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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35397 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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I'm curious what folks here think about tankies.

I remember seeing a twitter thread during the onset of the Ukraine war explaining why Russia and China growing powerful even to the point of imperialism is vital to combat western imperialism, "someone has to do it". Whether one agrees that Russia has been constantly provoked by NATO or not, its difficult to spin Russian actions as "anti-imperialist". Similarly, China's land and water disputes with its neighbours. It appears both these countries have become a sort of canvas to project their ideologies. They often call western conservatives "far right" and often attack their criticisms of feminism. But how do they explain China's own censorship of feminist activism, the fact that independent labour unions are illegal, the push for pro-natalism, the push for masculinity training, etc.? I've seen many articles countering the stories about Uyghurs, but not much on the above. What really makes the "tankie ideology" attractive? I can fully understand and even sympathise with their gripes over western imperialism and even Israel to an extent, but I don't get the narratives that its all the neoliberals and the "far right" against China, essentially projecting the whole issue as a new cold war of ideologies between neoliberalism and communism.

There was an amusing article linked on /ssc the other day (since deleted) which decried those who supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine as "brainwashed empire automatons" and "imperial apologists."

Whoops, I got that mixed up. The author actually meant that if you opposed Russia's war of conquest you were an imperial apologist.

All it is is that that some people hate western liberals (the people they know, and meet, and talk to on the internet) more than they do people committing war crimes. You've read the SSC essay.

About a decade ago I read a history of the Third Republic and found myself bemused that there were so many French who hated the opposing political faction that they would very literally prefer a German or Russian takeover (and the ensuing bloody purge of their rivals) than trying to work together and prosper. Now I don't find it so amusing.

The pro-surrender side which says the West and Ukraine need to capitulate ASAP to avert a nuclear war, really, really needs to address the problems that incentivizing nuclear blackmail this way are guaranteed to have. I've seen plenty of articles and posts like the one you listed, and none of them get into this issue despite it being extremely important and despite it being brought up as a response to basically every one of these articles. It's getting aggravating at this point. It's not like there are no responses at all, but the pro-surrender side just blissfully pretends like the issue doesn't exist and that nobody has even thought of it before.

I don't think the Ukranians should surrender. If someone was invading California, I like to think that I would be brave enough to volunteer to fight. I do think that the U.S. needs to take escalation concerns seriously when analyzing the risk-reward of providing various weapons systems, information, training, or support to the Ukrainian war effort. It's not as simple as "oh, someone waggled a nuclear dick around, they automatically win" - its a question of determining whether what we expect to reasonably be able to achieve by the desired policy is proportional to the risk being run of nuclear or other serious retaliation. And that determination requires (1) a clear statement of what the U.S. expects to achieve from its policies, (2) an evaluation of how important those goals are worth, and (3) an analysis of whether those goals are worth the potential costs imposed by Russian countermoves, up to and including nukes or other action targeting civilian infrastructure in the U.S. or in vital partner-countries/treaty partners.

This type of post sounds good and all, but runs into issues when it comes to actual implementation. It reminds me of the abortion debate we had on the motte a few months back when people were saying stuff like "the father should have a say when it comes to decisions regarding abortion". There are two parents involved in making a kid, so this type of thing sounds good, right? Certainly the man shouldn't be excluded from the process... except it runs into the issue that abortions are a binary (yes/no) issue. You either implement a patriarchal law which gives the father functional veto over the mother's right to choose whether to abort or not, or you don't do that and the father's wishes remain completely ignorable, i.e. the status quo. There are a few sticky compromises in some cases (legal paternal surrender if the man wants to abort but the woman doesn't), while there are outright none in others (if the man wants to carry the child to term, but the mother wants to abort).

Bringing this back to Russia, the issue is that Putin seems to be entirely willing to suicide the Russian nation to chase his revanchist dreams. He keeps doubling down every chance he gets: Crimea in 2014, invading in 2022 instead of remaining with the frozen conflict, mobilizing what'll probably amount to over 1m soldiers, formally annexing large swathes of another sovereign state, bombing his own pipelines (if that was indeed Russia who planted the bomb, which it probably was) which is akin to Cortez burning his ships, etc. The US has remained remarkably restrained in the conflict so far, only giving intel/training support and equipment, and even the equipment is limited to not be too escalatory (e.g. no jets, no long-range missiles, not even Abrams tanks so far). If Biden wanted to, he could do what the US did in Syria and Libya and declare a No Fly Zone, start using NATO planes to bomb Russian targets, and have the conflict cleaned up before Christmas. But Biden doesn't need to do this, because even just lend leasing some equipment is enough to get the Russian army to disintegrate as it's doing right now. Now, wars are highly unpredictable and it's not outside of the realm of possibility that mobilization lets Russia restabilize the front, but if Russia keeps losing as it's doing then we're going to end up seeing whether Putin's nuclear threats are credible, and at that point we only have the option to acceded to Putin's demands and let him blackmail us with nukes to a major degree, or call his bluff and risk nukes going off.

In short, we're barreling towards a situation where there might not be any wiggle room to do what you're saying we should.

Oh psh, we get blackmailed all the time. Its why we haven't reunited the Korean Peninsula, and energy blackmail is a decent explanation for half the horrifying shit we do in the middle east, like arming and funding the Saudi's quasi-genocidal conflict with the Iranians. Which, btw, is just as revanchist as anything Putin is doing, with an added soupcon of ethnic and religious bigotry tossed on top for fun. We also generally support Israel annexing other people's land too, so that's clearly not an American ethical red line either.

Also, while I don't doubt that we could achieve rapud significant conventional superiority over the Russian forces in a direct engagement, I do not trust that we could neutralize their nuclear forces immediately. Given that direct US armed involvement is likely to trigger general hostilities with Russia up to and potentially including a "fuck you" countervalue strikes, your "home by Christmas" glibness is, frankly, horrifying.

The Schelling point on nukes so far is that they can be used as a defensive deterrent, but they can't be used for offensive actions. Allowing Russia to use them for its offensive actions in Ukraine is what everyone is worried about. Nothing else about ethics (e.g. US supporting Israel or Saudi Arabia) matters compared to whether Russia gets to break the nuclear norm in Ukraine.

What do you mean "gets to?" They can decide to use a nuke or not, at which point we would have to decide how to react. And given that the Russians have agency, shouldn't it behoove us to, y'know, treat them seriously even if it means doing somewhat distasteful things? Given that question, why are people on the NATO side whipping up an anti-Russian crusade? Seems like a nation that is the target of a crusade, even if in the wrong, is more likely to do wild and unpredictable things - possibly including unwise things with nukes - than one which is being dealt with as a regional power.

By "gets to", I mean that they do it without sufficient deterrence by other powers such that the original Schelling point is broken. If that happens then all non-nuclear countries will now have significantly more incentive to get their own nukes, as they'll know they can extract significant concessions from great powers since the US just proved it works, and as a result any nation that's threatened by a potential new nuclear power now knows they have to get nukes themselves to have any chance at defense.

You either implement a patriarchal law which gives the father functional veto over the mother's right to choose whether to abort or not, or you don't do that and the father's wishes remain completely ignorable, i.e. the status quo.

There are 4 weakly increasing (so that more parents agreeing with an outcome doesn't lead to the opposite one) symmetric (to treat both parents equally) functions on two boolean variables: false, true, or, and. Applied to the abortion debate these correspond to: always abort, never abort, abort only if both mother and father agree to, abort if at least one parent wants to kill the fetus.

Which of these strikes you as "patriachal"?

Which of these strikes you as "patriachal"?

Letting the man have unilateral decision on whether the woman decides to abort or to not abort is patriarchal.

You haven't answered, you were asked about 4 options and what you say is none of this

I did, it just seems like you didn't like the answer.

More comments

I think there's simply widespread disagreement about the validity and brand of used game theory. Some people really do conceptualize their behavior with causal decision theories and some with timeless/functional kinds.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying. Are you implying they don't think acceding to nuclear blackmail will have any major implications for proliferation? If so, they should state that explicitly and give some evidence to back their claim.

I think they see the immediate round of the game and their actions as influencing only or primarily the outcomes of that round, yes.

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