Dean
4mo 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.
As always whenever US military recruitment woes comes up, it's relevant to bring up that something like 80% of new recruits come from a family where someone else has served. The implication of this isn't that the US has a racial demographic recruitment option, but a familial one: that families that once would have encouraged children to join, are no longer doing so / encouraging them not to do so.
Failing to work around this issue makes many of the options presented pretentiously comedic rather than serious, because the audience that needs to be convinced isn't the recruits- it's the already-separated family members who are dissuading recruitment.
Behind a paywall, but one of the better breakdowns of the US recrutiment issues from the WSJ.
And how do you think running Venezuela into the ground by sanctioning them will impact migrant flows?
Why should anyone believe that US sanctions are 'running Venezuela into the ground' relative to the effect of the Venezuelan governance?
The Venezuelan government even 20 years ago was led by a clique who struggled with basic concepts like 'if you dictate that private businesses sell items at or below cost of procurement, private businesses will stop stocking items' or 'if you send people with guns to take over specialized businesses, the business people with specialized knowledge will leave.' It instituted a deliberate system of personality cult, attacks (literal and legal) on opposition actors and political opponents, and cultivating gangs as a national security strategy who then went on create a domestic security climate on par with Iraq. It routinely picked diplomatic and economic fights with its biggest trading partners while willfully and eagerly trying to align with countries less known for their quality of governance and far more known for their police states and party-empowering corruption. These were all chosen through the agency of Venezuela's own governmental leaders, for two arguably three political generations now. The same general clique of incompetents is still in power, and has been for long enough for an entire demographic cohort to have grown up under their management.
By contrast, you believe the relative impact of the US sanctions is...?
(This is a direct question, by the way.)
For all that you regularly like to cite US malfeasance as the cause of whatever cause of whatever blowback of the hour, I don't believe I've ever seen you actually provide a position of relative blame of US actions vis-a-vis other actors. Without any sense of relative allocation of input to output, this is just the cliche hyperagency/hypoagency paradigm that leaves agency with the US while everyone else is a passive recipient of their will, where even their own policy decisions are forced upon them by the US rather than, well, chosen both in response to and to shape US policy themselves.
While this is certainly flattering to US prowess in the same way that anti-semetic propaganda is empowering for the mythical Jew, it's not particularly well informed, and rather patronizing to the many invested and career anti-american politicians around the world who work hard to make their own policy disasters with hefty externalities but do so without American direction or demands. Give them their credit!
Dean
3mo ago
My take on this is that it has less to do about museums, and more a general decline in the US-American cultural/social reelvance of the Native American groups.
From an admittedly distant view, even as the sort of progressive/SJW criticisms of problematic Native American cultural references and caricatures increased in the 2000s/2010s, my sense is that rather than replace these with 'better' alternative symbols, there's been a broader trend of simply stripping Native American references entirely, with no indian cultural identifier left. Whether it's a butter company removing an iconic native american from branding, or the (American) football team Washington Redskins changing to the Washington Commanders following years of activist pressure, 'you can't have bad things- change it' isn't the same as 'do better things.'
I'd go further that Kissenger violated a number of ideological tropes and expectations.
Kissinger was a Holocaust surviving Jew (by narrow evasion of the fascists) who became strongly aligned with the American political right rather than left, a European who became an ardent anti-communist rather than a social-democrat, and thus something of a ideological/race-traitor theme which akin the progressive reaction to prominent black conservatives. He also worked directly against a common preconception/trope of a successful diplomat being someone who is supposed to avoid war at all costs and speak in universalist rather than national-interest terms. More to the point, he was a flagrantly ambitious and a publicity hound at various points, and so rather than quietly exist within the state apparatus or quietly retire to obscurity, he made a good part of his later-life about trying to be an elder statesman and defending his legacy.
That made him an active proponent of an otherwise often faceless machine, but also means that people's desires to anthromorphize broader collectives had an easy target to pin collective actions and policies onto, which has the effect of re-allocating responsibility away from less subtle actors in more flattering ways. It becomes a singular personal issue (Kissinger and his cronies were the cause of State Department anticommunist policy) rather than a broader trend (Kissinger was just the most prominent of an extensive line of anti-communists in the State Department who would have attempted by and large the same things regardless).
While there's plenty to criticize, I do agree that a good deal of the motte-expansive criticism of him rests on hyper-agency/hypo-agency distinctions. Very few Cold War critics treat anti-communists as having their own agency to commit atrocities rather than as American dependents operating at the direction of the Americans (and thus who would not have acted/been successful in their crimes without it). (And, by extension, anti-communists have no agency and commit atrocities; pro-communists have agency in resisting the US/west, and their crimes are brushed over as able. Who, whom, and all that.)
Edited for clarity of the memtic nature of the point.
This is an odd post, because it's framed as a disagreement without an actual disputing of the higher level post premise (broader and family-recruitment), makes some odd claims of a political shift in recruitment not actually observed (there is a recruitment crisis because fewer people are joining, without evidence of a meaningful change in overall recruitment allocatio), and yet somehow still adopts that curious twixt of 'there's no problem happening, and if it is it's good and you deserve it.'
This is without the oddness like 'If they can send you to die in the middle of Ukraine possibly,' given that the US military... can't send combat forces to Ukraine at this time. Which not only undermines the metaphor to the jab, but ignores that the higher post explicitly acknowledged that the legal basis for enforcement wasn't disputed.
Dean
26d ago
Never the worst decision, but Paul Krugman in particular stopped being an economist and traded that for being a credentialed political attack dog... probably decades ago at this point. Certainly back in the 2000s he was serving the role of the Certified Economist to tell NYT readers how stupid his political opponents plans were, and how good the Democratic policy was as being based in Science and Facts.
Dean
1mo ago
The refusal to be alone in a room with a woman that wasn't his wife, yes. That it was on grounds he couldn't be trusted is the partisan strawman.
Dean
5mo ago
As always, it sometimes helps to review the text that media coverage gestures towards. Regarding the El Salvador Constitution, english translation linked here-
When media refer to the Constitution in a 'the Constitution prohibits re-election', they're generally referring to Article 152-
Article 152 [The following] shall not be candidates for the President of the Republic:
1st.—He who has filled the Presidency of the Republic for more than six months, consecutive or not, during the period immediately prior to or within the last six months prior to the beginning of the presidential period;
2nd. —The spouse and relatives within the fourth degree of consanguinity or second of affinity of any of the persons who have exercised the Presidency in the cases [included in] the preceding ordinal;
3rd.—He who has been President of the Legislative Assembly or President of the Supreme Court of Justice during the year prior to the day that initiates the presidential period;
4th.—He who has been Minister, Vice Minister of State, or President of any Official Autonomous Institution, and the General Director of the National Civil Police, within the last year of the immediately previous presidential term;[28]
5th.—Professional military persons (militares) who were in active service or who have been so within the three years prior to the day of the beginning of the presidential period;
6th.—The Vice President or the Designate who when legally called to exercise the Presidency in the immediately preceding period, refused to fill it without just cause, meaning that this exists when the Vice President or the Designate manifests his intention to be a candidate to the Presidency of the Republic within the six months prior to the beginning of the presidential period;
7th.—The persons included in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th ordinals of Article 123 of this Constitution.
Article 154 is really, explicitly clear that a President cannot spend more than their full term-
Article 154 The presidential period shall be of five years, and shall begin and end on the first of June, without the person who exercised the Presidency being able to continue in his functions one day more.
Article 131 adds an obligation in ordinal 16,
Article 131 16th.—To obligatorily disavow the President of the Republic or his substitute if, when his constitutional term has ended, he continues in the exercise of his post. In this case, if no person has been legally summoned for the exercise of the Presidency, a Provisional President shall be designated;
HOWEVER... there is a certain... trifling... Article 155
Article 155 In default of the President of the Republic, due to death, resignation, removal or other cause, the Vice President shall substitute him; lacking the latter, one of the Designates in the order of their nomination, and if all these are lacking for any legal cause, the Assembly shall designate the person who shall substitute him. If the cause that incapacitates the President for the exercise of his position endures for more than six months, the person who substitutes him in conformance with the preceding paragraph, shall complete the presidential period.
Some rules lawyers may be recognizing why that might be important. Rest assured, Article 156 is quick to spot one potential loophole-
Article 156 The positions of the President and Vice President of the Republic and of the Designates are only resignable for a duly substantiated grave cause that shall be approved by the Assembly.
And later on, it's very, very clear that that on the constitutional amendment front, the framers were very clear that the most relevant principle can not be amended.
Article 248 Reformation of this Constitution may be decided by the Legislative Assembly, with the vote of one-half plus one of the elected Deputies.
For this amendment to be decreed, it must be ratified by the following Legislative Assembly by a vote of two-thirds of the elected Deputies. Thus ratified, the corresponding decree shall be issued and shall be published in the Official Gazette. Amendments may only be proposed by elected Deputies, by a number no less than ten.
**Under no circumstances, may the articles of this Constitution, which refer to the form and system of government, to the territory of the Republic, and to the principle that a President cannot succeed himself (alternabilidad), be amended. **
---RECORD SCRATCH---
Did you catch that? One of the key points of discrepancy in the coverage? Something previously referenced, but kind of relevant?
The El Salvador Constitution doesn't prohibit the election of former presidents. The El Salvador Constitution prohibits self-succession.
To quote-
Article 88 The principle that a President cannot succeed himself (alternabilidad) is indispensable for the maintenance of the established form of government and political system. Violation of this norm makes insurrection an obligation.
This is where the Constitutional rules-lawyering begins, which has not, shall we say, been an area where the Western media has been particularly clear on positions or, or weaknesses of, those involved.
The Constitutional principle involved for arguments against re-election is not that not actually about re-electing a former president. There are a half-dozen restrictions on who can run for President, but being a former president- or even a future former president- isn't one of them. There is only time frame defined derives from Ordinal 1 of Article 152, which is where the prohibitions on self-succession defines as-
1st.—He who has filled the Presidency of the Republic for more than six months, consecutive or not, during the period immediately prior to or within the last six months prior to the beginning of the presidential period;
The core of the Constitutional argument against Bukele boils down to claiming that being President 7-12 months before the presidential period- but not 0-6 months before- constitutes 'the period immediately prior to the beginning of the presidential period.'
The weakness of those who want to take that position is without an actual ban on former Presidents running for election, trying to claim 'more than half a year ago' is 'immediate' and not long enough obligates a standard on how long out of office would be enough. And the issue here is that the only hard number the Constitution provides in this context is... the 6-month window.
Bukele's maneuverings- and his supporting Constitutional argument- is that he will resign from being president more than 6 months out. It will not be his Presidential Period anymore- it will be whoever actually ends up replacing him as the interim, who will complete the Presidential Period (Article 155).
Article 156 does stipulate that a Presidential resignation should be accepted for a 'duly substantiated grave clause'- but there is no definition of what that would be, and the power to accept that is explicitly left to the Assembly. 'Duly substantiated grave clause' is in the same undefined space as the American 'impeachment-worthy' category, which is to say- whatever the Legislature wants it to be. And, of course, whether they accept it is not really in question.
At which point, once resignation is accepted, some of the key constitutional objections give way.
Is Bukele succeeding himself, the criteria for which insurrection is obligatory? Clearly not- he will have resigned.
Will Bukele be succeeding someone for whom he is too closely related to be a candidate again? Also no- the constitutional barriers are on familial relationship, not political relations.
Will Bukele's succeeding president be unconstitutional? Not if the Bukele's resignation is accepted by the appropriate constitutional body.
Should the Bukele's resignation be accepted? I would agree they should not. However, the judgement falls to the Assembly.
Will the Assembly's acceptance of the resignation unconstitutional? This isn't the case being made- and there is no standard for what they can / cannot accept.
And this is where we get into the space that Americans will be more familiar with, the sort of open-ended 'what is an Impeachable offense' standard where a Legislature has the ability to choose, but no obligation or enforcement arm to have a standard. In the U.S. American political context, this has generally been recognized as 'let the voters reward or punish,' where the worthiness of an Impeachment is based on whether voters reward or punish at the ballot box.
It's very hard to emphasize enough the point that Bukele is truly, genuinely popular in El Salvador. He is not going to need to cheat to win the election. This is not a case of 'unpopular minority incumbent corruptly rigs courts to steal votes,' or even 'incumbants use state of emergency to change voting laws to favor themselves by improving partisan constituent turnout.' Bukele is a wildly popular incumbant who is popular because he made major, discernable changes in people's quality of life through addressing real threats. The unpopular minority parties in this context are the ones trying to prevent the most popular candidate from running.
None of this is intended to imply that Bukele's ambitions for another term are good or just or appropriate, or even that you need to accept his position's Constitutional framing. The principle of self-succession was adopted for many, many good reasons.
But rule of law implies rules by the laws as written, not the rules as you wanted them to be, and conflating the two simply undermines the claimed sanctity of the former. Bukele is a classic letter-of-the-law versus spirit-of-the-law dispute, where the spirit and the letter are not the same thing, and 'Bukele packed the courts' isn't the only reason he could win that argument.
Dean
5mo ago
The modest version is that jewdefender presents as being against racial-supremacist arguments while making nominally anti-white supremacist posts that borrow heavily from white-supremacist tropes that are used to undermine the nominal 'we've got to resist these people' facelevel argument while adopting the conclusions. In this case, a 'why can't we have a honest conversation without disclaiming racial violence' and 'I get we need to be neutral and objective'- the defensible mottes- are surrounded by a laundry-list of 'non-white bad' and appeals for ethno-supremacist supremacist states which routinely use violence to enforce a dominant ethnic-identity paradigm.
Oversimplified, the persona's schtick is 'I'm totally against white supremacists, I'm just going to raise all these points they say they make framed for you to agree with their conclusions, but I'm totally not associated, really.'
A longer version includes that they're also suspected of being a repeated past troll who's just updated their posting style a bit.
Dean
8mo ago
In reference to Trump, they argued that the events on and surrounding January 6th intending to overturn the election would constitute "insurrection or rebellion" as understood at the time of the passing of the amendment.
Why?
The 14th amendment was, after all, passed after the Civil War, a conventional war in which field armies were marshalled to fight against the uncontestedly lawfully elected government. (The Confederates did not deny that Lincoln won the election, which is why they cited other casus belli.) The contemporary acts of insurrection included federal garrisons being overrun, cities sacked, massive civil destruction the likes had never been seen in North America since maybe the fall of the Aztecs, and millions dead directly or indirectly. In the drafters' own lifetime, non-insurrectionary violence in the capital included beating Congressional representatives with canes and honor-duels.
January 6, by contrast, wasn't even in the top 5 violent acts of political violence within a year of it happening.
I can't see this not being important,
Why not?
Trying to frame January 6 as an insurrection or rebellion has been an attempted narrative line since January 6, 2021, with generally only partisan effectiveness. It has been approximately 945 days and American public polling has consistently held viewing this along partisan lines. What, besides the appeal to Federalist society credentialism, is supposed to make it more significantly more persuasive after day 950?
Dean
6mo ago
I think that the distrust of experts on this site goes way too far.
How can it go way too far without any baseline-standard of how much distrust is appropriate?
You've not contested charges that various experts have lied, and lied for reasons of political and person self-interest. You've not countered the implications of the replication crisis which undermines the veracity of so much published research and the institutions behind it. You've only added examples of unreliability and bias undercutting grounds of deferrence, because if subject matter experts can't be rational in their chosen fields or are utterly unreliable in areas outside of them or compromised by ideology... it seems really, really significant that the dominant expert institutions have been heavily captured by ideological interests who select for ideological affiliation.
In other words, you've only provided more reasons to distrust Experts by default, factors that only further justify a starting position of distrust until veracity can be verified, without providing any standard of how much distrust is warranted as a starting point.
If there's no standard of 'this far is okay,' you lack the same standard to compare and say 'this much distrust goes way too far.'
Dean
10mo ago
I will always think of the places where liqour stores were essential business, but churches and religious services were not.
Dean
6mo ago
While the PIS won the most votes of any single party, with around 36.6% of the vote, this was less than the last election's 43.6%, and there seems to be a lack of coalition partners to reach the 50%. This was a fatal slide, which while having many contributing factors followed a major scandal in which corruption in selling Visas greatly undermined one of the PIS's key policy points- immigration- while validating accusations of corruption. While there will be some pro-forma opportunities for PIS to try and form a government, in practice leaves the likely next government to be an opposition-left coalition, which will likely be led by former prime minister (and former European Council president) Donald Tusk, who leadership in Poland was what paved the road for PIS to rise to power about 8 years ago.
Such a result will likely be greeted as a relief and good news for the European Union elites, and especially for Germany and Merkel, who Tusk was a reliable partner for. Tusk is about as much a Eurocrat as one can have, and has long been a leading voice in European circles shaping anti-PIS narratives as he tried to get back into Polish politics in the name of countering democratic-backsliding.
With a EU-phile government in Warsaw, this means some policies are likely to change. However, the nature of changes are likely to fall short of a 'the opposite of anything PIS did,' due to dynamics of PIS both doing some genuinely popular things which required 50-stalins criticisms, and for the nature of changing paradigms. Some of the dynamics that led to PIS criticism- such as the nationalization of hyper-majority German-owned Polish majority- aren't as likely to be reversed and re-sold once to the same companies once a shakey three-party coalition mostly united by being anti-PIS. Some things will be reversed, some will be kept, and some things will just be paralyzed due to coalition politics. That said, the European power centers- especially Brussels and Germany- can likely expect a more compliant Polish government for the next few years while Germany and France make a major push for power centralization in exchange for EU enlargement.
Various policy changes to look for movements on might include-
EU-centralization: This is one area where EU policy changes may see or enable significant shifts. One of the PIS's claims to notoriety was its functional political partnership with Hungary to block EU-level efforts to punish/exclude/potentially even suspend voting rights of recaltrant states. While condemned as part of anti-democratic badness, this had a major functional effect of blocking attempts at EU centralization that could sideline and selectively punish bad, or just unpopular, states. Tusk, as a EUrocrat, is almost certainly to step back from watering down issues targeting Hungary, but whether this will translate into a broader centralization momentum is less clear. The Germans and French have shifted from a current-EU-model of centralization (where individual states would be able to punished and lose veto rights- something Tusk might have gone along with) to now proposing a multi-speed-Europe model in exchange for expansion, which has far more serious implications, and which Tusk has opposed in the past (for potential reasons to broad for here).
Judiciary: This will likely be the quickest / easiest reversal, to EU applomb. The Polish judiciary followed a judges-select-the-next-judges, not appointment by the elected party akin to the German or US, and attempts to change that was strongly condemned by the EU (for whom the Polish Judiciary was seen as reliably deferential, despite corrupt origins from the post-communist transition). PIS paid regular political costs, and Tusk will drop that at the first chance while likely trying to prune if not purge the influence of PIS-associated judges (which will not be subject to significant EU-level criticsm)
LGBTQ+WE: This is one where the government line will likely align with the EU consensus of embracing the rhetoric and enabling/encouraging advocacy groups to set up social networks in Poland that were previously resisted. While over action will likely be less than full-throated supported, this was a PIS culture war point that the anti-PIS coalition will likely reverse for internal and external support reasons, though it will easily be a function that plays more to elite interests and foreign legitimization from EU allies than widespread domestic support.
Ukraine: There's very likely to be little substantive change on this. The biggest change is likely to be if there's a change in the distribution of arms vs other aid, which will reflect the military-industrial and rearmament policy more than a desire to aid Ukraine itself. While PIS did have election-rheotric and some disputes with Ukraine, I wouldn't expect the new coalition to substantially different on the conflict points (no Ukraine food dumping on politically significant farmers), and some of the criticisms of PIS on the Ukraine front came as much from a 50-Stalins direction as anything else.
Rearmament: Since Ukraine started, the PIS went on a major armament buying spree to modernize and bulk up the Polish military. Part of this was to free up older platforms to pass on to Ukrainians, while others were about establishing Poland as a military leader in Europe. Pre-election criticism focused on cost, and so reigning in would be natural (which could in turn mean less direct arms transfers in the future). The real interest will be what is cancelled versus what is changed, as various EU-power centers were more opposed that Poland was buying from outside the EU- especially US and US-alllied suppliers- rather than rearming itself. This will likely be a more case-by-case basis as PIS already had the ability to start some contracts that may have clauses making it less feasible to back out and transfer. It would be a major surprise, and reversal, if new-Poland renenges on the Korea tank contracts and goes for a German option.
Military-Industrial Policy: An outset of the Ukraine and Rearmament policies, PIS was establishing relationships and efforts to make Poland an autonomous arms center who could compete with French and German armament industries both inside the EU market and without. This had a dynamic of countering the EU strategic autonomy efforts (which are largely synonymous with French and German led arms projects), so there may be EU-advocated efforts to reign in the potential competition as a part of the rearmament restraint and Ukraine aid reallocation. Look for if South Korea's tank deal is radically restructured, as that was not only a rearmament program but also a lead-in to joint R&D for Polish military production capacity.
Media: One of PIS's condemned policies was its functional de-Germanification of Polish media. During the post-Cold War period and the early 2000s, part of Germany state-encouraged economic policy was the expansion of German economic interests, especially media interests, in the post-Soviet east. This led to a major centralization of Polish media by German corporations, who weren't adverse to leveraging corporate influence for political influence and themes, including shaping editorial lines on Polish politics. Tusk was a beneficiary of this as part of his German political alliances, given the nature of German government-corporate media relations which can be characterized at times as 'cozy,' but when the PIS took power they compelled foreign-owned media concentrations to sell, which is how the PIS gained outsized media influence that the opposition decried as state propaganda. Despite PIS now losing hold of that, I suspect that there will be no explicit German re-sell/reversal: rather, the Polish media landscape will likely be re-coopted by the new ruling coalition, just with different political interests in charge, or the new government will attempt to compel re-sell, but with an eye for more pro-EU rather than German-specific interests, to try and re-establish a dominant pro-EU media sphere but do so in a way a future-PIS government can't reverse as easily.
Immigration: This is likely to be one area where PIS broke the EU-phile paradigm, and Tusk and the anti-PIS quietly maintain continuity as a whole. While Tusk was a committed EU-phile and ally of Merkel, PIS made extremely good political hay from its anti-immigration stance, even getting the grudging German acquiesence when it was used in the 2021 Belarusian-instigated refugee crisis, where PIS preventing migrants from requesting asylum served as one of the only shields preventing an otherwise easy movement from Belarus-thru-Poland-to-Germany during the German government formation process. Given the EU-wide changes to immigration, and especially Germany's, while Tusk may entertain some token-level redistribution support, this will be a topic they step very gingerly around, not least because letting in immigrants corruptly was a key point of what brought PIS down, and could easily do them in again in turn.
There's more to be guessed at, of course, and I don't claim any special insight, but overall I'd expect by next year Poland-EU relationships to be on a fundamentally different tenor, but not at all what they were before PIS took control. Expect a lot of whom and who sort of 'it was really bad when PIS did it, not so much an issue now' tenor as conflicts occur, but one where Tusk and his EU allies try to make longer-term systemic efforts to prevent PIS from returning and cement a pro-EU coalition for as long as possible, but doing so knowing there's very shakey footing that could see them quickly fall and a PIS-coalition return.
Dean
8mo ago
There are innocent contexts, but the problem for Biden is that he is associated with repeated, consistent, and public denials that he was involved in any for Hunter Biden's business deals. Any emails to that will be another albatross to Biden among non-Democratic voters, in much the same way that Hillary had her own email scandal that just sapped over time.
If Biden has said from the start that he did personal business with Hunter, the Republicans would have pounced but voters wouldn't have cared as much unless there's something actually disreputable. The bigger issue is the contrast in insisting there was no business overlap, and now even the more sympathetic media are acknowledging that family and business mix, even as they avoid directly addressing questions about Hunter. It's probably meant to mitigate, but it's a context where the innuendo (false deniale, followed by non-denials) are damaging in their own right.
Dean
9mo ago
I replied that having done quite a bit of business in Zimbabwe, including with white Zimbabweans who still run many major corporations and are quite prominent in business in Harare, I didn't think that seemed to be the case, and had never noticed much racial animus toward whites by blacks in the country.
...and did they counter-argue the pretty obvious selection bias given your context and who you were working with specifically, i.e. the surviving winners and those who had monetary incentives to put you at ease?
I don't think your argument supports what you think it does. The point of 'the collective hates [X]' isn't that every member of the collective shares the same vibe of the group, an objection which itself would be a form of fallacy, but that the group effects is dominated by those who do. Most ordinary Germans may well not have hated Jews in 1939, but they were also onboard with a regime that absolutely did, hence why so much of German post-war political identity had to confront the 'I wasn't directly involved, and thus not my issue' collective identify in order to rehabilite a collective German political identity.
Likewise, the successful surviving white business men you met who were willing to work amiably with you may not have had significant expeirences with those who shared a regime stance... but the white businessmen were, by definition, the survivors who made accommodations and allies and friendships with/within the regime to protect themselves. The ones who didn't- the ones who would have been dispossesed out of spite- wouldn't still be in business for you to deal with.
That Wagner is unlikely to succeed in a coup is not the same thing as not producing any consequences (doing anything). The threat of Prigozhin's rebellion isn't in the likely doomed attempt- it's in the second and third order effects of the purges to follow not just against Wagner, but Wagner's allies, and the apathetic sorts of bystanders who didn't oppose them with fervency.
Prigozhin and Wagner aren't politically significant in the sense that 'Prigozhin thought he was a real boss.' Prigozhin is well aware, hence why he went on his antics for publicity, and targetting his feud of the MOD bosses, and the instigation event being Shugoi's alleged attempts to both administratively dismantle Wagner's independence (Soldier contract demands) and potential bombing. Prigozhin likely isn't under delusions that he's 'a real boss'- he's likely under very clear understanding that he was targetted and doomed, and is deciding to go down fighting.
Prigozhin and Wagner are politically significant in that they are representative/rallying points for a key contingent of what you might call 'the non-state nationalism.' Wagner is... I hate to use vague terms live 'Avatar' or 'totem,' but symbollic of the idea of a Russian strength that's not simply the state. Signalling support for Wagner was a way to show your support for Russia as a good nationalist even if you opposed/detested/thought Shugoi and the MOD were incompetent/wrong/ruinous. Being pro-Wagner was a form of acceptable criticism of the regime by people who were fellow travelers. It was a nexus through which anti-Shugoi factions could persist and loosely coordinate.
When Shugoi wins- and I agree that he's likely to win this- he is not going to stop at just Wagner leaders. He's going to go after their allies, which includes not only other disaffected oligarchs (it's own risk to the system if/when a class of greedy opportunists opportunistically move against eachother to take eachother's stuff), but their support networks as well, which includes their media/social presence spheres. And in that, what was previously swarths of officially tolerated opinions- and criticisms- will no longer be tolerated, but officially suppressible.
What this will mean is up for debate, but the reason Wagner was a totem of alternative nationalists was that they didn't want to support the existing national symbol of strength- the MOD-military- in the first place. Removing the alternative doesn't mean people will transfer their favor to the persons/institutions that did so... and is likely to be suppressing them either actively or with open suspicion. Dismantling parts of the oligarchy doesn't mean that only the traitorous parts are subject to being targetted- or that only the traitors will resist and fly back.
This is an event that, even in failure, will change how the war-supporting base view the government fighting the war, and how the oligarchs move against eachother. Either would be significant on their own, and this is before Putin's typical insecurities drive further responses against either group.
Dean
10mo ago
I keep seeing this take in a lot of social media and I really don't think that it has any relation to reality. It isn't a "fairly moderate chunk of the US military budget" but a massive economic imposition and cost upon the rest of the west. Aside from the direct costs of sending money and arms to one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, the indirect costs from rising energy prices, economic disruption, inflation, sanctions, refugees and the like have made this entire affair incredibly expensive.
This conflates a few different topics of wildly different scopes, so I'll focus on the point of energy prices. The energy price rising isn't the consequence of the war, it's the consequence of the Europeans- namely the Germans- refusing energy blackmail. The war was the context of the blackmail, but the capacity for the blackmail was baked into the status quo ante as a result of deliberate central and western European policy choices over the objections / concerns / warnings of US and Eastern European countries. The Russians were always very blatant that they were prioritizing political goals over economic profit with their use of gazprom, and that the German industrial base getting functionally subsidized energy was a means to an end.
The energy costs Europe is experience are the cost of a much delayed structural shift away from a nigh monopoly supplier to more resilient import network infrastructure. This is the epitome of a good cost, and will drastically increase European economic safety over the long term.
For any sort of advocate of European strategic autonomy, this is perhaps the best cost of the entire conflict, and exceptionally well timed as it occurred when there was the US-alliance network to fall back on for sourcing for LNG imports.
If the de-dollarisation that the sanctions regime has spurred continues it could ultimately prove to be one of the most expensive mistakes in US history.
Laconic 'If' applies. De-dollarization has been a thing for literal decades, and continues to be a thing, and will continue to be a thing. The reason it always seems to never happen is epitomized by the Russia-India experience in the rupee trade debacle- the other person has to want your currency, and to want your currency at scale it needs to be a a stable and fungible store of value. It's not enough to offer your own money as loans to buy stuff back from you, as is common with the Chinese yuan projects- the currency has to have value with others.
I am happy to concede that China may yet get some value out of the Yuan as a way to facilitate corruption outside of dollar monitoring systems (which is how, say, Lulu got caught for corruption in Brazil)- but this is independent of the war.
Even then, the cost in materiel matters as well. Western supply chains and reserves have been tapped out to funnel that equipment to Ukraine, and those stocks have been considerably depleted (at least among EU member state militaries).
They are depleted because they were incredibly thin beforehand, due to decades of neglect and under-resourcing and frankly falling behind the tech curve. Again, this is a good cost to pay if you are any sort of advocate for a strategically resilient and autonomous Europe, as the cost was going to come regardless.
With unavoidable costs, timing is key to relative preference, and the Ukraine crisis is about as ideal a time to restock / modernize, as political support is high, support from the current American establishment is high to subsidize modernization costs, and the political costs of emptying out the outdated cold war stock to free up budget / admin capacity for modernization is practically negative.
While that's bad by itself, it becomes even worse when you remember who Russia's biggest ally is - China. The Chinese government is, presumably, sitting back and rubbing their hands together with glee as they watch the west burn vast amounts of military equipment on a pyre. Every bit of kit that gets blown up in the Ukraine or sold onto the black market by some unscrupulous oligarch is a piece of kit that is not going to be used in any prospective defence of Taiwan
...but it was never going to be used in any prospective defense of Taiwan regardless, because water is a thing other than the color blue on a map.
This has been a thing since last year, but it bears repeating: Taiwan is an island. It's not in need of tank columns to drive across the strait. No one is building trench lines in the water. Many of the weapon systems that are very useful in the Ukraine conflict are practically irrelevant in a Taiwan conflict, because even if they were on the island they wouldnt' reach far enough off the island to matter in what really matters in a Taiwan conflict- the ability of the Chinese to maintain a blockade of the island against the US Navy.
In a Taiwan conflict, there will be no Ukraine-style aid packages to fight a major ground war. Only the equipment already on the ground has any relevance, and even then only in so much that it extends the time the Chinese need to maintain a blockade. As long as there is any blockade, no aid package would get through. If there is no blockade, it's because the Americans have beaten back the Chinese navy, and if the Chinese navy isn't there, it's not landing forces.
The Taiwan conflict isn't about ground-force kit, it's about naval assets. Which, notably, have not been sent to Ukraine.
if the US is getting a pretty great deal, you're gonna run out of superlatives when you try to describe the one China is getting.
A white elephant.
The Ukrainian crisis demonstrated that several of the assumptions that might have supported a Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan in the near term were extremely suspect. This included the power of offense versus defense, assumptions of acceptance by the targeted population, the unwillingness of the Europeans to assume costs to diplomatically resist pressure, and inability of the US to do things, and of course the ability of the Russians as allies.
I think this is the rationale.
It's not, as there is no single rational.
There are a multitude of competing interests and desires, and trying to consolidate them into a single position is going to
It doesn't seem to be working. The sanctions have failed. Utterly.
They really haven't, unless you misunderstood various purposes of the various differing sanctions.
It turns out that China, not the West, is the key trade partner of any commodity producer. Russian oil and commodities freely trade on the world market, and the West is actually afraid to sanction Russia more strongly because it hurts them more than Russia. Sanction Russian metals? Great, welcome to higher prices and China will scoop up all Russian production for cheap.
These, for example, were not the goals.
In order- the Chinese have not substituted for the Europeans in Russian energy export volumes, the sanctions on Russian energy exports were about profit margins rather than keeping them out of the world market, the Western sanctions have been about driving the economic separation of the European economic system from the Russian system despite Russian attempts at triggering economic devastation via abrupt cutoffs, and keeping Russian metals off the global market was never the goal as much as to break the European supply line dependencies.
Saying 'you're failing because you're paying more to not be addicted' rather misses the point of an economic policy to break addiction to cheap commodities that were kept cheap via policies to encourage dependence that could- and was attempted to be used as- geopolitical blackmail. China's gain to Europe's pain is not a counter-argument to this, as China paying more at the cost of Europe staying dependent is not a success of a policy to economically disentangle Europe from Russia. This is simply trying to smuggle a bilateral zero-sum argument in a three-party arrangement to claim that Russia and China both have to lose simultaneously for the other parties to win. (Rather than, say, noting that China exploiting Russia and taking over European market share and more at the expense of Russian autonomy from Chinese interests is not a Russian strategic victory.)
The bigger issue is that the Russian army is 15% larger than before the war and apparently Russia is outproducing the West in key armaments by large margins.
The Russian army is 15% larger by size, not capability- which is to say, they have conscripted a lot of infantry after losing most of their professional officer corps, and their armament level devolved from late cold war technology hardware to mid- and early-cold war vehicles pulled out of storage with minimal modernization. The key armaments Russia is outproducing the West in are artillery ammunition and middle-Cold War vehicle reactivations, which- while relevant- are neither indefinite nor enduring production advantages.
Surprise surprise, it turns out that if you start war economy mobilization first, first-mover advantage allows you to have more industry mobilized than people who spent more of the first year hoping they wouldn't have to mobilize.
There are separate other assets that the Russians are utilizing to good effect- like Drones and airpower- but saying that Russia is outproducing the West in airpower assets or drones would both be quite bad takes.
But even if this strategy was effective, killing 1 million people to "weaken" an adversary is just incredibly evil.
That is indeed why the Russian government is incredibly evil, since they are indeed killing to the adversary they have identified in a way that war crimes have become practically a point unto themselves as proof of their power via untouchability or recourse.
Fortunately, the people assisting the Ukrainians are not killing the Ukrainians, but instead helping them resist the evil people who have been quite open on their desire to erase the Ukrainian nation in the third continuation war in a decade.
Dean
5mo ago
The irony is that the reason Iran is reluctant to get involved, and the reason they were reluctant to attempt a bigger retaliatory move after the Soleimani assassination, is because they're winning. Sure, they could tell their allies to press harder against US forces in Syria and Iraq, but nothing makes Americans angrier than American soldiers being killed. And the thing is that (and I'm interested in @Dean's view on this) a small number of US forces holed up in bases in Syria and Iraq doesn't threaten most Iranian interests in the region. They still increasingly control most of Iraq, Assad is relatively firmly in power in Syria. It's an insult to them, perhaps, they may consider it offensive, but the Americans aren't going to end shiite control of Iraq or overthrow Assad with their current presence.
Well, since asked... I suppose my view on your assessment is that it depends on if one thinks Iran was actually uninvolved/unaware of the October attack.
If Iran was unaware/uninvolved, then it's not an illogical position. The conflict is an unexpected opportunity for Iran's foes to weaken themselves militarily/politically, disrupt the alignment against Iran by more regional actors, provide new opportunities, etc. etc.
But, as the laconics say, 'If.'
My personal view is that what we're seeing is a failed effort to start a broader conflagration, since being walked back and limited for damage control. An analogy might be the Russian-sponsored NovaRussia uprising in eastern Ukraine that consolidated around the 'separatist republics'- a 'success' on one hand in achieve an operational victory, but a failure for an intention for a much broader result that didn't materialize, leaving the instigating party a 'good hand' for a context they didn't actually want to be in, because they were aiming for something substantially different.
Very non-laconic thoughts below.
From my viewpoint watching various regional actors, the initial post-attack propaganda narratives, and so on, Hamas's goal wasn't isolated to a Gaza-specific event to be resolved with a hostage standoff, but to try to be the instigating event of a wider intifada with broad regional support from Iran's proxy groups. Key goals likely included a broader consolidation of Gaza support into breaking the barrier, instigating a West Bank uprising that would paralyze the 80% of the IDF there, and major external support from Iranian proxies- especially in Lebanon and Syria- to conduct major rocket attacks and limited ground incursions to surround and further paralyze the IDF. This would have only been possible in coordination with Iran, and in turn Iran would have attempted to use the regional chaos to try and expel the remaining U.S. presence from south-eastern Syria and from Iraq, removing US influence from a region where the US presence prevents consolidation of Iranian influence (via US-aligned partners in Syria, and the political impacts of both US presence and critical US funding in the Iraqi government which can and has been used to play off the Iranian-aligned actors). In an 'Iran was involved' perspective, Iran would be relying on its proxies rather than direct involvement, adhering to the principle of plausible deniability.
The 'issue' is that the Hamas attack did not instigate a wider intifada, and the Iranians were confronted that their denials wouldn't be considered plausible by actors who mattered most if the rest of their influence network actually joined in force. Hence the anti-climatic climbdown by Hezbollah from was being built up as a natural call to arms, the token-level support by groups like the Houthis in Yemen that even the Saudis have shot down without meaningful propaganda criticism, and how the Hamas strategy has resorted to increasingly blatant appeals for truce by steadily increasing the number of hostages it would turn over for relief.
The Hamas failure to spark a wider intifada, which has been a real concern in regional security circles over the last few years, can probably be attributed to a few various factors. A lack of coordination outside of the Iranian network meaning other Palestinian groups weren't ready to join in immediately, the shock value of their atrocity-propaganda having a detering rather than galvanizing effect as actual local groups distanced themselves due to the immeninet Israeli retaliation rather than join in, the effectiveness of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank to prevent anyone from mobilizing a force that would make them seem like participants., what have you. In fact, even the Gaza public support has seemed to be... well, acceptance is not the same as endorsement, but the Hamas ability to defend in Gaza has been surprisingly underwhelming, which would be characteristic of a force that thought it would be receiving a lot more support than it actually is. Gaza is not Kyiv in 2022, where the citizenry was mixing molotovs in the streets to fight the invaders. An urban area held by truly hostile local populace is a notoriously rough fight, and one that hasn't manifested in the fighting so far, but was probably expected given the parallels to the Israeli incursion into Lebananon against Hezbollah awhile ago, where Israeli ran into exceptional difficulty on the ground.
Which leads to what I think is the most relevant point- and the one that matters from the Iranian perspective- which was a misjudgement of regional views and perceptions. Plenty of people around and abroad were happy to cheer for Hamas, but no one wanted to join in fighting alongside Hamas- and as it became very quickly clear that the other people weren't joining in, the Iranian-aligned networks could either join in in the Israeli background, or back out.
By and large, they've backed out, even at the cost of regional prestige/leader-of-the-resistance standing. No one has taken more than a token involvement in the Israeli front. The more relevant activity increase has been entirely geographically/politically separate, which is the anti-US attacks in the Syria-Iraq zone. This is relevant for the Iranians- the US presence in Iraq particularly significantly limits Iran's ability to consolidate it's advantages by giving a counter-balance option to local politicians- and it serves a number of purposes in the strategic competition, but the most relevant is trying to re-establish leverage (you need to negotiate, lest we escalate- which is to say, the same position before October) rather than actively trying to overwhelm, which- to me- seemed to be the goal of the opening October efforts.
This is all based on a paradigm and a viewpoint I fully acknowledge others might not share, and that's fine. But from that paradigm comes a significant distinction as to why Iran is doing what it is doing at the level it is- whether this is a situation Iran found itself in that it doesn't need to do anything because escalation could tip the apple cart that it already enjoys, or whether this is a situation Iran found itself in because it tried to turn over the apple cart, but failed, and is now trying to present that it wasn't trying to do that (but could still yet do so if pressed, so better not press it).
To turn back to the start, to the question of if Iran is 'winning' and the analogy of the NovaRussia uprising- this is where I'd make a point that operational successes are not the same as strategic wins, and that sometimes the consequences of a partial success have different, less foreseen, implications. The Ukrainian NovaRussia uprising was a 'win' for Russia in that it successfully inserted itself into Ukrainian politics in a way that froze western integration and allowed Russia to play a key diplomatic role even as it was a de facto belligerant. But the NovaRussia efforts are also what functionally froze the NordStream pipeline project to Germany, cutting off a major economic-influence vector before it could be manifested, and thus greatly reducing influence that would have mattered much more down the line, when the early Russian strategy in Ukraine centered around pressing Germany to accept it and thus undercut a European pillar of support. Had NordStream been activated years earlier, it may well have worked, even as the years of warfare over NovaRussia empowered the Ukrainian army and national identity to resist the Russian invasion.
Iran is probably not going to have as much of a blowback, but then again no one would have predicted the Ukraine War's consequences for the Russians in the first few months of NovaRussia either. What does seem clear to me is that while Iran has likely achieved a short/medium-term disruption of Israeli-Saudi normalization due to the sacrifice of Hamas/Gaza, they do have some key elements of power being undercut as well. For one, the paradigm I reflect- the one where Iran has been deterred from maximal proxy usage- is a fundamental failure of one of the key points of proxy warfare, the 'plausible deniability.' If you wouldn't use a plausible-deniable proxy for fear of retaliation, it's no longer plausibly-deniable, and you're just returning to conventional deterrence. For another, Hamas and the Gaza Strip were most relevant to the Iranian posture as a force-in-being- the idea that Israel was surrounded on three fronts by forces that could at any time launch an uprising, and as a consequence Israel was in a weak position and needed to make concessions that Iran could take credit for leading. Except the West Bank didn't rise up, which changes expectations of what it might do going forward, and whatever happens to Gaza after this war, it's probably not going to be a serious contender for a mass popular uprising either. When the Israeli-Palestinian conflict returned, the anti-Israeli palestinians had to shoot the Palestinians to keep them from running away from the Israelis. Bar Hamas somehow remaining in power- and it seems very unlikely that will be the result of the Gaza war- whoever remains left is much, much less likely to be willing to be a quasi-Iranian proxy after seeing what the Iranian axis did for Hamas.
Is it a 'good' position to be in? Kind of. Is it a 'better' position than they had before the Hamas attack? Questionable.
But all this derives from some first-order assumptions of the nature of the conflict, which I suspect you and I diverge on.
Hope that answers the question.
Dean
5mo ago
The bar for blowing hospital and it not being a war crime is quite high.
The bar is extremely low, as low as 'is it being used as a military position.'
War crime law is not that legitimate military targets (military positions, command posts, munition stores) are made ineligible by the presence of protected classes (i.e. hospitals), but rather than protected classes are made eligible by the presence of legitimate military targets. There are no protected classes of military sites where someone can fire at you, but you can't fire back.
The proportionality principle, which is what limits collateral damage that could kill civilians, is proportionality relative to what is needed to destroy the legitimate military target compared to other means that would achieve the same military effect, not the proportion of military-to-civilian casualties. There are no convention requirements to take military casualties in the process of storming military objectives in order to minimize civilian casualties.
Dean
3mo ago
guesswho is a long-term progressive cultural warrior, and this level of evidence is extremely typical of him.
Dean
10mo ago
Nobody seems to talk about the RU-UA war here anymore. I guess it's because we're saturated with it everywhere else.
I'd suspect it's less saturation and more that there wasn't much to talk about that wasn't already obvious here. The Russian offensive culmination was largely evident last summer, and the mobilization as it occurred demonstrated it was about defensive padding rather than offensive capability generation. The fate of the Russian winter offensive just kind of underscored that to a degree that even the pro-Russians of the internet couldn't credibly claim a 'Ukrainine is imminently doomed' narrative based on Russia Stronk memes.
The people for whom the expected Russia victory would have been some sort of validation of their world view instead got their noses rubbed in Russian strategic and moral failures, and generally withdrew.
First, it is immediately clear that the Russians are much more prepared this time. The area that Ukraine took back in autumn was barely defended by a rag-tag group of volunteer militias. That was a big lapse by the Russian general command, which also led to the big mobilisation drive. This time is different.
You're either conflating two very different offensives, or ignoring one entirely. Kharkiv was the unexpected success brought about by undermanning. It was undermanned precisely because the majority of Russia's forces were moved to the Kherson region, which was a two-and-a-half month offensive, which was in no way a dynamic of 'rag-tag group of volunteer militias' on the Russian part.
Even pro-UA accounts like Julian Röpcke are conceding that Ukraine is losing lots of armored vehicles with very marginal gains. Western officials like the CIA chief or the US foreign secretary have all pointed out that the aftermath of the offensive will shape upcoming negotiations. Given that Ukraine has little to show for their offensive thus far, this inevitably casts a dark shadow on any prospects for large territorial compromises. Why would the Russians give the Ukrainians something at the negotiating table which they cannot gain on the battlefield?
There are a few points here.
One, you're assuming that the negotiations the offensive will be meaningfully shaping are territorial negotiations. This is very unlikely- Putin's political interests are such that the Russians aren't going to give the Ukrainians territory at the engotiating table which they cannot gain on the battlefield regardless. The negotiations that occur will be for other dynamics on the extension of the war, including Russian blockade or not of food exports, prisoner swaps, investigation access into the dams, repatriation of Ukrainians in Russian territory, and so on.
Two, you're framing this offensive as if it demonstrates the Ukrainian capacity for offense. That's... really not the case, as the Ukrainian capacity is about western backing for capability, and that is still largely in the 'what we have on hand to spare' levels of output. The estimates last year were that it'd take two-to-three years for various forms of industrial spinup to occur, even as the US has only started scratching it's own strategic storage stockpile. The success (or not) of an offensive in the present really has nothing about the capacity for offensive to work in the future, and far more to do with affecting how Ukraine's western backers shape their plans to back Ukraine (and the potential opportunities for those opposed to that to argue that they shouldn't).
Third and final, you're making far too early a judgement on far too little information. The Ukrainian offensive has been underway for about a week. The Kherson offensive, which again is the 'not a rag-tag group of volunteer militia' comparison, was a two-and-a-half-month offensive. I have no reason to doubt your characterization of Julian Ropcke, but I am not clear why you think they are in any sort of authoritative position to make a considered judgement of the current offensive.
Ultimately, the measure of success of this offensive isn't whether armored vehicles are being lost. That's expected regardless, and the reason 'the tanks are burning, the war is lost!' is its own meme. Success will be whether the offensive does enough that Ukraine's backers consider it enough progress to continue backing rather than compelling surrender, which won't be determined for months.
To my mind, the best that Ukraine can hope for now is a stalemate. This war has shown that in the era of ubiquitous ISR capabilities, trying to surprise your enemy is much harder if he's on his toes (which the Russians weren't in the autumn, but they are now). Consequently, offensives are simply far costlier and harder. The Russians had the same problems, which is why capturing Bakhmut took such an absurdly long time.
The nature of the Russian and Ukrainian problems are significantly different. The Russian issue was that they entered the war with the greatest advantage in material capacity they'd have for the entire war, but squandered it out of strategic incompetence and and with it their capacity to conduct meaningful offensives. The Ukrainian issue was that they started the war with the least material and logistic capacity they're liable to have, and are dependent on western backing in scale to generate these capabilities.
The prevalence of ISR aviation really hasn't changed these dynamics. NATO ISR certainly helped the Ukrainians massively, but it would have amounted to just having the finest view to watch the Russian invasion succeed if the Russians had planned the war's opening as a military invasion and not as a military support to an intelligence coup. Meanwhile, rather than use their surveillance capabilities to hit actual tactical or operational targets, the Russians squandered their strategic stockpiles and is now getting hosed by Iran for drones to use as cruise missiles against... still not tactical or operational targets.
For those of us who would want to see a negotiated settlement, the reality is that neither side is running out of money or arms. Russia is spending a moderate amount of money
This is underselling it by more than a little. It is true Russia isn't going to run out of money in the near term, but whether you want to consider direct expenditures or losses in income or opportunity costs or GDP shift or the impacts to Russian industries, the Russians are spending very significant amounts of blood and treasure and much of their cold war inheritance of Soviet stockpiles.
The only way this war ends is if the West tells Ukraine to give in and accept large territorial losses in return for a settlement and possibly security guarantees. Such an outcome would be nearly impossible to sell to Ukraine's domestic public and would almost certainly end the career of whoever was leading the country, including Zelensky. Whatever comes out of this war, I'm not optimistic about Ukraine's long-term prospects.
These seems like a lack of imagination. Other ways the war can end are that the West continues to help Ukraine generate offensive strength for future even more effective offensives in the future. You may think that's unreasonable/impossible, but the success of such a strategy doesn't rest on your concurrence.
Other ways the war could be brought to something other than a diplomatic capitulation to Russian stronk is that the war continues long enough with enough Western aid to Ukraine that the Russian economic-military capacity to meaningfully resist degrades, that Putin passes away and is replaced by someone not as beholden to Putin's legacy-interests, that the Russians do something really stupid that leads to NATO direct intervention, and other variations.
'Russian military defeat is impossible- better to negotiate now while you still have your army for leverage!' has been a theme since the war started. Nothing in the last six months has provided it any more traction than in the first six month. The war will continue, Ukrainian military capabilities will increase, Russian capabilities will decrease, the Western military-industrial expansions will continue, and the Russian national economic base will continue to retract.
Dean
8d ago
It's kind of an old conventional wisdom at this point, but the basic point is that late last century, the Israeli right and left were significantly divided by the question of how to deal with the Palestinian territories, and the Israeli left was discredited when withdrawal from militarily occupying Gaza led to its takeover and militarization by Hamas, ruining the Israeli-left security policy that peace could be achieved by making unilateral concessions to the Palestinians in the name of peace.
For a more extended version-
When the Israelis occupied Gaza and the West Bank in the Six-Day War in 1967, one of the reasons for seizing the territory was both as a military buffer, but also that they could be traded back for peace in the future. This is what happened with the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt, but for various reasons did not happen with the other territories.
Said reasons variously involved the fracturing of Pan-Arabism and the growing divides between the Palestinians and regional Arab states.
During the early cold war pan-arabism was a movement for a common Arab state which even saw some states voluntarily try to associate/join eachother, but ultimately inter-elite disagreements and the shocks of the Arab-Israeli wars fractured that movement to the point that Egypt, which had been one of the leaders of the Pan-Arab movement earlier, refused to take the Gaza Strip when it regained the Sinai as part of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The Egyptian position was that it's refusal was because it had never held Gaza as part of Egypt before the war, but a not-uncommon belief is that this was because Egypt didn't want the trouble of governing gaza / having to deal with the Palestinians / it made a useful thorn in Israel's side.
In the West Bank, Jordan renounced claims to the West Bank (which it had previously annexed) in the aftermath of the Black September civil war, when the PLO (who was present in Israeli-occupied Israel as well as Jordan) attempted to overthrow the King of Jordan in 1970. The Kingdom of Jordan won that, but the PLO remained in the Israeli-occupied territories, and in 1974, the Arab Leage recognized the PLO- and not Jordan- as the sole representative of the Palestinians, and compelled Jordan to recognize a Palestinian independent of Jordan. Jordan would later formally renounce claims in 1988, as part of cutting monetary expenditures and dissolving a lower house of legislature that was half composed of constituencies in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, i.e. Palestinians. Jordan and Israel would go on to establish relations in 1994, without needing any sort of concession of the West Bank back to Jordan, who it had been captured from in the first war.
What this meant is that come the 90s, when the Cold War was ending and there was no US-Soviet context to the middle east conflict, Israel had achieved peace with its immediate neighbors it had conquered Palestinian territory from, without having actually to trade back Palestinian territory as part of the deal. However, this peace between states wasn't the same as peace: the First Intifada at about the 20 year anniversary of the 1967 war in 1987-1990 was years of violence / murders / increased unrest, and it was clear that it could happen again. As a result, Israeli politics shifted to a question of how to resolve the Palestinian issue. This was the... not start, but how the Two State solution took new life in the post-Cold War environment, with the Left and the Right disagreeing on how to approach it, or whether even if it should.
An oversimplification of this is that the Israeli left was vehemently onboard with the two state solution, and more associated with making compromises- or even unilateral concessions- to advance negotiations. The Israeli right was far more skeptical, alternatively wanting terms that would functionally limit Palestinian sovereignty in their own state (no military allowed, right for Israeli incursion against groups attacking from Palestinian soil) or not wanting to have to do it at all. Then there was how settler politics played into both parties, as settlers were both a way to secure territory that might not have to be returned due to changing facts on the ground (the Israeli right), but also a bargaining chip that could be traded away at the negotiating table (the Israeli left), and of course an actor in their own right.
The so-what here is that in the late 90s, the Israeli left had an politically ascendant moment. Prime Minister Ehud Barak of the Labor Party came into office, at the same time that Bill Clinton was still in office, and they were relatively like-minded enough to put together the Camp David Summit... whose failure was one of the triggering events for the Second Intifada. The exact reasons why it failed are subject to dispute / position / your belief on what Yasser Arafat could actually deliver on behalf of the PLO, but from a more common Israeli perspective, this was a sincere effort with politically-damaging offers at the sort of land-swaps that had been a functional base of negotiations for a good while, and it not only failed, but it blew up into another 5 years of violence.
Part of what ended the 5 years of violence was the Israeli-PLO Sharm El Sheikh Summit of 2005, where President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority- the same Abbas still in power today- had assumed power from Arafat. And this was in part because not only had Arafat died in 2004- and so robbed the Palestinian movement of one of its unifying figures- but in 2004 the Israelis had also done a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
While the Second Intifada was a blow to the credibility of the Israeli left, the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is what I'd consider to have been the fatal blow to the Israeli left.
While it was conducted by Ariel Sharon- who at the time was part of the conservative/right-wing Likud party- it was so controversial a policy that Sharon's faction left Likud and established the central-liberal Kadima party, which attracted a number of the Labour party members as well. It was as such a policy that was identified with the left/center-left in spirit and practice, as not only was it's proponents the dominant leftist political force of the era, but it was a quid done for no quo. Israeli infrastructure was left behind, including things like greenhouses, and while for awhile it could have been argued that it set conditions for the cease fire the year after, which probably had something to do with Kadima's victory in 2006 to top the government- i.e. the political reward for ending the Second Intifada through good leftist political wisdom, bravery, and...
...and a year later, in 2007, Hamas completed its takeover of Gaza Strip after its own 2006 electoral victory by throwing PLO officials off of skyscrapers, and began a sustained rocket campaign into Israel. By January 2008, it was up to hundreds of rockets a month. The rocket campaign would more or less go on until the Gaza War of 2009-2010, after which the rockets... never went away, but were more varying, and a constant source of tension and unease. For as bad as the Intifada was, it wasn't that degree of regularity in rocket attacks on a weekly basis.
As a result, in Israeli politics, the Gaza Withdrawal became the political kryptonite of the left, a sort of feckless concession that made things worse. Prime Minister Netanyahu first assumed power in 2009 as a result of running on a tough-on-security policy, and ever since the decades of 1990s and 2000s have been the death knell of the Israeli left. After running and winning on the post-cold-war optimism of the 90s, the ideological basis of the leftest approach to Palestinian negotiation/conciliation was discredited. Not only were perceived-as-sincere offers of trades and concessions not only rejected but answered with an Intifada, but further unilateral concessions to amoliate even that only served to facilitate even more violence by even more dedicated partisans.
The Israeli left, associated with both conciliatory approach to the Palestinians (that visibly failed) and a commitment to a two-state solution lost a political generation as Netanyahu spun in power. In so much as they could define themselves still as an alternative to the right, the Israeli left was still defined by its commitment to a Two State solution, and thus as the respectable political faction that outsiders (like various US administrations) could like and work with...
And Oct 7 has rendered even that an albatross, because arguments for a two-state solution with the people who relished in their own ISIS-level brutality doesn't go down well with the electorate. For all that Netanyahu is unpopular and is unlikely to survive the death of his reputation as an effective security providor, Netanyahu is unpopular as a man. The two state solution is now unpopular as even an idea, and that is practically the most defining distinction of the Israeli left in some circles.
Or so the story goes. Perspectives and recollections may differ.
I didn't read the substack in question and don't have a particular opinion on it, but from personal discussions / observations / distant review, the issue is more the aging-out/retering cohort's effect on military families and communities.
While there is a core demographic argument, the demographic is more regional/cultural than demographic per see. South/MidWest/etc. have always been over-represented. The thing the OP's summary paragraph doesn't seem to address is that a lot of enlistment is from military families/communities, rather than blank regional. I forgot the statistics precisely, but in generally any country you go you're likely to see far more volunteers from people with parents/grandparents who were in the military than a random first-generation enlistment. There's a family, not just demographic, dynamic in play, which means if the family member advises against rather than for the enlistment... well, 'I'll join the military' isn't exactly social rebellion.
The issue for the US's current recruitment woes comes from how the generational transition has matched to politics. The 9-11 recruitment cohort is dead, dead, dead. If you look at age averages, the vast majority of US service members were born after 9-11. If you joined just after 9-11, you are that tiny minority of people who serve a full 20 (for a pension) or go beyond. That means people who joined during the Bush years, have gradually and progressively lost during the Obama years / saw the Trump years / are back in the Obama 2.0/Biden years. There's any number of things that could justify a feeling of disenchantment, from perceptions of futility of the wars, to the progression culture war aspects into military culture/life, and so on.
This is purely anecdoctal, but the straw that broke the back for some life-longers was how the Biden administration approached the Covid vaccine mandates. The US military, like many in the world, is legally allowed to employ experimental medicines / vaccines on the forces. US troops have been used not only for experimental medical treaments, but also as medical experiment test subjects in the past. When the Biden administration decided to make Covid vaccines mandatory for all forces no matter what, they weren't on particularly legally shakey ground.
What they did run aground on, however, was the disparity between culture war politics and needs-based buy-in. Whatever your competence-expectation for the average junior soldier, US career military professionals are career professionals. They are not only educated, but educated with an eye to practical implications and effects and cross-specialty coordination that many topic-focused specialists are not. And the politically inconvenient facts of COVID- such as that it was not a death plague for the young and the healthy (which most of the armed forces are) or the sort of politically-influenced media pressures were being used in a propagandaist fashion (which the military is above-average aware of as both a target and a perpetrator of) or active suppression of inconvenient medical dissent (which the more conservative-tuned military would be more aware of)- where thus part of the awareness environment even as the administration used brute force command-control precisions to not only demand, but overrule requests for exceptions despite cases of special forces personnel (a highly respect internal community) requesting exceptions for practical concerns, religious personnel requesting exceptions on religious grounds (which have variously been respected in the past), and so on. The evidence that the Covid vaccine wasn't even stopping transitions- and as such not making self-vaccination a breakwater to protect others- undermined a public good argument that the pandemic would end once everyone was vaccinated to stop transmissions. Instead, it was pure formal power demands on institutions of people who are explicitly trained on formal versus informal power dynamics as part of good-leadership training on the assumption that demands from compliance on basis of formal authority is bad leadership. Instead, people that people knew- people with long terms of service, unquestioned loyalty, generally high levels of competence, people who had put up with the worst of the military life and some of the worst strategic decisions of national leadership in a generation- were systematically kicked out for not bending to the political hysteria of the moment. People for whom loyalty was not an ironic thing, for whom a culture of reciprocal loyalty both up and down was both the formal instruction and often found informally, were kicked aside saying 'your services aren't needed anymore.'
What did anyone expect them to tell their families? Or for their friends who kept their heads down but also got out to tell theirs?
American military recruiting was always declining as the 9-11/War on Terror legitimacy faded, but Covid was an inflexion point in at least some US military family circles, where the military went from 'you can be safe and have a successful career as long as you keep your politics to yourself,' to 'you are not safe if you do not defer to the demands for conformity by politically-driven misinformation.' This would be unhelpful regardless, but is especially counter-productive if you (a) are drawing recruitment from the political opposition, and (b) embitter a core part of your informal recruitment advocates who shape the willingness of those most open to joining.
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