Dean
5d ago
Ah, but we are! We are, if anything, over-prioritizing them. And not understanding that is why the advisor is incompetent, and should be removed from the deliberations immediately.
If the incoming missiles are a nuclear decapitation strike, the American (or French, or Russian) people are already dead to nuclear genocide, because that is the level of mass nuclear strike that is needed to prevent a counter-MAD reaction by us. The people are doomed regardless, and the advisor's proposal will not help them. This is a consequence of the advisor posing his option after the mass missiles are already flying, where we are in a nuclear response paradigm, and not before, when nuclear pre-emption theory might have mitigated damage.
If the incoming missiles are not a nuclear decapitation strike, then the advisor's proposal will harm the nation's people for the foreseeable future due to the international geopolitical consequences of conducting one's own nuclear genocide on others. If we didn't care about that and were willing to conduct nuclear genocide we would be doing so on our own terms under more favorable conditions before, or later, but not during a context where we will bear maximum and most obvious culpability for irrationally choosing nuclear escalation to the conflict. Arbitrarily doing so in response to yet another conventional strike wave in a war of years of nuclear-capable missile exchanges only heightens the damage, by demonstrating the [insert your state here] as irrational nuclear irrational.
More to the point, if the incoming missiles are not a nuclear decapitation strike, but the enemy actually has the ability to, then retaliating in the advisor's form would result in the [insert your nation's people here] getting nuked, because you provided the nuclear provocation first. That this is happening in the context of a multi-year conventional war with no history of nuclear use / intent / capacity even to use nuclear weapons in the first place, and decades of precedent on the opposing sides own willignness to use nuclear weapons.
The advisor is not providing a recommendation for mitigating the damage of a nuclear exchange, but one that will maximize the damage to the nation's people of a nuclear conflict.
The fact that this is all a consequence of the advisor forgetting the difference between nuclear pre-emption and nuclear response paradigms when his job is supposed to be knowing the difference is why he is out of a job for not paying attention.
He should probably have at least read up on the French nuclear doctrine history instead, which is far more open about the use of a limited pre-emptive nuclear demonstration target to demonstrate awareness, intent, and readiness for further escalation.
How was world conquest supposed to be achieved by occupying Korea?
If world conquest would not be achieved by invading Korea, then not achieving it is not an actual objective of the invasion of Korea. Maybe, in the future, it could matter for a different / later conflict, in which case Hideyoshi indisputably failed that broader conflict, but that conflict is not the conflict for the Korean peninsula.
By contrast,
When Russia invaded Ukraine, it did set out with clear goals on the scope of its intended Ukraine results at the time.
For example, we know they sincerely considered taking Kyiv a capital as a war goal in the opening days of the war not only because they indicated regime change as a goal (the de-nazification line, the flying of Yanukovych to Belarus in the early days to stage with the probable expectation of imposing him as a figurehead of a new government), but because early Russians were found with parade gear and a Russian riot police convoy memorably drove past the front lines into Kyiv. This would make no sense in the 'it's a feint' cope argument from 2022, but is entirely consistent if your stated goal of replacing the current government is an actual goal.
We also know because the Russians accidentally auto-published post-victory propaganda editorials that reflected the intended narratives and framings they intended. Here is a reddit post of a full machine translation. RIA is a Russian domestic news agency, with this message being intended for the Russian audience what this victory means for Russia.
These sort of 'what victory means to us' are propaganda, but propaganda useful for identifying what was to be considered a Russian success to the Russian audience. Part of why they are so useful is precisely because only the strategic-level planners knew enough ahead of time to write and plan the release, and thus give insights into the mindset of what strategic-level planners wanted to convey.
Noting that this was published under the expectation that overall victory was achieved by that non-decisive fighting remained, relevant points of 'did this war succeed in its goals' include-
Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome. Yes, at a great cost, yes, through the tragic events of a virtual civil war, because now brothers, separated by belonging to the Russian and Ukrainian armies, are still shooting at each other, but there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia.
Will the post-war Ukraine be anti-Russia?
If yes, war goal failed.
Vladimir Putin has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility by deciding not to leave the solution of the Ukrainian question to future generations. After all, the need to solve it would always remain the main problem for Russia - for two key reasons. And the issue of national security, that is, the creation of anti-Russia from Ukraine and an outpost for the West to put pressure on us, is only the second most important among them.
Will the post-war situation leave the Ukraine issue as an issue for the next generation to deal with, and leave a anti-Russian/pro-Western Ukraine?
If yes to both, two war goals failed.
The first would always be the complex of a divided people, the complex of national humiliation - when the Russian house first lost part of its foundation (Kiev), and then was forced to come to terms with the existence of two states, not one, but two peoples. That is, either to abandon their history, agreeing with the crazy versions that "only Ukraine is the real Russia," or to gnash one's teeth helplessly, remembering the times when "we lost Ukraine." Returning Ukraine, that is, turning it back to Russia, would be more and more difficult with every decade - recoding, de-Russification of Russians and inciting Ukrainian Little Russians against Russians would gain momentum. And in the event of the consolidation of the full geopolitical and military control of the West over Ukraine, its return to Russia would become completely impossible - it would have to fight for it with the Atlantic bloc.
Will the post-war situation in Ukraine mean Kiev is returned to the Russian house? If no, war goal failed.
Will the post-war situation in Ukraine mean that a following fight will mean having to fight with 'the Atlantic block' in the next round? If yes, war goal failed.
Now this problem is gone - Ukraine has returned to Russia. This does not mean that its statehood will be liquidated, but it will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state of part of the Russian world. Within what boundaries, in what form will the alliance with Russia be consolidated (through the CSTO and the Eurasian Union or the Union State of Russia and Belarus)? This will be decided after the end is put in the history of Ukraine as anti-Russia. In any case, the period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end.
Will the war end with Ukraine in some form of Russian alliance-consolidation (CSTO, Eurasian Union, Union State, etc.)?
If not, war goal failed.
And here begins the second dimension of the coming new era - it concerns Russia's relations with the West. Not even Russia, but the Russian world, that is, three states, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, acting in geopolitical terms as a single whole. These relations have entered a new stage - the West sees the return of Russia to its historical borders in Europe. And he is loudly indignant at this, although in the depths of his soul he must admit to himself that it could not be otherwise.
Will post-war Ukraine act as a geopolitical whole with Russia?
If not, war goal failed.
Did anyone in the old European capitals, in Paris and Berlin, seriously believe that Moscow would give up Kyiv? That the Russians will forever be a divided people? And at the same time when Europe is uniting, when the German and French elites are trying to seize control of European integration from the Anglo-Saxons and assemble a united Europe? Forgetting that the unification of Europe became possible only thanks to the unification of Germany, which took place according to the good Russian (albeit not very smart) will. To swipe after that also on Russian lands is not even the height of ingratitude, but of geopolitical stupidity. The West as a whole, and even more so Europe in particular, did not have the strength to keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence, and even more so to take Ukraine for itself. In order not to understand this, one had to be just geopolitical fools.
Did Russia give up Kyiv?
If yes, war goal failed.
(I will break flow to note here that this refrain of Kyiv is part of the very explicit acknowledgement that Russian war aims were well beyond the eastern most Russian-speaking provinces. There is no 'we only wanted the Russia-speaking bits.')
More precisely, there was only one option: to bet on the further collapse of Russia, that is, the Russian Federation. But the fact that it did not work should have been clear twenty years ago. And already fifteen years ago, after Putin's Munich speech, even the deaf could hear - Russia is returning.
Will this war end with Russia returning as a great power?
If not, war goal failed.
And so on. Most of the article then begins pontificating on geopolitics, where you get more into bad analysis than actual objectives, but what the Russian perspective of Russian victory to a Russian audience is already established enough for the point.
What's bizarre to me is that Russia is clearly winning the war,
I would disagree. Russia is clearly losing the war, not least because they already defined what victory looks like, and it's not like circa 2025.
Saying Russia is winning the war requires ignoring the vast majority of the context, and claimed reasons, for why Russia started the war in the first place. It requires forgetting what they themselves claimed was the impact and implications of victory as they intended it to be when they thought they were in reach of their earliest intentions. It requires forgetting the pre-war demands, the pre-war justifications for what the war would achieve, and what the war was supposed to result in.
Russia is not winning the war because it is taking and may keep territory in the Donbas, it is losing the war because Russia itself framed the war not as a conflict between itself and Ukraine, but between the Russian world and the west. Instead of a campaign to unify of the Russian peoples, a gain of the Donbas is the formalized loss of the greater Ukraine in a civil war of the Russian peoples that will cost the Russian nation blood and treasure for decades and centuries to come. Millions of Russian-worlders have died, fled, or defected to the adversaries that the war was meant to improve the Russian position against. In so much that NATO is worse off in 2024 than 2022, it's because of reasons other than Ukraine, and in many respects NATO is considerably stronger and more threatening than before.
To quote a wit, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was worse than a crime, it was a mistake. One does not clearly win a mistake.
Edit
To elaborate by copy-pasting a response lower down up here-
When Russia invaded Ukraine, it did set out with clear goals on the scope of its intended Ukraine results at the time.
For example, we know they sincerely considered taking Kyiv a capital as a war goal in the opening days of the war not only because they indicated regime change as a goal (the de-nazification line, the flying of Yanukovych to Belarus in the early days to stage with the probable expectation of imposing him as a figurehead of a new government), but because early Russians were found with parade gear and a Russian riot police convoy memorably drove past the front lines into Kyiv. This would make no sense in the 'it's a feint' cope argument from 2022, but is entirely consistent if your stated goal of replacing the current government is an actual goal.
We also know because the Russians accidentally auto-published pre-written post-victory propaganda editorials that reflected the intended narratives and framings they intended. Here is a reddit post of a full machine translation. RIA is a Russian domestic news agency, with this message being intended for the Russian audience what this victory means for Russia.
These sort of 'what victory means to us' are propaganda, but propaganda useful for identifying what was to be considered a Russian success to the Russian audience. Part of why they are so useful is precisely because only the strategic-level planners knew enough ahead of time to write and plan the release, and thus give insights into the mindset of what Russian leaders wanted to convey as why the victory was a glorious success. These elements of success, in turn, are goals- goals the war is meant to change versus no war.
Noting that this was published under the expectation that overall victory was achieved by that non-decisive fighting remained, relevant points of 'did this war succeed in its goals' include-
Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome. Yes, at a great cost, yes, through the tragic events of a virtual civil war, because now brothers, separated by belonging to the Russian and Ukrainian armies, are still shooting at each other, but there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia.
Will the post-war Ukraine be anti-Russia?
If yes, war goal failed.
Vladimir Putin has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility by deciding not to leave the solution of the Ukrainian question to future generations. After all, the need to solve it would always remain the main problem for Russia - for two key reasons. And the issue of national security, that is, the creation of anti-Russia from Ukraine and an outpost for the West to put pressure on us, is only the second most important among them.
Will the post-war situation leave the Ukraine issue as an issue for the next generation to deal with, and leave a anti-Russian/pro-Western Ukraine?
If yes to both, two war goals failed.
The first would always be the complex of a divided people, the complex of national humiliation - when the Russian house first lost part of its foundation (Kiev), and then was forced to come to terms with the existence of two states, not one, but two peoples. That is, either to abandon their history, agreeing with the crazy versions that "only Ukraine is the real Russia," or to gnash one's teeth helplessly, remembering the times when "we lost Ukraine." Returning Ukraine, that is, turning it back to Russia, would be more and more difficult with every decade - recoding, de-Russification of Russians and inciting Ukrainian Little Russians against Russians would gain momentum. And in the event of the consolidation of the full geopolitical and military control of the West over Ukraine, its return to Russia would become completely impossible - it would have to fight for it with the Atlantic bloc.
Will the post-war situation in Ukraine mean Kiev is returned to the Russian house? If no, war goal failed.
Will the post-war situation in Ukraine mean that a following fight will mean having to fight with 'the Atlantic block' in the next round? If yes, war goal failed.
Now this problem is gone - Ukraine has returned to Russia. This does not mean that its statehood will be liquidated, but it will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state of part of the Russian world. Within what boundaries, in what form will the alliance with Russia be consolidated (through the CSTO and the Eurasian Union or the Union State of Russia and Belarus)? This will be decided after the end is put in the history of Ukraine as anti-Russia. In any case, the period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end.
Will the war end with Ukraine in some form of Russian alliance-consolidation (CSTO, Eurasian Union, Union State, etc.)?
If not, war goal failed.
And here begins the second dimension of the coming new era - it concerns Russia's relations with the West. Not even Russia, but the Russian world, that is, three states, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, acting in geopolitical terms as a single whole. These relations have entered a new stage - the West sees the return of Russia to its historical borders in Europe. And he is loudly indignant at this, although in the depths of his soul he must admit to himself that it could not be otherwise.
Will post-war Ukraine act as a geopolitical whole with Russia?
If not, war goal failed.
Did anyone in the old European capitals, in Paris and Berlin, seriously believe that Moscow would give up Kyiv? That the Russians will forever be a divided people? And at the same time when Europe is uniting, when the German and French elites are trying to seize control of European integration from the Anglo-Saxons and assemble a united Europe? Forgetting that the unification of Europe became possible only thanks to the unification of Germany, which took place according to the good Russian (albeit not very smart) will. To swipe after that also on Russian lands is not even the height of ingratitude, but of geopolitical stupidity. The West as a whole, and even more so Europe in particular, did not have the strength to keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence, and even more so to take Ukraine for itself. In order not to understand this, one had to be just geopolitical fools.
Did Russia give up Kyiv?
If yes, war goal failed.
(I will break flow to note here that this refrain of Kyiv is part of the very explicit acknowledgement that Russian war aims were well beyond the eastern most Russian-speaking provinces. There was no 'we only wanted the Russia-speaking bits,' which has become a more modern revisionism of downplaying Russian failures by de-scoping the initial claims.)
More precisely, there was only one option: to bet on the further collapse of Russia, that is, the Russian Federation. But the fact that it did not work should have been clear twenty years ago. And already fifteen years ago, after Putin's Munich speech, even the deaf could hear - Russia is returning.
Will this war end with Russia returning as a great power?
If not, war goal failed.
And so on. Most of the article then begins pontificating on geopolitics, where you get more into bad analysis than actual objectives, but what the Russian perspective of Russian victory to a Russian audience is already established enough for the point.
Do you retaliate with the full strength of your nuclear arsenal, do you launch a conventional attack, what do you do?
You eject the advisor who raised the dilemma for the same reason you would if they raised the fear of waking Godzilla: if you are in a decision to launch nuclear missiles, you want serious people asking serious questions.
If you are right to fire him you've just avoided a catastrophic nuclear policy failure that would lose your nation it's global position as a credible power for generations. Assuming a mass nuclear strike at odds with all intelligence, precedent, and political contexts of the supposed aggressor and backer states is the mark of an incompetent who should not be in the halls of power. You will have done your nation a service.
If he was right and the incoming missiles are nuclear missiles planning a preemptive nuclear holocaust, then your country is already doomed to lose its global position as a credible power regardless because there is currently a mass nuclear holocaust in progress and nothing you can do would stop it. You won't feel bad, or anything, for long, and he'll be dead too soon to be vindicated. The fact that the fate of the nation is the same whatever option he offered the atomic underscore to the point that it wasn't a good policy question.
Regardless of which, the second-strike nuclear capability is already underway and ready to ruin the lives of those who were so irrational that nuclear deterrence doctrine wouldn't work against them anyway, so even if you are about to be nuclear ash you can rest easy (or at least with a bit of spite).
Dean
5d ago
Spaniel is good, and you're accurately reflecting much of what he's said over the last months. Kudos for keeping attuned!
Spaniel's work does have a weakness, though, in that he approaches his work (videos and books) from a more game-theory/'lines on maps' perspective, of more direct actor cost-benefits, and doesn't really touch on coalition management. That's not to say he doesn't think of it- he may leave it out for simplicity's sake- but he doesn't necessarily show that he thinks of it either.
This mattes because Spaniel often frames things like the Kursk offensive in terms of what Ukraine is trying to do towards Russia (for peace negotiations), as opposed to something Ukraine was doing towards it's backers (trying to change the risk calculus for operations on Russian territory). Similarly, he's more inclined to frame western support dynamics in terms of Russian negotiation calclulus, as opposed to 'what keeps the western coalition together.'
Which is a underrated paradigm for analyzing the conflict, because from my perspective it seems obvious that the Biden administration made a very deliberate and explicit priority of keeping the Western coalition together, even when it could have unilaterally rushed various things to the front under Presidential authority, in part for just the sort of dynamic we're seeing emerge with Trump: a coalition that was larger and more than the US, which could (potentially) make do without the US being the dominant lead party, and setting conditions for the Germans / Europeans to take a lead if the US was unable to.
A significant step to that occurred last week, with the German government triggering a new election and an attempt to break the German debt break. This is almost certainly was decided as a consequence of Trump winning, so that the German government- depending on how it reforms next- can try to start assuming debts needed to power a major European increase in aid and orders for Ukraine.
Dean
5d ago
I agree with your conclusions, but disagree with your approach on 'what did they actually say' as a defense against Russian red liens threats. That's providing an overly strict definition of 'red lines' which assumes Russia actually provides clear coherent red lines and does so specifically via Putin, which isn't really how Russia operates.
Russia routinely provides a variety of framings / warnings / threats by different actors within the government. None of these have any actual binding power- Putin's own flip-flops/lies/whatevers have a long story, but the same applies across the foreign ministry, the military, and any other communication channel you like. None of these are absolutely authoritative, and any of these warnings may be ignored, or dismissed, or forgotten as useful.
What Russia does is more of retroactively justify an action based on some previous claim of a red line. There's always a 'our previous warning was ignored' warning to find, even as when Russia is making these warnings it uses them in a more aggressive-bounding function (in the sense of claiming more expansive red lines than one actually has, so that you can get more concessions without making a direct threat).
So when you say something like this-
So (at least here) he actually did not threaten nuclear war in the event of ATACMS strikes. He reminded everyone of Russia's nuclear doctrine. Which – newsflash! – is the same as or arguably more restrictive than US nuclear doctrine in this regard (the United States, unlike some nations, does not have preconditions on nuclear use.)
-this is wrong, because reminding everyone of Russia's nuclear doctrine is how Russia regularly makes threats, because Russia's nuclear doctrine is deliberately vague enough to create space to justify a response. That Russia routinely does not carry through with those justifications is irrelevant to the claim that it's not a threat, because if Russia were to carry through, then Russia would point to something like-
"Russia will also consider the possibility of using nuclear weapons when receiving reliable information about a massive launch of means of aerospace attack and their crossing of our state border."
He added: "This includes strategic and tactical aircraft, as well as cruise missiles and drones, hypersonic and other delivery vehicles. Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in case of aggression, including if the enemy using conventional weapons poses a critical threat."
-as the proof that it warned (i.e. threatened) beforehand.
In other words, it's a motte-and-bailey. It's a threat until it's challenged and retreats to the position of not being a threat, unless there's a counter-attack afterwards in which case it totally was a threat.
Dean
5d ago
Can anyone steel man Biden's actions here?
General deterrence-escalation management theory, pattern recognition, coalition management, and/or a kind gift to Trump to boost Trump's chances.
Deterrence of conventional escalation relies on the point that you may not be able to literally prevent another party from taking an action, but you can make the costs via retaliation high enough that it's not worth it. However, since the other side can retaliate against the retaliation, actual war-costs are generally not present (hence the pattern of Russian red lines). The main factors of retaliation in a democratic-state level is to take retaliation that will threaten, if not the actual existence of the government, it's survival to the next election.
Lame duck governments, by their nature, cannot be deterred in this way.
This changes the cost-benefit calculus of a Putin retaliation. No matter what he does, the Biden administration will be gone in about two months. If he retaliates to a 'sufficient' level to match his previously claimed red lines, doing so risks sabotaging whatever chances of a ceasefire deal he wants with Trump by invoking Trump against him. As Putin's macro-economic strategy for the war for the last years has clearly been to front-load the war economy on the expectation of achieving a close in the next two years or so, that's not a risk Putin will credibly take over a marginal increase to Russian rear area losses.
Pattern recognition comes from the point that the risk of Biden doing so is low based on the normal pattern of Russian reactions to claimed red lines of this manner. No one actually believes Russia's nuclear saber ratling about recently lowering the nuclear threshold to make this a nuclear escalation risk, because the Russian nuclear decision has never been deterrent on the doctrine, but Putin, and if he wanted to do a nuclear response the claimed thresholds were met years ago. As the Russians have and will continue to escalate in various ways regardless (including the new import of North Korean troops), this is just a general pattern of how the coalition has been increasing support for Ukraine over time over Russian objections.
The coalition management angle here is that Biden has probably been willing to support loosening the restrictions for awhile, but was withholding for election purposes. Returning to deterrence, the nature of a deterrence threat to electoral stability is that Russia might have ways to make the election decisively worse if Biden acted before, but this threat loses it's relevance after the election occurs. As such, holding the range limit was a matter of the pro-Ukraine coalition stability (for US electoral purposes this time, but other country considerations before such as German tanks), but releasing range now is also a matter of coalition stability. By releasing the conditions now, Biden is creating precedent that Trump cannot block or revoke, while enabling the Europeans to likewise authorize and release their own long-range munitions at their rate of production (and expanding production, as European arms expansion programs are expected to start taking effect next year).
Finally, the gift to Trump is that this assists Trump's leverage in whatever approach Trump makes with Putin next year.
The crux of the 'Trump plan', which it bears repeating isn't actually a plan Trump made or said he would use, is that Trump would make a conditional threat to Putin: accept Western-offered terms, or see an increase in support to Ukraine.
What releasing the range limitation does is provide a relative preview over the next months of what that support can imply. This means theater-level strikes into Russian airfields where the Russian airforce (especially glide-bomb force) has sat out the war out of range of Ukrainian capabilities, rear-area supply depots, and otherwise increasing the burden on Russia's own stretched air network, and so on. As western- including European and American- arms production investments are expected to started coming online next year, and with it even more long-range weapons, this release bolsters the credibility of what that future armament potential means as a reason for Putin to move closer to an acceptable peace terms.
As such, Biden's release of the range limitations is something the pro-peace audience may want to think him for.
The war is coming to a close. Trump's win gives him the political capital to go to the negotiating table and bring this ugly chapter of European history to a close. It will probably result in Russia gaining some of the Russian speaking territories of Ukraine. There's not much we can do about that unless we want to spend a few hundred thousand more lives.
There's not much 'you' can do if you aren't willing to spend a few hundred thousand more live either, besides assume that the Ukrainians will continue fighting without American support.
Setting aside that Trump has not claimed he would compel the Ukrainians to accept a Russian-acceptable deal, nor was that a fair characterization of the Trump-advisor plan that was claimed to offer that during the election season, Trump doesn't actually have the political capital to do so either. Trump's election gives him as much political capital as his narrow Republican majority cares to back him with, and no further. The Ukraine war is not a priority to Republican majority, let alone compelling an end to it, and Trump attempting to do so is an easy way to break his 2-year trifecta with a party member revolt for... a position he hasn't taken.
And even if Trump wants to, his American political capital doesn't translate into political capital to compel the Europeans to contribute to the concessions Russia has demanded for ending this round of the Ukraine War, nor can he compel them to stop aiding Ukraine, nor does he have the poltiical capital to make the Ukrainian government accept Russian terms, nor does he have the political capital to make the Ukrainians stop fighting.
What Trump can do is make a not-very-credible threat that he will withhold all aid and watch the Ukrainians die even if they die by the hundreds of thousands... but the only way to make that sort of threat credible if the Ukrainians fight on is to stand by while hundreds thousands more lives end.
You may think that shouldn't happen, that there's no reason for that to happen, that it would be a bad idea for the Ukrainians to take a path for that to happen... but that can very well happen regardless of what you think, because you are not the ones who can make that decision. No American is.
At which point, you are just as well off asking what to do on the assumption that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians will die regardless. Even if 'we' do nothing, we would still be spending hundreds of thousands of lives to do nothing.
Ideally, Biden would make peace now. It's his last chance to do something good for the world. A Nobel Peace Prize would put a positive sheen on an otherwise terrible Presidency.
Biden doesn't have the ability to make peace now, because Biden is not, and Americans are not, the hyperagent of the Ukraine War.
The Americans are not able to compel Putin to accept a deal, or to make the Europeans offer concessions so that Putin would take a deal now rather than think he could get a better deal from Trump later.
This pointless escalation does nothing to help Ukraine achieve victory.
Why not, besides your own particular definition of victory?
If one defines victory as Ukraine gaining credible Western security guarantees short of NATO membership that convince Ukraine to accept a Russian demand for no-NATO membership, then demonstrating the effectiveness of previously off-limits capabilities may assuage Ukrainian concerns of post-conflict western support.
If one defines a victory as the Americans negotiating near-term cease fire under Trump, this directly enables Trump to present maximum coercion to get Putin to agree to drop various demands and accept a ceasefire.
If one defines a European victory as further attriting the Russian economic damage of the war to delay by years the functional reconstruction / rebalancing of the Russian military and civil-economy, and thus giving Europe and Ukraine more time to prepare for the next war without American support, this directly enables further attrition of Russian strategic assets whose replacement may add to that time.
There are many theories of victory which this easily supports, regardless of whether you think it's a good idea or not.
You're right that Russia is not about to start nuking cities. But there are lots of things that they can do to be annoying, such as restricting exports of key materials, cutting underseas cables, or even blowing up GPS satellites.
And you believe those are more credible or meaningful threats to refrain from support because...?
You are proposing, variously, a non-threat of a fungible good, an already occurring trend, and an expansion into direct conflict when the purpose of Russian deterence strategy has been to prevent direct conflict with the US.
That's an interesting thing to be deterred by, but not a particularly compelling one.
Is Biden hoping to bait Putin into an escalation that Trump can't ignore, thereby preventing him from ending the war. If so, this seems evil, there's no other way to put it.
That is how things seem if you assume the evil conclusions of your outgroup.
Dean
5d ago
It's less a miracle and more of a consequence of how the cross-border dynamic of human smuggling works. In short, the cartels have strong incentives to not only not go along with it, but to punish defectors (other cartels who might), and this lack of reliability and secrecy renders it not particularly feasible for state actors.
The cartels have been competing with the US government and mexican authorities for a long time, but part of that is also because they selective cooperate to take down rivals / settle feuds / use the MEX/US authorities to go after their business rivals rather than themselves. Since the drug business is profit-motivated, unnecessary conflict with the US authorities is generally avoided up to a point. This is one of the reasons that the Mexican drug wars, while bloody in absolute terms, have been relatively low-collateral damage to American citizens- if you do something high profile against the US, not only have you put a target on your back from increased US attention, but your competitors have a prime opportunity to bring you low. This is how you get Mexican cartels killing their own as a sort of apology for getting Americans killed. This is without going into how the drug cartels themselves are penetrated by Mexican / American law enforcement agencies.
Why this matters for the state-terrorism angle is that other countries know this, not least because back in 2011 an Iranian attempt to use Mexican cartel hitmen to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the US made the minor oops of hiring an FBI informant as the assassin.
Further, state terrorism is actually a pretty poor strategy for direct competition because if you were willing to launch the equivalent of a missile strike in the first place (several bombs on objectives), you'd just use missiles in the first place (which countries like Iran and Russia have). The advantage of terrorism isn't the damage, but the non-attribution... but if you're going to be attributed anyways (say because you take credit, or because you are compromised by untrustworthy Mexican cartels you relied upon to get across the border who are belatedly trying to cover their own ass), you're not any less vulnerable to a retaliatory missile strike than if you did something more overt.
Terrorism / bombings work in an insurgency context because of the ability to hide within the population which negates the ability / wisdom of retaliation. However, a cross-border migration attack wouldn't be able to hide amongst the American side or the Mexican cartels.
There are ways this could change- and it's a policy argument against trying to declare mexican cartels as terrorist organizations (as then they'd have less to lose from working with actual terrorists)- but without credible plausibility a terror-bombing is just a way to get into a direct military conflict with a country who the perpetrators primary national security strategies are about not coming into direct conflict with.
I know what you mean.
I actually had a bit of a falling-off moment around Elden Ring (partly due to it, partly due to earlier titles) where I lost interest in more narrative-driven video games because it became increasingly obviously a lot of people (but felt like an increasing number of people) didn't 'get it' and weren't paying attention to the actual plot or themes as much as treating the video games as an extension of their own politics.
An example was the strategy game Fire Emblem: Three Houses where people unironically didn't realize that the villain route of siding with a self-styled meritocrat was undercutting not only the themes of the game, but her own themes. There was just taking-at-face without realizing the irony that the self-styled 'revolutionary' was not only a revaunchist conqueror, but she was self-styled meritocrat who was stealing credit for other people's work, that she entrenched the previous nobility via her own nepotistic patronage and retention of her nobility friend group without changing the lots of the lower-class classmates, and that hers was the one ending that didn't end with some variation of 'and they were remembered as succeeding,' but instead 'and maybe she could start trying to be a reformer'... despite not having actually had a plan for any post-conquest education system or other meaningful government policy.
And also that her introductory scene is her literally running from the consequence of her own actions backfiring, resulting in her more or less falling for a stranger who saves her, i.e. one of the least 'this is a competent and mature women' introductions possible.
But hey, she had nice legs and was uwu for the player character.
(For Elden Ring, it was the general 'Marika was rebelling against the Greater Will!' fan movement in general. Because... clearly she was a Jesus allegory because she was crucified. It hurt to engage with that.)
Dean
6d ago
The Tumblr person for EldenRing is @yournextflame.
I don't remember if they had anything about the Ring Cycle in their pieces- that was me just being more familiar with the director and the material- but they have some great cross-cultural insight into the Japanese language/connotation/cultural context that doesn't always translate to the English fandom.
Dean
7d ago
Obviously so, yes, but by posing a question anyways I was able to get some adults to nerd out about a children's book series. ;-)
Dean
7d ago
But here in America, we're rarely exposed to the British working class.
Out of curiosity, what did Harry Potter qualify as?
Dean
12d ago
Is there a continental-scale societal category that historically does not have high rates of mass violence?
Just to look briefly at Europe- football hooliganism, muslim riots, public-targetted terrorism, Russian border wars, Paris lighting itself on fire every presidency or so...
Dean
12d ago
Those could literally all be true without caveat, and it wouldn't matter in the budgeting sense since those may seem like big numbers in absolute terms but are proportionally very small compared to entitlement spending. It doesn't matter of bridges 100x or even 1000x more than they 'should' if the budget is spending thousands times more on entitlement spending than on bridges.
To wit- according to the Biden administration earlier this year, the US has $40 billion allocated to spend over 5 years on bridges. By contrast, the combined Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare spending in 2024 is $1.67 trillion, and expected to rise to 3.1 trillion by 2033.
Put another way- 5 years of all bridge spending is less than 3% of one year's medical spending, and shrinking. You could make that $40 billion 10x, 100x, or even 1000x more efficient, but no matter how efficient you spend 40 billion it's a drop in the entitlement spending. Sure, you could argue that there are savings to be made there... but then you're not going into the discretionary budget administration, you're going to the automatic entitlement spending, which goes to the laws rather than the executive administration thereof.
Part of that's just baked into demographic politics.
When the Americans legislated Social Security in 1935, FDR signed a law that authorized payments for those 65 or older when the average American lifespan in 1935 was... 61 for men and 65 for women, according to a quick google search.
Today, social security can begin between ages 62 and 70 depending on your preference of payout amount... when the average American lifespan is about 75 for men, and 80 for women.
It fundamentally doesn't matter in a budgeting sense how efficient you are at executing the discretionary programs if the entitlements previous created on the assumption that less than half of people would live long enough to see them are instead expecting to pay for more than a decade. When you start adding in medical spending, which costs increasing with age, you're adding more. This is an issue of law and what the legislators deem is the appropriate entitlement, not administration of that amount. No matter how much you save on the executive side- and it can be very good to have more efficiency there!- it's not the central or determinative issue.
The best example is the cult of the "martyr" (i.e. suicide terrorist) among Salafi Jihadis in most places, but not in Saudi Arabia or Taliban-ruled Afghanistan where Salafism is not an oppositional culture.
Eh. The Taliban made plentiful use of suicide bombers, and the Saudi extremist wahhabism had plenty of 'die for the cause and call them martyr' extremists over the last two decades. You saw more suicide bombers in conflict zones because conflict zones are where you get more desperate / angry / 'I don't care if I die / what do I have to live for' types.
What changed the cultural value of suicide bombers was when suicide bombers started getting associated with targeting muslims as opposed to Jews / Christians / outsiders. I think it was around 2009 round abouts, but even before the rise of ISIS or the Arab Spring there were surveys noting that regional support for suicide bombers as a valid form of resistance was dropping. When suicide bombings transitioned from more associated with the anti-israeli intifada and more associated with civil wars and targetting other muslims, it became less heroic and more problematic.
Dean
12d ago
But maybe it takes a chainsaw-wielding maniac to get the job done. How is Milei doing, by the way?
Reasonably well, but for reasons that are generally non-transferable to Trump. Milei's success / continued political survival was in large part because the economic issue of government bloat / inflation were central to his election. He was able to win election and maintain support despite warning upfront that things would get worse before they get better because he was very clear there would be pain, and the voting public accepted the legitimacy of that in order to address a broadly recognized problem that had decades of buildup.
The Trump context is considerably different. Trump beat Biden, and the electoral college makes it more decisive than the vote difference otherwise would, but Trump ran on a generalized vibe rather than an explicit and widely accepted problem. Particularly since US problems aren't the same sort of 'within the Executive sphere' as Milei faced. Milei had to deal with executive patronage networks / make jobs / inflationary policies, but the US challenge on the budgeting sense is the automatic entitlement spending, not the bureaucracy administering it. The sort of cuts to be needed would need to be legislative, and the sort of sphere that Trump has tended not to challenge.
This will be interesting, in the sense of interesting times, but the chainsaw will probably go after the wrong institutions to meet it's stated goals (but which probably will meet less-stated goals).
Dean
12d ago
If the image that Trump supporters (and opponents) have constructed in their heads of Trump that presents some sort of a major different to the general thrust of postwar American foreign policy differs from reality... well, that can't be helped. In general, foreign policy tends to the be one thing where political changes don't usually lead to large differences in course.
This, mostly. Don't forget that John Bolton was Trump's National Security Advisor for a time, which is a position of significant influence (but, critically, not determinative).
Trump isn't an isolationist, nor is he a neocon. He's more than willing to have hardliners on the staff, but he will ignore them as much as he ignores that anti-hardliners, which is to say he'll pick whoever's proposal he likes most in the context. Trump isn't ideological enough to be consistent, and while he's willing to go with things that are thought of as 'hardline' (such as the Soleimani killing), he's also been willing to go along with things considered 'weak' (such as the meeting with North Korea's Kim).
Part of Trump's style / implicit offer to his cabinet and significant appointments last time is that he's willing to appoint people whose ambitions / desires are outside the Overton window of the department they oversee, as long as they stand by him / don't start to try and spat with him / his priorities. Trump's appointments, however, are not themselves an endorsement / indication of top-level support for their preferences (i.e. Trump isn't going to fight their bureaucratic battles for them).
What that means is that Rubio and Trump probably have some identified overlapping interests that Rubio wants to do but the current state department momentum isn't. Rubio being a hawk doesn't disqualify him to Trump, because Trump isn't going to defer to Rubio as much as let Rubio do his own thing until Rubio gets involved in a fight with Trump.
Dean
13d ago
And I approve! It was meant to be a joke, but I realize now it might have seemed a bit mean-spirited, which I apologize for.
It's actually as short as it is because I cut off a bit of a nerd spiel. One of my favored commentators for analyzing video games (specifically Elden Ring) was- for some unfathomable reason- only posting on Tumblr. It was just that level of 'niche access' and 'you have to really be dedicated to this topic' that I now associated with Tumblr, for its highs and its lows.
Dean
13d ago
If those people are able to buy houses in Eugene, they are within the system. It's still just demand.
Now, it may be a demand curve that needs to be adjusted by different legislation- such as restricting property purchases by non-residents or some such- but that's different from a claim that the demand is stimulated.
Dean
13d ago
I believe the counter to the steelman is that 'stimulated demand' is just known elsewhere as 'demand,' which is to say the exact thing you'd expect to see from a supply and demand curve interaction when you increase supply.
A Twitter exchange is in fact a form of contract -- so whether the guy sent Nate a piece of paper saying "I will pay Nate Silver 100K if Florida goes less than R +8, otherwise he will pay me", I think the terms of the bet were pretty clear.
...?
If the Twitter exchange is in fact a form of contract, then so is the stipulation of said Twitter exchange for the requisite next step- which includes Nate's condition that the other person send a formal contract via lawyer. If the guy sends a piece of paper saying what you say, it would be failing to meet the conditions of the terms of the Twitter-contract.
But no one accused him of dishonesty.
...er, yes, there has been. That is one of the implications of the phrase 'weasel out of a bet,' which has been invoked in this Nate Silver context*. In forum and elsewhere, the Nate Silver's bet post is being used to charge Nate Silver of dishonest for not following through with his offer for a bet.
*Though not by Ranger specifically.
Nate never said "I didn't get any contract", that's my entire point!
Nor, to my knowledge, has Nate ever said he did get any contract. Hence you do not have a point- you have an absence of information.
Hence why I am asking for some support that he received the contract, as opposed to working from a position of assuming he did.
It's his opponent that exposed himself to an accusation of dishonesty if and only if he didn't send the contract.
Incorrect. Nate's opponent would only expose himself to an accusation of dishonest if and only if he claimed to send the contract but didn't.
However, if Nate's opponent has not made a claim, he would not be dishonest regardless of whether he sent a claim or not.
Unless I misread something earlier, at this point and in this thread, no evidence has been provided that Nate's opponent has claimed to have sent a contract. IF Nate's opponent has made a claim, THEN that claim could be looked at for evidence of credibility- for example, if the claim was made before the election (when results were still uncertain) that would be more credible than the same words made after the election (when the results are now hindsight)- but no consideration can be made absent of existence, and without existence of a claim from Nate's opponent then Nate's opponent cannot be dishonest about said claim.
This, and the fact that you thought it's his reputation as a better that's at stake, makes me think you're not really getting the logic behind my reasoning, but I don't know how to explain it any better.
No, I get your logic behind your reasoning, I just think it's a very poor counter to a request for information, and does not warrant accepting an assumption that is required for various arguments to be valid.
Who is this 'we'?
This is neither a common definition of victory, nor even an accurate characterization of the comparable expenditures.
It is certainly a take that a country that was not a member of a regional defensive alliance, and repeatedly disagreed internally and externally about any need to join a defensive alliance, getting repeatedly invaded and suffering major losses when countries that did join the defensive alliance were not invaded is thus a proof against value of being a party of a regional defensive alliance.
It is certainly also a take where a country vastly outnumbered by a power considered one of the strongest in the world, without the supplies to sustain operations for a year, being able to last years and fight the aggressor with designs on the entire country down to border provinces alone thanks to external aid as evidence that the external aid couldn't help anyone.
By contrast, smaller countries around the world often find these things- not being invaded and being able to substantially resist much more capable threatening neighbors if they are invaded- very very helpful, and often something they drive their entire foreign policies around. Were American alliance structures accurately perceived as such a bad deal, we would expect other American alliance members trying to leave or distance themselves from them.
Instead, over the last four years we saw increased interest in joining or strengthening them from Europe (Finland and Sweden) to the Middle East (reported Saudi Arabian terms for Israeli normalization) to Asia (Philippines re-alignment post-Duterte, increasing trends by Vietnam and India) to Latin America (Guyana). By contrast, the states that have notably tried to distance themselves from the US include such notable allies as... Afghanistan (an indefinite money and resource sink), Iraq (also a money sink), and Russia (if you are of the Mearsheimer school of thought).
What you think 'the rest of NATO might as well be dead to the remaining civilized world' means is unclear. The Ukraine War may have surprised you with the level of apathy / disinterest towards the Europeans security concerns among those countries who didn't care to go along with European sanctions, but I assure you this is very much not new or particular to Europe, and is quite consistent with European sensitivities to other states security interests both near (in Europe itself) and afar.
Again, I will ask who this 'we' is, because this goes beyond a lack of shared consensus.
In 2020, NATO was so legitimate that the Finns and Swedes didn't want to be a part of it, the Ukrainian body politic was ambivalent and still considered a Russian full-scale invasion impossible at a cultural-identity level, and that the Germans and the French were as a matter of policy trying to strengthen their ties with Russia even at the expense of the security interests of other NATO countries, including arms sales and the Nord Stream pipeline whose energy blackmail implications to both the eastern europeans and Germans was only retroactively acknowledged as maybe a bad idea.
In 2020, Russia had not 'abstained' from invading Ukraine for four years, but was at that very time actively running and had been supporting for years two incited rebellion statelets that it was attempting to leverage for demands of sovereignty concessions that would preserve its proxies and give it substantial veto controls of Ukrainian foreign policy, including economic engagement with Europe. That this was a step too far for the French and Germans, who had replaced the Americans in the Russia-Ukraine negotiations years prior and were simultaneously willing to deepen military and economic cooperation in other fronts, is demonstrative of whether it was a virtuous abstinence or not.
In 2024, by contrast, NATO is presumably less legitimate because a non-member state forcing a stalemate of a nation-scale invasion by what was arguably the strongest land army in the world is embarrassing.
And in 2024 NATO is presumably weaker than in 2020 because the addition of Finland and Sweden, years of greatly increased military-industrial investment in their armaments capabilities, and consensus that the Russians are indeed a common threat is... is presumably worth less than the stockpiles given to Ukraine shoot NATO's primary potential adversary in the face, who... apparently grew in relative strength the more NATO munitions were shot in its face and the more of its own munitions it shot at a non-NATO country.
But, you know, vibes.
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