-iteration commentator.
To say this is not the first time you have posted on the subject of the 2020 election would be an understatement, and in those times you have regularly sought to use specific cases as a broader disproof to concerns or condemnations or malbehavior of the 2020 elections as unfounded/unjustified/'very poor quality in general', while not ignoring and or acknowledging (unless when forced, to the bare minimum as forced) said issues. You likewise have a pattern of then later referring to those selectively narrow motte-arguments in serve of more expansive baileys, such as claiming no substantive or well-founded issues were raised in previous iterations, or otherwise minimizing the existence or legitimacy of counter-positions, generally expressed by claimed befuddlement on how people could believe a broader topic despite numerous presentations to you.
Then there's the point that someone claiming they are not making an argument is not the same as not making the argument. Arguments do not have to be explicitly made to be made- this is the purpose of metaphor, as well as allusion, or comparison, and especially insinuation, which are techniques you have used in previous iterations of your reoccurring hobby horse pasting and examples can be found here. It's also the defining characteristic of a motte and bailey argument- a denial that the argument is the expansive claim, but really only the narrower one.
As your utilization of narrative techniques is retained, and your practice of referring to previous arguments is appropriate meta-knowledge for how you present arguments, your previous positions are a legitimate basis for understanding and interpreting your raising of a familiar topic. Said topic, the hobby horse you yourself acknowledge indulging in, is not TTP specifically, but 2020 election doubt more broadly. While asking people to refrain from acknowledging the bailey is indeed a form of motte defense, it still remains a motte and bailey argument of familiar form and purpose.
As such, it remains appropriately helpful for anyone wishing to contest the background argument to ignore the bailey, which is raised to defend the motte.
Dean
13d ago
I would disagree with your conclusion, and affirm your opening question. I think the variations you see do exist, as Putin runs a personalist system and so his personal foilables show themselves (including his desire for historical reputation, his propensity for aggression when he perceives it as a safe i.e. easy win), but there is a distinction between someone who is pursuing a strategy badly (Putin is, I have asserted for many a year, strategically inept), versus not having a strategy at all.
Putin is in many respects incompetent at various strategic factors, but that's a matter of capability, not intent.
Dean
1mo ago
Kind of indicative they didn't have meaningful contacts in Ukraine.
If you're on the run from Russian authorities, trying to flee across the most militarized part of the Russian border with the most civilian control points, an occupation state apparatus tailored to identifying and mitigating dissident mobilization and ability to move, entire deployed military formations with contiguous trench fortifications, a country-wide mine field, and then rushing the armed defenders with standing 'shoot on sight' orders is...
...well it's a bold strategy, but not a particularly intelligent one when the country in question has demonstrated the ability to covertly operate well within Russian territory for extended periods of time.
The US was not exactly thrilled by hostile forces extending their influence into its hemisphere during the Cold War (or any other time really), especially the forward basing of missiles. It's expected that great powers will try to avoid this.
It's also expected that Russia can read a map and is aware that it is already in the position regardless of Ukraine- so invading Ukraine to keep it out of NATO doesn't change the missile threat, and thus does not serve as a sensible rational. If NATO wanted to place missiles in range of Moscow, they don't need Ukraine to do so.
Likewise, it's also well known that the US is in range of Russian missile bases in... Russia. Russia gets no nuclear posture advantage by advancing nuclear bases into Ukraine.
The Cuban Missile Crisis logic stopped making any sort of strategic sense within two decades of it happening. The US did not need to maintain nuclear missiles in Turkey for the sake of ranging Russia, and the Russians did not need missiles based in Cuba to range the US. ICBMs and SLBMs largely rendered the role of IRBMs irrelevant, which is why they were an easy-to-negotiate away weapon in the nuclear arms control treaties as a trust-building measure.
Sensors and missiles based in Ukraine are relevant to nuclear warfare, as are Ukraine's claims to Donbass and Crimea.
Not really. The sensors and missiles that can nuke Russia can do so from the continental united states and orbit. The nuclear deterrence argument continues to fail because the technology levels involved are not the 1950s or 60s or even 70s.
If you want to argue that Ukraine is the key to a potential NATO nuclear decapitation strike of Russia, you need to establish what Ukraine brings to the table that the Baltic countries don't... and why Russia's second-strike deterrent capability only works in the invade-Ukraine scenario but not in the other.
Dean
1mo ago
And where would you expect to see the other side that vested western interests have an interest in keeping suppressed? CNN? Fox? MSNBC?
Non-American or European media, to start. Al Jazeera has good production value if you're insistent on English language, but if you're willing to indulge in machine translation then there are entire other continents of geopolitical fans with viewpoints- and memories- outside of anglosphere cultural frameworks.
However, your citation wasn't to have someone on the other side of vested western interests- your citation was on a claim of what the vested western interests were themselves supposed to be admitting. Citing someone accusing them of stuff is not them admitting to... well, you were very vague and generic, to a degree it's not clear what was supposedly being confessed to (or not).
Which, admittedly, was probably the rhetorical technique intended, it was just an odd appeal to authority to neither cite the authority, or anyone with special insight into the authority's position, but then to immediately appeal to an outsider with no authority when the lack of authority was noted.
How about the world's foremost critic of US foreign policy? Or is he just a senile old man at this point?
Chomsky was a senile old man at heart decades ago, given that he's been an anti-american tribalist for longer than you've likely been alive with no particular moral creed to peg consistency to otherwise, and not a particularly impressive one unless you're awed by sophistry. If you think he's the world's foremost critic of US foreign policy, you have a very shuttered view of the world of American critics.
If you want intellectual heft, try the French foreign policy establishment and its advocates. Defiantly not-American enough not to buy into Anglophone tropes by default, but familiar enough with both western cultural contexts and a cultural inclination towards argument structure to be delightfully relevant, and with significant national patronage in order to define themselves against the US in their attempts to align Europe to their interests.
You're the one who obliged with the logic of that statement. Makes it difficult to argue against if you stand with it.
I suspect the difficulty is that you don't seem to recognize- or at least acknowledge- a satirical tone of non-agreement. Neither he nor I were standing with the position, and your continuing insistence that they were (and your word choice in the process) is suggestive that part of the reason why may be that English isn't your first language.
Seems like you're engaging in some pretty strenuous intellectual acrobatics to preserve a conclusion you wouldn't accept if another actor adopted a similar justification.
I accept your concession of your limited perception with good cheer.
Sure, you made a silly historical metaphor while trying to ignore the inconvenient parts that ruin it as a simile. History's hard. Fortunately, this is the motte, and asinine positions are for being flanked, spanked, and penetrated as a result.
Judged by the standards of moral idealism, maybe both Russia and the US fall short. Judged by the standards of the world's only superpower, Russia isn't doing anything the US wouldn't approve of in it's own defense.
Modern Russia is certainly doing things the modern US wouldn't approve of in its own defense, not least of which is invading adjacent countries in territorial expansionism on irredentalist grounds based in the past. American warmongers of the current generation, as everyone has familair examples of, invade far-away countries on ideological grounds driven far more by humanitarian considerations/rationals in the present.
Even if you wanted to appeal to the 1800s Americas, back when it was run by racist imperialist most Americans would be appalled by and oppose today if a mirror-US magically appeared, the expansionist era American imperialists didn't rely on claims historical conquest to justify their conquests. They just resorted to the sort of lovably mockable jingoism and manifest destiny that's parodied, and no one believes or particularly claims that the Mexican-American war was a defensive war.
The fact that you tried appeal to a war the better of a century ago- to a war that was declared against rather than by the US by the perpetrators rather than defendent of territorial aggression- to force some kind of equivalence between the modern US-Japan relationship and the ongoing attempt to subjugate Ukraine kind of shows you missed the mark on historical metaphors. The US-Japan relationship of 2020 isn't the relationship of 1950, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not aiming to establish a relationship of 2020 US-Japan.
Now, if you argument is instead that Japan is analogous to Russia, and that Russia should be nuked and forced into unconditional surrender in order to be occupied and forcibly reconstructed as Japan was, that might be an interesting historical parallel to make...
You want me to be more introspective, check your own actions at the door first.
I'd rather you devise a competent metaphor than be introspective. Naval gazing and whataboutism is easy, but not particularly impressive. Competence is hard.
Alas, the Japanese-American alliance today does not remain an unconditional military occupation with overt censorship by the occupying authority.
Which wasn't the point I was making. If you think history is important, I encourage you to read it. If not, then that tells me everything I need to understand your position.
I will submit that you likely think you are far more informed than you are, but that you also don't care when you make a bad historical claim with more relevant differences than similarities.
If you care to disagree with my position on historical differences mattering... let's hear it!
Dean
1mo ago
It's not hugely discussed because it's not particularly controversial, to the point that it's like water that the fish swimming through don't recognize.
The 'issue' is that many scientific developments with military applications aren't actually all-that visible, being more about integration of capabilities than distinct form. A 'post-sputnik space effort' is visually impressive when there are no space rockets. A re-usable space-launch rocket is not visually all that distinct from a non-reusable one, and only (greatly) expands the amount of material moved into space, rather than introducing first-of-its-kind capabilities.
Another issue is that a lot of significantly advancing technology is also a lot more democratized, with periods of sole-state advantage being shorter than ever before. Thirty years ago, GPS-guided weapons and real-time tracking of forces was an unprecedented technological advantage that allowed the Gulf War US to slice through one of the largest Soviet-style armies in the world to an unprecedented degree. Now you have the same technological capability in your pocket, in some cases provided by the same companies putting satellites into orbit rather than the states that once had a monopoly on doing that. What isn't invented can still be replicated, often for a fraction of the cost.
That doesn't mean that the technology -> military loops isn't occuring, or having strategic payoffs. After being the target of proxy war for the better part of two decades, the US is arguably waging one of the most effective proxy wars in human history, in large part because of the technologies it has developed and deployed in favor of it's backed party while using lessons from the previous conflicts. The advent of drone warfare is a revolution in military affairs which will be a great weakness to all major military powers by greatly increasing the costs when operating in hostile terrain- but effect the US less due to the US's geographic and alliance contexts. This is far more relevant and impressive on a strategic level than, say, a carrier-killing ballistic missile, a weapon with only about 50 applicable targets in the world.
But drones aren't sexy a decade after the Iraq War, and a carrier-killing missile is whoosh.
Making an alt doesn't work well in the sense that it's liable to be detected, but it works fine in the sense that there is a venerable and proven record of it working for known / suspected / mods-openly-identify-person-as-alt-but-don't-take-action case. A reoccuring point from past mods when identified alts were raised in the past is that if someone Alts after being banned but isn't currently breaking the rules that got them banned, then their change in behavior is 'Mission Accomplished.'
Dean
3mo ago
guesswho is a long-term progressive cultural warrior, and this level of evidence is extremely typical of him.
Dean
1mo ago
Not really what your article shows, which doesn't actually indicate a German government role. Rather, it's a threat by the company that wants to be paid to build the project in order to pressure the UK to provide more money, with the threat to build to Germany instead. However, the article doesn't claim that Germany is interested in this, and the underlying context is that the company (XLinks) is in the capital/financing accumulation phase (trying to identify investor governments), of which the UK was the primary interested investor.
Xlinks garnered initial UK interest, in the 'UK is sending civil servants to study this in depth if it actually makes sense' sort, because it claimed the project would be profitable for it if it was guaranteed a solar energy cost floor (minimal price) of 48 pounds per MegaWatt Hour (GBP/MWh), when the UK cost is generally higher. The route was intended to be a shallow-water cable basically bypassing Spain to go direct to the UK, meaning it wasn't to enter the EU energy market (which would risk/compromise the viability of the project for the UK for multiple reasons).
But that's kind of where the project has stalled. It's unclear if the UK found other information indicating it's not viable, whether the costs are higher than initially advertised, or what. But implicitly the project is under negotiation. And this article isn't the Germans saying they want in, but rather the company involved threatening to go ask the Germans to see if they want to replace the UK as the recipient... but naturally if the UK isn't delivered to, it's not going to be a load-carrying investor, and as for the Germans...
Well, there are a couple problems for that. One being that it have to enter the European energy grid, unlike the sea transmission route to the UK, and the French have typically opposed solar transmission network proposals (such as from Spain) linking solar producers to their consumers... surely unrelated to France's own substantial electricity exports to Germany, and its desire to expand its nuclear energy exports to its European neighbors.
But there's also the point that the Xlinks Morocco project started being pushed in 2021, and the Ukraine War kicked off in 2022. Germany energy policy since has been about (re)building natural gas import capacity, as natural gas is not only critical for stable baseload power generation, but specifically as an input for many of Germany's industrial processes as a resoruce separate from the electricity. As a result, Germany's energy investment priority has been on scaling up its import capacity / storage for gas as it fights to keep as much industrial capacity as it can.
Dean
27d ago
There's also the point that the US wasn't the biggest funder of the Afghan resistance- the Muslim world was. The US brought the state-of-the-art stingers that negated Russian aviation, but in terms of raw money to pay/feed/supply troops in aggregate, the US was a modest part.
Dean
1mo ago
What's your ingroup?
Counter examples would require ingroup to be identified, but give us one of reasonable scale and it's generally trivial to find some policy or practice that can framed as an act of aggression towards others. Even hobbyists can rightfully be accused of taking money that could spent to benefit starving people and squandering it on unnecessary self-satisfaction instead.
Ah, excellent. While the abandonment of previous lines of argument to ever shifting deflections and changes of argument is as enjoyable as always (Really? You tried to use Macron warning about a Ukrainian defeat as a counter to Russia's invasion of Ukraine being a strategic disaster of choice? In the same post rejecting government strategic positions as unreliable due to lying, no less?), I think we can close this exchange by returning to one of the original points that you've been defending against all this time, which your attempt to avoid acknowledging illuminates nicely.
As was forewarned-
As we are back to the American national strategy, I will offer you a direct question to establish your familiarity with American national strategy, which in full forewarning I will call out if you try to evade.
Before I posted the link, and before you posted your opening thesis on American strategy, had you ever read or reviewed an American National Security Strategy?
And your response is more than telling.
This may be news to you but you do not have to read these documents to discuss national strategy. You can look at what actually happens in the real world. You can interpret govt priorities with your own eyes. This is better than trusting in the documents. Govts lie! The Chinese might say that they're interested in purely peaceful development - yet actually build up a gigantic navy and forces targeting their near abroad. The US might say it's worried about Iraqi WMDs and Saddam's links with terrorists - but have other motivations and goals for invading Iraq.
And when govts don't lie, they try to be tactful, they massage their words and adopt a certain frame. The Chinese adopt this supercilious tone where their military may be forced to take action if foreign provocateurs incite a rogue province into illegal independence activities. That's not a lie but it's not straightforward communication. Better to ignore the cheap talk and look at results.
This is a rather unsubtle attempt to waive aside the relevance of having read the American strategy, when a simple affirmation would have bolstered your position considerably more in a single word. Add to that your earlier ignorance of the documents in question and attempt to cherry-pick contents of the document after introduction without awareness of how they fit into their own location, I feel reasonable concluding...
No, you did not read or review the American National Security Strategy before your commentary on American national security strategy.
And given your word choice in this non-rebuttal to as to what the Chinese 'might' say in their strategy- as opposed to what they do say in their strategic policy documents- I strongly doubt you've read Chinese equivalents either.
Which makes a fair degree of sense, given your obvious lack of familiarity with not only American strategic thinking, but how Western strategic policy systems work in general, including the distinctions between strategies and policies. And your simultaneous attempt to assert that it doesn't matter if you read national policy documents or not because of your powers of observation, but also that the American national strategy document isn't the real strategy anyway so, like, it double doesn't matter if you read it or not.
I fully expect you to continue this denial of relevance defense, of course. After all, it's far more palatable to deny that the strategy exists or that it matters if you are aware of it than to concede that you didn't read it before trying to summarize it in boo-words.
While prioritizing the personal truths of one's own interpretation is typically more associated with progressive DEI advocates than detractors, it's a common enough retort when challenged over inconvenient external objective facts that might challenge their interpretation, like the publicly available national strategy documents that anyone could check their claims against.
Which returns to the original question that led to this exchange, and the structural answer that resulted.
Do you agree with my characterization of national strategy for either country?
No. Because you never bothered to learn what their strategies are, and it shows in what you've chosen to project and focus on instead.
I think if there's a bunch of specific cases that turn out to be unfounded, then it's justified to presumptively downgrade the broader claim only as a heuristic.
Fortunately this is simple hueristic to meet for the position you oppose. There are a lot of specific claims that electoral corruption does not happen in American electoral politics, and there are plenty of historical findings to the contrary.
I don't believe I've ever used a specific election fraud case to disprove the broader election fraud claim, but if I did then I disavow it now because that's not a valid argument. This would be akin to saying "Michael Richards never killed someone" as a way to establish that no Seinfeld cast member has ever killed someone.
It would be a terrible argument, and yet relying on weakmen arguments is something you have done repeatedly in the past, are charged with doing in the present, and are fully expected to do in the future. As such, your offer of refutation is not accepted, or believed.
It is a very characteristic part of your hobby horse, and is not expected to change.
Can you cite a specific example of my evasion/obstinance?
Yes.
This thread is one of them.
Can you cite a specific example of an allusion or insinuation that you believe I've made in a surreptitious manner?
Yes, assuming you are using surreptitious is the common vernacular (as a synonym of sly, as in cunning), rather than an attempt at adding a qualifier for a different definition (as in 'secretely') that can never be met by virtue of being an openly visible word, and thus not a secret, while smuggling the connotation of the other without committing to either.
If explicitly disavowing an argument is insufficient for you, is there anything I can say that could possibly militate against the mind-reading?
This would be another example an insinuation, as the argument presents the accusation as based on mind-reading, rather than observation of iterative behavior. The insinuation furthers a further implication to the audience, as opposed to the other party, that no reasonable defense could be made against such and thus the accusation is unreasonable.
The reasonable defense against reoccuring bad behavior is to not conduct the bad behavior, though by its nature this requires controlling one's conduct before, rather than after, the bad habits re-occur. However, you enjoy your snipes too much to not, as you have with your post-posting edit here.
I'm often accused of holding positions I either never made or explicitly disavowed, and at some point I have to conclude that the reason people fabricate and refute arguments I've never made is borne out of frustration at apparently being unable to respond what I actually said. This post from @HlynkaCG remains the best example of this bizarre trend, where he's either lying about or hallucinating something I've never come close to saying.
While it is certainly flattering to conclude your doubters are hallucinating liars who make up their basis for distrusting you, you are not forced into that conclusion.
Sure, I have an admitted interest in the overall 2020 election claims.
I believe the British would characterize this as a modest understatement.
Edit: I'm mindful that we've discussed many of these same issues a year ago almost to the day. I appreciate that you've tempered your accusations somewhat, and I nevertheless would be eager for specifics to support your claims.
Specifics have been provided, as they have been provided in the past, as you have denied being provided them in the past, and as you will continue to not link to as part of the denial.
And with that, have a good night.
Ukraine has been by far the worse Russian strategic failure.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was a failure of ideology, and even legitimacy- a lack of belief that the system was worth maintaining. However, recognizing that no one believed in the project, that it was ruining the nation vis-a-vis reforms, and that brutal oppression of unwilling subjects was not necessary was... an accurate and even validated strategic assessments. The Russians lost their empire, and yet the military suppression of their neighbors was proven to NOT be necessary to prevent war or an invasion of Russia. The Soviet empire was unnecessary for Russia's security needs, because Russia was not, in fact, at meaningful risk of NATO invasion despite the loss of a major conventional military, even as the Gulf War of '91 already demonstrated that they had lost military dominance.
By contrast, Ukraine was a failure of strategy because it was unforced error born of systemic incompetence at strategic evaluation. All the costs- direct and opportunity- have been unnecessary, and it was incredibly counter-productive on even its own stated goals and rationals, propagandized as many of those were.
The results are that despite how 'well' the strategy is being communicated through to the population, there is a growing subculture in China's increasingly important and undersized youth pillar, required to maintain the system as the ideological generation retires, who are increasingly don't care to maintain the ideological project, for reasons that are both compounding and beyond the the CCP's ability to stop. Reasons like the pending loss of generational savings of the retiring ideological generation due to the property crisis that is resulting from party policy, which will place more of the burden of supporting (and recovering) on the youth-generation where the passive-resistance has manifested and spread because of, and not despite, social pressure efforts.
Their existence is a counter to arguments of social mobilization behind Xi's national rejuvination narrative, and their growth is a strategic vulnerability to strategies which rely on a supportive populace, as opposed to an apathetic-indifferent one.
And this defense is what undermines the previous sentence and the implicit premise of the first post, which attempted to set up a contrast to the popular unity of the Chinese strategy versus the unpopular dissent of the American strategy. Equivalence of NEETs and cultural equivalencies isn't an advantage remaining with China, it's the undermining factor of any strategy that depends on social elan by denying it unique advantages proscribed to it.
There certainly have been strategies over history that attempted to rely on the assumption of a hyper-motivated populace on one's own side, vis-a-vis the apathetic and decadent losers on the other. They are typically poor strategies, serving more as rationalizations of those dependent on the offense rather than actually well founded, and just as often built on the rhetoric of the propaganda state being echoed by the compliant subjects, who by the nature of the state lack the outside perspective to actually make well informed conclusions of their system.
And that would an inaccurate characterization, particularly given what is behind the (multiple pages) of each of those geographic and technical areas.
And note that I predicted you might try this deflection-
-and as I said then- it is. This is how the American government- by law- articulates and communicates national strategy. It is called the National Security Strategy by the virtue of the same law- the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, because that's what they called it in 1986, and no one in the US Congress has felt a need to rename it even as the Presidents have gradually broadened it to the whole-of-government strategy.
Unless you wish to identify some other document as the the real actual national strategy document, I charge this as a No True Scotsman appeal to a semantic that the American government doesn't abide by.
You seem to be under the impression that the national security strategy is only about the field of security, which is a very important indicator that you haven't read it. And are probably confusing it with the National Defense Strategy.
The US National Security Strategy only 48 pages, including the cover and agendas. Admittedly more than some other countries, but nothing a serious commentator on national strategies should find overwhelming. Here you go. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Biden-Harris-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-10.2022.pdf
By contrast, the National Defense Strategy is a wee 30 more pages, but does go into far more detail as to how the 800-lb-gorilla of the US government thinks about going about competition. https://www.hsdl.org/c/abstract/?docid=872444
And yet, this does not make DEI the American national strategy, and does not keep DEI from being a policy. I would certainly agree that DEI is a policy that it's advocates believe in as a good in and of itself, and even that is irrelevant to whether the spread of DEI is viewed as a advancing American strategy, but neither of those are relevant to the difference between being a strategy and being a policy advanced on the basis of strategy.
This, too, does not make DEI the American national strategy, nor does it keep DEI from being a policy. In fact, it is directly compatible with DEI being a policy- policies counter eachother.
Such a large-scale and comprehensive effort is precisely what an American WGA entails.
Whole-of-Government Approach (“WGA”) refers to the joint activities performed by diverse ministries, public administrations and public agencies in order to provide a common solution to particular problems or issues, and involve some form of cross-boundary work and restructuring.
Which is to say- a government policy.
More options
Context Copy link