This short piece came about because of continuing discussions on the subject of Ukraine in a Discourse Forum I frequent. The forum contains its fair share of Ukrainians, Russians and Eastern Europeans, so often the discourse is somewhat different from the standard Western narrative, and the discussions have often been highly emotive. This was the article which provoked my response- Kremlintarians: Russia’s war on Ukraine exposes great libertarian divide
Peter, I think there is a false distinction on the part of the writer, even though he himself tries somewhat unsuccessfully to spell out the paradox. One can be complete against America’s history of Forever Wars, completely ineffective Regime Change Wars, and still be both sympathetic to the Ukrainian people and against Putin’s aggression.
Here’s the rub. It was and is not an unprovoked war of aggression. Don’t get me wrong- Putin’s casus belli was faulty, but America and her allies had ample opportunity to avert this unfolding human tragedy, to nip it in the bud. Before the war, they could have pressurised Zelenski to accept a deal which guaranteed that Ukraine joined neither NATO nor the EU, with additional provisions for independent investigators/monitoring in the Donbas.
In fact, regardless of my own personal dislike of Trump- I would be willing to bet good money that given his bull in a china shop approach to diplomacy and narcissistic belief in his own deal-making prowess, Trump would have averted the Ukrainian crisis entirely- or at least forestalled it temporarily.
But that wasn’t the political aim of the Western establishment. They wanted revenge on Putin for the humiliation suffered as a result of Crimea and to repay the insult in the same coin they were once offered. They wanted to humiliate Putin on the world stage and weaken him domestically. They honestly believed, erroneously, that he would back down. In addition, they were acting cravenly to save their own political skins. Can you imagine the political hit taken by the parties in power in both Westminster and Washington, by their respective opposition parties, for entertaining serious, concessionary, negotiations?
And let’s not fail to acknowledge the self-deception involved. Politicians as a species are entirely capable of the kind of mental gymnastics required to make their own self interest seem to them a matter of national priority- performing a metaphysical transmutation which substitutes their own selfish goals for national pride. It’s sheer hubris. Remember Jim Hacker, every time he waxed Churchillian? (British early 80s sitcom reference- Yes Minister)
Of course, if we are being brutally honest we British had more reason than most for bellicosity. The Salisbury Novichok incident was the deliberate deployment of a WMD on British soil. It inadvertently killed innocent civilians. One wonders why the Russians simply didn’t follow the example of the Israelis when dealing with matters of national sovereignty abroad and deliver a bullet to the back of Sergei Skripal’s head. Could it be perhaps because Putin himself had bought into the insane ravings of an envious Frenchman about how Britain is behind every modern conspiracy in the world?
The scene was set long before the earlier events this year. The mistake is in thinking that there was anything remotely military or geopolitical about this sad debacle. This whole affair was purely political- the deeply cynical maneuvering of vainglorious men conscious of their status in the world and how history will remember them.
Old men make wars and young men fight them. It was ever thus, and thus it will ever be. The mistake was in thinking that we as a collection of civilisations could ever rise above this sad truth. But don’t believe the propaganda from any source. Again, our leaders failed us- on both sides- they could have easily diverted this disaster for the Ukrainian people, the Developing World and both Russia and the West. The Great and Good play their sick and twisted games and it’s ordinary who people suffer- for what, I hear you ask? Nothing more than their own vanity- assigning the avoidance of political embarrassment a greater priority than human life.
Unfortunately, with a few notable exceptions, all politicians are ideologues. It’s in the very nature of the profession- it’s in the job description, selling ideas to their own people. This is one of the reasons why power corrupts- because, being in love with ideas they naturally fall in love with their own, and become like Narcissus staring at his own reflection. This in turn twists their priorities into something not quite human. Remember, most Great Evil is committed in the name of some entirely hypothetical and illusory Good.
We should reinstate the Roman chariot tradition and pay men to whisper in these great men’s ears ‘Memento Mori’. Perhaps in the modern context it might avoid needless civilian casualties.
Ukraine was about political hubris and pride- nothing more, nothing less.
It should be noted that I don’t entirely agree with this position. I was simply making a strong argument about the nature of politics and why we should all be highly sceptical of any clam made by a politician to some supposed higher good. One of the things I’ve found from staring at discussion boards on highly emotive subjects like COVID, Trump or Ukraine is the extent to which it makes one world weary in the sense that such topics innately divide people, and very little progress is ever made. Worse still, they only seem to harm the relationships we make online- which is tragic given that, putting the reductive cesspool of the likes of Twitter aside, the Internet can still offer the opportunity, for those so inclined, to finally understand the worldviews of those with radically different political philosophies from our own.
Plus, if I’m being brutally honest with myself, I’ve become somewhat fond of the libertarians I’ve met online. Yes, it can be somewhat infuriating to argue with them over politics and policy- given they don’t accept most of the usual political priors- but overall, they are very nice people. I found myself possessed of the natural urge to defend them upon reading the article above.
"they could have pressurised Zelenski to accept a deal which guaranteed that Ukraine joined neither NATO nor the EU"
Sorry, I don't think that would have done any good - because I don't think those were Putin's *real* main reasons for invading Ukraine - so 'fixing' them would have been an exercise in futility. (They were, I think, mostly just excuses he gave to sell the war to the Russian people - and a line that has found a lot of adherents among *some* conservatives in the West - although there may be a certain amount of truth to them, in that he does seem to see NATO as a 'threat' to Russia - the expansionist Russia I describe below.) What do I reckon were his real reasons?
The first Putin himself laid out in his essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" (http://www.en.kremlin.ru/misc/66182), which is critical reading for anyone attempting to understand Putin, and this war. Putin apparently sees himself as a new Peter the Great, whose destiny it is to re-build the Russian Empire. Russia has been on the same trajectory - absorbing its neighbours - for hundreds of years. That's why it stretches across *11 time zones*. Look at its whole history - the expansion to the Pacific in the 1600s; the annexation of the 'stans' in the 1700s-1800s; taking over its Western neighbours. (It's instructive to note that the wars/annexation involving Poland, Finland and the Baltics in 1939-1940 were the *second* time Russia had moved there; Finland had gained its independence in 1918, during the Russian Revolution.) The focus on the 'Communist threat' after WWII made the Cold War seem purely like an ideological battle, but that was only part of what was going on; in retrospect, it was just one more chapter in Russia's long arc.
The second was revealed by Farida Rustamova's (an un-paralleled source of information on what's *really* going on inside the Kremlin, *all* of whose columns are mandatory reading) column, "“Now we're going to f*ck them all.” What's happening in Russia's elites after a month of war" (https://faridaily.substack.com/p/now-were-going-to-fck-them-all-whats). She reckons that Putin really started the war to entrench his power in Russia (among other reasons). If you look at the arc of Putin's time in Russia (the clash with the oligarchs; the apartment bombings; the recent wave of dead oligarchs; etc, etc) the consolidation of personal power has been a consistent goal.
Were those his *only* reasons? Perhaps not; but they were certainly *very important* goals. In that light, 'neutralizing' Ukraine was a fool's errand - and anyone who thinks it would have solved the problem has an insufficient appreciation for the longer and larger historical context.
Did *some* in the West see an opportunity to cripple Russia, using Ukraine as the cannon fodder? Perhaps - but they didn't *lure* Russia into this foolish war to do so - far from it. In fact, any attempt to prevent it, with less than traditional 'great power' moves ('do it and we'll blow your head off'), was doomed to failure - given what Putin perceived as *his* incentives to do it. (His perception was flawed in so many ways I don't have time/space to list them - including the incompetence/corruption in the 'newly re-built' Russian armed forces.)
In fact, most in high places in the West thought Russia would succeed in fairly short order! That kind of blows up the theory that that this war was a clever plot to cripple Russia; a short war wouldn't have been more than a speed bump on Russia's path to power - unlike the current conflict. Although Hedrick Smith in some sense saw this coming 30 years ago, in his 'The New Russians': "Ukraine, the second-largest republic, and the only one capable of posing a serious armed challenge to Russia proper." (pg. 565).
The long-term result of the current conflict may well be beyond their wildest dreams: just as Afghanistan was a major factor in the collapse of the USSR, I wonder if the Ukraine war may result in the disintegration of the current Russian behemoth. If so, it will be one of the largest testaments in history to The Law of Unintended Consequences.
2. Which do you really think is more likely, that Putin wanted to annex all of Ukraine or that this is just about NATO expansion (talk about propaganda)?
I'm sure a full annexation would have been a dream of his. But that failed with massive US weapons and intel support. He miscalculated this because Obama+Biden didn't do this before.
Do you not think NATO on the Russian borders matter? Or turning to the EU?
Do you reject the ongoing civil war? Putin did annex the lands most said he would annex, the pro-Russian parts, as he did in Crimea. And that this civil war started after the US meddled in the 2014 Ukraine elections (that got Hunter Biden a high paid gig because of his incredible knowledge that Burisma needed).
I certainly don't support Putin's war. I don't support NATO expansion and threats. But I do know that politicians lie, obfuscate and give explanations unrelated to what they say.
Do you believe politician mostly tell everyone the whole truth?
Great comment. Exactly my point. Just because we loathe Putin, does this necessarily mean we should engage in full-throated support of our own particularly inept breed of politicians on this particular issue?
I don’t believe politicians tell the whole truth. Nor do I believe they’re really capable of the kind of behind the scenes manipulation they would have to be doing for some of the wilder theories to have any credence.
That's not what I'm claiming. Government is a creeping cancer- it is as bad at policy and diplomacy as it is at managing markets and resources. Most government disasters are caused because a policy sounds good at a superficial level, but nobody has stopped to consider the second or third order effects.
This is the problem with foreign interventions- they almost always work out badly for the people receiving 'help'. Don't get me wrong, we absolutely should have helped Ukraine as soon as the invasion took place- but by being as firm with the Ukrainians in the run-up to war- making it clear that the Azov Battalion would no longer receive funding, the extrajudicial killings in the East would stop, the proscriptions of the Russian language would stop, we could at least have robbed Putin of many of his pretexts and excuses for war.
Noel is right- there is a pretty good chance that this wouldn't have stopped Putin. But it would have given him a much harder time of it after the event- both with his own people, but also critically with the Chinese, India and the Saudis. As it was, it allowed Putin to whisper into their ear about how Americans intrude into other regional powers spheres of influence.
With India this matters more in a cultural sense than a territorial one, but the Saudis and the Chinese were both heavily influenced by his arguments. Besides, Thucydides is not a trap, it's a ledger containing every perceived insult and grievance between two powers. This was why America was so successful with the British in their Thucydides scenario, because this former generation of Great Americans understood that pride mattered more to the British than pragmatism- as it does with all peoples who consider themselves powers.
He's a warlord (like Henry VIII or Alexander the Great), not a politician. Even warlords have to be sensitive to the population's opinions, though; read accounts of Philip's speech to the Macedonians after he took over.
Too true- it's apparent in his speeches that he is land focused. He may not be Hitler, but there is at least something queasily familiar, evoking Blood and Soil, and uniting a people.
But we also need to understand what Forever Wars are all about. How about Tactus quoting Calgacus 'These plunderers of the world [the Romans], after exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.'
Free markets are great, as are democratic classically liberal values- but only when freely chosen by a people and their leaders. When they are a product of policies which seek to liberate markets as much as people, of 'democratise or I'll shoot', they are an external tyranny disguised as liberation. Remember, in many parts of the world people only like foreigners as tourists or investors- for their money- they prefer their ow bad government, to the good governance imposed by others. How else can we explain the utter failure of regime change wars?
Great source material, mate. I was also deeply alarmed by the Putin speech. Konstantin Kisin first drew my attention to it. However, the timeline of the speech is telling- could it perhaps be a post hoc ergo proctor hoc justification (fallacy) for actions taken up to that point, as a means of shoring up domestic support?
Your other source was also great, although I would hasten to add that although there is no evidence to support the contention that the biolabs in Ukraine were producing bioweapons, no lesser luminary than Janet Yellen herself admitted to being deeply concerned about some of the materials being worked upon within the labs, given the state of war which existed. Still, that says nothing- given that a recent disclosure by a team of scientists at Boston University involved a preprint of a study which admitted to gain of function research which increased lethality of an early COVID strain to 80% amongst lab mice!
I largely agree with you on both Putin's motive for increasing his personal power, and the obvious analogies in his own mind with Peter the Great. However, I think we also need to add the central motive of weakening the West to his agenda. It's become increasingly evident that it's a goal at which he is succeeding, given the likely consequences of Europe's winter, the damage to both the German and the UK economy and the likelihood that the devastating consequences for the Developing World in terms of global food supply will likely weaken resolve, especially amongst well-heeled cosmopolitans (although its debatable whether they will attribute these failings of human agency to climate change, relying upon a largely misinformed educated class).
The chances of dislodging Putin are slim to none, and a doubt we will see an end to Russia as a Great Power. Although their industries will doubtless suffer from the deprival of key strategic parts, it's worth noting that they have the highest per capita rate of engineers in the world. The nightmare scenario is a lone nut taking Putin out himself. It produces by far the highest probability of nuclear engagement of all.
I would be willing to bet that Nassim Nicholas Taleb is feeling a little like Cassandra, given that he warned us of this systemic risk, with his work on anti-fragility. And it is a global problem, even one found in America. I wonder just how many pension fund managers for state, local and city employees are feeling somewhat nervous right, given that many of the pensions promised upon the expectation of a continuing supernormal profit era which has largely ended, and LDI is a common practice in America.
Still, there may be a small silver lining to this very dark cloud, with the Fed now being forewarned about this systemic risk. It might prevent them from further rate rises- a good thing, given that most of the factors causing inflation in the West are cost push and external to Western economies (although obviously money supply didn't help, nor did signalling to the market that fossil fuels were somehow Warren Buffet's half-smoked cigar (pure fiction BTW).
I wonder how much state actuarial resource Putin has to hand? The timing is extraordinarily in his favour, and he certainly picked a point at which the West is experiencing a temporary nadir. Still, hopefully lessons will be learned. The EU and UN have both issued statements redefining both nuclear and natural gas as green technologies, and one hopes we will dispense with the fluffier notions of the WEF and ESG- in particular, the insane notion of converting the world's farming to organic veganism.
Addendum. You will note I stated this position was not one with which I was particular agreed. This seems to be one of those topics upon which people cannot amicably disagree. In this sense, thank you for your informed contribution. I also think there is something to the idea that history is something which 'great' leaders muddle through, rather than being possessed of a particularly piercing insight or planning ability- 'Events' necessarily outweighing any talent for prognostication.
The essay (I am not sure he delivered it as a speech) was from July, 2021, so it's not 'post hoc' justification for the recent invasion. That's also years after the seizure of the Crimea, too late to be a rationale for that. The timing makes it virtually certain that it's pre-event rationale for the current invasion.
I have not looked into the biolabs charges; to be frank, I had assumed it was more excuses sourced to the Putin PR exercise, like the charge that NATO had given a commitment not to expand Eastward. (Gorbachev himself, who was at the table, and should know, in an interview in October 2014, disagreed that such a commitment had been made: "The topic of “NATO expansion” was not discussed at all".)
I think it's very foolish for anyone to think of dislodging Putin: i) that's a bad area to get into, as a general rule; ii) that is almost certainly something that is beyond the power of outsiders, and something the Russians will have to do, and iii) there's no guarantee that whoever replaces him will be any better.
It's hard to see in the crystal ball when we will see an end to Russia as a Great Power. (That it will happen eventually, as it has to the Romans, British, etc, is inevitable eventually.) These things are hard to foresee; when that Russian general walked across the Amu Darya bridge in 1989, did anyone think the UUSR would collapse within 2 years? The low birth rate, rampant corruption, etc are not good signs. It's still a natural-resource-based economy (unlike the Chinese, who managed to improve thing a lot; they have other problems, though). I don't know when it will happen ... but don't be surprised.
You've sold me on the first point and I largely agree with the rest. Plus, if I'm being brutally honest about the Biden Administration, they were very limited in terms of realpolilik as to their range of options- especially given that the Ukrainians had political leverage.
But there is still plenty to criticise about the West, especially in terms of let sentiments rule over strategy-mindedness in the resource sense. Was the killing of Jamal Khashoggi horrible. Of course. But if we were really of a mind to alienate a power with which we were aligned, then it should have been over the Yemeni people rather than a sole journalist. In any event a bad idea- unless America was willing to secure alternate resourcing both through Venezuela and Iran- the latter sure to both make the Israelis incandescent and strategically misalign the Middle East again.
I've been thinking a bit about convergent factors acting as agents of cascade- it's akin to some very insightful work from Mark Blyth at Brown about 2008, austerity and the rise of Global Trumpism and regarding coupled systems. Taken individually Administrative hostility to fossil fuel profits, ESG and the WEFs pretty insane approach to farming aren't cascade problems, but as a compound formula they have the potential to be absolutely catastrophic.
This made the West weak when we didn't need to be. It allowed Putin to think us vulnerable. The French and the Swedes are the only ones who are currently sane in Europe, with their nuclear. We Brits and the Germans haven't exactly covered ourselves in glory recently, and it exposes over two decades of bad energy policy.
I understand that large segments of Western populations feel as though climate change is a more urgent priority than it actually is. I was similarly misinformed until I took the time to start reading some of the summaries for myself. But the only way to tackle it is with nuclear and innovation AT THE SAME TIME, to create more abundance and wealth, not less.
If there is a silver lining to this very dark cloud it is that these events have given the West a kick in its complacency. I note that China already had all this worked out years ago. They are building 150 large reactors for $440 billion. If past experience is anything to go by the first four will cost 25% of the budget and the rest will be cheap as chips. It's about creating the institutional experience within an industry.
Great source material on the Gorbachev comment. I wasn't aware. But we've stored this problem up for some time, particularly with regard to exiting the ABM treaty. The West Wing was right on that score- and the did in fact 'build better bombs'. It's an asymmetry which probably wasn't considered in the headlong rush to secure the world from MAD. Better rockets will always be an order of magnitude cheaper than those systems meant to guard against them.
We could have made Russia our ally before Putin- if we had delivered a Marshall Plan rather than Shock Therapy. But like so many periods in history, there is the incompatibility of misaligned magnetism. The neoliberalism which made it possible to outspend the Russians and force them to the negotiating table was always going to consider a Marshall plan an echo of big government, and not sound economics.
And of course Shock Therapy was doomed to failure because the rest of the world doesn't produce the types of psychologically WEIRD people which would made it at all possible for foreign talent to come in to run Russian industries.
Munich - now there's an interesting comparison. Most of these comparisons focus on one side only. Thus German unpreparedness for war in 1938 is generally omitted particularly by Chamberlain apologists whereas allied unpreparedness highlighted. The German general staff admitted they couldn't have pierced the Czech frontier defences with the equipment they had.
The whole French and British leadership establishments panicked and rather than thinking what they could do ran away. Thankfully this didn't happen in the Ukrainian situation and the response has been pretty impressive especially on the British and American sides. Do you remember 'politically correct' language? I suspect that wokeness will go the same way.
Good counter argument. I forget to mention that despite the lack of British and French offensive capability, the Czech's were actually quite able, and all they needed was for the French and BEF to threaten their flank. However, you forget FOW. Perception overruled reality for the British and French establishment. They had all been convinced by Trenchard's theory that the bomber will always get through.
They envisaged French and British cities burned to husks by bombers, when in actuality the Nazis wouldn't possess this capacity for a little time to come. There was even some rather nasty talk in the House of Commons about the Jews rioting in Whitechapel and the Old Kent Road.. So you are right to point out the discrepancy, the threat was more imagined than real, but they believed it. As with the pandemic, the Great and the Good had little faith in the working classes, when all the time it was more privileged who would prove inadequate in stoic virtue.
So, they wanted to build up the bombers to threaten German cities in retaliation, in the hopes this might dissuade. It was also why the RAF was so desperately short of fighters in 1940, because the bombers had been prioritised, especially if we count engines as a back of the envelope rough calculation of aircraft capacity. There was also the matter of modern aircraft versus air fleets which were woefully obsolescent compared to the Germans- although obviously this was also an issue for the Germans as late as 1936 where they used Ju52s as bombers.
If this was Discourse, at this point I would probably link a Picasso painting. It was obviously a visceral fear in the thirties. It's also worth noting that 'Things to Come' was released in 1936, and the cognitive elite mind is more prone to bad thinking than the merely good intellect- it's anchor biases. It's why predictive forecasting ability peaks between the 120 to 130 range- unless the mind is highly disciplined and able to destruction test bad ideas. scepticism being the chastity of the intellect.
But thanks for the challenge. It wasn't clear thinking on my part. So thanks for the stimulating thought exercise.
A rather grandiose and Western-centric narrative don’t you think. Some libertarians ascribe to this position but others are far less hubristic about the supposed machinations of Western “great men.” Their position could be summed up as: because most things are beyond our control and we face such an incredible amount of uncertainty/lack of knowledge, any intervention on our part would likely only make things worse (just as Putin’s foolish intervention is backfiring on him).
In this narrative I see little role for Ukrainian agency. If anything, it’s the opposite of libertarian in that it sees a few Western fat cats as manipulating events behind the scenes. I’m not sure the West can determine events. Not in any meaningful way. I highly doubt Biden and Truss can control Zelensky, let alone Putin.
Good comment. I simply attempting in some sense to elucidate the failings of the West thus far. A more adept breed of politician, sadly now consigned to history could have averted this disaster. Much as we must support Ukraine now, we could have been somewhat less enthusiastic in the months preceding the invasion.
As Putin has repeatedly demonstrated- he is the last man one would want to hand a pretext or excuse. In particular, we should have expressed our deep concerns about the 10,000 or more extra judicial killings in the Russian majority East (admittedly on both sides). Further, banning Russian speaking in many areas of public life was an error of the first order- handing gasoline to those inclined to Russian Nationalism.
As history shows, pretexts can be manufactured. But they can also be an unforced error. Reports of Ukrainian Nazis are overstated- only a sliver of the populations support such notions. But where the Ukrainian state was an exception was in arming these types as paramilitaries.
#1 No, it's a Discourse forum, although it does have Discord plugins enabled. #2- Doh! 'PPS You Brits just can’t help it being on the constant lookout for an exercise in sticking it to the French'-Lol. It's probably cultural envy of their food. The speed of our industrial revolution robbed us of much of our own peasant food culture, as entire generations fled the land for the city- although the series of Land Enclosures Acts certainly didn't help. Then there is the nuclear envy- I think the French have finally settled on a 4% rise in energy bills for the year. Sadly, there is much to envy about France at the moment.
Good piece, but you left out the painful result for Britain: an energy crisis that led to a debt crisis that led directly to the shortest premiership in history and political and economic chaos. The debt crisis is a true crisis that can only be solved by allowing Russian energy back into the fold...but OMG, I can hear the screaming already. Reality does bite...
I actually took a photo of my meter reading the day the energy prices changed. One of leading consumer advocates- Martin Lewis, the most trusted man in British public life- advised people do it, because he thought some energy companies might not believe some of their customers. It really is that bad.
The pension crisis is an altogether different animal. Yes, Liz Truss caused a fire sale because of a poorly timed budget strategy which ran counter to what the Bank of England was trying to achieve (wrong, IMHO, as with all the central banks at the moment)- but it all happened because of toxic assets in many pension funds portfolios, especially gilt derivates. They wanted better returns, but they didn't see the risks- profits and risks are linked, there is no escaping this simple mechanic.
It makes one wonder how many other countries have toxic LDI exposure waiting to blow up, like a ticking timebomb. If you or your friends have private pension provisions, it is well worth checking this issue out. My aunt has a friend who retired to Spain who has lost tens of thousands of pounds on her private pension.
So it's 2008 again? Sometimes I am quite relieved to be poor...my assets, which consist of artworks, do not get shorted, after all. I blame Obama for not punishing the bankers back then.
This is one thing that the Left in America doesn't understand about the Trump phenomenon- a lot of the realignment in American politics stemmed from rage at corporate Dems bailing the bankers out. It's also why the racism hypothesis doesn't work, because many of Trump's most enthusiastic MAGA Republicans voted for Obama, and then wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders.
The echoes are quite severe. Early reporting from Reuters showed that of the key, more violent offenders on Jan 6th- 119 were people who had lost homes or businesses as a result of 2008. Unfortunately, these sort of more reasonable explanations for bad behaviour aren't what makes it into narratives about insurrection.
PS: Thanks for the Kremlintarians link; the link to the Liberpedia article within it was very interesting.
FWIW, I think the column is right on target; I just re-read it, but see little to disagree with. Their proximity to Russia seems to have focused the thinking of the Eastern Europeans quoted there. Ironically, I see the people outside Eastern European whom the column is about as ideological 3rd cousins to progressives, their notional opponents; the two groups' ideological ideas are of course completely at odds, but both groups are alike in living in their own imaginary reality, not the real world.
The popularity of Russian propaganda, among certain circles in the US, has been very eye-opening to me. I observed that that PR effort is likely part of Putin's plan to divide the West. His military is fairly inept, but as a life-long KGBer, his schemes to undermine people's minds are a little more functional.
I think the popularity of Putin argument about conservatives and libertarians has been overplayed. It's not Putin people like, but the sheer ineptitude of our own governments at an institutional level. One of the worst arguments in the 'he'll never do it' argument with nuclear weapons. We came within a hare's breath of doing it during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Curtis LeMay's wanted to do it, because of the inevitability of mounting parity in arms, if one accepts a finite threshold for total annihilation.
If you know your von Clausewitz on friction, then the easiest way to think of it is to imagine that systems of nuclear deterrence only remain rational in the absence of friction. As the friction mounts so do the risks of irrationality, and although the risks are by no means exponential, they are certainly not linear. The friction wears the opposition players down over to point that they can willingly entertain madness.
It's a little known fact that radiation poisoning didn't kill the population around Hiroshima and Nagasaki evenly- despite all being exposed to lethal doses for very long periods. Many went on to propagate children who were not deformed. If Putin and his higher echelons retreat to their bunkers they will be safe as will their families. They probably also believe that the Russian survivors are naturally more resilient than the West, given Russian winters. They probably also think that they will be better able to rebuild than the West, being closer to primary and secondary economies, in terms of workforce.
Who says the Russians consider it a Rubicon not to be crossed? Although liberals and conservatives tend to be roughly equivalent in terms of intelligence, libertarians are the exception, tending towards the higher end of the cognitive spectrum. They are more likely to know all this, and this is probably the source of their recalcitrance about supporting the war. They are more likely to be rational about irrationality. They know the stakes and they want an exit strategy, despite the loss of face and Western status. They are most likely to know the real stakes, given the reality of the probability and impact.
I am not for Putting at all, but for Biden, the EU politicians and the UK political class even less. Am i a libertarian? for sure yes.
As a hetero white male with a job in the private industry and that had to study a good amount and fight everyday to keep my job. To who am i closer, to the Woke agenda of the west politicians and elites or to the speeches attributed to Putin in these matters?, hell i am much more like Putin, and i would like the world to come to its senses.
Having seen Libya, i live very close to it, having seen other "colors revolutions", i fully understand the fears of any country to keep its sovereignty and trying to control the "help of those ONGs" (these usual suspects. Can you name a country that having enjoyed a "colour revolution" is better off? the women with Sadam, with Gadaffi and previously in Iran had more rights they have today. Thanks very much western politicians, sorry but i would wish these politicians to be held accountable, who is going to help me? i do not see any of the commentators here willing to help me
Seeing how the democracies work, that is the most classical expression of a circus, Take, USA elections, take Spain government, my country, take Primer minister appointment in Italy and the technocrats (it has been 10 years without a government elected by its people). Sorry but i am really considering preferring a dictatorship, at least we would know what we have and we would not need to be bombarded with daily subliminal propaganda to be convinced.
Sorry but the west is a complete mess, elites, political class of the west, these could not care less about the inhabitants of these countries. In a certain way it seems that Putin cares more about the Russians than the west governments care about the people of the west.
Do i condemn Putin action? yes with all my might., do i approve it? for sure not, do i want him to finish Putin's power era? yes. Is Putin such a mastermind, well i think he is also on the payroll and that he has been elevated by the west media there is a book called "the best enemy money can buy" that i think is nearly 100% applicable.
Please do not ask me to defend the politicians from the west that i think hold at least 50% (yes, at least) of this war.
I really pity the people of Ukraine, being them of the Russian ethnic or the Ukrainian ethnic. I pray daily for this war to finish and that no more normal people dies.
On a frivolous point, this is the wet dream of Poland & France being able to regulate the energy to the German industry. Do you think they would let them to have a relative prosperity like the one Germany has enjoyed over them ..... It is going to be fun.
"To who am i closer, to the Woke agenda of the west politicians and elites or to the speeches attributed to Putin in these matters?, hell i am much more like Putin"
I think you're seriously confused if you think Putin believes in _anything_ - except 1) power for himself, and 2) (and a long way behind 1) power for Russia. In short, he'd throw you and everyone who thinks like you into a grave - alive - in the blink of an eye, if he thought that would increase/cement his personal power. (And no, I'm extremey conservative, not woke.)
I think one of the few things that Putin may be honest and true about is the woke nonsense. Whichever it may be if he says that woke is a mental disease then I have to agree with him. If you see people that want to castrate children (to put it bluntly), what are you going to think? Left or right, you have to have natural instincts that tell you this is wrong. This is fundamental – you do not do such things. Or you should not.
But I give you that - there is no knowing whether particular statement of a politician is honest or just words said to achieve something. Not sure how that makes him different from any other western politician who thinks he can impose anything on anybody.
Another thing is that the saturation with idiots, religious (CO2, covid, trans etc) zealots, outright criminals and people with evil agenda is very high in most of western countries. We still have lower levels of criminality and the ability to acquire wealth is more open here than it is in Russia I presume. But here is the thing – how can you claim not being confused?
I lived under commies for a quarter of a century – the propaganda and censorship is now on the levels that I recall from those old times. If at all we have more effective methods of confusing everybody. The information ecosystem is poisoned. Even the weather reports are now used for propaganda and they were not reliable before either.
Then there are the wars. The balance is not in our favor. The number of wars where we definitely made it worse than it was before is high. Even assuming we really meant democracy and civil rights, we still f.ed up so much that such claims cannot be taken seriously.
Of course I want us to win the war with Russia (it is really that). I do not see any moral high ground whatsoever in this though. Especially when I think about how it all started and about the victims of the Ukrainian nationalism. We will win this war – bigger guns and bigger economy will make it happen. Whether it would be worthwhile I am not so sure tho. It does not look like it. It is a bloody mess already and Putin is not the only one responsible. I want us win because I live in the west. But I do not see any advantage for myself or for people living in Ukraine in that. In what state will our economy be after we “win” is another matter.
This is all complex and quite frankly I am not sure where you get your confidence. I have massive doubts about our i.e. Western intentions and about our ability in an unlikely case these intentions were good. I also recall that this is not the first time people have no doubts when the marching orders were given.
This is one of the things which the establishment gets wrong about the whole misinformation/disinformation thing. It's not misinformation or the internet which has undermined Western institutional credibility- it's the fact that their own actions are burning their reputations down to the ground.
And none of their machinations will ultimately work. They can't put the genie back in the bottle. The dissent will only grow. What they don't understand is that history shows us that populism always emerges when foreign-born citizens hit 14% of the population. It is almost entirely not racist, and is activated by the deliberate undermining of blue collar male economic interests- although there are also localised community cultural preservation issues at stake.
The only exception is Australia, where the fact that they put blue collar interests at the heart of their Populate or Perish policy produced remarkable different results. This is what the Cosmopolitan elites just don't get- for the most part their children are the winners of a genetic lottery, towards the top end of the cognitive spectrum. The world will be their oyster. In addition to being born with a silver spoon in their mouth, the can be anything they want- doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, scientists, work in finance or as a part of the professional management class.
Sadly, most of them want to be journalists, influencers, go into politics or work for climate NGOs. This is why Australia is quite to want to recruit the best and the brightest from around the world, because the children of affluent elites don't want to do the highly cognitive work which actually keeps society running and creates the value to pay for government. In all likelihood, Australian living standards will surpass even those of Americans by 2050 to 2070, especially given that the woke seem to be in the process of dismantling many of America's profit centres.
Did they really expect the blue collar class to sit idly by as they saw their children's futures stripped away from them, their likely lifetime earnings halved. The Left think that minimum wages and meagre governments income supplements can solve the problem- but consider that an Aussie builder earns $35 an hour, his American equivalent earns $18 and a Brit in the same job only £13. People are liable to get quite angry as they see their children's futures slip away- they can be a little selfless for themselves, but never for their children.
Of course, there are exceptions. Ramonchu comes from a blue collar background and he is an engineer. But we are talking about exceptions not the rule. It is also true that migration does also provide opportunities for some people to move up, but mainly for girls working in offices raising their children by themselves, or for the lazier children of the privileged upper middles classes, who might otherwise have experienced a downward shift in social mobility.
But for the boys of blue collar parents it's nothing short of catastrophic. At least a literal decimation in labour participation and a halving of the future value of their labour. It's also why so many of these blue collar jobs tend to stay vacant in most Western economies- because many adopt a 'no pay, no play' attitude and find alternative employment. Working in a bar or restaurant (service) may not be particular well-paid, but at least one is not exposed to the weather for a pittance.
Hi Hans, there is a series of documentals from Oilver Stone (now he has been sidelined by the west media). These are called "interviews with Putin", he comes as a very human being, (yes Noel for the good, for the bad and for the very bad), that series is recommendable to watch. Well at a certain point, Stone asks him "do you spy russian citizens,?", "not we dont but because we are poor, if we would have the resources we will, and whoever tells you that they dont they are lying". I am not going to love him, but i do appreciate his candidness.
Now it comes the betting time :))) , so the following are my views HAHA .....
Can we, the west "win" this war? yes very easily! are we going to "win" it?, i do not thin so because wars are business, because as i mentioned to Geary and yourself once the following contracts are "carved in stone" be it for energy, for additional expenditure in weapons, for submission to these supply lines. Then there is no need to continue war, why destroy one of the best money makers that the complex has !!!yes, that money maker is Putin".
So i am ready to bet a beer and some crisp with you and Geary, that we would reach "agreement" by spring next year, and that it would be a "resentful agreement", that would require building up defenses, trade only with "friendly countries" vetted by the masters, and stop any relationship with "bad countries". By the way, USA will buy gas from Russia and would re-sell it to Europe.
The bet is for physical beer and crisps, to be paid/collected in one of the nicest spots in the Mediterranean. I must inform you, you may come and collect/pay the bet but once you see the set up you may like it. First we will settled the bets then i would invite you for some more beers for visiting me.
Hello Noel, i do agree with you, my sentence says "more", i wanted to mean that in some speeches attributed to Putin regarding Gender (that you can define your sex like you want), or other woke subjects, i am closer to these speeches (not fully but closer) than what i am to the agenda of western politicians . Putin is human animal, he is first and foremost for his situation and position of power and he has proved to be extremely heartless and merciless, so i have no love for him whatsoever, but in a very small percentage of things i am closer to him than to my governments, i am not partisan and i try to appreciate "the right & the wrong" at least from my perspective in every individual. The fact that i do not love him does not mean that i love the western politicians (lets remove their mask, they are not Therese of Calcuta), in a scale of love & hate from 0 (hate) to 10 (love), Putin would score for me minus 10, and the western politicians on average -20, and the spanish government -100.
I'm beginning to turn back to the phrase PC authoritarians. Ai Weiwei used in an interview with PBS about a year ago, and its more apt given I recent heard that the Left have apparently taken to referring to some Conservative ideas as Right Woke. So, first they deny it exists, but it's a good thing anyway, then they accuse their opponents of it.
Hey Noel, this one will make you spitting mad. Ramonchu's father was convinced by the Spanish government to invest his life savings in a solar project, then the fuckers reneged on the deal retroactively! It was a big thing in Spain- diabolical. They stole his father's life savings!
The thing is that both the Russians and the Chinese are quite gleeful about the woke- it's somewhat reminiscent of Soviet pathology or the Cultural Revolution. It's why they are making moves which they otherwise wouldn't even consider- at least not at the current juncture of the timeline.
The Chinese even have a name for it- they call it Baizuo which means white liberal, and means singularly obsessed with matters of race, gender and climate. To them it's an epithet.
It's highly likely that a lot of the weaponised internet activity coming out of China and Russia has been accelerating this tendency. Generally, their efforts are aimed destabilization, but can you think of a more ideal way this type of strategy could be aimed, than by accelerating woke, cancel culture and polarisation?
This is one thing Democrats get wrong about 'Russian Interference'. Sure, they didn't like Hilary Clinton, because they perhaps rightly saw her as a mad women liable to start World War Three. But more generally, the efforts were aimed at provoking destabilization through civil breakdown- doing things like make sure that Antifa rallies were double-booked with Proud Boys events.
And this is the other thing- although the West and the Anglosphere didn't like Trump, the non-Western world did like him. The Saudis, the Israelis, India, China, Brazil, Turkey and yes, Russia. Non-Chinese East Asia is more split, with Japan in favour of him, but South Korea more cold. In many ways, he was more reminiscent of an era when the West confined itself to narrow and rational self-interest and didn't tell the rest of the world how to run their affairs.
Hey Ramonchu. I entirely agree. If there is a silver lining, it is that Western leaders will now be forced to dispense with many of their most cherished notions, their luxury beliefs which directly harm the financial interests of ordinary people.
In the more modern context, what are luxury beliefs- energy policy, the movement endorsing organic and veganism, unrestricted blue collar mass migration... Take your pick- none of it serves the interests of the blue collar class. And our political elites are so intent upon carving out their temporary moment in history, they altogether fail to consider the downside risks if things don't turn out exactly as they expect. Recent history is littered with such events.
As a engineer, I'm sure you appreciate probability and impact, especially given that history has proven that nuclear powers under friction most certainly do not behave rationally under friction. In most circumstances- yes, they do- but if the players in the Cuban Missile Crisis had been only slightly different, so would have been the outcome.
Ahhhhhh, as an engineer, my specialty when studying was structural engineering, with master degree in reinforced structures and , so i have my own views about how they went down the famous towers!!.
Friction is something that whether we like it or not, it is there, so we better make it to work in our favour. I am not an expert in quantum mechanics, or even physics for instance, but even if you need a critical mass, in fact on the first nuclear weapons a very important item were the mirrors, and mirror manufacturing is considered high technology stuff. Personally i do not believe there is the conditions for the "atoms impact at this moment, much less for the chain reaction", just see Mr Biden on his speeches, I saw one saluting to the back, not knowing where he was, come on this individual is for the elderly home, and the ones running the show behind him are for the business.
And by the way, yes UK elite started both WW, the 1 and the 2, and they were not just "by chance" these were carefully crafted, i can recommend a couple of books about that. I was working in Devon for a number of months some 30 years ago, I found the normal english of the small town lovely people, these were not the ones that organized the wars these were like me an anybody else "foot people of the world" actually the ones suffering. "War is a place where the young kill one another without knowing or hating each other, because of the decision of old people who know and hate each other, without killing each other".
So as i mentioned to Hans, here is the bet
"the west"would would reach "agreement" by spring next year, and that it would be a "resentful agreement", that would require building up defenses, trade only with "friendly countries" vetted by the masters, and stop any relationship with "bad countries". By the way, USA will buy gas from Russia and would re-sell it to Europe.
The bet is for physical beer and crisps, to be paid/collected in one of the nicest spots in the Mediterranean. I must inform you, you may come and collect/pay the bet but once you see the set up you may like it. First we will settled the bets then i would invite you for some more beers for visiting me.
I'm with Noel. We can invent whatever we want when talking about what might have been, but it seems to me that Putin wants his empire back and that starts with Ukraine and he was going to invade no matter what. This is true irrespective of whatever critiques one might have of 'us' or the Americans or NATO or whoever.
Sure, he has been unequivocal in his recent admissions. However, regardless of his grandiosity, pragmatic limitations will now limit his ambitions. That is, if we manage to avert the risk of Global Thermonuclear War.
War and sanctions; tax unequally and spend ever more into debt; propaganda; totalitarianism/authoritarianism; socialism/fascism/crony capitalism; cages for those who don't toe the line. What's not to trust about people who spend so much money to "serve" others by force?
'Never let a good crisis go to waste'- a reasonable comment made by a great man in a difficult time, but since enlisted into the service of entire legions of political Machiavellians who read Saul Alinsky at University and thought the exercise of political force and coercion in service of a supposedly noble cause was a good idea.
It rather simplifies and distorts things, doesn't it. I think Jeremy Corbyn would have been proud of that one. The alternatives to the West don't exactly fill me with joy.
I completely agree, and it was by no means my intention to channel Jeremy Corbyn. However, the West needs to rapidly get itself out of the habit of making unforced errors. See my reply to Ben above. One can be both completely against Putin and highly critical of the West's failures. They have been replete- not in supporting Ukraine, but from the nineties onwards.
In particular, we never should have forced nuclear disarmament, given that our guarantees could never really be underwritten, especially given the changing occupants in the Great Offices of State in most countries.
'The alternatives to the West don't exactly fill me with joy.'- nor me. But it is worth noting that our own most cherished notions are under threat. As Ai Weiwei recently revealed, just under a year ago to PBS, it was not Trump's authoritarianism which reminded him most of Chinese state power, but the chilling reach of PC authoritarians intent upon policing speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjYjhxGJ-sI&t=3s
Anyway, it wasn't my goal to appear at all supportive of Putin's goals, but rather to draw attention to the complete failings of the West. We make to much of Neville Chamberlain's failing. It is worth noting that if Hitler had has his way in receiving the war he wanted over Czechoslovakia, he would have faced a far less prepared and ill-equipped Britain, particularly in the air. Most historians focus upon the betrayal by the West. What they miss is the entirely plausible counterfactual in which Hitler delivered an early exit to both France and Britain from the conflict. Both militaries were statically intent upon defensive war in the West, only prepared for a rerun of the Great War.
Regardless of the fact that Neville Chamberlain consigned himself to the wrong side of history, he did at least buy time for Churchill to begin to gather both popular support and military preparedness. Speaking purely militarily, history favoured the British the longer the war could be forestalled.
"they could have pressurised Zelenski to accept a deal which guaranteed that Ukraine joined neither NATO nor the EU"
Sorry, I don't think that would have done any good - because I don't think those were Putin's *real* main reasons for invading Ukraine - so 'fixing' them would have been an exercise in futility. (They were, I think, mostly just excuses he gave to sell the war to the Russian people - and a line that has found a lot of adherents among *some* conservatives in the West - although there may be a certain amount of truth to them, in that he does seem to see NATO as a 'threat' to Russia - the expansionist Russia I describe below.) What do I reckon were his real reasons?
The first Putin himself laid out in his essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" (http://www.en.kremlin.ru/misc/66182), which is critical reading for anyone attempting to understand Putin, and this war. Putin apparently sees himself as a new Peter the Great, whose destiny it is to re-build the Russian Empire. Russia has been on the same trajectory - absorbing its neighbours - for hundreds of years. That's why it stretches across *11 time zones*. Look at its whole history - the expansion to the Pacific in the 1600s; the annexation of the 'stans' in the 1700s-1800s; taking over its Western neighbours. (It's instructive to note that the wars/annexation involving Poland, Finland and the Baltics in 1939-1940 were the *second* time Russia had moved there; Finland had gained its independence in 1918, during the Russian Revolution.) The focus on the 'Communist threat' after WWII made the Cold War seem purely like an ideological battle, but that was only part of what was going on; in retrospect, it was just one more chapter in Russia's long arc.
The second was revealed by Farida Rustamova's (an un-paralleled source of information on what's *really* going on inside the Kremlin, *all* of whose columns are mandatory reading) column, "“Now we're going to f*ck them all.” What's happening in Russia's elites after a month of war" (https://faridaily.substack.com/p/now-were-going-to-fck-them-all-whats). She reckons that Putin really started the war to entrench his power in Russia (among other reasons). If you look at the arc of Putin's time in Russia (the clash with the oligarchs; the apartment bombings; the recent wave of dead oligarchs; etc, etc) the consolidation of personal power has been a consistent goal.
Were those his *only* reasons? Perhaps not; but they were certainly *very important* goals. In that light, 'neutralizing' Ukraine was a fool's errand - and anyone who thinks it would have solved the problem has an insufficient appreciation for the longer and larger historical context.
Did *some* in the West see an opportunity to cripple Russia, using Ukraine as the cannon fodder? Perhaps - but they didn't *lure* Russia into this foolish war to do so - far from it. In fact, any attempt to prevent it, with less than traditional 'great power' moves ('do it and we'll blow your head off'), was doomed to failure - given what Putin perceived as *his* incentives to do it. (His perception was flawed in so many ways I don't have time/space to list them - including the incompetence/corruption in the 'newly re-built' Russian armed forces.)
In fact, most in high places in the West thought Russia would succeed in fairly short order! That kind of blows up the theory that that this war was a clever plot to cripple Russia; a short war wouldn't have been more than a speed bump on Russia's path to power - unlike the current conflict. Although Hedrick Smith in some sense saw this coming 30 years ago, in his 'The New Russians': "Ukraine, the second-largest republic, and the only one capable of posing a serious armed challenge to Russia proper." (pg. 565).
The long-term result of the current conflict may well be beyond their wildest dreams: just as Afghanistan was a major factor in the collapse of the USSR, I wonder if the Ukraine war may result in the disintegration of the current Russian behemoth. If so, it will be one of the largest testaments in history to The Law of Unintended Consequences.
Good comment. You nailed it. Why are we ascribing all sorts of motives to Putin rather than just literally reading what he wrote on the subject?
Because politicians always tell the truth and don't just try to drum up support with propaganda that hides their real motives.
1. Is Putin a politician? Or something else?
2. Which do you really think is more likely, that Putin wanted to annex all of Ukraine or that this is just about NATO expansion (talk about propaganda)?
Yes, Putin is a politician.
I'm sure a full annexation would have been a dream of his. But that failed with massive US weapons and intel support. He miscalculated this because Obama+Biden didn't do this before.
Do you not think NATO on the Russian borders matter? Or turning to the EU?
Do you reject the ongoing civil war? Putin did annex the lands most said he would annex, the pro-Russian parts, as he did in Crimea. And that this civil war started after the US meddled in the 2014 Ukraine elections (that got Hunter Biden a high paid gig because of his incredible knowledge that Burisma needed).
I certainly don't support Putin's war. I don't support NATO expansion and threats. But I do know that politicians lie, obfuscate and give explanations unrelated to what they say.
Do you believe politician mostly tell everyone the whole truth?
Great comment. Exactly my point. Just because we loathe Putin, does this necessarily mean we should engage in full-throated support of our own particularly inept breed of politicians on this particular issue?
Hell no!
I don’t believe politicians tell the whole truth. Nor do I believe they’re really capable of the kind of behind the scenes manipulation they would have to be doing for some of the wilder theories to have any credence.
That's not what I'm claiming. Government is a creeping cancer- it is as bad at policy and diplomacy as it is at managing markets and resources. Most government disasters are caused because a policy sounds good at a superficial level, but nobody has stopped to consider the second or third order effects.
This is the problem with foreign interventions- they almost always work out badly for the people receiving 'help'. Don't get me wrong, we absolutely should have helped Ukraine as soon as the invasion took place- but by being as firm with the Ukrainians in the run-up to war- making it clear that the Azov Battalion would no longer receive funding, the extrajudicial killings in the East would stop, the proscriptions of the Russian language would stop, we could at least have robbed Putin of many of his pretexts and excuses for war.
Noel is right- there is a pretty good chance that this wouldn't have stopped Putin. But it would have given him a much harder time of it after the event- both with his own people, but also critically with the Chinese, India and the Saudis. As it was, it allowed Putin to whisper into their ear about how Americans intrude into other regional powers spheres of influence.
With India this matters more in a cultural sense than a territorial one, but the Saudis and the Chinese were both heavily influenced by his arguments. Besides, Thucydides is not a trap, it's a ledger containing every perceived insult and grievance between two powers. This was why America was so successful with the British in their Thucydides scenario, because this former generation of Great Americans understood that pride mattered more to the British than pragmatism- as it does with all peoples who consider themselves powers.
He's a warlord (like Henry VIII or Alexander the Great), not a politician. Even warlords have to be sensitive to the population's opinions, though; read accounts of Philip's speech to the Macedonians after he took over.
Please read my comment above to Ben. I considered it one of my better ones.
Too true- it's apparent in his speeches that he is land focused. He may not be Hitler, but there is at least something queasily familiar, evoking Blood and Soil, and uniting a people.
But we also need to understand what Forever Wars are all about. How about Tactus quoting Calgacus 'These plunderers of the world [the Romans], after exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.'
Free markets are great, as are democratic classically liberal values- but only when freely chosen by a people and their leaders. When they are a product of policies which seek to liberate markets as much as people, of 'democratise or I'll shoot', they are an external tyranny disguised as liberation. Remember, in many parts of the world people only like foreigners as tourists or investors- for their money- they prefer their ow bad government, to the good governance imposed by others. How else can we explain the utter failure of regime change wars?
Great source material, mate. I was also deeply alarmed by the Putin speech. Konstantin Kisin first drew my attention to it. However, the timeline of the speech is telling- could it perhaps be a post hoc ergo proctor hoc justification (fallacy) for actions taken up to that point, as a means of shoring up domestic support?
Your other source was also great, although I would hasten to add that although there is no evidence to support the contention that the biolabs in Ukraine were producing bioweapons, no lesser luminary than Janet Yellen herself admitted to being deeply concerned about some of the materials being worked upon within the labs, given the state of war which existed. Still, that says nothing- given that a recent disclosure by a team of scientists at Boston University involved a preprint of a study which admitted to gain of function research which increased lethality of an early COVID strain to 80% amongst lab mice!
I largely agree with you on both Putin's motive for increasing his personal power, and the obvious analogies in his own mind with Peter the Great. However, I think we also need to add the central motive of weakening the West to his agenda. It's become increasingly evident that it's a goal at which he is succeeding, given the likely consequences of Europe's winter, the damage to both the German and the UK economy and the likelihood that the devastating consequences for the Developing World in terms of global food supply will likely weaken resolve, especially amongst well-heeled cosmopolitans (although its debatable whether they will attribute these failings of human agency to climate change, relying upon a largely misinformed educated class).
The chances of dislodging Putin are slim to none, and a doubt we will see an end to Russia as a Great Power. Although their industries will doubtless suffer from the deprival of key strategic parts, it's worth noting that they have the highest per capita rate of engineers in the world. The nightmare scenario is a lone nut taking Putin out himself. It produces by far the highest probability of nuclear engagement of all.
On the subject of UK's recent pension crisis, this article by Reuters presents a more informed view than a purely political failing: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/how-britains-pension-scheme-hedge-became-trillion-pound-gamble-2022-10-15/
I would be willing to bet that Nassim Nicholas Taleb is feeling a little like Cassandra, given that he warned us of this systemic risk, with his work on anti-fragility. And it is a global problem, even one found in America. I wonder just how many pension fund managers for state, local and city employees are feeling somewhat nervous right, given that many of the pensions promised upon the expectation of a continuing supernormal profit era which has largely ended, and LDI is a common practice in America.
Still, there may be a small silver lining to this very dark cloud, with the Fed now being forewarned about this systemic risk. It might prevent them from further rate rises- a good thing, given that most of the factors causing inflation in the West are cost push and external to Western economies (although obviously money supply didn't help, nor did signalling to the market that fossil fuels were somehow Warren Buffet's half-smoked cigar (pure fiction BTW).
I wonder how much state actuarial resource Putin has to hand? The timing is extraordinarily in his favour, and he certainly picked a point at which the West is experiencing a temporary nadir. Still, hopefully lessons will be learned. The EU and UN have both issued statements redefining both nuclear and natural gas as green technologies, and one hopes we will dispense with the fluffier notions of the WEF and ESG- in particular, the insane notion of converting the world's farming to organic veganism.
Surely Norman Borlaug is turning in his grave. https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/man-who-saved-billion-lives
Addendum. You will note I stated this position was not one with which I was particular agreed. This seems to be one of those topics upon which people cannot amicably disagree. In this sense, thank you for your informed contribution. I also think there is something to the idea that history is something which 'great' leaders muddle through, rather than being possessed of a particularly piercing insight or planning ability- 'Events' necessarily outweighing any talent for prognostication.
Comments on a few points; the rest I agree with:
The essay (I am not sure he delivered it as a speech) was from July, 2021, so it's not 'post hoc' justification for the recent invasion. That's also years after the seizure of the Crimea, too late to be a rationale for that. The timing makes it virtually certain that it's pre-event rationale for the current invasion.
I have not looked into the biolabs charges; to be frank, I had assumed it was more excuses sourced to the Putin PR exercise, like the charge that NATO had given a commitment not to expand Eastward. (Gorbachev himself, who was at the table, and should know, in an interview in October 2014, disagreed that such a commitment had been made: "The topic of “NATO expansion” was not discussed at all".)
I think it's very foolish for anyone to think of dislodging Putin: i) that's a bad area to get into, as a general rule; ii) that is almost certainly something that is beyond the power of outsiders, and something the Russians will have to do, and iii) there's no guarantee that whoever replaces him will be any better.
It's hard to see in the crystal ball when we will see an end to Russia as a Great Power. (That it will happen eventually, as it has to the Romans, British, etc, is inevitable eventually.) These things are hard to foresee; when that Russian general walked across the Amu Darya bridge in 1989, did anyone think the UUSR would collapse within 2 years? The low birth rate, rampant corruption, etc are not good signs. It's still a natural-resource-based economy (unlike the Chinese, who managed to improve thing a lot; they have other problems, though). I don't know when it will happen ... but don't be surprised.
You've sold me on the first point and I largely agree with the rest. Plus, if I'm being brutally honest about the Biden Administration, they were very limited in terms of realpolilik as to their range of options- especially given that the Ukrainians had political leverage.
But there is still plenty to criticise about the West, especially in terms of let sentiments rule over strategy-mindedness in the resource sense. Was the killing of Jamal Khashoggi horrible. Of course. But if we were really of a mind to alienate a power with which we were aligned, then it should have been over the Yemeni people rather than a sole journalist. In any event a bad idea- unless America was willing to secure alternate resourcing both through Venezuela and Iran- the latter sure to both make the Israelis incandescent and strategically misalign the Middle East again.
I've been thinking a bit about convergent factors acting as agents of cascade- it's akin to some very insightful work from Mark Blyth at Brown about 2008, austerity and the rise of Global Trumpism and regarding coupled systems. Taken individually Administrative hostility to fossil fuel profits, ESG and the WEFs pretty insane approach to farming aren't cascade problems, but as a compound formula they have the potential to be absolutely catastrophic.
This made the West weak when we didn't need to be. It allowed Putin to think us vulnerable. The French and the Swedes are the only ones who are currently sane in Europe, with their nuclear. We Brits and the Germans haven't exactly covered ourselves in glory recently, and it exposes over two decades of bad energy policy.
I understand that large segments of Western populations feel as though climate change is a more urgent priority than it actually is. I was similarly misinformed until I took the time to start reading some of the summaries for myself. But the only way to tackle it is with nuclear and innovation AT THE SAME TIME, to create more abundance and wealth, not less.
If there is a silver lining to this very dark cloud it is that these events have given the West a kick in its complacency. I note that China already had all this worked out years ago. They are building 150 large reactors for $440 billion. If past experience is anything to go by the first four will cost 25% of the budget and the rest will be cheap as chips. It's about creating the institutional experience within an industry.
Great source material on the Gorbachev comment. I wasn't aware. But we've stored this problem up for some time, particularly with regard to exiting the ABM treaty. The West Wing was right on that score- and the did in fact 'build better bombs'. It's an asymmetry which probably wasn't considered in the headlong rush to secure the world from MAD. Better rockets will always be an order of magnitude cheaper than those systems meant to guard against them.
We could have made Russia our ally before Putin- if we had delivered a Marshall Plan rather than Shock Therapy. But like so many periods in history, there is the incompatibility of misaligned magnetism. The neoliberalism which made it possible to outspend the Russians and force them to the negotiating table was always going to consider a Marshall plan an echo of big government, and not sound economics.
And of course Shock Therapy was doomed to failure because the rest of the world doesn't produce the types of psychologically WEIRD people which would made it at all possible for foreign talent to come in to run Russian industries.
Munich - now there's an interesting comparison. Most of these comparisons focus on one side only. Thus German unpreparedness for war in 1938 is generally omitted particularly by Chamberlain apologists whereas allied unpreparedness highlighted. The German general staff admitted they couldn't have pierced the Czech frontier defences with the equipment they had.
The whole French and British leadership establishments panicked and rather than thinking what they could do ran away. Thankfully this didn't happen in the Ukrainian situation and the response has been pretty impressive especially on the British and American sides. Do you remember 'politically correct' language? I suspect that wokeness will go the same way.
Good counter argument. I forget to mention that despite the lack of British and French offensive capability, the Czech's were actually quite able, and all they needed was for the French and BEF to threaten their flank. However, you forget FOW. Perception overruled reality for the British and French establishment. They had all been convinced by Trenchard's theory that the bomber will always get through.
They envisaged French and British cities burned to husks by bombers, when in actuality the Nazis wouldn't possess this capacity for a little time to come. There was even some rather nasty talk in the House of Commons about the Jews rioting in Whitechapel and the Old Kent Road.. So you are right to point out the discrepancy, the threat was more imagined than real, but they believed it. As with the pandemic, the Great and the Good had little faith in the working classes, when all the time it was more privileged who would prove inadequate in stoic virtue.
So, they wanted to build up the bombers to threaten German cities in retaliation, in the hopes this might dissuade. It was also why the RAF was so desperately short of fighters in 1940, because the bombers had been prioritised, especially if we count engines as a back of the envelope rough calculation of aircraft capacity. There was also the matter of modern aircraft versus air fleets which were woefully obsolescent compared to the Germans- although obviously this was also an issue for the Germans as late as 1936 where they used Ju52s as bombers.
If this was Discourse, at this point I would probably link a Picasso painting. It was obviously a visceral fear in the thirties. It's also worth noting that 'Things to Come' was released in 1936, and the cognitive elite mind is more prone to bad thinking than the merely good intellect- it's anchor biases. It's why predictive forecasting ability peaks between the 120 to 130 range- unless the mind is highly disciplined and able to destruction test bad ideas. scepticism being the chastity of the intellect.
But thanks for the challenge. It wasn't clear thinking on my part. So thanks for the stimulating thought exercise.
A rather grandiose and Western-centric narrative don’t you think. Some libertarians ascribe to this position but others are far less hubristic about the supposed machinations of Western “great men.” Their position could be summed up as: because most things are beyond our control and we face such an incredible amount of uncertainty/lack of knowledge, any intervention on our part would likely only make things worse (just as Putin’s foolish intervention is backfiring on him).
In this narrative I see little role for Ukrainian agency. If anything, it’s the opposite of libertarian in that it sees a few Western fat cats as manipulating events behind the scenes. I’m not sure the West can determine events. Not in any meaningful way. I highly doubt Biden and Truss can control Zelensky, let alone Putin.
Good comment. I simply attempting in some sense to elucidate the failings of the West thus far. A more adept breed of politician, sadly now consigned to history could have averted this disaster. Much as we must support Ukraine now, we could have been somewhat less enthusiastic in the months preceding the invasion.
As Putin has repeatedly demonstrated- he is the last man one would want to hand a pretext or excuse. In particular, we should have expressed our deep concerns about the 10,000 or more extra judicial killings in the Russian majority East (admittedly on both sides). Further, banning Russian speaking in many areas of public life was an error of the first order- handing gasoline to those inclined to Russian Nationalism.
As history shows, pretexts can be manufactured. But they can also be an unforced error. Reports of Ukrainian Nazis are overstated- only a sliver of the populations support such notions. But where the Ukrainian state was an exception was in arming these types as paramilitaries.
Here is an interesting little piece of history: https://www.timesofisrael.com/80-years-ago-how-a-very-different-schindlers-list-helped-ignite-wwii/
Politics inescapably is power games, and
💬 [u]nfortunately, with a few notable exceptions,
...power selects for the worst and corrupts even the best 😳
~~
PS Must admit your 'any *clam* made by a politician' does pack some meaningful overtones 👌
PPS You Brits just can’t help it being on the constant lookout for an exercise in sticking it to the French 😇
#1 No, it's a Discourse forum, although it does have Discord plugins enabled. #2- Doh! 'PPS You Brits just can’t help it being on the constant lookout for an exercise in sticking it to the French'-Lol. It's probably cultural envy of their food. The speed of our industrial revolution robbed us of much of our own peasant food culture, as entire generations fled the land for the city- although the series of Land Enclosures Acts certainly didn't help. Then there is the nuclear envy- I think the French have finally settled on a 4% rise in energy bills for the year. Sadly, there is much to envy about France at the moment.
I couldn't spot #3...
Beautiful archaeological excavation of cultural envy roots! 😀
~~
PS #3 hides in second last ¶, italicised. I'd rather you leave it as is 🙂
Good piece, but you left out the painful result for Britain: an energy crisis that led to a debt crisis that led directly to the shortest premiership in history and political and economic chaos. The debt crisis is a true crisis that can only be solved by allowing Russian energy back into the fold...but OMG, I can hear the screaming already. Reality does bite...
I actually took a photo of my meter reading the day the energy prices changed. One of leading consumer advocates- Martin Lewis, the most trusted man in British public life- advised people do it, because he thought some energy companies might not believe some of their customers. It really is that bad.
The pension crisis is an altogether different animal. Yes, Liz Truss caused a fire sale because of a poorly timed budget strategy which ran counter to what the Bank of England was trying to achieve (wrong, IMHO, as with all the central banks at the moment)- but it all happened because of toxic assets in many pension funds portfolios, especially gilt derivates. They wanted better returns, but they didn't see the risks- profits and risks are linked, there is no escaping this simple mechanic.
Here is a pretty good Reuters article on the subject for the layman by Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/how-britains-pension-scheme-hedge-became-trillion-pound-gamble-2022-10-15/
It makes one wonder how many other countries have toxic LDI exposure waiting to blow up, like a ticking timebomb. If you or your friends have private pension provisions, it is well worth checking this issue out. My aunt has a friend who retired to Spain who has lost tens of thousands of pounds on her private pension.
So it's 2008 again? Sometimes I am quite relieved to be poor...my assets, which consist of artworks, do not get shorted, after all. I blame Obama for not punishing the bankers back then.
This is one thing that the Left in America doesn't understand about the Trump phenomenon- a lot of the realignment in American politics stemmed from rage at corporate Dems bailing the bankers out. It's also why the racism hypothesis doesn't work, because many of Trump's most enthusiastic MAGA Republicans voted for Obama, and then wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders.
The echoes are quite severe. Early reporting from Reuters showed that of the key, more violent offenders on Jan 6th- 119 were people who had lost homes or businesses as a result of 2008. Unfortunately, these sort of more reasonable explanations for bad behaviour aren't what makes it into narratives about insurrection.
PS: Thanks for the Kremlintarians link; the link to the Liberpedia article within it was very interesting.
FWIW, I think the column is right on target; I just re-read it, but see little to disagree with. Their proximity to Russia seems to have focused the thinking of the Eastern Europeans quoted there. Ironically, I see the people outside Eastern European whom the column is about as ideological 3rd cousins to progressives, their notional opponents; the two groups' ideological ideas are of course completely at odds, but both groups are alike in living in their own imaginary reality, not the real world.
The popularity of Russian propaganda, among certain circles in the US, has been very eye-opening to me. I observed that that PR effort is likely part of Putin's plan to divide the West. His military is fairly inept, but as a life-long KGBer, his schemes to undermine people's minds are a little more functional.
I think the popularity of Putin argument about conservatives and libertarians has been overplayed. It's not Putin people like, but the sheer ineptitude of our own governments at an institutional level. One of the worst arguments in the 'he'll never do it' argument with nuclear weapons. We came within a hare's breath of doing it during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Curtis LeMay's wanted to do it, because of the inevitability of mounting parity in arms, if one accepts a finite threshold for total annihilation.
If you know your von Clausewitz on friction, then the easiest way to think of it is to imagine that systems of nuclear deterrence only remain rational in the absence of friction. As the friction mounts so do the risks of irrationality, and although the risks are by no means exponential, they are certainly not linear. The friction wears the opposition players down over to point that they can willingly entertain madness.
It's a little known fact that radiation poisoning didn't kill the population around Hiroshima and Nagasaki evenly- despite all being exposed to lethal doses for very long periods. Many went on to propagate children who were not deformed. If Putin and his higher echelons retreat to their bunkers they will be safe as will their families. They probably also believe that the Russian survivors are naturally more resilient than the West, given Russian winters. They probably also think that they will be better able to rebuild than the West, being closer to primary and secondary economies, in terms of workforce.
Who says the Russians consider it a Rubicon not to be crossed? Although liberals and conservatives tend to be roughly equivalent in terms of intelligence, libertarians are the exception, tending towards the higher end of the cognitive spectrum. They are more likely to know all this, and this is probably the source of their recalcitrance about supporting the war. They are more likely to be rational about irrationality. They know the stakes and they want an exit strategy, despite the loss of face and Western status. They are most likely to know the real stakes, given the reality of the probability and impact.
Hello Geary and people,
Well here I am as the advocate of the devil
I am not for Putting at all, but for Biden, the EU politicians and the UK political class even less. Am i a libertarian? for sure yes.
As a hetero white male with a job in the private industry and that had to study a good amount and fight everyday to keep my job. To who am i closer, to the Woke agenda of the west politicians and elites or to the speeches attributed to Putin in these matters?, hell i am much more like Putin, and i would like the world to come to its senses.
Having seen Libya, i live very close to it, having seen other "colors revolutions", i fully understand the fears of any country to keep its sovereignty and trying to control the "help of those ONGs" (these usual suspects. Can you name a country that having enjoyed a "colour revolution" is better off? the women with Sadam, with Gadaffi and previously in Iran had more rights they have today. Thanks very much western politicians, sorry but i would wish these politicians to be held accountable, who is going to help me? i do not see any of the commentators here willing to help me
Seeing how the democracies work, that is the most classical expression of a circus, Take, USA elections, take Spain government, my country, take Primer minister appointment in Italy and the technocrats (it has been 10 years without a government elected by its people). Sorry but i am really considering preferring a dictatorship, at least we would know what we have and we would not need to be bombarded with daily subliminal propaganda to be convinced.
Sorry but the west is a complete mess, elites, political class of the west, these could not care less about the inhabitants of these countries. In a certain way it seems that Putin cares more about the Russians than the west governments care about the people of the west.
Do i condemn Putin action? yes with all my might., do i approve it? for sure not, do i want him to finish Putin's power era? yes. Is Putin such a mastermind, well i think he is also on the payroll and that he has been elevated by the west media there is a book called "the best enemy money can buy" that i think is nearly 100% applicable.
Please do not ask me to defend the politicians from the west that i think hold at least 50% (yes, at least) of this war.
I really pity the people of Ukraine, being them of the Russian ethnic or the Ukrainian ethnic. I pray daily for this war to finish and that no more normal people dies.
On a frivolous point, this is the wet dream of Poland & France being able to regulate the energy to the German industry. Do you think they would let them to have a relative prosperity like the one Germany has enjoyed over them ..... It is going to be fun.
Take care and nice weekend
"To who am i closer, to the Woke agenda of the west politicians and elites or to the speeches attributed to Putin in these matters?, hell i am much more like Putin"
I think you're seriously confused if you think Putin believes in _anything_ - except 1) power for himself, and 2) (and a long way behind 1) power for Russia. In short, he'd throw you and everyone who thinks like you into a grave - alive - in the blink of an eye, if he thought that would increase/cement his personal power. (And no, I'm extremey conservative, not woke.)
I think one of the few things that Putin may be honest and true about is the woke nonsense. Whichever it may be if he says that woke is a mental disease then I have to agree with him. If you see people that want to castrate children (to put it bluntly), what are you going to think? Left or right, you have to have natural instincts that tell you this is wrong. This is fundamental – you do not do such things. Or you should not.
But I give you that - there is no knowing whether particular statement of a politician is honest or just words said to achieve something. Not sure how that makes him different from any other western politician who thinks he can impose anything on anybody.
Another thing is that the saturation with idiots, religious (CO2, covid, trans etc) zealots, outright criminals and people with evil agenda is very high in most of western countries. We still have lower levels of criminality and the ability to acquire wealth is more open here than it is in Russia I presume. But here is the thing – how can you claim not being confused?
I lived under commies for a quarter of a century – the propaganda and censorship is now on the levels that I recall from those old times. If at all we have more effective methods of confusing everybody. The information ecosystem is poisoned. Even the weather reports are now used for propaganda and they were not reliable before either.
Then there are the wars. The balance is not in our favor. The number of wars where we definitely made it worse than it was before is high. Even assuming we really meant democracy and civil rights, we still f.ed up so much that such claims cannot be taken seriously.
Of course I want us to win the war with Russia (it is really that). I do not see any moral high ground whatsoever in this though. Especially when I think about how it all started and about the victims of the Ukrainian nationalism. We will win this war – bigger guns and bigger economy will make it happen. Whether it would be worthwhile I am not so sure tho. It does not look like it. It is a bloody mess already and Putin is not the only one responsible. I want us win because I live in the west. But I do not see any advantage for myself or for people living in Ukraine in that. In what state will our economy be after we “win” is another matter.
This is all complex and quite frankly I am not sure where you get your confidence. I have massive doubts about our i.e. Western intentions and about our ability in an unlikely case these intentions were good. I also recall that this is not the first time people have no doubts when the marching orders were given.
This is one of the things which the establishment gets wrong about the whole misinformation/disinformation thing. It's not misinformation or the internet which has undermined Western institutional credibility- it's the fact that their own actions are burning their reputations down to the ground.
And none of their machinations will ultimately work. They can't put the genie back in the bottle. The dissent will only grow. What they don't understand is that history shows us that populism always emerges when foreign-born citizens hit 14% of the population. It is almost entirely not racist, and is activated by the deliberate undermining of blue collar male economic interests- although there are also localised community cultural preservation issues at stake.
The only exception is Australia, where the fact that they put blue collar interests at the heart of their Populate or Perish policy produced remarkable different results. This is what the Cosmopolitan elites just don't get- for the most part their children are the winners of a genetic lottery, towards the top end of the cognitive spectrum. The world will be their oyster. In addition to being born with a silver spoon in their mouth, the can be anything they want- doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, scientists, work in finance or as a part of the professional management class.
Sadly, most of them want to be journalists, influencers, go into politics or work for climate NGOs. This is why Australia is quite to want to recruit the best and the brightest from around the world, because the children of affluent elites don't want to do the highly cognitive work which actually keeps society running and creates the value to pay for government. In all likelihood, Australian living standards will surpass even those of Americans by 2050 to 2070, especially given that the woke seem to be in the process of dismantling many of America's profit centres.
Did they really expect the blue collar class to sit idly by as they saw their children's futures stripped away from them, their likely lifetime earnings halved. The Left think that minimum wages and meagre governments income supplements can solve the problem- but consider that an Aussie builder earns $35 an hour, his American equivalent earns $18 and a Brit in the same job only £13. People are liable to get quite angry as they see their children's futures slip away- they can be a little selfless for themselves, but never for their children.
Of course, there are exceptions. Ramonchu comes from a blue collar background and he is an engineer. But we are talking about exceptions not the rule. It is also true that migration does also provide opportunities for some people to move up, but mainly for girls working in offices raising their children by themselves, or for the lazier children of the privileged upper middles classes, who might otherwise have experienced a downward shift in social mobility.
But for the boys of blue collar parents it's nothing short of catastrophic. At least a literal decimation in labour participation and a halving of the future value of their labour. It's also why so many of these blue collar jobs tend to stay vacant in most Western economies- because many adopt a 'no pay, no play' attitude and find alternative employment. Working in a bar or restaurant (service) may not be particular well-paid, but at least one is not exposed to the weather for a pittance.
Hi Hans, there is a series of documentals from Oilver Stone (now he has been sidelined by the west media). These are called "interviews with Putin", he comes as a very human being, (yes Noel for the good, for the bad and for the very bad), that series is recommendable to watch. Well at a certain point, Stone asks him "do you spy russian citizens,?", "not we dont but because we are poor, if we would have the resources we will, and whoever tells you that they dont they are lying". I am not going to love him, but i do appreciate his candidness.
Now it comes the betting time :))) , so the following are my views HAHA .....
Can we, the west "win" this war? yes very easily! are we going to "win" it?, i do not thin so because wars are business, because as i mentioned to Geary and yourself once the following contracts are "carved in stone" be it for energy, for additional expenditure in weapons, for submission to these supply lines. Then there is no need to continue war, why destroy one of the best money makers that the complex has !!!yes, that money maker is Putin".
So i am ready to bet a beer and some crisp with you and Geary, that we would reach "agreement" by spring next year, and that it would be a "resentful agreement", that would require building up defenses, trade only with "friendly countries" vetted by the masters, and stop any relationship with "bad countries". By the way, USA will buy gas from Russia and would re-sell it to Europe.
The bet is for physical beer and crisps, to be paid/collected in one of the nicest spots in the Mediterranean. I must inform you, you may come and collect/pay the bet but once you see the set up you may like it. First we will settled the bets then i would invite you for some more beers for visiting me.
Hello Noel, i do agree with you, my sentence says "more", i wanted to mean that in some speeches attributed to Putin regarding Gender (that you can define your sex like you want), or other woke subjects, i am closer to these speeches (not fully but closer) than what i am to the agenda of western politicians . Putin is human animal, he is first and foremost for his situation and position of power and he has proved to be extremely heartless and merciless, so i have no love for him whatsoever, but in a very small percentage of things i am closer to him than to my governments, i am not partisan and i try to appreciate "the right & the wrong" at least from my perspective in every individual. The fact that i do not love him does not mean that i love the western politicians (lets remove their mask, they are not Therese of Calcuta), in a scale of love & hate from 0 (hate) to 10 (love), Putin would score for me minus 10, and the western politicians on average -20, and the spanish government -100.
I'm beginning to turn back to the phrase PC authoritarians. Ai Weiwei used in an interview with PBS about a year ago, and its more apt given I recent heard that the Left have apparently taken to referring to some Conservative ideas as Right Woke. So, first they deny it exists, but it's a good thing anyway, then they accuse their opponents of it.
Hey Noel, this one will make you spitting mad. Ramonchu's father was convinced by the Spanish government to invest his life savings in a solar project, then the fuckers reneged on the deal retroactively! It was a big thing in Spain- diabolical. They stole his father's life savings!
The thing is that both the Russians and the Chinese are quite gleeful about the woke- it's somewhat reminiscent of Soviet pathology or the Cultural Revolution. It's why they are making moves which they otherwise wouldn't even consider- at least not at the current juncture of the timeline.
The Chinese even have a name for it- they call it Baizuo which means white liberal, and means singularly obsessed with matters of race, gender and climate. To them it's an epithet.
It's highly likely that a lot of the weaponised internet activity coming out of China and Russia has been accelerating this tendency. Generally, their efforts are aimed destabilization, but can you think of a more ideal way this type of strategy could be aimed, than by accelerating woke, cancel culture and polarisation?
This is one thing Democrats get wrong about 'Russian Interference'. Sure, they didn't like Hilary Clinton, because they perhaps rightly saw her as a mad women liable to start World War Three. But more generally, the efforts were aimed at provoking destabilization through civil breakdown- doing things like make sure that Antifa rallies were double-booked with Proud Boys events.
And this is the other thing- although the West and the Anglosphere didn't like Trump, the non-Western world did like him. The Saudis, the Israelis, India, China, Brazil, Turkey and yes, Russia. Non-Chinese East Asia is more split, with Japan in favour of him, but South Korea more cold. In many ways, he was more reminiscent of an era when the West confined itself to narrow and rational self-interest and didn't tell the rest of the world how to run their affairs.
Hello Geary, i found a nice reading for the weekend
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/hudson-germanys-position-americas-new-world-order
take care and nice weekend
Great source. A lot of food for thought.
Hey Ramonchu. I entirely agree. If there is a silver lining, it is that Western leaders will now be forced to dispense with many of their most cherished notions, their luxury beliefs which directly harm the financial interests of ordinary people.
Have you heard of Rob Henderson? He first coined the phrase: https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-status-symbol-for-rich-americans/
In the more modern context, what are luxury beliefs- energy policy, the movement endorsing organic and veganism, unrestricted blue collar mass migration... Take your pick- none of it serves the interests of the blue collar class. And our political elites are so intent upon carving out their temporary moment in history, they altogether fail to consider the downside risks if things don't turn out exactly as they expect. Recent history is littered with such events.
As a engineer, I'm sure you appreciate probability and impact, especially given that history has proven that nuclear powers under friction most certainly do not behave rationally under friction. In most circumstances- yes, they do- but if the players in the Cuban Missile Crisis had been only slightly different, so would have been the outcome.
Ahhhhhh, as an engineer, my specialty when studying was structural engineering, with master degree in reinforced structures and , so i have my own views about how they went down the famous towers!!.
Friction is something that whether we like it or not, it is there, so we better make it to work in our favour. I am not an expert in quantum mechanics, or even physics for instance, but even if you need a critical mass, in fact on the first nuclear weapons a very important item were the mirrors, and mirror manufacturing is considered high technology stuff. Personally i do not believe there is the conditions for the "atoms impact at this moment, much less for the chain reaction", just see Mr Biden on his speeches, I saw one saluting to the back, not knowing where he was, come on this individual is for the elderly home, and the ones running the show behind him are for the business.
And by the way, yes UK elite started both WW, the 1 and the 2, and they were not just "by chance" these were carefully crafted, i can recommend a couple of books about that. I was working in Devon for a number of months some 30 years ago, I found the normal english of the small town lovely people, these were not the ones that organized the wars these were like me an anybody else "foot people of the world" actually the ones suffering. "War is a place where the young kill one another without knowing or hating each other, because of the decision of old people who know and hate each other, without killing each other".
So as i mentioned to Hans, here is the bet
"the west"would would reach "agreement" by spring next year, and that it would be a "resentful agreement", that would require building up defenses, trade only with "friendly countries" vetted by the masters, and stop any relationship with "bad countries". By the way, USA will buy gas from Russia and would re-sell it to Europe.
The bet is for physical beer and crisps, to be paid/collected in one of the nicest spots in the Mediterranean. I must inform you, you may come and collect/pay the bet but once you see the set up you may like it. First we will settled the bets then i would invite you for some more beers for visiting me.
take care and nice weekend
I'm with Noel. We can invent whatever we want when talking about what might have been, but it seems to me that Putin wants his empire back and that starts with Ukraine and he was going to invade no matter what. This is true irrespective of whatever critiques one might have of 'us' or the Americans or NATO or whoever.
Sure, he has been unequivocal in his recent admissions. However, regardless of his grandiosity, pragmatic limitations will now limit his ambitions. That is, if we manage to avert the risk of Global Thermonuclear War.
War and sanctions; tax unequally and spend ever more into debt; propaganda; totalitarianism/authoritarianism; socialism/fascism/crony capitalism; cages for those who don't toe the line. What's not to trust about people who spend so much money to "serve" others by force?
'Never let a good crisis go to waste'- a reasonable comment made by a great man in a difficult time, but since enlisted into the service of entire legions of political Machiavellians who read Saul Alinsky at University and thought the exercise of political force and coercion in service of a supposedly noble cause was a good idea.
It rather simplifies and distorts things, doesn't it. I think Jeremy Corbyn would have been proud of that one. The alternatives to the West don't exactly fill me with joy.
I completely agree, and it was by no means my intention to channel Jeremy Corbyn. However, the West needs to rapidly get itself out of the habit of making unforced errors. See my reply to Ben above. One can be both completely against Putin and highly critical of the West's failures. They have been replete- not in supporting Ukraine, but from the nineties onwards.
In particular, we never should have forced nuclear disarmament, given that our guarantees could never really be underwritten, especially given the changing occupants in the Great Offices of State in most countries.
'The alternatives to the West don't exactly fill me with joy.'- nor me. But it is worth noting that our own most cherished notions are under threat. As Ai Weiwei recently revealed, just under a year ago to PBS, it was not Trump's authoritarianism which reminded him most of Chinese state power, but the chilling reach of PC authoritarians intent upon policing speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjYjhxGJ-sI&t=3s
Anyway, it wasn't my goal to appear at all supportive of Putin's goals, but rather to draw attention to the complete failings of the West. We make to much of Neville Chamberlain's failing. It is worth noting that if Hitler had has his way in receiving the war he wanted over Czechoslovakia, he would have faced a far less prepared and ill-equipped Britain, particularly in the air. Most historians focus upon the betrayal by the West. What they miss is the entirely plausible counterfactual in which Hitler delivered an early exit to both France and Britain from the conflict. Both militaries were statically intent upon defensive war in the West, only prepared for a rerun of the Great War.
Regardless of the fact that Neville Chamberlain consigned himself to the wrong side of history, he did at least buy time for Churchill to begin to gather both popular support and military preparedness. Speaking purely militarily, history favoured the British the longer the war could be forestalled.