I supposed we will have to agree to disagree that it is unfair to request evidence to substantiate an accusation, particularly when that accusation is a form of argument.
'The accused did not defend themselves' is so flawed a standard for determining truth that Americans prohibit it as a legal standard at a Constitutional level as an element of self-incrimination protections (you cannot be forced to testify, but also your refusal to testify is not itself self-incrimination), and while we are not a court of law it does lead to why it's a poor argument on grounds of reputational damage. Even Nate defending himself in this twitter at this point can inflict reputation damage to Nate- after all, it could be presented / accused as Nate lying / trying to deflect from the poling-result mismatch / doing a condemnable thing in and of itself. General decorum is to not air legal conflicts on your pseudo-business reputational Twitter account, particularly when they are about a prediction that you got wrong- just re-raising the topic is causing reputational harm.
And this is without other possible reasons of reputational harm for not going into detail of why an offer might not have been carried through. Like, say, the fact that Nate Silver is a married men, and married women are often quite willing to have strong words with their husbands when said husbands start offering 5-figure bets. Or maybe his finances are not so liquid and stable as to set a 5-figure risk. Or that he was drunk and not in a good state of mind when he made the offer. Nate is already suffering reputational harm for coming off as a bet-welcher, but he could suffer more reputational harm if he provided more context... and this is regardless of whether there was an actual acceptance-offer made.
It's also a defense that doesn't really acknowledge the shifts in which reputations are being challenged how.
Note here that Nate's reputation isn't regarding whether he would fail to pay a bet. It's not even about if he made a bet. The reputation in question is if Nate's reputation as a political data analyst, i.e. whether his analysis of election, is sound enough to warrant respect.
Whether Nate is willing to actually to make a bet or not isn't actually a failure of his analytic capacity (i.e. whether he should be considered valuable input), it's a failure of an additional standard introduced as a basis of dismissal (if Nate Silver is not willing to go through with a bet, his work can be dismissed). Nate Silver's [Reputation as a political scientist] and [Reputation as a confident better] are two different reputations, which are being conflated to use the one that is easier to condemn [reputation as a betting man] to dismiss the other [reputation as a political scientist].
Since the [reputation as a betting man] is being used as a proxy argument for [Nate Silver's arguments can be dismissed without addressing], the role of evidence is in turn strengthening or weakening the proxy argument. This seems like a reasonable request, but I will admit that is my own opinion.
Dean
15d ago
Or that it's debates between large numbers of different people with different positions, even the people within the same coalition.
Just as governments aren't hive minds, neither are 'pro' or 'anti' camps. It's not a motte and bailey if person A takes position A and person B takes position B, even if B is better at some arguments than A (and often vice versa).
Dean
15d ago
That's less of a steelman and more of an indictment of competence that would be entirely Marn'i's fault.
Setting aside that the 'FEMA is at risk' reporting was for an entirely different state over a fear that didn't happen and in which FEMA activities were re-implemented, and thus not a credible fear in Florida, the broader issue is that the mitigation measure doesn't pass muster. If there is a safety fear in a neighborhood/area, then the safety mitigation is to prevent any personnel from going into the area until you have security, not avoiding specific houses. You are still in gunshot range of a danger house if you knock at the house next door.
Marni's is a person with agency, not a brainwashed thrall, and unfortunately their competence was quite low.
That would not be fair. In the absence of Nate confirming that he refused to sign a contract, a claim of having sent the contract is just a claim absent further evidence.
My curiosity / eyebrow is raised because Ranger is raising this bet as a character failure on the part of Nate Silver, but the proffered evidence is of the conditional offer of a bet, not that the bet was accepted as offered but that Silver refused to sign it.
This leads to a couple of issues for which more information than has been provided is needed.
-Did the other person actually accept the bet, or are they just claiming so with post-election hindsight? (i.e. is he talking the talk after the election is decided?)
-Did the person try to modify the terms of the bet offered that would render the offer void? (i.e. did he refuse to walk the walk when it mattered?)
-Did the person fail to meet the conditions of the offer of bet? (i.e. did they not have their lawyer do it, but tried to make their own contract- thus invoking the payment risk issue raised?)
I've no particular strong feeling on Nate Silver one way or another, but if someone wants to make a character failure accusation with linked evidence I'd generally prefer the links to be evidence of a character failure.
Dean
16d ago
Many do, one of the reasons being that a lot of bottled water is literally just tap water.
I'm not joking- there was a study in the US earlier this year that upwards of 60% of bottled water is sourced from municiple tap water.
We can make the argument that a filter 'changes' it, but a lot of tap water is itself going through filters installed in homes / point of exit.
Dean
17d ago
I posted this in the main week thread, but feel I probably should have posted it here instead.
/
In non-American election news of note, the German governing coalition has collapsed with German Chancellor Scholz (SDP party) sacked his Finance Minister (FDP), setting the stage for a snap election in the next few months, possibly as early as January.
The collapse occurred for typically German reasons, which is to say over money and budgets and deficit spending. Specifically, how to cover a 60-billion euro hole in the budget after a German court in November 2023 annulled a plan to repurpose COVID emergency funds, when more money is needed to conduct domestic stimulus / address EU issues / further support Ukraine. Scholz and other members of the coalition wanted to suspend the German balanced budget amendment, i.e. the 2009 debt break amendment to the constitution. The FDP, a more neoliberal minority member of the coalition but who had the finance minister portfolio, refused. Scholz had an exceptionally emotive press conference yesterday, and now the issue is turning over to the timing of the vote of no confidence to bring forth a new election.
Yes, Germany- the country which helped replace multiple governments in southern Europe in the name of enforcing austerity and balanced budgets- just saw its own government collapse over deficit spending. There are jokes to be made here.
While this issue was German internal politics in nature, however, the timing was almost certainly a consequence of the US election, which is to say we could blame Donald Trump. The issues are not new and have been building for a year, while German election results in recent elections have shown a rise of the right that worries the German establishment whose coalition is as much to keep them out as it is to keep itself in. The confluence or risks was acceptable while Biden was in the white house, and might have continued had Harris won.
The victory of Donald Trump in the American election, however, provided new future risks. If the previous German expected election cycle occurred in OCT 25, that would be the better part of a year in which budget-locked Germany couldn't maneuver diplomatically on any major financial issue, even as Trump is almost certainly going to make that a major issue. Further, Scholz would have been in a lame duck position as the months ticked by, unable to do much and no one necessarily expecting his continuation into 2026.
By quickening the election to as early as January, right as Trump transitions into office, Scholz will (possibly) mitigate those risks, while also (probably) benefit from substantial anti-Trump sentiment in Germany that will probably support the SDP more than it's further-right rivals. While Scholz himself may / may not be the leader of the next government, the election may break free the FDP log jam on deficit spending.
Which, to put it lightly, will have major political (and social) implications for not just Germany, but Europe as a whole.
German political power in Europe- overt and soft- has for a decade and a half been limited as much by German budgetary restrictions as by German reputational inclination towards fiscal restraint. But if Germany is willing to spend big, this will be a tidal wave of money no one else in Europe would be able to match, which no existing systems were expecting to absorb and utilize, and so a lot of money which many in the European Union will seek to channel. This is both in terms of other countries trying to get what benefits they can out of spending to benefit their own needs, whether that's debt cancelation or military investments or so on, but also at the EU level, where Germany will have a lot more purse for a lot more power of the purse. There have long been dreams of German-financed financial consolidation in the EU that were economically impossible so long as Germany barred itself from funding them- but if the debt break barier is removed, then it's 'merely' a very difficult lobbying effort.
It will also create an interesting context for other countries seeking to shape the incoming government. In 2021, for example, remember that the Belarus migration crisis was itself timed to the German government formation, and which led to a partial rapproachment between PIS-Poland and Germany due to Polish tactics to force back migrants aiming to go to Germany (and thus the enabler-governments behind those migrants willingness to poke Germany in the eye at a senstivie time). Expect non-trivial cross-europe lobbying and advocating within Germany as well, as countries try to enable foreign voting from their territory (if they think ti might benefit) / mobilize expatriats / good old fashioned election propaganda and social media and newfangled AI-propaganda influence efforts.
None of this is a guarantee, mind you. The German election could be more divided and create a weaker government rather than a stronger one. There's no guarantee that the FDP fiscal log jam will be expelled. The government might be 'worse' by whatever standard of good you choose.
But this could be significant that will impact the next years of European politics.
Dean
17d ago
In non-American election news of note, the German governing coalition has collapsed with German Chancellor Scholz (SDP party) sacked his Finance Minister (FDP), setting the stage for a snap election in the next few months, possibly as early as January.
The collapse occurred for typically German reasons, which is to say over money and budgets and deficit spending. Specifically, how to cover a 60-billion euro hole in the budget after a German court in November 2023 annulled a plan to repurpose COVID emergency funds, when more money is needed to conduct domestic stimulus / address EU issues / further support Ukraine. Scholz and other members of the coalition wanted to suspend the German balanced budget amendment, i.e. the 2009 debt break amendment to the constitution. The FDP, a more neoliberal minority member of the coalition but who had the finance minister portfolio, refused. Scholz had an exceptionally emotive press conference yesterday, and now the issue is turning over to the timing of the vote of no confidence to bring forth a new election.
Yes, Germany- the country which helped replace multiple governments in southern Europe in the name of enforcing austerity and balanced budgets- just saw its own government collapse over deficit spending. There are jokes to be made here.
While this issue was German internal politics in nature, however, the timing was almost certainly a consequence of the US election, which is to say we could blame Donald Trump. The issues are not new and have been building for a year, while German election results in recent elections have shown a rise of the right that worries the German establishment whose coalition is as much to keep them out as it is to keep itself in. The confluence or risks was acceptable while Biden was in the white house, and might have continued had Harris won.
The victory of Donald Trump in the American election, however, provided new future risks. If the previous German expected election cycle occurred in OCT 25, that would be the better part of a year in which budget-locked Germany couldn't maneuver diplomatically on any major financial issue, even as Trump is almost certainly going to make that a major issue. Further, Scholz would have been in a lame duck position as the months ticked by, unable to do much and no one necessarily expecting his continuation into 2026.
By quickening the election to as early as January, right as Trump transitions into office, Scholz will (possibly) mitigate those risks, while also (probably) benefit from substantial anti-Trump sentiment in Germany that will probably support the SDP more than it's further-right rivals. While Scholz himself may / may not be the leader of the next government, the election may break free the FDP log jam on deficit spending.
Which, to put it lightly, will have major political (and social) implications for not just Germany, but Europe as a whole.
German political power in Europe- overt and soft- has for a decade and a half been limited as much by German budgetary restrictions as by German reputational inclination towards fiscal restraint. But if Germany is willing to spend big, this will be a tidal wave of money no one else in Europe would be able to match, which no existing systems were expecting to absorb and utilize, and so a lot of money which many in the European Union will seek to channel. This is both in terms of other countries trying to get what benefits they can out of spending to benefit their own needs, whether that's debt cancelation or military investments or so on, but also at the EU level, where Germany will have a lot more purse for a lot more power of the purse. There have long been dreams of German-financed financial consolidation in the EU that were economically impossible so long as Germany barred itself from funding them- but if the debt break barier is removed, then it's 'merely' a very difficult lobbying effort.
It will also create an interesting context for other countries seeking to shape the incoming government. In 2021, for example, remember that the Belarus migration crisis was itself timed to the German government formation, and which led to a partial rapproachment between PIS-Poland and Germany due to Polish tactics to force back migrants aiming to go to Germany (and thus the enabler-governments behind those migrants willingness to poke Germany in the eye at a senstivie time). Expect non-trivial cross-europe lobbying and advocating within Germany as well, as countries try to enable foreign voting from their territory (if they think ti might benefit) / mobilize expatriats / good old fashioned election propaganda and social media and newfangled AI-propaganda influence efforts.
None of this is a guarantee, mind you. The German election could be more divided and create a weaker government rather than a stronger one. There's no guarantee that the FDP fiscal log jam will be expelled. The government might be 'worse' by whatever standard of good you choose.
But this could be significant that will impact the next years of European politics.
Early in this war the AFU primarily relied on volunteers or at least motivated individuals who eagerly did their duty when mobilized, ie conscription during wartime. However, the Ukrainian mobilization system was corrupt, incompetent, and the pool to pull from was deliberately kept small. Even by early 2023, cracks in the mobilization system were notable since early 2023. But nothing was done, probably because there were high hopes for the Spring 2023 Counteroffensive, if it went well then the war would hopefully end with a military victory in 2024.
Yeah, this narrative wasn't quite so. Whomever from CD and I remember things differently.
This has some tropes characteristic of the revisionism that Russia tried to interject about the 2022 mobilizations and the 2023 offensive afterwards, both in ignoring the cause of change in the early 2023 and recharacterizing the Ukrainian limitation. Early 2023 is a when the end-2022 Russian mobilization filled the gaps that had been present from the start of the 2022 invasion due to Putin's decision not to actual meet doctrinal manning levels. Both of these elements- the lack of manning and the mobilization- were major Russian scandals that Russia has tried to dismiss / divert attention from since. In contrast, the Ukrainian mobilization challenge in early 2023 was the same as in 2022- equipment, especially artillery ammunition limiting fieldable forces, rather than manpower.
Further, the idea that the Spring 2023 counteroffensive was supposed to lead to an end of the war a year later is, ahem, fanciful. When one looks at the actual direction of advance, scope of the Spring 2023 counteroffensive wasn't any sort of military victory- it was an attempt southward to pressure the Russian logistics chain over the land-route to Crimea. This had value, but it was explicitly a long-war strategy to cause logistical complications, not a short-term 2024 military victory, not an attempt to drive the Russians out of eastern Ukraine.
But the counteroffensive was a disaster. More so, the Ukrainians kept it going for six months, racking up losses they never planned to take, the mobilization of new soldiers was grossly insufficient to replace losses, so combat units grew weaker and weaker. A reputable military analyst named Michael Kofman says the Ukrainian only cut their counteroffensive off because they basically ran out of troops.
Again, this narrative wasn't so.
I am familiar with Michael Kofman, have been following him since the war started, and this isn't really capturing his key themes from 2023, or his assessments of the underlying issues at the time of the counter-offensive or afterwards. Kofman was far more focused on the debilitating equipment issues, including special equipment losses and limitations. One of this points at the time was that the Ukrainians were preserving people rather than spending them because of their need of landmine clearing equipment, the consequences of western limitations to go after helicopter airbases, cluster munitions, and so on- but not manpower disaster, and certainly not 'they thought they would take no losses.'
Michael Kofman has made many critiques of the Ukrainian manpower issues, and he's absolutely on record having advocated for more conscription sooner to not have problems now, but not on the basis that the counter offensive continued until they ran out of troops in 2023 / that the Ukrainians never planned to take losses / that the losses were disastrous.
Overall, the intensity hasn't been this high since the start of the war in terms of Russian momentum. The AFU units fighting can't replace losses, can't be relieved, can't retreat unless violating orders. Losses are beyond casualties, most of the vacancies are deserters now. More and more units are crumbling, and when they crumble it causes Russian successes, as they aren't blind and are timing their attacks against the weakened units to take advantage..
The intensity argument doesn't quite match the narrative you think it does. The intensity equivalence isn't Russia at the start of the war- it's Russia during during the Kharkiv offensive at the end of 2022.
Amid an intensified offensive in Ukraine, Russia’s military is facing unprecedented equipment losses, according to data from the open-source research project Oryx, analyzed by Agentstvo. October saw the highest monthly losses of Russian armored vehicles, aircraft, helicopters, and other military assets since October 2022, when Russian forces withdrew from the Kharkiv region.
Since October 1, Russia has lost 695 pieces of equipment, either destroyed, damaged, abandoned, or captured by Ukrainian forces, according to data from Oryx. These losses include 253 infantry fighting vehicles, 103 tanks, 41 armored personnel carriers, four aircraft (two Su-25 and two Su-34 fighters), and one Mi-28 helicopter. By comparison, Ukrainian forces lost 276 pieces of equipment in the same period, including 47 armored personnel carriers, 28 infantry fighting vehicles, 21 tanks, and one Su-24M aircraft.
Russia’s monthly equipment losses have climbed since summer, rising from 434 pieces in August to 695 in October. This increase aligns with an intensified push to capture Ukrainian territory, with Forbes noting that the Kremlin seems prepared to trade both personnel and equipment for land gains.
This is just attrition looks like if you aggressively do it faster in a shorter period of time. Both the gains, and the casualties, are accelerated. In terms of scope and scale, though, this is much more like the Kherson offensive in terms of scope and territory changing.
Ukraine's manpower shortage is absolutely contributing to making things worse, it is very relevant, and the loses of terrain are indeed notable- but the terrain was always going to be lost over time. Most of the Ukraine War has been Russia making consistent gains in the area it chooses to focus in, with the Ukrainians trying to make it take time and inflict high casualties in the process, and the counter-offensives have typically followed a similar pattern of penetrations but not dramatic breakthroughs (Kharkiv being a singular exception).
I'm not saying that the AFU will crack and a major operational breakthrough will happen. But historically when those happen due to attrition, the runup to mass collapse looks like what is happening now.
Not really. When attrition collapses approaches- when the state looses the ability to resist- the casualties of the attacker tend to plummet, not scale upward.
This is because attrition has compromised the ability of the defender to bring their systems and networks back. Attriting an air defense network allows you to bring air power to bear against defenses for more effective neutralization, attriting the logistics network deprives the enemy of maneuver or ability to reinforce and makes them easier to flank to attack advantageously, attriting enemy artillery lets your own operate more freely to suppress the enemy more, etc. etc. etc.
The 'high surge then collapse' runup model is less about attrition and more of climatic battles for all-or-nothing standup fights. Those do occasionally happen, but that is pretty clearly not what Ukraine is doing in the Donbas (hence why the counter-attack forces went into Kursk, where they have not faced a climatic destruction).
California is one of those contexts where I somewhat roll my eyes at Americans complaining that the electoral college unfairly limits attention to only a few battleground states. It's not the electoral system that limits presidential campaign attention to states like California- it's the winner-takes-all structure decided by the state where the dominant party knows it can get more political value of taking the electoral votes enabled to the opposition population rather than split them.
It's a classic party versus state interest issue. If the state wanted to invite far more presidential attention / attempts to lobby to California interests, it could do so by some form of proportional distribution of electoral votes, say a system in which the house votes are allocated to the party that wins the representative district but the senate votes go to the majority winner. However, doing so would threaten the Democratic party with far fewer votes and thus ways to electoral success, and increase the risk of the Republican national party investing into the state and making the state Republicans competitive election winners, and thus compromise the California Democrats ability to be a core of the Democratic party if they had fewer / more vulnerable members.
In my ideal world, there could be some sort of state-swapping agreement in which states of roughly equivalent proportional size agree to mutually-conditionally transition to proportional models in exchange for eachother doing so. But this would still threaten the state-party standings in the national parties, and thus never happen.
Dean
18d ago
I've heard rumors that may change by the time mail-ins come in, but still shocking for the election night results.
Dean
18d ago
There's also an issue that some of the biggest hispanic groups are from leftist/anti-American latin america states, which adds an anti-communist/socialist element to it.
Different kind of existential threat. You are (probably) thinking of existential threat in terms of 'we are about to be overrun', but the Ukrainian perspective is more in 'this war will determine whether the next war will be our last.'
Remember this is the third continuation war since the invasion of Crimea, and that Russia's opening war-termination demands were such as to render a future-Ukraine functionally unable to resist a future attack (i.e. demanding that the Ukrainians demilitarize to a smaller tank fleet than the number of tanks they've lost since continuing to fight, limiting Ukrainians to weapon ranges that couldn't hit rear areas, allowing a Russian veto on foreign assistance to Ukraine). The Ukrainians view their prospects in a future war where they may have no allies / partners far less optimistically than continuing this one with foreign support.
There certainly are plenty of young men (volunteers), and there are definitely unequal brigades (of wildly varying equipment quality), and you aren't wrong in how the unequal brigades are being used (though 'make-work' is probably the wrong way to put it). While Russia is prioritizing efforts in the Donbas, there is a long border to be guarded, and so units of various levels are being sent there.
But for the question of drafting demographic in particular, Ukraine is taking what might be called a seed-corn approach, i.e. prioritizing future growth potential. Ukraine is aware it is a rapidly aging country, and that the youths are the future, and to the degree possible it is trying not to rely on the youth to carry the costs of combat. (Additionally, the older age brackets are far more supportive/tolerant, and thus less politically costly, for mobilization.) The loss of a young man is worse than the loss of an older man, not least because there are a lot more older men and the youth will be needed to take care of the survivors.
Note that this is similar to why women may volunteer, but also aren't being drafted. Women have more long-term value to the nation. If things were so catastrophic in an immediate sense, the state very well could and likely would draft women as well just as it started mixing molotovs in the capital at the start, as many other existentially-threatened states have in the past. But for now it doesn't perceive a need, because the existential risk isn't in the current war, but how this war sets up the next one. Ukraine is operating off of the assumption that it is going to be significantly demographically impacted regardless of how the war ends, but prioritizing the more enduring elements while trying to establish longer-term deterrence.
None of this says that the current strategy is sufficient, or superior, or best. It's not an argument that the Ukrainians aren't losing on the Donbas front. But it is a point that there was a tradeoff of costs, and that the risk perceived as greater isn't imminent military collapse existential risk.
This is one of the issues that the AWOL/foreign flight/draft dodger issue isn't as catastrophic as one may think: the ones doing it are primarily already older (though not old) men, and between expanding the draft age and simply cracking down harder on draft dodger demographics, the state would prefer the later. This is not analogous to the US experience in Vietnam, where college kids flee to Canada to get out of going to war and so spend all their most productive years benefiting another nation.
Dean
18d ago
How many 'you have been replaced' jokes do you think the never-Trump republican exiles who were pro-immigration will get going forward?
One of the dynamics of this war is that both sides are relying on mostly older age brackets. Russia honestly has a bit more youth conscription going on in that the normal conscripts are still occuring, but being used in rear-area roles and kept from the front in favor of increasingly highly-paid volunteers (and, starting recently, less-highly paid north koreans). Michael Kofman has written/spoken more on it if you're curious.
One of the bigger issues for Ukraine is that they don't have brigades-worth of spare equipment to arm more brigades of conscripts with. The prospect of sending poorly-equipped conscripts into combat is a semi-scandal in Ukrainian politics- it raises issues of why more elite children aren't in the poorly-equipped units- and so (very) relative 'equality of equipment' is/was being prioritized over 'raw numbers of bodies.' Ukraine has been deliberately avoiding the Russian 'bring out the WW2 tanks' model of mobilization, as that would be a domestic solidarity issue if they did so. (Also, they don't have a meaningful reserve of WW2 tanks.)
This has actually been occurring since the start of the conflict, including in 2022 when the Ukrainians were turning away would-be volunteers and telling them to stand by for later mobilization. Note that the 2024 Ukrainians still had sufficient 'spare' manpower to launch the Kursk offensive. It's not that they literally can't send more bodies into the Donbas pocket, it's that there's a political consideration not to. (In part because the Donbas pocket is largely unsustainable long-term, so more manpower wouldn't stop the grind, but would incur larger political costs if ill-equipped forces were rushed in.)
Dean
18d ago
So Trump has beaten three women so far - Hilary, Kamala, and Ivana.
I believe the Babylon Bee is one-upping your misogyny joke here: Gender Gap: Woman Only Gets 78% Of The Vote Man Gets
Dean
18d ago
I imagine some of the remarks in it will be scene-setters for the tone the Democratic Party takes in the coming weeks/months, including characterization of Trump into January and initial allocation of blame.
Dean
18d ago
And yet, don't evergreen responses sometimes hold tree for as long as the evergreen does? Sometimes the exceptions need to be shocking to break the rule (such as a forest fire causing the evergreen to lose it's green), but the consistency across contexts doesn't disprove the evergreen.
Dean
18d ago
Professional Managerial Class.
Vaguely meaning college-educated specialists, particularly those in positions of authority over others (direct management or as authority figures deserving deference like Doctors) who are often highly certified and educated, but deal more with managing people or ideas than actual building of things or manual work.
As I understand it, the situation in the donbas is deteriorating at an accelerating pace in favor of russia. US officials have come to the same conclusion.
This situation is true, but implication is not necessarily what you understand. The underlying issue that a big % increase of a very small number is a still a small number, and that proportional increases don't continually scale
The theme of 2024 has been that Russia has significantly increased its rate of territorial gains in the Donbass, but 'significant' comes with the contextual caveat of 'compared to 2023.' The Russian gains in 2024 look proportionally impressive in part because the scale of the zoom-in maps was consistent for so long, but the degree of zoom-in was itself a result of how little the Russians were advancing, justifying exceptional zoom in to show differences. This was, in turn, partly because they were focused on advancing in other places (where we no longer see maps).
On a larger scale, however, 2024 has been closer to the creeping artillery campaign in 2022 where artillery overmatch allowed slow-but-steady gains elsewhere on the Ukrainian front, places which didn't receive/retain such familiar maps because they were changing faster and then lost. Unlike in 2022, however, 2024 has not also had simultaneous major Russian military operations across the front- the Russian operations have been primarily focused on the few spots being covered. This is consistent with what was observed in 2023, with the slow-but-consistent Bahkmut. Russia focuses on two-three places at a time, and presses those, and then reaches a point where it transitions to somewhere else.
In short, increasing changes in the Russian position in the current parts of the Donbas aren't themselves evidence of Ukrainian systemic collapse, but where Russia is currently focusing fires. The Russians have always been able to consistently advance when and where they chose to concentrate fires.
The rates of change of territory even lead to changes in where the territory shifts from favoring the operational defense to the operational offense. The formerly defensive high ground the Ukrainians enjoyed in some places became more advantageous to further Russia offensives when the Russians captured them, whether by increasing offensive fires range (thus allowing more concentration of artillery) or compromising other position to prompt a withdrawal of Ukrainian forces (such as has recently happened at the Ukrainian logistic node whose name I can't remember atm).
These positional advantages can even compound. The advantage Russia has gotten from partial-encirclements (approaching 3-side encirclement) is significant. It allows Russia to park more artillery for more range of fires across more of the Ukrainian front and rear. Because more of the Ukrainian rear is in range of fires, high-value-but-costly Ukrainian assets- like air defense or artillery- can't be brought in nearly as close. Because UKR artillery is denied, more Russian artillery can be brought in for further artillery overmatch, and because air defense is blocked the Russians can bring in more glide bomb aviation and helicopters to contribute. This adds up, and consistently enables things like 10-to-1 fires advantages that let the Russian forces make successful rushes for trenchwork and displace the Ukrainians to retreat to less compromised defenses.
But this is positional advantage, not strategic collapse. The artillery army is at its strongest when it can surround the foe on three sides and negate their air defense and airpower, and this position is untenable for most defenders, but there's a reason that the ideal of warfare is about encirclement and not simply flanking. The Russians put the Ukrainians in a bad position, the Ukrainians eventually withdraw, but the withdrawal is a choice to not commit further resources holding untenable positions further, not itself evidence of a lack of resources to commit. The Kursk offensive, for example, demonstrated that the Ukrainians had more combat assets to send, but that they thought there was somehwere better to use them than in the most pressed parts of the Donbas.
The issue with positional warfare analysis is that momentum advantages gradually negate themselves.
When the rate of advance depends on favorable positioning, the victor goes from advantageous terrain to neutral or even unfavorable terrain as new equilibriums are found and defenses rebuilt. If the positioning was favorable, after all, the attacker would continue attacking and advancing. This is more along the lines of 'water runs downhill' than the gallantry of a stream for following the path of least resistance.
But when/if the Russians close the 3-year old Donbas pocket, they won't have a 3-side advantage anymore, but a much 'flater' front. These means less ability to stack fires, less ADA coverage of glide bombs, etc. This means that the Ukrainians can commit more of its limited forces more easily, and more effectively, with defenses that lead the Russians to limit their exposure until they can start re-creating that 3-flank advantage. On the other hand, depending on where they make a push, they themselves may face a three-front disadvantage where a push leaves them exposed rather than able to bring in superior fires.
In other words, rather than a maneuver-warfare acceleration effect- 'Russia is increasing its rate in the Donbas; after the Donbas it will further increase its rate of advance'- positional warfare has a reset-effect. 'The Russian position after the Donbas is no longer as favorable; after the Donbas the rate of advance will slow until Donbas-like contexts can be created again.'
This runs into the separate issue, which I'll address off of your next point.
In addition the number of glide bomb strikes has increased to >1000 a week, and it is too risky to deploy expensive anti air assets close to the front to counter these, as Russian ISR has improved. Shahed drone strikes are also getting through more easily due to depleted AA, Ukraine is no longer claiming 90% shootdowns as in previous months.
And as long as those weapons continue to work at the ranges they do, that may be bad news for the Donbas front but it's good news for the ability of Ukraine to generate strategic resistance, because the Donbas isn't where Ukraine draws its ability to fight from.
The Russian glide bombs, as effective as they are, are not what the military would consider long-range weapons vis-a-vis normal indirect fire capabilities. They are launched from behind Russian lines, with the ability to get close limited by exposure to air defense. Since high-value air defenses won't be placed in pockets in range of tube-artillery supported by short-range drones, this is why the glide bomb strikes have been able to increase to >1000 a week: the Russians have a reasonably large array of targets in a zone they can reasonably know is exposed and safe to fight in.
But this makes them, in effect, a different sort of tube-artillery. Bigger boombs, harder to counter-fire, but not a meaningful threat to critical infrastructure / major supply nodes / depots. These are trenchlines, bunkers, or buildings. This is not good for the Ukrainians, but it is not the critical threat, especially if / when / as increasing long-range fires open up attacks on Russian rear areas. The glide bombs can't range those sort of capability-generations.
Shaheds might, but this gets into the limits of a Shahed drone. In short, it's not trivial, but it's not factory-destroying either, while there are indeed less AA rockets to shoot down Shaheds with, there are other limiting factors on their effectiveness, ranging from non-missile AA (not as effective, but a baseline), protection systems (like nets, additional baseline), or just the warhead limitations of a shahed drone. These are often much closer to 'can destroy a vehicle' than 'can destroy a building' payloads. You can throw a lot of Shaheds at a single target to make up in volume, but at that point you're just recreating the narrower and narrower focus of the artillery issue.
What matters more is that neither of these advantages is actually removing the ability of the Ukrainians to generate capabilities and forces, because those capabilities aren't located in the Donbas in the first place.
Ukraine could literally lose all the Donbas, and while it would the advantages of already-prepared defenses it wouldn't lose its force generation potential. Ukraine isn't depending on the remaining settlements in the Donbas for recruitment. Ukraine isn't producing its long-range weapons in the Donbas. Ukraine isn't receiving the import of foreign supplies through the Donbas. The Donbas isn't the Death Star at the battle of endor, where when the Emperor dies the imperial navy flees the field.
The Donbas is, in effect, a political trophy. Its conquest does not win the war for Russia / render the Ukrainians unable to fight. It may shape negotiations or political calculations, most notably Putin's willingness to claim victory with a face-saving 'I own all the territory' salve, but it's not vital to the Ukrainian ability to continue resisting.
Ukrainian desertion numbers have skyrocketed and their solution is that everyone gets 1 AWOL as a treat. Zelensky is still resisting Western calls to conscript 18-25 year olds but there may be no other choice.
But there is a choice, which combines with the fact that the biggest limitation on Ukrainian force generation (still) isn't actually manpower to recruit from, but the gear to equip them with, and the artillery ammunition to back them up with to negate Russia's fires advantages. The former is a question of the next year of foreign supply politics, while the later is something that has been expected to take into next year regardless.
The fact that Zelensky is in a position to resist Western calls to conscript 18-25 year olds is a mark against collapse desperation, not evidence of it (which it will inevitably shift to being characterized as when/if Zelensky does proceed with expanding conscription). The Ukrainian decisions to not conscript more earlier may be the 'wrong' one (I suspect we don't have the insight as to what the priorities actually are- such as if Zelensky wants to scale conscription with western arms deliveries so as to avoid public war support issues of sending ill-equiped troops into battle), but it has been one the Ukrainians felt they could make.
Manpower is one of those information fields where I'd caution you to be very, very cautious with narratives that don't have credible comparative numbers (such as Ukrainian desertion comparisons between years, or comparisons to Russian equivalent acts, or even comparisons to other countries in other conflicts,) especially when it is a field so plagued by deliberate propaganda campaigns. 'Ukraine's army is on the edge of collapse' has been a distinct propaganda theme for years now, and if I were a betting person I'd offer a bet that we'd be dealing with the same theme in twelve months because it is one of those 'maybe it wasn't true before, but it seems credible now' indefinite narratives that can appear credible no matter how many times it fails to materialize.
Dean
18d ago
Yes Minister has always had a special place in my heart. I've known a lot of Americans who liked West Wing because it was what they wished government was like, whereas Yes Minister had far more cutting insights behind its satire.
Dean
18d ago
What makes the 'stay in NATO' thing so amusing/frustrating is that it's not actually based on a Trump claim to want to leave NATO. 'Leaving NATO' is the political reframing attack. What was actually said could be interpreted as even worse- that he wouldn't act to support countries that weren't spending on their own defense- which doesn't require leaving NATO in the first place.
This is arguably worse- much worse!- both from a treaty-obligation perspective (it is better to leave a treaty than violate while claiming the benefits of membership) and from a NATO-credibility perspective (it says the quiet part out loud that Article 5 doesn't actually require NATO members to do anything specific).
In some respects it would even be preferable for the EU-Europeans to have the Americans leave NATO, so that the EU could functionally absorb NATO as an EU organ rather than an institution in perpetual competition for the same role that is necessary for EU-centralization fantasies. A constant issue in the EU-centralization and defense spheres is that EU-military efforts are duplicative to NATO, are often opposed when they come into conflict with NATO, but at the same time without defense credibility EU-centralization itself loses credibility.
Letting the US leave NATO clears a lot of that by letting someone else more European come to lead it. Which... has been an explicit goal for some since its inception. Many people forget / never knew that France left the NATO command structure in the Cold War after its failed attempts to play a decisive leading role in it as a founding member (partly disproven by US pressure during the Suez Crisis). (Which was rather the point. The US inclusion in NATO wasn't simply as a counter-balance against the Soviets, but to counter the influence of Germany and France over other, smaller, European countries.)
If the US were to leave NATO- and thus create a precedent for countries departing / being forced to depart from it- then NATO could credibly be replaced by EU institutions that had the same European-consolidating effect with an opt-in measure for the non-EU allies (i.e. the US, Canada, Turkey, the UK, and so on). Because there wouldn't be a loss of US participation, this would greatly increase the influence of key EU members (France and Germany) over NATO-style standardization, defense procurement, and coordination efforts, while inheriting many of the systems and existing institutional elements of NATO rather than recreate them.
It would also be an extreme shift in the power dynamic between the EU and NATO-but-not-EU-periphery members that would be highly appealing to some states (Albania, hypothetical Ukraine), but at substantial expense to others (think UK, Turkey). Depending on your point of view, that could be a substantial advantage- such as a strong incentive/pressure for the UK to re-enter the EU, or giving Greece and Cyprus more leverage against Turkey.
But- notably- these sort of European-centric defense changes only occur if Trump takes the US out of NATO- which he has not threatened to do- rather than have Trump compromise NATO from within but keep it from the influence of EU-centralicists- which is even worse.
Dean
18d ago
My prediction is that the DNC will just double down. They did it when Clinton lost, there's no reason to believe they won't do it again.
The reason why is the Israel and Ukraine Wars, which serve as powerful wedge issues that break party lines, even as the DNC from a decade ago no longer exists.
In 2016, the DNC was able to double down because there was nothing particularly important that major Democratic constituencies or politicians wanted that Trump could give that they couldn't also get by opposing him. 2016-2020 was almost entirely domestic-focused, with few foreign policy priorities interfering. There was very little to gain for crossing the line, and so the party could be united in the name of anti-Trump by the still-credible Obama political machine who had only just barely had its first presidential failure by a narrow margin.
In 2024, the Obama political machine is in tatters. Key kingmakers (Obama, Pelosi, and now Biden) are out of politics and in many respects discredited as 3 of the last 3 Obama-machine candidates (Clinton, Biden, Harris) have cratered. The Democratic party is going through a major generational change, without the sort of iron-handed party control that Pelosi had on fundraising support. At the same time, the Democratic party has sunk substantial political capital into supporting Ukraine, and has had an internal civil war (complete with a Muslim voting block abstination) over Israel.
The DNC may try to double-down again, but that's different from the ability to. 2016 was a result of unexpectedly high Republican turnout in first-time deplorable trump voters, but 2024 has been a demonstration of low Democratic turnout. The political energy, the leadership and the unity simply are not there, even as major wedges are currently in the coalition.
If that is so, I accept this correction in good faith, and I do believe this elaboration of the main argument is substantially stronger. I am not attempting to change your opinion on Nate Silver's accuracy.
I am still curious of if there was ever evidence that Silver's bet was accepted, both for it's own sake in addressing the question and to updating priors, but an argument of 'he would have lost money if he made the bet' is a substantially different argument than 'he refused to respect his own challenge,' and if you did not mean the later interpretation I am grateful for the clarification.
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