sansampersamp
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User ID: 751
sansampersamp
4yr ago
Some real work has to be done to flesh out exactly why Putin ordering the use of nuclear weapons makes that preference cascade less likely, not more.
sansampersamp
4yr ago
Unconventional assets (stealth) are rather scarce and whether they're truly stealthy to a peer adversary is a rather open question.
Have to admit I was expecting a link to some Russian wunderwaffen instead of a 1980s tracker that can be completely foiled by turning your radar off (like anti-radiation missiles haven't been a thing for decades).
The strategic air defense network they have is expected to require weeks to months of reducing till bombing can proceed in earnest with conventional assets.
This RUSI link from January is a fun throwback too, I imagine the assessments of Russian IADS have changed somewhat since then. Note that it doesn't say it would take months to carry out effective SEAD, but: "The question is not whether the Russian IADS could eventually be degraded and rolled back, but whether NATO forces could do so quickly enough to avoid defeat on the ground while deprived of regular close air support in the meantime."
Not a particularly relevant concern re: Ukraine.
sansampersamp
4yr ago
Why is the assumption that Germany was taken by surprise, conditional on the US being responsible?
Funnily enough I was thinking how once again Australia was passing through with a much more mild economic cold than the rest of the West (inflation has consistently been a few points lower than the US). A falling currency is also not necessarily a bad thing for a net exporter.
sansampersamp
4yr ago
If we're talking predictions, I'd say with 80% confidence that nothing of political consequence (leadership changes, notable policy backflips) will happen in Germany as a result of energy-related popular unrest that remains salient or has otherwise lasting effects into the following summer. Similar 80% prediction that winter protests or riots don't noticeably exceed the impotency of the covid ones.
I'm fairly confident it was someone in Nato or aligned with them, just pointing out that there's a bit of 'worst argument in the world' going on calling it an attack on state infrastructure when that infrastructure was not in use and the government had standing political commitments to not use it again.
The practical function of "covert" means state actors can let norm violations slide without undermining the norms. Sometimes it is in your interest to pretend not to see something. Ukraine equivocating as to whether it directed the helicopters that bombed Belgorod is another example: everyone knows they did it, but Russia and the US can pretend otherwise if a frank accounting of the facts would trigger responses they actually don't want to or can't follow through with (e.g. US constricting arms shipments, Russia escalating).
A military would sometimes burn their boats after landing on enemy shores to impress upon all soldiers that the only way back is through (Cortés, famously). Everyone may vocally say they'll cooperate at the outset, a good way to get them to commit to that is to just burn the defect button.
sansampersamp
4yr ago
Very unconvincing to me, not least because Putin has been incredibly risk-adverse and reticent to do anything that could be construed as escalatory as far as Nato is concerned.
sansampersamp
4yr ago
While true in a technical sense, this is softened a great deal by:
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Germany already rhetorically committing to wean themselves off Russian Gas within a couple of years
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The pipelines currently being turned off by Russian shenanigans (so the official projections for the winter are unimpacted)
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A difficult political problem (see: protests to open NS2) no longer is theirs to make and defend
Messy enough to demand something covert, but no military could get away with literally burning their boats now, even if it was actually the right thing to do
sansampersamp
4yr ago
Euro gas futures markets have been chilling out for a bit, ironically.
The reason why it doesn't make much sense as Russian bluff/escalation is that the only important costs borne by Germany are political costs -- the cost of making difficult, painful, but ultimately strategically correct decisions. Taking that decision out of German hands is a gift. Blowing the pipeline ends the game, no more concessions to be extracted or cracks to leverage. However much Germans suffer this winter is of vastly less strategic import to Russia than the unified front of sanctions against it. That suffering is only a chip to be traded for relief on the latter, and is near useless on its own.
ENTSOG map, for reference, with the breach occuring around Bornholm Island. Also to note, gas hasn't been flowing through either pipeline anyway: NS2 approval got spiked with the invasion, and NS1 has been shut off since the first of September, with the official excuse being a Russian turbine needing to be replaced and not being able to due to sanctions (though this is isn't true -- Canada, the repairer of such turbines, carved this out of their sanctions). Volumes have been flatlined since then, per the Nord Stream site. Accordingly, any recent projections of European gas scarcity (whether optimistic or pessimistic) shouldn't have been dependent on flow through Nord Stream. One such recent model has the biggest short term salve being energy generation substitution to coal, for example.
It's also very unlikely that Russia is responsible in this light -- the pipelines were already not being used via their equivocations over the turbines with Canada. Throwing Germany's steering wheel out of the window for them is not likely to yield them any concessions in the gas standoff, or poke at any weak points to unravel European solidarity over sanctions. This was likely West-aligned, but beyond that, who can say? These pipelines are notoriously vulnerable, I'd only be moderately surprised if it turned out to be a non-state actor (if only because overland pipelines are much easier targets, even if they don't have as much symbolic mindshare as Nord Stream).
One thing I do wonder is if they even get repaired now? NS1 potentially -- with its fate so uncertain whose to know -- but there isn't even a legally functioning entity on the European side to take responsibility for NS2. Who's justifying that expense?
sansampersamp
4yr ago
The costs for using nuclear weapons (pariah status worse than the DPRK at best, utter annihilation at worst) make them rarely a positive square on the reward matrix, unless the alternative is equally grim. This makes them particularly bad at anything that isn't critical deterrence. See Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy by Sechser and Fuhrmann, chapter here.
sansampersamp
4yr ago
Every war in history has ended in a negotiated settlement in which the winner keeps the territory and prizes they took.
The UCDP Conflict Termination dataset (link, paper) has this data:
Between 1946 and 2005, only 39 of 288 conflicts, or 13.5%, ended in a negotiated peace treaty
Most wars fizzle into low-level unresolved stalemates without formal concessions or recognitions. Only half or so of interstate conflicts end in a ceasefire or peace agreements (typically the former).
In suggesting a negotiated solution, one should also be aware of the statistics and factors regardings the durability of peace agreements, and particularly the tensions over incompatible interpretations of Minsk II that failed to be resolved in the Normandy format talks that initiated this conflict.
I'm not sure the pause is particularly well-rationalised as Ukraine suddenly hitting on a well-defended position so much as logistics needing to catch up and forces recuperate while the crossings are better supported. I'd expect a push to the Luhansk Oblast border within a couple of weeks.
In the interest of not over-indexing on Hitler's downfall, what are some other slow but inexorable military defeats that failed to pierce the epistemic closure of leadership until the very end?
I think partially complicating the narrative is that the Russian fantasy of a well-equipped and organised military, of a fractured and compromised Ukraine that would welcome them as liberators and turn against Zelenskyy, and of a weak Western alliance, has already been incontrovertibly destroyed. There are certainly bad ways to react to that which would retain a kind of disconnect -- and the purges of the Siloviki may well result in more fear than more clarity -- but the knowledge that you have already got it very wrong once still remains. What would really be that different about Ukraine liberating Kherson or Lysychansk or Donetsk compared to that first disastrous collision with reality?
I'm not convinced Putin does have a particularly sunny outlook, accordingly, though I'm sure significant issues with carrying bad news accurately and objectively up the C2 chain remain. Instead of one big epistemic collapse, where eschatological hopes pinned on a coup de main get transferred to gradual territory gains, to hopes of European collapse of resolve in the winter (while weaning off looks more and more realistic) until no more transference is possible, an alternative and perhaps more likely view is that however bleak the coming year is for Russia, leaving humiliated with nothing is a far bleaker alternative to Putin. The looming collapse of CSTO as a bloc orbiting Russia shows how dire Russia's credibility is. Hence the current moves to consolidate notional gains -- not militarily, but within his own domestic political sphere. It's unlikely to work, but sometimes there are just no better options.
sansampersamp
4yr ago
I think the worst attempts to 'write to the fans' with these resurrections assume that the in-universe attitudes about the characters need to sync up with the idolatrous attitudes of the worst elements of the fan culture. Cobra Kai did a good job of running against this, where the plucky kid who overcame the odds to win the Karate competition grows up to be a card dealer that won some high-school karate competitions and still kind of runs off that high. Have the courage to let beloved characters be a bit pathetic.
sansampersamp
4yr ago
Honestly thinking you can opt out of status games, or that obstinate refusal to 'play' doesn't impact how you and your arguments are perceived, is just cope. There's an autistic tendency to conflate a social illiteracy with the kind of practiced sprezzatura that seems effortless on the surface level, or writing off deviations from the norm (a real and valuable thing -- see the 'basic' sneer) as essentially the same.
sansampersamp
4yr ago
It's difficult for me to think of a lower status take than consternation about, say, the casting decisions in the Little Mermaid remake. There's a few layers to that -- the content is for children, and these live action remakes are kind of shameful to have any investment in even before getting to the politics that is easily read as a kind of adolescent, race-fragile myopia.
With low-status, I mean something a little more subtle than just oppositional to the general social mores that might define my own social circle (or how I might ascribe that to a kind of cosmopolitan hegemony writ large). There are plenty of subcultures which define themselves oppositional to the dominant culture without degrading themselves in the process. There are orthogonal axes here that signal a kind of noble worthwhileness outside simple questions of alignment, and these takes seem to me to naturally occupy whatever the distal pole of magnanimity and taste is.
The ensuing conversations can accordingly be less of a debate and more of a slightly embarrassing condescension as if one is explaining social niceties to a child -- not a particularly productive frame for bringing others to one's worldview. What can be read as conciliation or reluctance to gore sacred cows, from one side, may simply be efforts to find tactful ways to bring an embarrassing conversation back to a kind of civility.
It was a very well-executed movie, probably the best action movie (in a platonic sense) since Fury Road, notably another 80s revival. The plot is straightforward and functional, yes, but complex, political plots with twists and turns and grey villains and sociopolitical commentary have been in vogue over the last 20 years. A reaction against that towards simple plots that uses a strong emotional core and characters to hang the action is unsurprising, as is that being tied up in our current nostalgia moment. This is a subset of, but not strictly equivalent to the IP mining that is also going -- Star Wars reboots are part of this nostalgia moment, the Marvel empire is not, while Stranger Things is an (early) part of the former but not the latter. Within these 80s nostalgia plays, much of it has been pretty terrible (Ghostbusters, Star Wars, etc) but a few have been quite good (Maverick, Mad Max, Karate Kid). The lack of a political context or complex villain (the enemy given as minimal detail as possible) is a deliberate choice to not detract from the emotional conflicts in the film and the characters' struggles.
With the success of Maverick, I'd expect to see more minimal, character-centric action movies, and dogfighting films in particular (shown to be very underserved). More scenes where the hero returns victorious to cheering crowds, more nondescript villains.
I think a potentially unremarked-upon aspect of the film I appreciate is the tone it's saturated with -- it's more mature than the original without thinking that mature necessarily means dark, or tortured, or politically intricate. Where the former was testosterone and surface-level id played for face value, there's a world-weariness to the sequel. Maverick's tentatively rekindled relationship with Jennifer Connolly's character plays out the same kind of nostalgia -- real, bittersweet wistfulness nostalgia, not 'remember AT-STs' -- that suffuses the whole film. The characters feel deeply bound by their history in a way many other reboots completely fail to emulate. What cockiness was just a sharp expression of young competition is now just a wry, self-aware habit. Maverick can't be anything else, the only difference is now he knows it.
sansampersamp
4yr ago
It's a bit weird tbh to mention US aid to Israel without mentioning the Camp David Accords, since the ongoing aid was essentially the cost of brokering peace between Israel and Egypt (who similarly is the recipient of 1.3B in military subsidies a year). The Accords were a massive, historic achievement, fracturing the Arab bloc and bringing Egypt back into an uneasy harmony with the West, after Suez threatened them being a fixture of the Soviet sphere. The aid sent to Israel and Egypt is of little consequence for what it has bought. Mearsheimer, of course, is too much of a natural contrarian to recognise that though, as we can also see in his dim opposition to Western involvement in the Ukraine crisis (despite it being a course of action that is almost expressly prescribed by the offensive realism he put his name to).
sansampersamp
4yr ago
"Technology displaces workers" is not a new thing or a very controversial prediction that I am aware of anyone on the other side of. The contentious prediction is that AI would create structural persistent unemployment effects across the entire economy which every prior technological paradigm shift has yet failed to do. A few commission artists having to find jobs elsewhere in the service sector won't be evidence for that, nor would they really be the first to be impacted by AI in general (most translation work is now done by deep learning models, for example -- similar to AI art, a human in the loop is only necessary when the requirements are particularly complex or the quality demanded exceeds some nominal bar).
sansampersamp
4yr ago
We had photographers, and then later we had photorealistic painters. Photorealism is an artistic reaction to photography.
sansampersamp
4yr ago
Straightforwardly expressed by Weber, a basic necessity for a state:
A compulsory political association with continuous operations (politischer Anstaltsbetrieb) will be called a ‘state’ insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force [Zwanges] in the enforcement of its order. Social action, especially the actions of an association [organized action; Verbandshandeln], will be spoken of as ‘politically oriented’ to the extent in which [if; dann und insoweit] it aims at exerting influence on the leadership [government; Leitung] of a political association [organization; Verbandes]; especially at the appropriation, expropriation, redistribution or allocation of the powers of government [Regierungsgewalten].
Art and artists went through a similar crisis with the advent of photography -- what does it mean for technical skill when you can replicate a master's work with the click of a button. Art evolved, new categories developed and so on. The role of the artisan in art has been a bit contingent for ages, accordingly. It's not like Ai Weiwei welded all those bikes together himself, or that the interesting bit about Comedian was the subtle technique in its execution. Artists will come out the other side of this as they came out from photography -- much changed, and with new debates and reflexivity. (One interesting example is to compare paintings of water, ripples on streams etc, before and after photography revealed exactly how light played on and through the ever-changing surfaces).
I, for one am keenly anticipating the advent of the AI equivalent of photorealism -- replicating AI-generated aesthetic tells in the manual medium.
The US joins the war conventionally is about the minimum I've seen communicated. Since a non-strategic nuclear first strike by Russia in Eastern Europe or the Baltics is probably the single most examined scenario by the US post-ww2, I'd be surprised if the playbooks don't have the timings down to the minute and statements prepped like a newspaper's obit drawer.
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