Shrike
1d ago
If you keep reading,
According to the sources, Venezuela had formally fielded 12 Russian-supplied Buk-M2E surface-to-air missile systems, but only five were in operational condition.
Venezuela had no combat-ready military.
On the timeline of the Twitter source you cite, Venezuelan short-ranged air defenses (which are really the relevant threat; long range air defenses are greatly reduced in effectiveness against low-flying aircraft) were reportedly active.
I agree that the Venezuelan military isn't in great shape, and they certainly weren't ready (despite having everything but an RVSP in terms of indications), but a lot of conflict is in the prep work, which the US demonstrated. Anyway, between this and Hostomel I think we can say that kino heliborne assaults are probably with us to stay, and simply forcing enemy planners to have to consider the possibility of an airborne assault at any given point throughout a massive area is its own W.
Venezuela did not have air defenses deployed.
What term besides "deployed" would you prefer for the BukM2 the US destroyed in Caracas and the air defense systems that appeared in the area after probing by US bombers?
Shrike
1d ago
China does more overseas trade than the US.
Well, first off, I don't think this is true (by value). Secondly, we didn't have to waste trillions fighting forever wars over there to dominate trade either. Thirdly, China is actually expanding its military footprint in the Middle East, inclusive of building at least one military base there and performing anti-piracy patrols, so I think it's decidedly too soon to tell if they can avoid getting dragged into a military operation there.
Venezuela was not a threat to American martime trade.
I am not arguing that it was. I am arguing that merchant maritime republics regularly perform military actions overseas (securing maritime trade being one of the reasons said republics do that, but not the only reason). China (which, on top of the military actions I mentioned above, regularly both uses force and conducts military operations short of war in its maritime near-environs) is a good example that proves my point.
Shrike
1d ago
If the US hadn't been meddling in the middle east there wouldn't have been a GWOT to start with.
Sure, maybe. It doesn't follow from that that you can just let people blow stuff up and shrug your shoulders.
The US should focus on the US, not regime change.
The US is and has always been, at least in part, a maritime merchant republic. All such nations throughout history were inevitably getting embroiled in affairs abroad because their domestic politics rely on trade and trade relies on stable, non-hostile trading partners and open sea lanes. This is why the Monroe doctrine exists and why the US got involved in the Middle East almost instantly upon becoming a nation.
You could wish for some alternative version of the United States that was not this way, but you would be disappointed. "That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."
This is by no means me endorsing or supporting any given US military action. In fact I am broadly critical of US military interventions! But the idea that a merchant maritime republic wouldn't regularly be performing military actions overseas, including regime change in extreme cases, is a fantasy.
Shrike
1d ago
Did the bombing of teh Iranian nuclear facilities start a general war? Trump has ordered a fair few military actions, but none of them so far have lead to a wider conflict.
Yeah, this is the thing, I don't like everything Trump has ever done, but particularly in foreign affairs I judge him compared to the other option, and he's been remarkable at only doing limited military stuff. (And pretty much every US President ever has done at least dabbled in military action). I actually think that he dodged (at least so far) the scheduled all-out war with Iran, which I think is good.
(And I do mean scheduled, the Littoral Combat Ship seems, at least to me, to have been basically purpose-built for derping around in the Gulf shooting up Iranian speedboats and what have you.)
Shrike
1d ago
Yes, I agree - the US (or at least the Bush administration) needed a quick win. But there were lower-level guys we could have snatched, and even a punitive Just Cause-style expedition against, say, Pakistan Afghanistan would have been a politically acceptable show of US wrath, I think.
Shrike
1d ago
Imperialist war projects end up causing chaos.
All war projects end up causing chaos; war is chaos. Look, your original argument was that removing a leader was meaningless. I don't think that's correct. If the US had committed to merely removing AQ leadership during the GWOT there would have been less chaos. But by your telling that would have been meaningless. Which justifies the massive war project that was the Global War on Terror, since merely removing UBL and other AQ leaders wouldn't have accomplished anything. But now (in your telling) we're Kafka-trapped, since a massive war project to hunt down and eliminate terrorists would have created more chaos instead of stability. So the proper response to hostile, violent, or illegal acts against your nation-state or populace, apparently, is to do nothing.
The war to bring feminism to Afghanistan 10x the world's heroin production.
Forgive me for wondering if you didn't get it exactly backwards. You'll notice that Afghanistan was moved on about 3 seconds after the Taliban banned heroin; heroin production massively soared under Coalition occupation, and then after the US finally left Afghanistan heroin suddenly dried up in North America and subsequently was banned (again) by the Taliban, cratering production. Very mysterious - it's almost as if between 2001 and 2021 whoever was interested in keeping the heroin supply going developed a superior alternative.
Shrike
1d ago
So we will soon have regular flights to the US to bring cocaine.
I think that's bad but that's not a failure of the military operation if the military operation's goals are more modest than "end all cocaine flights for all time." By which sorts of standards no policies, wars, or other human endeavors are successful.
Neocon wars always end up with drugs and refugees.
Are we defining "neocon war" here as a war that ends up with drugs and refugees or what.
Just removing one person won't do much, the regime can easily continue even if one person disappears.
Correct. But also, the regime can easily not continue if even one person disappears. It depends a lot on the regime and the person!
Shrike
1d ago
Quite possibly.
I actually think the longer-ranged air defense elements (like the S-300s) just wouldn't be able to target low-flying helicopters (doubly so if jammed) so the real question to me is where the short-ranged stuff was at.
Seeing as how Trump was toying with Venezuela like a cat with a mouse I think someone deciding to Maduro offer up as a sacrifice makes total sense, particularly if there are bitcoins in it for you.
Shrike
1d ago
If this is what the Taiwanese security guarantor is doing, do you think Taiwan has much confidence in its security
Generally speaking, having your security patron secure a W makes people feel more confident in the prowess of their security patron.
especially as China is quickly moving towards total dominance in the South China Sea?
If you look closely, this may have demonstrated the insecurity of Chinese SCS holdings in a broader war scenario to air assault. (I've been thinking about this for years, interesting to see something like a proof of concept). Pretty interesting stuff!
Shrike
1d ago
Either way, bringing in rotary assets unmolested into Caracas is fucking ballsy and signals total degradation of any Venezuelan air control, especially given the lack of even preliminary SEAD/DEAD.
I wonder if we trust our countermeasures against their MANPADS or we have guys on the ground passively or actively making that a non-issue for us or both. Really seems like it should not be hard to have a few squads of dudes with Iglas or something wherever you go.
On the other hand, for all I know at this point the helicopters we saw were the extraction forces and the ingress was by covert assets on foot. Will be interesting to see how much we can learn about what exactly happened.
Shrike
1d ago
If you want to understand what is going on, you need to start seeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Iranian water riots, China firing missiles and practicing live fire drills while surrounding Taiwan, and the US capture of Maduro as all different angles of the same problem.
One of the other things this entire adventure has demonstrated is that the US can suddenly and rapidly flow forces to a previously abandoned airstrip and rapidly project power to that location.
In every "Eagle v. Dragon" wargame, China pummels the heck out of US airbases in Guam and Japan with ballistic missiles, destroying large portions of US air power on the ground. If the US can, at short notice, transform any of the dozens or hundreds of little airports in the AO into operating bases and start reconstituting old World War-vintage airstrips to platforms for tactical aircraft, the target set for Chinese ballistic missiles expands dramatically.
And of course this is not a surprising US capability. But it's one thing to know we can do it in theory and another thing to see the US actually execute on it so briskly. A successful snap air assault against a prepared enemy is icing on the cake.
Shrike
1d ago
Respectfully disagree.
Sometimes it seems to me like Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine have gotten people convinced that the way to do military action is to occupy a foreign country and turn it into a vassal and that's the standard by which all military operations must be measured. Iraq and Afghanistan failed because the vassalization process broke down, not because of the invasion.
This isn't true! Limited military operations, including punitive expeditions and decapitation strikes, can be successful if the goals are modest.
I don't think Putin could have achieved all of his goals merely by removing Zelensky, but arguably if we had tried this in the Middle East (no invasion, just grabbing bin Laden) we would all be much, much better off.
What's happening in Venezuela looks like a repeat of our removal of Manuel Noriega, which was viewed as a successful operation for the States. Obviously it's too soon to tell if there's a Part 2: the US could still decide to go back for more and get bogged down. But overall I think taking out leaders is actually a pretty viable strategy in the right circumstances.
Shrike
2d ago
Am I missing something here? Is there a reason why these incredibly powerful, important political parties seem to have zero effort involved in actually getting young people to work for them? Seems like an incredibly massive self-own.
I'm not sure where you are, but it makes no (short-term) sense for national institutions to build out efforts in places that are dark blue/red. They're already going to vote one way, and it's a waste of money to try to change that. Or at least that would be the steelman.
Shrike
2d ago
I also wonder if nicotine ends up being a net win for the former (and the latter) over a large population over time due to its tendency to keep smokers thin.
Not a nicotine user myself and wouldn't encourage it. But I think we are (as a collective society, or, if you prefer, the state is) often shortsighted in perceiving the effects our actions will take. Which makes stuff like "boosting TFR" very tricky.
Shrike
2d ago
higher during the 50s-70s when people smoked like chimneys.
Which is really funny because (if I recall correctly) there's at least some evidence that nicotine is not great for fertility; if smoking was wide(r)spread today it would absolutely be Culprit #1 for reduced fertility.
Shrike
2d ago
The scope of the consideration here was solutions that might cause a widespread meaningful rise in TFR. If you're not invested in that, then sure, it not working isn't a problem for you.
Over what time span? Over a long enough time span, the problem as currently projected is likely to very slowly fix itself because those higher-fertility communities are growing. Of course I don't trust those projections to continue indefinitely but it seems just as wrong to assume that births will go to zero as it does to assume tradcons will go to 100.
Short of shotgun gestation, there's nothing that will fix TFR immediately. I expect you could fix it in about ten-twenty years in the States with a whole-of-society effort. I suspect free (state-subsidized) births (cheap, I suspect), school propaganda (~free), media propaganda (cost+), perhaps some housing subsidy-type arrangements could drag it back past 2.1. Throw in building 1000 nuclear reactors (expensive but we need 'em anyway) to boot. I don't think that's undoable by any means, but it would be hard and the social conditions aren't there to galvanize it yet. Maybe in a decade.
I don't think some of the gender-related stuff you talk about would hurt and it might help but I suspect that it would pale (particularly in terms of cost-effectiveness) in comparison with kids being told in school and on television "you will be a failure in life if you don't graduate high school, get married, get a job, and have 2 - 3 children." Maybe I am wrong, but people forget that there was a concerted anti-natalism campaign in the West in media and elite circles, and I do think that saw results. The tweaks you are proposing, to make men feel more "ownership," will also work, but slowly, because people work via vibes, and it might take some time for your legal tweaks to nudge the vibes - at which point, frankly, I think the nudge will be weaker than "wow energy is free and the housing is cheap." I broadly agree with you wrt pregnancy-related expenses although eliminating those would of course come out of someone's pocket. Ultimately I suspect "tough marriage policy" - the stick - would help, but not as much as a carrot, and you do that by making it easy to get a job and a 4 bedroom 3 bathroom white picket fence and lawn forever home at 24.
A big question, to me, is if a crash course in boosting fertility based on massive government intervention is sustainable. People are very susceptible to social pressure but it tends to breed backlash and resentment. I don't want a massive baby bump in 20 years followed by a massive crash and backlash in 50.
Shrike
3d ago
Very interesting. Is there a nice succinct article/essay about this you could share?
I've been mildly optimistic that elite concern about the issue in the West is early enough that it will pull the elephant in the correct direction, so it would be very interesting to read about the South Korean experience on that question.
Shrike
3d ago
This would efficiently target the most valuable, productive, ambitious people too, rather than the welfare class who don't really want to go to university, don't have anywhere near the necessary marks and aren't in line for promotion anyway.
The whole criticism of affirmative action is that it promotes non-meritocratic people. I don't really want my surgeon being selected for having four kids any more than I want her being selected for being a neurodivergent woman, or something. And if we started offering affirmative action for people who have kids, I don't know how it would stop otherwise-low-performing people from having kids to game the system. It probably would boost TFR but I don't think it would efficiently target the most productive or ambitious people any more than current AA policies do.
Shrike
3d ago
I wonder how much of this will happen naturally as higher ed begins to face a crunch as the population narrows. Various fedgov policies could speed this along fairly "painlessly" (to the average American). It seems plausible that college enrollment trends will reverse even without ideological buy-in from the colleges themselves.
Shrike
3d ago
She can drink, snort, and smoke however much as she likes while carrying her child and nobody can actually stop her.
This isn't exactly true; on a quick Google around half of US states treat substance abuse while pregnant as a form of child abuse.
Why don't we just stop beating around the bush and go back to what works? Uh huh. How's that been working out? Mainstream conservatism has taken notice to how unpopular this position is and has largely adapted to this reality by promoting what I've take to calling neotraditionalism: offering a model of male obligation without the durable ownership. Good luck with that.
This does work within the communities that practice it. Red states are attracting more children than blue states; devout religious conservatives are ~at TFR. You correctly point out the problems with packaging this in a secular model but it works well in a religious model where accusations of cryptopatriarchy are the cost of doing business.
These are insurmountable problems. There's nothing to be done.
If you extrapolate wildly and irresponsibly from current trends, what's being done is precisely what needs to be done: the evangelical non-denoms, Pentecostals, and Jews will slowly convert the entire population of the United States and then birthrates will stabilize nicely at about replacement, carefully husbanded by religious traditions with centuries of time to refine their methods for dealing with human mess.
Of course I don't think it's as simple as that; nothing is as simple as that. But I think it's important to realize in the TFR/birthrates discussion that the United States isn't a monoculture, it is a teeming ecosystem of competing subcultures, and some of them are radically out-competing the others. (And of course I assume this is true elsewhere as well.) If you want to boost birth rates, you can try to identify what works in those subcultures (or, if you're a genetic fatalist, you can probably relax because they will win in the end eventually anyway).
One parting note: I do think there is a distinct danger of trying to boost TFR by elevating high-fertility subcultures. I suspect that outside threat sensation boosts fertility rates - see Israel's extremely high TFR; it may not be a coincidence that evangelicals, which have had a persecution complex for decades, have a higher fertility rate than mainline Protestants even with similar beliefs (see my second link). So, as in other ecological endeavors, attempts to preserve or expand an ecosystem might backfire and end up destroying it.
I tend to agree with you. But I imagine Hanania would prefer to define it in the Puritanical sense so that he can connect conservative and progressive sexual mores. This lets him make his message "the problem with the left is that they took on the worst aspects of the right" or something like that, which is both a counterintuitive take and advances his overall goals - in other words, a very typical Hanania move. (Or at least that's my perception.)
In his defense, I do think that "scolds" are an important part of (or at least a viable means towards) "keeping things the way they are." This arguably also explains at least in part the rise of "wokescolds," as concerted threats to "woke" culture appeared.
To tag-team off of this a bit, if we knocked out Venezuelan communications it seems quite possible that many Venezuelan troops did not fire or attempt to fire simply because they received no orders to. A lot of us here are military nerds so we know if we were in the Venezuelan armed forces and we looked out the window and saw an MH-47 we would be like "oh crap the Americans!" but I wonder if your average Venezuelan air defense troops, even if they were under standing orders to shoot US assets, could confidently PID the target.
I agree that it's "unlikely and impossible" if you properly distribute them but (along the lines of above) I wonder if the Venezuelans just set up static AD posts that could be mapped and then targeted pretty easily.
Whatever the case, I think your typical US plan involves assuming the enemy is competent, so either we were confident in our ability to map and strike their AD troops, we were confident in our countermeasures, or just relatively risk-tolerant. Probably a combination of all three.
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