Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being a reactionary post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal critical theorist Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man Fox News boomer. No one yet has guessed a scholar, or multiple people. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
Dean
Flairless
3d ago
Rotational schemes also have a key roll in cross-leveling institutional knowledge at the levels between the subject-matter-experts and the client policy-makers. In any given institution, the specific SMEs are rarely the ones directly briefing decision makers. This is because there are incredibly few policy-level topics where a single SME is sufficient. Instead there is inevitably some level of synthesis going on, and that synthesis is often being overseen by other leaders who need to know what other perspective/input is needed for a better whole. Leaders changing portfolios across their careers is important for understanding the interconnection of things related to what their initial expertise was.
This is more commonly recognized on the military side. The classic saying on the military side is that amateurs study tactics while experts study logistics. You do this by taking a weapons officer outside of just the weapons side of thing, and make them responsible for overseeing something more logistical, such as a small organization or some such. Platoon leaders lead platoons, Company Commanders oversee a Company supply section, Battalion Commands have entire supply Companies, and so on.
Well, more expert-experts also study not only logistics, but budgeting and manning. And force protection and military construction. And training and theory. To get senior advisors who can advise on the miltiary as a whole, you need a military progression system that increases exposure and understanding of other parts of the military. Leadership rotation schemes are part of that.
Dean
Flairless
5d ago
I agree that criticism of your writing seems a lot more personal when you make your writing your job. But I'd go further and add there's also an element in the lifecycle where some of these people made their writing about themselves- specifically their own moral self-perception- and that criticism stings all the more when you publicly fail to meet your own publicly espoused ethics.
I don't remember ymeskhout burning out, but the other two at least had high-profile moments where they failed to meet the standards they claimed, and then rather clearly disliked that standard being held against them. When you make an unequivocable moral standard about why others are wrong to act in a certain way, and then equivocate about it when you do it yourself, the substack paywall becomes a the most generous sort of affirmation. On the other hand, a diverse audience of many contradicting and even disagreeable views who will scorn your self-image of yourself as a morally superior person for free.
On the other hand, you have an audience that is largely composed of people who like you and your position enough to give you money.
Dean
Flairless
5d ago
In the Clausewitzian model, war is conducted between states. The loser gives concessions to the winner, with the assumption that even a bad peace is better than a bad war, that ending hostilities - even for the moment - is the best way to bring about revanchist policy.
Modest nitpick, but not quite. In the Clausewitzian model, war is conducted by states, but between nations, with the distinction being the degree of political support for the state that allows the state to engage in broder, 'more total,' war.
The state is the conductor, and the negotiator, but the state's capacity is more than the state itself. The state's capacity also derives from outsiders willingness to support the state, and that derived from people, both subjects and outsiders. This was because Clausewitz was speaking from the the aftermath of the French Revolution and the rise of nationalism, which was a revolution in military affairs in and of itself that was so disruptive that it was part of what pushed Clausewitz to his efforts.
This distinction matters because the political will/political support that matters, particularly in a democractic context, can vary by policy by policy. The political support that may allow a great deal of acceptance of costs in Policy A, will not necessarily extent to Policy B, even if Policy B offers larger [gains] at lower [costs].
Seventy-five years later and the Arabs might as well be Ewoks against the Empire.
Fated to win decisively with the assistance of telegenic Western-coded young adult protagonists designed to encourage self-projection fantasies?
And the key / general point remains wrong. How other people want to take something is an appeal not even to subjectivity, but second or even third-party subjectivity, which is a fools errand in attributing agency. There are indeed contexts where the appearance of impropriety matter, but they are contexts of where the agent making the decision and why they are taking those decisions are related to the impropriety.
It also runs into historically inconvenient facts in Ukraine.
The responsibility for disruption of elections lies with Russia- whose invasion was intended to entirely replace the state that would conduct elections, and came with planned target lists of the sort of pro-democracy activists who were seen as categorical enemies. The Russian plan was intended to impose a state that would also not provide for free of fair elections or any sort of democrat legitimacy, for the sake of forcing through policy changes that did not survive electoral cycles years ago.
This invasion, in turn, met the conditional for which the Ukrainians had already considered and designed a policy at a government constitutional level. You may not feel 'don't have elections in the middle of an invasion' is a bad policy decision, but that is why it is not your policy decision any more than it was an American policy decision. This Ukrainian policy decision, in turn, was not made as a result of American patronage, which only began well after the Ukrainians made the policy decision which set conditions that the Russians later met.
You can try to re-allocate responsibility for others peoples actions and decisions from those people on whatever grounds you want, including funding. You can even ignore time and space and argue that patronage after a fact can be taken as responsibility for the facts of the past. This is considered poor practice since it is a position with no limiting principle, but plenty of people make poor arguments. It is still the hyperagent failure mode if those decisions are not, in fact, driven by funding.
I don't want to dwell too much on this topic, but could it be that these more horrific types of tortures were limited to just a handful of people and the rest were summarily executed?
Nah. Not just the cruelty, but the complicity, was the point. Clinical and targeted actions by a minority would be counter-revolutionary.
Part of revolutionary terror theory is that it's not just about killing the individuals, but destroying the society they were a part of in a way that it cannot come back from. You secure the revolution by preventing counter-revolution, and you can prevent the counter-revolution by making would-be counter-revolutionaries complicit in the revolution, so that its loss would lose them.
Part of that, in turn, was encouraging/pressuring/coercing other members of society into complicity. In more 'civilized' / stable communist societies, this entailed the use of domestic surveillance states where people spied on friends/family/other breaks of social trust that- if revealed- would ruin their ability to operate outside of the state. In revolutionary terror periods, more direct violence, often mob violence, is the way to build complicity on the perpetrators. People who partake in public violence/torture/etc. with the sanction of the state against public enemies are not only unlikely to turn against the state, but are also more likely to rationalize that what the state does is morally justified and not worth bringing to just account, for what the state did was what they did and people tend to rather rationalize their actions than want to confess and condemn themselves.
Both extremes- 'mere' surveillance state participation or revolutionary terror- work on the same principle of breaking down social trust in favor of the state. The crime / moral violation forever separates people from their victims, who are the other part of society. Who can re-trust a spouse or friend they knew betrayed their most secret trusts? Who will trust a promise to agree to disagree from someone who split another's head open for ideological failure? Once you do an indisputably unjust thing in service of the unjust state, that makes you both an accomplice of the state and having an interest in maintaining it against the people who would bring it to account, for justice against it could also mean justice against you.
This tendency works better the more of the population you turn against the rest, and the more extreme the injustice. If it were 'just a handful of people,' then the crimes of the revolution could be projected/shifted to that tiny minority, and by proxy 'absolve' the rest. This is counter-revolutionary, because the goal of the revolution is to claim and change the people, not give them an easy target and rationalization for rejecting the revolution.
Dean
Flairless
6d ago
Thank you for providing an elaboration at request. (And that is a sincere thank you. An ! would feel flippant, but the gratitude is meant.)
Dean
Flairless
6d ago
Maybe I'm tired and not understanding correctly, but your use of the collective 'you' is reading to me as linking to both the perpetrator and victim of firebombing alike- or possibly both, as in someone deserving firebombing.
Might I ask you to reword this for clarity?
I am adding 'Fox News boomer' to my list of pejoratives.
Dean
Flairless
6d ago
Honestly, it wasn't even the rageout. Catharsis doesn't have to be pretty. It was more the gap... anti-moe? The gap/contradiction between his opening narrative pitch of 'hello respected friends, let me tell you of a guy who talks shit about the Motte' and then the flame out 'screw you guys, I hated you all anyway.' It's not like it was any sort of surprise or carefully guarded secret, but false friendship for the sake of shilling a substack of all things...
Dean
Flairless
6d ago
That it makes no sense to you is a shame. I wish you better understanding, and more careful word choice, going forward.
You may not believe or understand why I wouldn't put a given act past multiple different actors. That is your limitation, not evidence of either my position or of culpability.
This sort of (inaccurate) mind-reading and incredulity of alternatives is why we disagree about who the serious people are.
Dean
Flairless
7d ago
We strongly disagree on who serious people are, so that's not surprising.
Dean
Flairless
7d ago
You are doing the motte-and-bailey language game again, where you make grasping claims you'll walk back when challenged. We could do that point noting what has changed in the last 75 years, or in the last year, and so on. We can do it with different types of relationships, or even what different terms for government mean.
Really, though, it just goes back to the hyperagency bias. Keep on keeping on with it.
Dean
Flairless
7d ago
You’re trying to have it both ways. You claim that Antony Blinkin and the State Department do not speak for Ukraine, then you turn around and list all the ways that they have MASSIVE LEVERAGE over Ukraine. So which is it?
Both! One does not need to speak for someone to have influence over them. There is no contradiction of Ukraine not wanting to needlessly offend the Biden administration (not doing a stunning rebuking a gesture of support), and the Secretary of State not speaking for Ukraine.
Are the documented statements by official representatives of the American government that Ukraine will have elections when they have Crimea (read: when pigs fly and the sun rises in the west) a legitimate statement of policy of not?
Of course not. That's not how national policies work, particularly when the American government representatives saying so is no longer an American government representative, and has been fired / traded out for someone willing to execute a new policy.
Why should I ignore the rantings of Ukraine’s very rich, very influential benefactor that could scotch their war effort on a whim?
Aside from that rantings are safely ignored in general, because Antony Blinkin is not Ukrain'es very rich, very influential benefactor anymore. He is, in a sense, an unemployed bum.
Blinken's influence was tied to his status-at-the-time of being President Biden's Secretary of State. While the Secretary of State, Blinken had substantial sway over the Biden administration's dispersal of material and monetary aid. This is why he was very rich- as rich as the American government cared to be- and very influential- with influence at the highest levels of the American government.
The status went out the door when current Secretary of State Marco Rubio became the very rich, very influential benefactor that could scotch their war effort at a whim. Rubio has not, to date, taken any position on the urgency (or infinite delay) in Ukrainian elections. When he does, he is not bound by Antony Blinkin's preference or prior statements.
People tend to forget that one of the Syrian civil war's proximate instigating sparks- the events that might not have been necessary but helped push uncontrolled protests into violent rebellion- was a sniper campaign against protestors.
This is / was a more common suppression method in the broader autocrat toolbox in the early 2010s, especially Russia-aligned. In theory, you can not only use the the violence from the snipers to take out key organizers, or to frighten / scatter crowds, but you can even use it as a pretext to send in armed forces to 'protect the people,' including escalating your own use of force.
In practice, government snipers backfired terribly in both Syria (2011) and Ukraine (2014). Digital media distribution, more capable phone-cameras, and now adays drones make it far easier to publicize/highlight/share the presence of snipers emplaced for longer periods of time. Once the presence of the snipers is known, it changes the political context and response vis-a-vis an unknown shot from unknown source.
That may / may not be 'stupid,' and the Arab Spring challenged a lot of underlying assumptions, but it an inclination towards a certain sort of murderous brutality.
...no?
I may not be understanding your quote from the thread correctly, but I may not have been clear. In the quote you are citing of me, I am referring to what I believe was the WSJ account that reported that Germany was warned of the Ukrainians before the attack occurred, as well as post-incident reporting.
'We are warning you of what someone else is thinking of doing to you,' followed by 'we think the people we warned you about did what we warned they considering, which just happened,' is substantially different than 'we are warning you of what we are doing to you so you can minimize the harm we are doing to you.'
Or rather, if warning someone of third party hostile intent is evidence of responsibility, I'm not sure I can contribute anything on the subject.
And I am sure that- in your superiority and/or boredom- you will no longer waste your time responding to any of my posts that are not directly to you ever again.
In return, I will continue to strive to do the same for you.
Do you feel like these snarky comebacks add anything, impress or convince others?
Your example was actually a fair skit for showing the limits of a hyperagent mentality.
The short discussion, as much of a caricature as it starts as for Agent A, is rather more damning for Agent B, the supposed reasonable party and hyperagent proxy. By literally having a discussion that does not include an intermediary Agent C who perpetrated unspecified war crimes, whose existence is acknowledged but also dismissed by Agent B in favor of prosecuting Agent A on implicit rather than even explicit responsibility, it demonstrates the hyperagent theorist failure and inclination to unjustly allocation punishments and sanctions on the basis of convenience and accessibility, rather than agency is the nominal crimes.
There are interesting angles, historical examples, and differences/hypocrisies that could easily be pointed at. After all, at no point does Agent B ever actually assert that Agent A had any knowledge of, issued any direction for, had any operational control over, or ever voiced any support for. Agent B's accusation and prosecution of Agent A as the responsible party could run word-for-word even if Agent C actively deceived, defied, circumvented, and even defected from Agent A in order to commit the war crimes. Agent A is responsible merely for having supported Agent C at some point, not for having supported Agent C for the purpose of the atrocity alluded to. There is no criminal intent required, or even awareness.
The allocation of responsibility to Agent A by Agent B is fundamentally uninterested in the agency, moral responsibility, and moral culpability of Agent C. Agent B merely treats Agent A as the hyperagent on the basis of providing support, regardless of the degree of support (A is not claimed to be the decisive supporter), the exclusivity of support (A is not claimed to be the only supporter), or the restrictions that were attempted (A is not claimed to have taken not mitigations). Agent B, in doing so, begins to validate the nominally farcical accusation by Agent A that Agent B is naive, simplistic, and ignoring cause and effect.
If it was intentional, it was well done, with multiple levels. If it was not, that was my error, and I apologize for confusing you.
That's good! You'd probably have a vision problem if you did. One typically does not see stunning rebukes of foreign, and former, political appointees who are providing rhetorical, financial, and military support to your own side.
Even assuming that this is true, could they really have done it without support or at least acquiescence+aftercare from the US?
Acquiescence+aftercare from the US was reportedly that the Americans told the Germans before the attack, as well as soon after.
As for being puzzled by regional parties whose security concerns Germany dismissed and ignorred in pursuing Nord Stream, I suspect you believe they have a far greater fear and/or positive opinion of Germany than they do. Germany's Nord Stream policy was not exactly considered a benign or neutral policy by its Baltic neighbors. German politicians had not only insisted it was ridiculous to oppose Nord Stream on grounds of Russian concerns, but also that it was ridiculous to believe Nord Stream interests might sabotage Germany's willingness to support its European neighbors security if Russia did do something stupid. Both of these concerns were validated by the German response to Putin.
If anything, rather than a snub the non-cooperation was both a retaliation and a warning. Germany could not defend Nord Stream when it was warned in advance. Germany could not pursue Nord Stream saboteurs without the cooperation of its neighbors in the present. And Germany would not be able to protect any future Nord Stream in the future, if it disregarded its neighbors security concerns. The Nord Stream concept was not a German-Russia bilateral concern. It was a concern of far more people, and far more veto authorities in practice.
Germany was never so adored and/or feared that it could expect other countries to defend Germany's privileged energy relationship with Russian at their own expense. If that surprised the Germans, well it wasn't for a lack of being warned.
Dean
Flairless
7d ago
Truly, Antony Blinkin's word is Ukrainian law forever into the future, and 'the State Department isn't going to lean on them' is the same as 'State Department approval.'
It's worth... well, there's nothing to forgive, so no fairness needed from me since no offense was taken. I am not making a critique about the interview in any sense, merely raising an eyebrow at the pitch / appeal to the audience. Which is not suspected of being Tracing's responsibility in any way.
Maybe it's mentioned in the video and not caught in the text.
Dean
Flairless
7d ago
Looks like the Count got himself banned over 100% fake news.
Something something karma and bearing false witness, I suppose. I've no intention to tease him with this if / when he returns, but I imagine this will be a poke back he should be expecting for the rest of his time on the Motte going forward.
If you want a better / more rounded list, just use the RealClear media roundup portal. The link is to RealClearWorld specifically for global emergent news, but there are a number of other portals (technology, energy, military, US politics, etc.) which provide more articles, from a broader selection of sources, daily.
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