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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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The way the Russian government is handling the war in Ukraine strongly reminds me of the Kursk incident.

As a brief reminder, the incident featured a Russian nuclear submarine that experienced a fatal malfunction: the explosion of a torpedo that then triggered more of its torpedoes to explode. The blasts killed most of the crew and the few that remained alive sheltered in the tail end of the submarine, which dropped to the bottom of the Barents Sea. The incident received international attention in August 2000 because of a seemingly endless series of mishaps during the rescue operation:

  • the Russian Navy was accustomed to frequent comm equipment failure so it didn't take any action when the Kursk failed to check in.

  • the Navy's rescue ship was a former lumber ship and could only operate in calm seas.

  • the admiral in charge of the military exercise that Kursk was part of informed the Kremlin of the incident about 12 hours after it it took place.

  • the next day, the same admiral informed the Russian press that the exercise had been a resounding success.

  • one of two Russian submersibles used for the rescue operation collided with the Kursk and required repairs.

  • the second submersible was used but failed to locate the Kursk.

  • the next day, the first submersible was fit for action and sent to attach itself to the Kursk, but it took too long and it ran out of batteries. There were no spares, so the rescue operation had to be put on hold until the batteries was recharged. Meanwhile, the weather got worse and the operation had to be held off until the next day.

  • the first official report of the incident to the Russian media stated that the Kursk had experience a minor technical difficulty.

  • Russian officials first stated that the problem was a result of a collision, most likely with a WWII mine.

  • the second submersible was damaged again while being it was being prepared to be lowered for another mission.

  • the second submersible was repaired and made two attempts to attach itself to the Kursk, but both failed. As it was being picked up by its ship, it was seriously damaged.

  • a few days into the operation, the Navy was reporting that from the evidence it had obtained there had been no explosions on the Kursk. (This despite the first two explosions being serious enough to be heard by other vessels taking part in the training as well as seismograph sensors operated by multiple other countries.)

  • initial offers of international assistance were denied. Only 5 days later were they accepted.

  • another admiral of the Russian Navy stated that the incident occurred because of a collision with a NATO submarine. Other officers backed up this report, although no evidence was produced. They kept to this line for nearly two years after the incident.

  • after the wreck was lifted from the sea floor and transported to Russia, an investigation found the incident to have been caused by (get ready) torpedo explosions. It is suspected the root cause was a faulty weld. Also, the automated recording system was disabled along with the rescue bouy.

(For others like me who accidents fascinating I recommend reading the full wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk_submarine_disaster. Spoiler alert: the remaining Kursk sailors died within a few hours of the accident. The wikipedia entry contains some quite disturbing details of how they died, eg. "(..) abdomen was burned by acid, exposing the internal organs, and the flesh on his head and neck was removed by the explosion.")

What stands out to me here, just from the perspective of incident response is:

  • ineffective incident management. Awful communications. General lack of understanding of the problem at hand, what to do, etc.

  • ineffective rescue equipment. Outdated, unmaintained.

  • numerous human errors: the rescue submersibles were damaged multiple times by their operators!

  • lack of transparency with public. Numerous false statements eg. calling the incident a "minor malfunction."

  • blameful-postmortem. Blaming WW2 mine, at first, then trying to sell a completely made up story about a collision with a NATO vessel.

From where I stand, I see all of these patterns replaying themselves in the current war in Ukraine.

  • Frequent painful logistics problems. Problems with supplying front-line troops with food, water, even adequate clothing.

  • Ineffective, outdated, unmaintained weapons and vehicles. No air superiority. Foreign-made drones that don't work well in cold weather. Not being able to defend bases hundreds of kilometers inside the motherland from a suicide drone strike. The infamous analysis of truck tires from the beginning of the conflict showing that regular maintenance was not done.

  • Bad management. Awful communications. Changes in leadership. Risking and losing high-value equipment like the Moskva.

  • Lack of transparency. 3 day "special operation" that has been going on for 300+ days. The need to mobilize 300k civilian men to fight what was supposed to be a simple little conflict.

  • Lies. Painting the conflict as fight against nazism, Satan, or NATO (ironic to pull the NATO card again after the "collision with NATO submarine" during the Kursk incident). Even starting the conflict by staging a military exercise that, allegedly, even the participants didn't know was the first step in the war. Reassuring the Russian public that Russia will bear no economic pain from being cut off from various trade systems. Repeated threats of using nuclear weapons. Threatening Finland and Sweden.

Note that I'm not touching on the moral aspects of the war, just on the operational ones. In both of these stories, the salient patterns appear to be corruption, inadequate training, lack of management, and constant lying and bluffing that serves to create internal confusion.

If these patterns reflect reality, then the future doesn't look good for the Russian government. I can see two probable ways this can end: a long, drawn burn that ends in the eventual "suffocation"--lack of basic resources to continue the conflict--or a quick, short ending meant to stop the hemorrhaging of resources on a futile conflict. Either is catastrophic or nearly catastrophic for the Federation.

One of the tragic parts of the Kursk incident is that Russia declined several Western offers of aid (from the US and parts of Europe) until such time as it's own efforts had completely failed several days later. In particular putting national pride above the lives of it's sailors seems like quite a tragedy for the families of those lost.

But perhaps that also speaks to attitudes toward the current situation that I have trouble understanding from a Western perspective.

In particular putting national pride above the lives of it's sailors seems like quite a tragedy for the families of those lost.

Question: do you think Ukraine should surrender to Russian demands immediately, or do you think that it should continue to lose its men at the front and lose its women (and therefore its next generation) to permanent refugee-vacation in glamorous Western Europe?

Because for one of those cases, you have no cause to be finger-wagging anyone else at placing national pride above human lives.

I think sacrificing lives to defend a country's sovereignity against an invader is generally more excusable than sacrificing lives to a technical accident by not accepting aid. I'm sure the same Ukrainians that are the sacrifices in the former case would generally be more eager to sacrifice themselves in the former case than in the latter.

Indeed, I've heard quite a few opinions to the effect of "I will sacrifice my life if I have to, to defend my country/my family/my culture/kill those fuckers". I've heard "I will sacrifice my life if it means my country doesn't have to show weakness" far less often.

I think sacrificing lives to defend a country's sovereignity against an invader is generally more excusable than sacrificing lives to a technical accident by not accepting aid

Why?

National sovereignty is just national pride writ large.

National sovereignty is just an extension the same game theory that insists upon the existence of private property. There's nothing irrational or arbitrary about it. Even the specifics of drawing the national lines are a fairly straightforward exercise in carving the space of people's interlocking loyalties at the joints.

Only if national sovereignty is useful in the same way as private property. But national sovereigns don't internalize the costs of their mistakes or reap the rewards of their enterprise like private proprietors do. So that seems doubtful. And the linked post only explains why entities that already have sovereignty in a given area consistently fight to defend it, on the assumption that such sovereignty is worth retaining. It does not explain the value of assigning such entities sovereignty over such areas in the first place.

But national sovereigns don't internalize the costs of their mistakes or reap the rewards of their enterprise like private proprietors do.

Life is generally better for the head of state and leading members of government when the government is popular than when it isn't, and good stewardship of national resources and policy is generally an effective path to popularity.

It does not explain the value of assigning such entities sovereignty over such areas in the first place.

Maybe it would be helpful (both here and generally in your commentary) if you made more of an effort to state your thesis directly instead of only implying it by criticizing other comments for what you view as the negative space of your unstated thesis.

That is not internalizing costs like private proprietors do. It would be ridiculous to say there’s no connection whatsoever between how political leaders’ fates and the ups and downs of their countries. But no one denies that (certainly not me). And the connections that you name, at best, float quite free of the actual state of the country. (See, e.g., The Myth of the Rational Voter.)

I’m not criticizing you for disagreeing with some thesis hidden up my sleeve. I’m criticizing your argument for the reasons that I stated. If you disagree, please be more specific about why.

But national sovereigns don't internalize the costs of their mistakes or reap the rewards of their enterprise like private proprietors do.

Really? I can think of more cases where sovereign nation-states do "internalize the costs of their mistakes or reap the rewards of their enterprise like private proprietors do" than I can think of cases where they don't, unless by "sovereigns" you are referring to tinpot dictators who "externalize" failures by blaming their failures on foreign actors. Poor social policy can f-- up demographics, which weakens the state. Poor farming policy leads to crop failure. Poor educational policy leads to low labor productivity. Failure to safeguard the borders leads to loss of territory. Failure to balance the books leads to national default, usually by way of hyperinflation (with a singular exception in the USD, which is supported by its use in international trade). Environmental pollution can be externalized, but it's much easier for an individual land proprietor to externalize pollution. Honestly, I'm failing to see how nations are different here.

I think that you're confusing nation-states with national sovereigns. National sovereigns are the people who rule a nation-state. Nation-states are not agents in their own right and so cannot internalize costs at all. There is, at best, an extremely attenuated connection between the events that you're describing and the fortunes of the people who rule the countries that they happen to, as history amply shows.

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What? No. Sovereignity is specifically about the control you have over the territory. Pride is more about keeping face.

And you would want your country to be hegemon over some clay because...?

Because they don't want to be Putin's slaves?

Because (and when) I can be sure that the current government will treat me better than the other guys.

The other guys marching in with tanks and artillery seems to make people less assured that they'd be better than the current government.

Because (and when) I can be sure that the current government will treat me better than the other guys.

This sounds like remarkably similar logic to Russians wanting to rescue their own submariners than having other countries do it for them.

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