Dean
19hr ago
As far as carriers are concerned, drones themselves are not the issue. That doesn't make carriers a good idea, but the unique ability of carrier makes them less vulnerable to drones than land-based aircraft. The cost efficient case of a drone vs jet is a drone that is walked by a dude in range of the airfield. That sort of drone wouldn't be able to fly from the coast to the carrier group.
At the end of the day, a carrier is a mobile airfield. Carrier aircraft are significant advantages because the airfield moves great ranges, not because the aircraft does. When aiming for the same metric of success, land-based aircraft can almost always out-perform a carrier aircraft thanks to not having the carrier takeoff/landing restrictions. Carriers beat land-based airpower because the basing advantage is just worth more, which is why Chinese anti-carrier ballistic missiles aren't depending on PRC airpower.
The conceptual problem with carriers is that those mobile airfields aren't as unfindable as they once were. As the number of satellites up high looking down increases, it gets easier and easier to find them. The proliferation of detection systems doesn't help. While the Chinese carrier-killer missiles may or may not actually work as propagandized, carriers have always been vulnerable to massed land-based attacks if they could be found. Drones would be a part of that, but fundamentally the issue is detection.
The question mark for the war nerds shouldn't be whether carriers are useful- they quite demonstratable have been- but rather if manned aircraft carriers are still the way of the future.
Drone carriers- as in, carriers that only hold unmanned drones, not ships that themselves are unmanned- are an interesting possibility, and while there are still a lot of conceptual and technological issues to consider, they could be substantially cheaper (and thus far closer to within range of mid-tier countries) while keeping the advantage of the mobile airfield.
Dean
20hr ago
The graveyards are filled with indispensable politicians, which is to say there are no indispensable politicians, merely politicians who don't want to let go.
There absolutely are political realities in which Biden didn't run again, starting from untimely death of old age and going to political competence. Biden's choice was a result of ambition, not urgency.
Dean
2d ago
Asad did reportedly fly to Moscow earlier this week, which is always an opportunity for a palace coup when things get bad.
In another interesting development in a week with a number of interesting developments, the Syrian civil war has kicked back up a bit with a surprise rebel offensive that has taken Aleppo, one of Syria's largest cities last meaningfully contested in 2016. What has been almost as surprising as the offensive itself has been the speed and success of the advance.
The Syrian Civil War has more or less been frozen for the last few years, but with Assad only controlling around 70% of the country. However, the freeze not only included the American-backed counter-ISIS presence in the far east, but the Turkish-backed anti-Assad elements in the far north. The later Turkish-backed elements are what have made the recent offensive.
What starts to introduce some intrigue is the timing / possible reasoning for the timing. Specifically, the recent (still tentative) ceasefire close to of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, which depending on whose reported numbers you believe killed and/or wounded thousands of Hezbollah members, including much of Hezbollah's senior leaders.
This matters because those senior leaders and forces were key deciders in Hezbollah's support for Assad in the Syrian Civil War. In 2017 a hezbollah commander claimed to have 10,000 Hezbollah fighters in Syria, and while that number was almost certainly theatrical propaganda it does illustrate the point of a substantial Hezbollah presence and interest. This, in turn, was an extension of Hezbollah's role as an Iranian ally/proxy force, being used to supplement fellow Iranian ally Assad by providing desperately needed manpower. However, the recent Hezbollah-Israel conflict has been extremely disruptive, and Hezbollah is in a period of recovery / reorganization.
What also matters as context is why Aleppo fell / was retaken by the Assad government in 2016, which was the role of heavy Russian air support. If you remember the 2015 Russian SU-25 shootdown by Turkey, that was a result of the Russian aircraft violating Turkish airspace in the general Aleppo air area. Those bombings were heavy, even decisive, but also highly exposed to Turkish interception if Turkey wanted to. It didn't at the time... but at the time, Russia wasn't heavily committed to the war in Ukraine, nor had it been more or less caught in a foreign sabotage campaign effort which may or may not be attempts to shape upcoming Ukraine negotiations by way of some coercive leverage.
Of course, coercive leverage can exist in multiple domains, and multiple forms. Which gets us to where we are now, and the interesting overlap of foreign interests and angles.
Just from a window of opportunity angle, the Aleppo offensive can be taking advantage of the weakening of two of Assad's most relevant allies- the Ukraine-committed Russian airforce (which has so far done some pro-forma bombings in Aleppo), and the Israel-rattled Hezbollah (which had some of its Syria-based logistics struck just in the last few days- nominally to prevent the rearming within Hezbollah, but coincidentally denying their repurposing to Assad). But from a 'why would its backers want to do so now' perspective, Aleppo may also be a Turkish initiative timed / intended to shape/counter the Russian pressure campaign in Europe, both as a warning not to do the same in Turkey, and a 'gentle' reminder of Turkish interests and influence in the Ukraine resolution.
But of course, that later rational would have applied whether Aleppo changed hands or not... but now that it has largely fallen, and probably succeeded far more than anyone was expected, it brings up the question of how much further the Turkish-backed rebels think they can / should push in this previously unapparent window of opportunity.
Does this mean a re-opening of the Syrian civil war, if local actors see Assad is newly vulnerable without the support of the Ukraine-stretched Russia and the disruption of the Israel-distracted Iranian axis of resistance? Probably not. An offensive started without expectations of huge gains isn't likely to have prepared the resources for such a follow-through, and by the time they are martialed that will also be time for the Syrians and Russians and Iranians to prioritize this problem and reach a new stalemate.
But it is considerably more likely than it was a week ago.
The male equivalents of the women in question aren't the ones doing the dirty work, we're talking >85th percentile IQ.
Again, this is reversing the paradigm to assume the conclusion. It's not about 'the male equivalents of the women in question,' it's how you are characterizing the jobs these women's spouses would be doing if they were expected to be breadwinners, i.e. "the cool shit while she gets to be the factory to make more boys."
Most bread-winning jobs are boring, tedious, monotonous, and/or dangerous because that is why they are paying you breadwinning wages in the first place. Higher wages aren't correlated with fun or excitement, but with the compensation required for people to take them, generally because the work is not generally desirable 'cool shit.' Quite often the greater the wage advantage the worse the desirability, because if it was highly desirable then other workers would want that job and be willing to do it for less.
Which returns to the question of framing bias.
Why would you insinuate to high IQ women that they should be envious of the often unpleasant jobs of their bread-winning spouses, while denigrating the alternative, except for the purpose of elevating the former over the later?
...why would they tell curious young women that the boys get to do all the cool shit, as opposed to telling them that boys have to do all the boring, tedious, monotonous, and dangerous shit?
Like, sure, you can, but that's a weird framing to take for what even you concede as the strictly superior option for society. Why would a society want to approach persuasion in that way?
It's already well established that people massively overestimate how much work needs to be put into raising children, leading to terribly stifling parenting styles that are net negative for the affected children.
This is not the well established conclusion, since the comparison isn't terribly stifling parenting styles versus beneficent parenting styles, but rather terribly stifling parenting styles versus no parenting at all.
The repugnant conclusion of ethics is only repugnant if you think sub-optimization is worse than non-existence. Certainly the general child is not better off for having never been born to suffer parents (or worse, puberty). Those that disagree can and would resolve that issue themselves, but the survivors will- by definition- prefer the life with bad parents to no life.
Dean
3d ago
Just as a general awareness point for Trump-administration Ukraine Policy-
Keith Kellogg is one of the authors of the American First Institute white paper that was called 'Trump's peace plan' during the election. This is the one that was regularly (mis)reported as Trump was going to force Ukraine to agree to Russian terms by withholding aid.
What the Kellogg proposal says on page 16, emphasis mine, is-
America First is not isolationist, nor is it a call to retreat America from engagement in the world. An America First approach to national security is, however, characteristically distinct from a foreign policy establishment that often keeps the United States mired in endless wars to the detriment of the country by putting idealistic principles ahead of the interests of the American people. There is a pathway forward in Ukraine in which America can keep its own interests prioritized while also playing a role in bringing the largest war in Europe since World War II to an end. That role must be through decisive, America First leadership where bold diplomacy paves the way to an end-state. What we should not continue to do is to send arms to a stalemate that Ukraine will eventually find difficult to win. This should start with a formal U.S. policy to bring the war to a conclusion.
Specifically, it would mean a formal U.S. policy to seek a cease-fire and negotiated settlement of the Ukraine conflict. The United States would continue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement. Future American military aid, however, will require Ukraine to participate in peace talks with Russia.
To convince Putin to join peace talks, President Biden and other NATO leaders should offer to put off NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace deal with security guarantees. In their April 2023 Foreign Affairs article, Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan proposed that in exchange for abiding by a cease-fire, a demilitarized zone, and participating in peace talks, Russia could be offered some limited sanctions relief. Ukraine would not be asked to relinquish the goal of regaining all its territory, but it would agree to use diplomacy, not force, with the understanding that this would require a future diplomatic breakthrough which probably will not occur before Putin leaves office. Until that happens, the United States and its allies would pledge to only fully lift sanctions against Russia and normalize relations after it signs a peace agreement acceptable to Ukraine. We also call for placing levies on Russian energy sales to pay for Ukrainian reconstruction.
By enabling Ukraine to negotiate from a position of strength while also communicating to Russia the consequences if it fails to abide by future peace talk conditions, the United States could implement a negotiated end-state with terms aligned with U.S. and Ukrainian interests. Part of this negotiated end-state should include provisions in which we establish a long-term security architecture for Ukraine’s defense that focuses on bilateral security defense. Including this in a Russia-Ukraine peace deal offers a path toward long-term peace in the region and a means of preventing future hostilities between the two nations.
Regrettably, we see no prospect that the Biden Administration will do anything to end the Ukraine War and may implement policies to make the conflict worse. Nevertheless, the above are a few creative ideas for an America First approach to end the war and allow Ukraine to rebuild. President Donald Trump also has a strategy to end the war that he has not fully revealed. We are hopeful there will be a new president in January 2025 to implement these American First ideas to end this devastating conflict.
The Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people will have trouble accepting a negotiated peace that does not give them back all of their territory or, at least for now, hold Russia responsible for the carnage it inflicted on Ukraine. Their supporters will also. But as Donald Trump said at the CNN town hall in 2023, “I want everyone to stop dying.” That’s our view, too. It is a good first step.
This isn't new news, so not much else to say that hasn't been said before- the proposal doesn't meet stated Russian conditions or pre-war demands, peace is hard, and all that. This isn't to challenge anyone's opinion on the merits of even feasibility of the Trump peace plan.
What hasn't been said as much is more about Kellogg himself.
From his wiki-, Kellogg was a former national security adviser in the previous Trump administration, and is and retired lieutenant general in the US military. His military service included Vietnam War service with the 101st Airborne Division, and Gulf War with the 82nd Airborne, which is to say he was in some of the more prestigious parts of the US expeditionary military. His wiki also says he was in the Pentagon on 9-11, and after retiring was involved in the immediate post-occupation Iraq.
This is not, in other words, a Russophile or anti-military dissident of the national security complex, but a literal career Cold War veteran, albeit one who spent more of his career in Asia and the Middle East than Europe or NATO. People expecting Trump's Ukraine policy to be a repudiation of the American military-industrial complex and Pentagon elite are going to be counting on someone who was a Pentagon elite from the Cold War military-industrial complex.
What is also interesting, from a slightly more culture-war perspective, are two points of exposure as he's entering major political prominence:
Personal life Kellogg is the second oldest of four children. His older brother, Mike Kellogg, is a former Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge. His sister, Kathy, is a former actress who is now a clinical psychologist and his younger brother, Jeff, is a former Long Beach city councilman, served as President of the Long Beach Community College District Board of Trustees, and now currently works for the California Community Colleges system.
Which is to say- his family has somewhat significant- and still relevant- ties to the California political ecosystem, which for those less familiar is extremely Democratic.
Further, Kellogg was a witness in the White House during the events of Jan 6, even testifying to the Congressional select committee afterwards.
During the 2021 United States Capitol attack Kellogg defended Pence's decision not to leave the Capitol. While the Secret Service was attempting to get Pence to ride to a safer place, Pence insisted on staying. Kellogg reportedly told Anthony Ornato, former Secret Service and at the time White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, why Pence would not be evacuated, “You can’t do that, Tony. Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance. Don’t do it.” Kellogg made it clear that Pence would stay, even if he needed to remain all night."[27] Kellogg is viewed as a "key witness" in the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack because he was with Trump in the White House as the attack occurred. Kellogg testified under oath to the committee in December 2021,[28] telling them that the president's staff encouraged the president to take immediate action to quell the unrest, but that he refused.[29]
I make no claims on objectivity how the article has been edited, though I'll be interested if it hasn't changed significantly in the months to come.
Instead, the point I'd make is that whatever Kellogg testified before, it doesn't seem to have ruined his standing with Trump... but as the Trump administration enters the point where personnel meet politics (and eat political heat), Kellogg is not obviously unassailable. Whether pressure on or via his family in California, or a reinterpretation of Jan 6 for political hay (or just to disrupt), there are lines of attack that could be used to make his attempts to deliver a Ukraine policy more difficult.
Or at least, more difficult than it already is. We shall see.
Dean
3d ago
I'm surprised you didn't raise the Russian-captained Chinese-flagged ship that dragged it's anchor for 100 miles in the Baltic Sea, cutting the Baltic Sea undersea cable between German and Finland and Sweden and Lithuania.
The ship is currently surrounded by NATO vessels, with various European countries raising the rather pertinant point of sabotage. For which there a number of interesting things to say- this is neither the first case of probable Russian sabotage in Europe in recent years, but the timing and the nature are interesting in the context of the recent Ukraine posturing- but it's also interesting on the question of Chinese involvement, if any.
Especially given the Russian ruble tumble, which appears to be a foreign exchange issue given that they banned foreign currency purchases for the rest of the year, which itself followed a systemic Chinese premium charge of Rubles-for-Yuan from this summer
Dean
7d ago
That would be anti-woke by the current paradigm, in which negative representation is generally considered worse than non-representation for the same reason that 'don't concede the existence of excesses since it will give the bad people grounds to continue criticizing' is a norm.
A paradigm of prioritizing beneficent representation doesn't go well with making light (or villains) of it. The viewpoint of 'any representation is bad representation' being replaced by 'you must endorse' is one of the distinctions between liberalism and woke.
Dean
7d ago
I'd add onto this that it's not just powerlessness, but a dismissal of what people thinks gives them value in favor of something the victimizer cares about more. It's not just enough to be powerless, it's to be pursued and victimized because you could otherwise be something better as you see it, but that isn't the value in you that the tormenter sees and so your values are disregarded.
In Stepford Wives, the women could be better than stepford wives- more independent / autonomous / successful - but what they were valued for, and taken for, was their superficial femininity instead. The thing they cared about as raising them above Stepford Wives (independence / ability) was not what they were valued for, and so was thrown away. Similar things in the Handmaid Tale- the personal value is in the potential for emotionally fullfilling relationships (love on a personal level), but the oppressor is valuing women for another value (breeding).
In a very loose sense, this is analogous for the horror of 'the devil comes for your soul' genre horror. In those, the value people feel they have (the ability to live a good life / have healthy relationship) is disregarding for something they often care little about but which hell cares very much about- the soul. By taking the soul and damning the rest, the value of life and living is dismissed as irrelevant in the eyes of that higher power.
This contrasts with genres of existential horror in which the subjects have no value whatsoever. Worse than malice is disregard, as the negative consequences don't even have the selfvalidation of 'well my soul has value.' Lovecraftian cosmic horror is most notable for this in the sense that the old ones likes Cthulu don't portend the end of humanity because they hate us or need us gone for their plans, but simply as a consequence of their movements and our fragile, meaningless existence.
But this is less common than it appears outside of existential horror. There's a weird psychological dynamic in a fair bit of horror in that it is self-validating in some way.
For example, a revenge-horror rests on the premise that you once were strong and were able to torment your now-tormenter. Punishment-for-your-sins horror elevates the protagonist's agency as central to the events- if they had not sinned, this would not occur, so their sinfulness was important. Even monster horror typically places the protagonists in some form of competition or power relation in the context of the monster- either the monster is a result of human folly (humans have agency/responsibility), or this is a contest of survival (even if doomed, you had a chance and thus have ability), or even if you are prey the thing wants you (Alien is interspecies rape-murder, but you still have value to the cycle).
A lot of horror thus targets what people their place in the world is, but in doing so helps cement their centrality to it. Even if impotent, they are stilll important enough to be tormented.
Dean
7d ago
Further back, Great Expectations was already deconstructing the trope with Pip heading off to become someone.
I've always considered that in particular to be a good demonstration of the sin of Pride. I've known plenty of people who thought only the Important People could be prideful, as if to be full of pride required something to be justifiably proud of. I've tended to disagree- the phrase 'temporarily embarrassed millionaire' seems suitable characterization of prideful people of modest means.
Dean
8d ago
I've never known a city dwelling woman to carry any means of protection.
How many women have you known the contents of the purse of when they walk around at night?
Dean
10d ago
So, American investors were victims of fraud because Adanis claimed that their business was above ground in investment rounds. Then used American investment dollars for bribes. That is a crime in the US ?
Yup. This is why the western sanctions regimes can be so disruptive- it is really, really easy to fall into foreign jurisdictions when financial services are in play.
In international contexts, nations can assert jurisdiction fora couple of reasons, including the nationality principle (a state can punish their citizens- and corporate entities- for misconduct abroad), and the territorial principle (a state can punish misconduct on its own territory).
Both are relevant in this case, as using American investment corporations for bribes abroad is a nationality issue, and using the American financial system at all places it in American territory. That it is also in the Indian jurisdiction is irrelevant, though if the Indians wanted to pursue prosecution they'd probably be able to preempt the US effort, but the fact that Adani group is mostly based out of India is irrelevant. 'Mostly' is not enough- any exposure to another authority's jurisdiction is enough to require full compliance with those laws (hence why China or the EU can compel American social media companies to cooperate on censorship as a condition for market access).
Dean
11d ago
How are religious beliefs experienced differently?
A chaplain I knew once credited it as to experience the sublime in a way that changes your perspective afterwards on the world.
'Sublime' is a word that's often used as just another synonym for quality in art, but it can mean more than just 'pretty.' Something sublime is something that strikes one with awe- not simply being impressed, but the much more intense feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear and wonder. Once you experience it, you are forever changed, because while your feeling on the thing may change afterwards, the reverence / respect / fear / wonder changes how you see the relation of things.
This is not, to be clear, a 'solely' religious experience. It's a somewhat common attestation of astronauts who go into space and look down on the earth- seeing how small their home countries are puts the their formerly massive worlds into a new perspective. Astronauts, despite coming from often committed career professional paths of government cultures, often have a reputation for being more post-nationalist/more internationalist, not because they don't care about their countries but because their paradigm is shifted by the scale perception and how they view their homelands. That sense of being taken out of your previous perception paradigm and thrust into another has other analogs as well, often when dealing with items of scale- some people get put into awe by nature, or by mega-engineering, or by diving deep into conceptually massive items.
The point here isn't 'what' causes your perception shift, but rather that you have one, and what that means going forward. Just as an astronaut is never going to look at earth the same way again even when they return, or an environmentalist struck by the grandeur of nature will never be as impressed by industrial output, the very way people connect the world together has changed in a way that is not 'merely' a choice.
You do not choose to undergo the sublime experience (you can go look at something other people say is sublime and feel nothing), but likewise when you do experience the sublime you do not 'choose' to let it change you- instead, you are the one changed, because that is part of what strikes the reverence / respect / fear. And after that sort of experience, well... you can try to argue with a converted environmentalist that industrialization is good, and they might be swayed by specific arguments that industrialization may be a net positive for society despite it's harm to nature, but the underlying paradigms of how they put the world together has changed. You can't really argue people out of that any more than you can argue them out of their own visual perception.
Religion is a broad set of dynamics and relations, but the sublime religious experience is broad enough / shared enough that people who have experienced it can find enough of each other to validate and further the beliefs, in a similar sense that you and I both know what 'love' is as an experience despite not knowing eachother or eachother's experiences. For those touched by the sublime, something similar exists, and through it the sense of solidarity that the sublime experience, rather than being purely personal, is a shared sense of something else- and that something else is God, with all the fear / wonder / awe / reverence that implies.
Dean
11d ago
So anyway, next time you see some dude in a dress, with long hair and breasts but a face and voice obviously male despite his best efforts, think about what kind of emotions must have driven him to that place, and have a little empathy.
And enforce rules he or she does not like anyway even if they occur at their expense, correct?
'Empathy' is not an exception to social regulation. It may be used to claim it, or demand it, or insist that it should, but the fundamental purpose of government is to tell people 'no' and enforce that objection by force if necessary. This includes, and is especially true, for demands by one on the part of others- be it life (no, they do not have to give you their lives), property (no, they do not have to give you their possessions), conscience (no, they do not have to follow your religion), or presence (no, they do not have to let you into their personal spaces).
It is precisely because the government is in the business of allocating resources and punishments that governments are ethically obliged to not do so on the basis of empathy. Empathy is, after all, easiest for those we already care about and in scarce supply for our rivals or opponents. Empathy is, additionally, easy to fake and yet hard to measure- there are any number of performative appeals to empathy, but few metrics to actually identify those who need it (often because they cannot speak for themselves). A society ruled by empathy is an often cruel place, as it is one which takes from those less emapthizable with and gives to those who are most successful in bullying social pressure to claim the profits for themselves.
This is why virtuous governments are ruled by laws, not empathy. Empathy may be a consideration in the laws a just society creates, but only in accordance with any other virtue or favor, and refusing to enforce socially validated laws in the name of empathy for a select groups is a lack of empathy for other groups.
Dean
11d ago
It looks like it was just the kinetic vehicle with no nuclear warheads.
Is that supposed to be surprising? Russia has been conducting missile strikes for years with nuclear-capable missiles (not least because most of their modern missiles are nuclear-capable).
Russia using an ICBM is just a symbolic tit-for-tat for the US ATACMs range release. It's not a particularly cost-efficient delivery platform, but is intended to play into the recent implicit saber-ratling as a demonstration of capability.
Sure, though there's a bit more to it. It's a content neutral argument- it doesn't only matter if the [insert agreement] was a good idea, it also matters how it was went about. Process matters, and American Presidents who ignore process requirements deserve to get their noses rubbed into it, but there are broader benefits as well.
Short-term utilitarianism (the effects of JCPOA are good, therefore we should ignore process to keep it) is a bad governing and international diplomacy model over time, and thus the best way to negate such bad models is to make them survive or die by their own standard. Americans should not make commitments they are not prepared- or able- to keep, and one of those checks is if they have bipartisan support. Policies that will not survive a transition of party, should not be the policy of the united states, and future presidents should remember JCPOA as a cautionary tale of how not to try and establish a legacy policy.
This is particularly true if we want a more restrained American foreign policy aparatus in the future (i.e. in a more multipolar world), where the American executive's limitations are as much as asset as a hinderance. When other parties know that American Presidents have limitations in what they offer, it increases the need for a party to get their agreement in writing through Congress (after which American courts can later overrule different administrations). This, in turn, requires clearly identifiable- and communicable- benefits to the American Congress, and thus electorate, as to why the American commitment should be made.
If the other party is not willing to make such a commitment- or cannot convince the American electorate as to why an American commitment is appropriate- this is a strong argument against the US executive making a commitment themselves and thus exposing the US to future conflicts that they American political base will not support. Since that would see the US abandon the policy regardless- and thus lose legitimacy / credibility / prestige / whatever form of favor you prefer- it is in many cases more important for Presidents to not make bad deals/commitments than it is for them to be able to make any deal they want.
Treaties are pieces of paper, ask the native american's how much the US cares about treaties. Trying to hold the US population hostage to a group of war mongering imperialists because some out of them have made agreements with other countries has nothing to do with morality. It's part of this whole conveniently framing things in bizarre ways in a weak attempt to justify your position thing you have going here that isn't convincing anyone.
Thank you for continuing to not contest the point on affordability. Thank you also for continuing the underscore your lack of counter-argument on the issue of affordability by introducing amusing divergences that demonstrate good humor.
Comedy is, after all, about the gap between expectations and delivery. For example, one might expect that a moral condemnation of broken treaties and war mongers of a century ago to be an admonishment to not break other treaties or tolerate imperialist war mongers in the present. Instead, spending treasure to honor treaties and otherwise protect independent states from a warmongering imperialist is itself the basis of condemnation.
This is funny because the punchline is that you don't actually care about unindictable spending or honoring treaties or opposing warmongering imperialists.
Dean
12d ago
For Gillibrand, another way to look at it is that is anyone were to be on a deception scheme, she'd be one of the best candidates to play along.
Gillibrand is not only on the Armed Services committee, she is specifically on the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, which is to say she has considerably influence on how the military gets to do research and development and against what. Gillibrand is also on the Senate's Select Intelligence Committee, which is to say she has far greater access than most Congressional leaders. She would be one of the highest cleared persons in the US Senate to know and access things, from both military and intelligence understanding, and while that doesn't mean she has exercised the power it would take quite a bit of exceptional circumstances to try and stop her.
It also means, however, that Gillibrand would have incentive to play along with any 'this totally isn't us' ploy. 'Oh, we don't know who's flying these things- that's why we need more money' is a basic needs-justification for her committees to get more influence over the budget, just to give one incentive. Not spoiling her relationship with her executive branch interlocuters is another.
I respect your reasoning and you're not wrong to have skepticism, but in this context (a) she probably is among the best person in Congress best placed to know, and there are reasons who might not forthcoming even if she did. (If she does- it could also be that she doesn't.)
Dean
12d ago
It is also very useful for a nonimperialist faction to know where the nuclear line of their enemy is.
In fact, it's particularly useful to know if/when the enemy is imperialist towards them.
There's no incentive for Ukraine to give up territory without some kind of Western security guarantee (lest Putin decides to pick up where he left off at a later date),
There's an anti-incentive, even. Perun had a good section recently on the risks of a ceasefire, on how the nature of a ceasefire can actually increase risk over a short-to-medium term (months to a few years) absent other items to prevent a return to conflict.
In short, the current conflict has been as stable as it is because while Russia's force generation rate outpaces Ukraine's, so has its force expenditure. As such, even as Russia raises more stuff (men material), it expends more stuff faster (casualties / ammunition) such that the relative balance stays relatively stable (Russia having slow advances on a small part of the front) as opposed to decisive relative advantage (the opening months of 2022 where the hypermajority of Russian offensive gains were achieved).
In a ceasefire, force generation infrastructure is still there to build up advantages, but expenditures stop and transition to stockpiling. This allows periods of rest / refit / reorganization / retraining which can allow a force to constitute both greater quantity and quality for overmatch than it would if the conflict just straight continued. Because of how numeric advantages can scale non-linearly (the relative advantage of having a 3-to-1 advantage is considerably more than a 2-to-1 advantage despite having the same unit of relative advantage above 2 that 2 has over 1), a current-but-lesser disadvantage can be less dangerous than a later-but-larger disadvantage.
This is especially true if the larger force generator continues generation systems (the already established Russian 2025 war economy budget) while the smaller force ceases force generation (such as foreign supporters cutting aid flow on cost-saving grounds). It's also true if the larger force generator has reasons to believe long-term disadvantages await, and thus limited time-window incentives to act sooner than later.
This is how Russia can be (paradoxically to some) both a higher short-term threat and a lesser long-term threat in its current state circa late 2024. In the long-term, the Russian loss of much of the Soviet inheritance has degraded its strategic center of gravity, the Russian economy will go through painful rebalancing, and when the current war reserves are put back into stock there will be a long and hard period of recapitalization to get back to a post-soviet military. In the short-term, however, it retains enough that it can continue to generate forces at a rate that it's neighbors do not match. The awareness that there is an only short-term advantage in turn drives a 'use it or lose it' opportunity window.
This is why I've noted in the past there's a considerable European security interest in not having the war end in the near term. From the European security interest, the Russian force generation potential needs to be matched / beaten, and that requires the time for them to scale their industrial base even as Russia does not have the opportunity to turn attention to them before complete. And the Ukrainians, in term, have a security interest in not having a Russia able to simply out-generate them and come back for march on Kyiv but with better planning.
This is why, absent security guarantees that would credibly prevent a Russian aggression, the logic of continuing to apply an economic-attritional war still applies, even if the US reigns in support. It's not that slowly losing the Donbas is good, or wouldn't happen faster with less US aid, it's that the costs of doing so are lower than the costs of trying to stop Russia attempting march on Kiev v2 with a year of buildup and reset. (Not least of which because a slow but steady series of bad news can change the US political calculus to re-enable aid, but more rapid defeat in the later scenario would preclude the time for American aid to make as much of a difference before whatever status quo extension hits.)
The question of how likely that is will matter quite a bit to people who dismiss the risk... but this in turn returns to the question of who expected the Russians to invade in 2022. And this, in turn, turns to Putin, and his credibility of convincing other actors that he totally wouldn't break his word that he poses no threat to Ukraine yet another time.
Dean
12d ago
I can be serious and I can be silly, and tend to retort in kind. Arguing a shared memes on the part of Trump Jr. are meaningfully demonstrative of Trump's viewpoint is silly. Noting that the Trump selectees for Trump's cabinet are Ukraine skeptics is serious... but so is noting that many of Trump's selectees are pro-Ukraine, which undercuts the credibility of a hardline anti-Ukraine position.
If Trump is supposed to have strong opinions on the Ukraine war, he certainly isn't manning his administration to reflect that, as the adage 'personnel are policy' applies here. Trump Jr. is a person of interest in the Trump administration, but he is far from the only person, and we can just selectively choose quotes whichever way we want.
That Obama tried to circumvent the treaty process by creating a treaty in all-but-name without getting the domestic political support for the not-treaty to exist beyond his own partisan tribe's span of power, mostly by trying to argue that the consequences of ending it were too big to let it end.
This was both bad statecraft and bad precedent, and would have posed exceptional risk to US policy stability if Presidents got accustomed to trying to engineer too-big-to-fail international agreements to bind their opposition-party successors. International relations is a field that relies on stability and predictability, which is undermined if you build castles on sand and then dare your political opponents not to shake them too much. This is a bit like building near a fault line but hoping there isn't an earthquake, and the best way for sound building codes to be enforced is for the occasional reminder of why building codes are needed.
The end of JCPOA was a salutory reminder to most parties involved that (a) if you want an agreement with the US get it in binding writing, (b) if you want a binding written agreement with the US it needs to be politically palatable to the American democratic representatives, and (c) if you want a proposal to be palatable to American democratic representatives, you should probably not be killing Americans via a proxy warfare policy.
Thank you for not contesting the point of affordability, I appreciate the concession in good humor. You do, however, bring an interesting question.
What are the maximum, and the minimum, non-indictable levels of military spending?
For the level of spending to be an indictment implies a non-indictable level of spending. That amount, in turn, would morally need to align with the legal obligations that the American legislature has passed on the American government, which includes things like security treaties.
Ah, I misunderstood you. If the argument is that missiles are making carriers obsolete, I generally disagree, particularly if the assessment is based on carriers being 'no DEF'. Carrier groups have one of the strongest defenses available, which is the ability to move at a respectable speed. There's a reason nearly every 'the carrier was sunk!' wargame has to move the carrier into range of the enemy threat, and/or keep it stuck in a certain location.
'Carriers are expensive, missiles are cheap,' itself is just one framing. The script can be flipped around with 'cruise missiles are expensive, and airstrikes are cheap.' An all-missile force seems like a grand cost-efficient idea until the war goes on for more than a week, and the realities that missiles are also expensive that sustainment of operations is its own virtue / necessity. We already saw this is Ukraine, where Russia had to transition to kamikaze drones as a substitute for cruise missiles because it burned through most of its strategic stockpiles of cruise missiles in a matter of weeks and then months. Hence why artillery, far less capable, has dominated. There is a cost curve comparison where- over time and strikes- the carrier wing starts to become more and more cost-efficient than the cruise-missile-reliant alternative.
Much of the cost of carriers is on the issue of sustainment. As a result, the cost comparison of carriers to missiles isn't the cost per unit, but the cost for however many missiles one believes it would take to achieve the same effect. A carrier is a lot of eggs in a single basket, and critiques that it is too many eggs in one basket are conceptually valid, but the comparison is with how many other baskets would be needed for the same number of egg deliveries, not the cost of the basket to crack it, if that makes sense.
No, not really. The difficulty of fighting carriers has never been that they were actually unfindable, or even well hidden, but rather that the difficulty of finding them and then getting weapons to bear before they moved off again. Naturally if you require the carrier to be in a functionally inland sea in range of the enemy's most intense detection and fires capability, it is easy to find and destroy them.
The question is why you would expect them to be there in the first place after a war started, and what is supposed to threaten them while they are where they would go.
Unlike Millenium Challenge 2002, the exercise that 'proved' the vulnerability of carriers to small craft, most navies don't get teleported into point-blank range of ships that physically couldn't stay afloat with the weapons strapped to them and then have their defenses turned off. Nor do motorcycle couriers actually works as well for managing command and control- including relaying of targeting information. It would certainly be interesting to see an Iranian swarm attack into the Indian Ocean, but it wouldn't be particularly threatening.
Similarly, diesel submarines have been killing carriers since WW2, but their limitations in range and speed are just that- limitations. When the diesel submarine in quiet mode goes maybe 10 knots an hour, but a carrier can sail around 30 knots an hour while striking 1000 miles away, what you have is an ambush threat, not a roaming hunter. And if diesel submarines are in quiet mode and submerged to avoid detection, how they are receiving the targetting updates of where to go is, well, a non-trivial question.
There is (considerably) more to the thinking behind this, but the core point is that WW2 technology has been sinking carriers since WW2, so overall peer capabilities has never been the requirement, even as the primary defense of carriers is their mobility, not being totally hidden.
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