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We're sitting on a > 48 hour interval with no top level posts which might be some kind of record. It's been awhile since we talked about Ukraine, so here we go..
It would seem that Ukraine is still slowly losing a war of attrition. Of course, the big news is Ukraine's incursion into Kursk, in which they managed to capture some Russian territory after catching the Russians with their pants down. Coupled with that, Ukraine has also been mounting more long-range attacks against Russian oil infrastructure. Neither of these actions is really what Ukraine's western allies want to see, but what can they do? Ukraine's best bet may to escalate in order to draw in more Western support without which they will collapse. But it's looking quite grim. Germany has vowed to stop new aid.
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-halt-new-ukraine-military-aid-report-war-russia/
In response to Kursk and the oil infrastructure attacks, Russia has attacked Ukraine's energy grid.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-strikes-ukraines-power-grid-in-most-massive-attack-of-war/ar-AA1pt39P
What many people don't realize is that the Ukraine/Russia conflict has been in many ways quite limited. Life goes on in the cities. Casualties have largely been limited to combatants. The longer things go on, the more this might change. People in Kiev are now facing the real possibility of a winter without heat and electricity.
Here in the West, people's enthusiasm for the war seems to be waning as the news cycle covers newer, shinier topics. But the war grinds on and every day men die at the front.
Edit: As usual, the cure to a stale front page is to post about Ukraine which inspires another post on a different topic moments later.
So, anyone have a read on what a realistic ceasefire deal looks like? Does one exist? Is anyone serious mooting one around in the world of think tanks?
Ukraine's winning scenarios have run out at this point. The abortive and telegraphed offensive ate up too much time and material for them to win in any conventional sense. Prigozhin might have been the Black Swan they needed, but he pussied out. The Russian economy is showing no signs of collapse. Some point to a Wunderwaffen or to some chart that shows NATO production coming online at a faster pace from 2025 onward, but I doubt that will make a material difference. Ukraine is basically hoping for a Russian collapse as a result of some as-yet-unknown cause, which is not impossible, but not much of a strategy.
Russia's odds of winning much more than what they have so far seem longer still. They're hoping Ukraine just gives up, but that might be longer odds than a Russian collapse, as Ukrainian psychopathic nationalism seems more systemic rather than oriented around a single individual.
Neither side is going to win the kind of victory that will make good their losses. So how is a ceasefire outlined that will deliver a lasting peace?
I still haven't come up with a better idea than putting Harry and Meghhan on the throne in Kiev.
Have western elites ever been able to formulate a war plan?
Afghanistan was a war without a goal after the first few months. There wasn't much more than slogans as war aims and no real negotiations could be made. Taliban are pure evil, are motivated by nothing but evil, have no legitimate concerns or demands. Those who fight the taliban may rape children and sell drugs but they are still the good guys.
Iraq was mission accomplished without a real plan.
The plan in Ukraine seems to be built entirely on slogans, an extreme sense of moralism in which the western elites are seen as a self evident good and Putin as a completely illegitimate evil.
The people running the west are effectively campaign staff addicted to social media. There is no serious group of people to negotiate with. There is no plan. There is just slogans and polling data on what will yield the most traction as well as whatever the donors are pushing for. Nobody is going to have a serious conversation about eastern Europe's security architecture. Nobody is going to have a sensible discussion about what can be achieved. There will just be virtue signalling on twitter.
Politicians will be allowed to say all sorts of crazy slogans such as "we need to bring down Putin!" and no journalist will ask follow up questions.
We have another forever war with no plan, budget, war aims or leaders that will be held responsible. A war lead by people who will never go any where near the front themselves and who are more interested in the perception of the war than the war itself.
Wars like that don't tend to end with nice treaties.
I mean welcome to decline era Western politics. We have cookies. It’s been my frustration on all levels of modern western politics and one of the things that draws me to Moldbug. We’ve been so dominant on all fronts throughout the period from the 1960s to the 2010s that we really didn’t have to take political issues seriously (as in being practical and focused on real facts and real political goals) for most of the last century. I’m convinced that most politicians have no idea how to actually identify, study, and solve problems in the real world. And now that we have given away most of our manufacturing base to other countries, reduced our education system to basically a joke, haven’t modernized any infrastructure really (given the state of the roads, we aren’t really maintaining infrastructure either). We run on slogans and propaganda while our nation crumbles around us. Is it any wonder that the West truly believes that wars can be fought and won on the basis of “well, Russia was big mean by invading, therefore they’re destined to fail, and the plucky Ukrainian military run by a former comedian can win a war against a former KGB agent.”
The setup for this war is the worst of all worlds. A vibe based conflict with a nuclear power in which we have no plan to win, no strategy, no strategic reason to think that Ukraine itself is value to anyone (it’s an agricultural country, and mostly exports gains).
I don't think they ever should or did. Since you mention Moldbug, it's not like the King was meant to personally be an expert in infrastructure or coinage or agriculture. A few were, no doubt, but I think the job of politicians is largely to select the right folks to advise him, to choose wisely amongst their counsels and to mediate accountability to the public will.
And yet.
The idea wasn’t that the King would literally know how to do everything. The idea was that the king would have full control over the state and thus could set a vision or set of visions for what success looks like. And while the King might not know all the details, they’d have their entire youth up until taking the throne to learn how to actually run a state. But having full control, knowing the basics of how things work, and having a vision of what he wants the state to look like by the end of his reign gives him a leg up to actually getting those things done. It’s a lot easier to get the administrative system to approve more nuclear plants if the king knows that nuclear is fairly safe, provides a lot of energy, etc. and with a vision of better energy independence and efficiency and a plan to get there, chances are you’ll get there.
Modern democracy encourages people to learn how to run for office with very little knowledge of how to run things once they actually get there. I think democracy does work most of the time, I just think good statecraft is much more important to a functioning state than the details of how the decisions are made. We lack this in both parties. It’s a campaign of clowns with no serious ideas about how the United States should move into the twenty first century. Our foreign policy is based mostly on vibes. Our plan for education is basically to bandage over the failures of universities and do nothing to improve K-12. Our infrastructure plan appears to be “fix potholes”. Health care is still a mess. And general health is terrible as Americans are pretty much obese at this point.
Ah ok, phrased this way I agree with the sentiment. I must have misread your previous post.
I think I was a bit unclear. But the criticism of the west that always stuck with me was Xi Diengpeng saying that we are an unserious people. To be honest, he’s absolutely right about our leadership. And I think Moldbug is right in his diagnosis of the problem even if I think absolute monarchy is probably not a solution. If you read about how statesmen of the past thought about governance, it’s not anything like what we talk about in governance. You can read the Republic and the Laws and Cicero is talking about laws being aimed at the common good. Confucius talks about rulers and ministers having a duty to study and understand the issues. It was seen as an art and a science of making the state prosperous and powerful. I just don’t see those kinds of serious pragmatic leaders coming forward.
Some of this is just incentives. The person who can win the election is the one who can pander best. The ones who can promise what sounds good on TV as a sound bite of less than 10 seconds. If you are drawn to solving problems and fixing things, then I can’t imagine the need to go on TV and give interviews where you do your best to give non answers for an hour. You’d probably rather build a business or financial empire or rocket ships or something.
I think what you're describing resides within the civil service. Even Confucius understood that the Emperor is not likely to be the sharpest crayon on every topic and has to rely on ministers and advisors. The art of statecraft that he has to learn is very much more about how to lead that service, keep them in check and point them in the right direction. The art and science of how to actually do things is somewhat less useful at this.
Maybe what I mean is that governance is a meta-skill. And I think modern leaders are failing at it because they are optimized too much on electioneering (as you say), but I think I differ a bit in that I want them to be serious people about employing and empowering the right folks while curbing abuses of a civil service that has been left to fend for itself because the folks that are meant to be overseeing it are AWOL.
Boy do I have a good story for you that I need to create as a top level post.
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