site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1573 thread views

Transnational Thursday for February 27, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

0
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

After yesterday's events in the White House, Haltbakk Bunkers, one of Norway's largest marine fuel companies, appears to have announced that it will no longer refuel American Navy vessels.

https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/1895896267269808193/photo/1

There's some speculation that this has already affected US submarine patrols.

This is pretty obnoxious behaviour IMO. Unlike Ukraine, Norway is a US treaty ally. Good allies refuel eachother!

It also reminds me a little of New Zealand's decision in the 1980s that they were going to be a 'nuclear-free' zone. That meant NZ required any vessels that entered their waters to certify they didn't carry nuclear weapons. The US refuses to declare which vessels are nuclear-armed. The standoff resulted in the US downgrading its alliance with New Zealand for many years, they 'suspended' their obligations under the ANZUS treaty. The treaty remained in force technically but the Kiwis got kicked out of military exercises, less intelligence sharing, less access to technology.

Ultimately of course New Zealand is totally irrelevant to world affairs and it doesn't really matter if the US only sends ships known to be conventionally armed and powered over there. Europe and Norway is quite a different matter, there seems to be a dangerous level of broad-based hysteria over Ukraine.

When is the allure of ineffectual posturing going to wear off? Is anyone really impressed with this kind of behaviour?

The Russian economy is the size of Italy’s and they were never going to use nukes. The need to appease them was and is minimal, it’s weird that Trump cares so much.

How do you think a war between Russia and Italy would play out as a 1v1? How about Benelux vs Russia? According to the economists they have similar sized economies.

These economic figures are just numbers. There's no relation to real world performance and strength, it's pure fantasy. Nominal GDP figures don't even measure the economy, they measure the imaginary value of goods and (imaginary) services in imagined dollars by some arcane metric. 'Imputed rent' is 6% of US GDP - homeowners enjoying their house is not real economic activity but they count it anyway.

Measure the number of workers in arms manufacturing, measure steel production, measure the count of soldiers, measure anything even slightly tangible rather than the 'economy'.

The wage of my job doesn't determine my chance to win in a fight, what matters is my size, skills, environment and weapons. Money may buy those things. Or it may not. There are things that money cannot buy that require time and effort and natural ability. Money does not matter, what matters is capacity.

Bizarre Soviet-style denial of basic economic capacity isn’t a rebuttal of any value to this argument. Of course military production matters; after all, Pyongyang is capable of destroying Seoul. But Russia has no desire or intention to conquer the West and isn’t going to be nuking London, Paris or Washington any time soon because of a minor regional conflict in Ukraine, that being utter WW3 hysteria.

Strange that someone defending Vance’s comment would appear to have a much lower opinion of Russian strategy than someone criticizing it.

The problem with GDP as a measurement of war-making capability is that the United States can’t actually nationalize Netflix, Facebook and Pornhub and use their factory floors to build tanks.

But the US can nationalize those companies and force them to show propaganda-- or they can conscript their programmers out from under them and force them to work on software for autonomous killing machines. American deindustrialization is strategically dangerous... But it's not like the US gets no strategic advantages in return for being the global center for information engineering (inclusive of coding, financial services, and software.)

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats