Shrike
14hr ago
A much sounder argument for American agency and responsibility for destroying European industry primarily rests in providing the British and Soviets the ammo supplies more generally to shoot the Germans and Italians
I did allude to this, yes!
The Americans of course gave much more than ammunition; they transferred tens of thousands of aircraft and dozens of ships, although my understanding is that those were compensated Lend-Lease transactions, not charity donations. In fact the aircraft transferred by the United States to Russia, if they had been transferred in one batch (they weren't) would have outnumbered the Luftwaffe at its peak strength during the war.
Attributing their loss of industry to the Americans is a wrong claim of history.
Perhaps it's a bit of a gloss, but it seems to me that, for the simple reason that the US destroyed (both directly by using American weapons delivered by American servicemen and indirectly by the provision of support) European industrial capacity, it's perfectly fine to ascribe (at least a goodly portion of!) the loss of European industrial capacity to the US.
Your point seems to be about ultimate responsibility. I was trying to make a claim about US intervention that I don't think is at odds with your claim about ultimate responsibility.
That the Americans took advantage of the European actions that destroyed the European states and empires does not mean the Americans had the agency, responsibility, or even the ability to stop them.
Is your disagreement here quibbles over a factual claim or with a moral claim that you think I am making? I'm not pushing some sort of revisionist line about how World War Two was part of some secret master American plan with the European countries being American puppets the entire time. (To finally make a criticism of the Star War prequel trilogy disguised as a point of historical commentary, if the United States had puppeted the governments of Europe in the 1930s they wouldn't have destroyed their own investments.)
Shrike
14hr ago
The Russian stuff was better than the Ukrainian stuff. The Ukrainians were fighting with
- US/NATO weapons
- Much more importantly, US/NATO intelligence apparatus. Since Russia has no desire to fight NATO and Ukraine at once, it didn't shoot down US satellites, ISR aircraft, etc. meaning that in a very real sense Ukraine had an easier time of it, in some ways, than NATO would have during a shooting war with Russia.
If Russia had just been fighting Ukraine I think it's very plausible the results would have been "as predicted." My recollection was that NATO intelligence was responsible for ensuring the Ukrainians responded to Hostomel in something like a timely manner. The odds of the Russian shock attack succeeding look much better, I think, if the Russians successfully complete an airbridge and start rolling over Kiev in the opening hours of the war.
Shrike
1d ago
I think we actually know what the US win situation looks like, because we already saw it happen.
Picture this: the Chinese decide that their window is closing but they have a moment of opportunity (perhaps after a US or Taiwanese presidential election). Their plan is really simple: surround Taiwan with troops and ships doing increasingly provocative exercises to demonstrate Taiwanese weakness, give Taiwan an ultimatum of some sort (e.g. "stop buying US military hardware") and then when it is denied, a limited ballistic missile strike on Taiwanese C&C facilities, combined with a lightning heliborne assault to seize a port, coordinated with a large amphibious landing. The Chinese decide not to open with an attack on Japan and the US, reasoning that the thousands of ballistic missiles they have in reserve will send a clear deterrent signal and the Taiwanese will give in under the shock of the offensive, capitulating as soon as it is clear that a bridgehead is established, an estimation made based on accurate intelligence assessments of Taiwanese will to resist.
And this is basically correct: just like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US and its allies don't militarily intervene. Unfortunately for China, just like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese government keeps their ultimate plans secret from their own leadership until the last minute for reasons of operational security. This means that the United States, with its sophisticated signals intelligence apparatus, actually has a clearer picture of the battlefield than the Chinese commanders on the ground. This allows the US to do the in-real-life equivalent of "streamsniping" the Chinese, directly transmitting targeting coordinates and other intelligence to Taiwan, while Chinese commanders are operating largely in their own lane, without broader situational awareness of the battlefield. The air assault troops are met by an armored brigade and cut to pieces; ballistic missiles are intercepted or hit empty buildings and airfields; Taiwanese antiship missiles (guided by US assets in orbit, allowing them to hit assets the Taiwanese are blind to) strike vulnerable Chinese naval flotillas that are traveling with their air search radars stowed to avoid broadcasting their position, and the Chinese amphibious assault/port seizure operation runs into a recently planted minefield and is ignominiously sunk by mines designed during the First World War and artillery shells designed during the Second in the last mile before the beach. The survivors are eliminated by tanks and helicopters without making a significant bridgehead.
And that's it. Because the difference between the invasion of Ukraine (where substantially similar events took place but merely shifted the mode of the war) and the invasion of Taiwan is that Russia has a land border with Ukraine and no problem consolidating whatever gains they have, pulling more tanks out of their stockpiles and drafting more men if their first push fails. But an amphibious landing is a much more binary thing, and when the Chinese lose a third of their amphibious and air assault transport capacity? They can't call a time out and build more ships, or dig in and hold ground, as the Russians did. Ten years worth of procurement underwater or stranded on a beach in 72 hours. Sure, the Chinese still have a large fleet of second-tier ships, including many transports, but those will be, if anything, less survivable than the purpose-built amphibious fleet they've lost, and the Taiwanese still have a cool five digits of contact mines in their inventories.
Now, in this situation, the Chinese could attempt a blockade, or nuclear threats. But we're angling for an at least somewhat plausible hypothetical best case scenario for the US here (not necessarily the most likely scenario) so we'll say instead the government collapses in the face of thousands of casualties with nothing substantial to show for it and the military remove the Secretary General from power.
Most likely scenario? Eh, I wouldn't bet on this happening. Possible? Sure, I think so.
Shrike
1d ago
I don't disagree with your point about the Europeans shooting themselves in the foot, but by the same token of agency and responsibility, the Americans of the day did not merely sit around and let their country become the last economy standing by default (even though isolationism was probably a live option); they took advantage of the situation to better their own standing (perhaps some would argue not as much as they should have due to sympathies with and penetration by the Soviets).
Shrike
1d ago
Just accepting all of this for the argument instead of quibbling (and I think there's a lot of quibbling that could be done, but Second World War bombing campaigns aren't really my area of expertise, so possibly I'm just wrong) the US was still an important part of the post-war partition, and an important part of the Soviet Union's victory in the East, and an important part in the reindustrialization or, if you prefer, continued industrialization of Germany after the war through the Marshall Plan, to say nothing of the shelling, urban fighting, and sabotage that you mention (and of course removing German scientists after the war to serve the United States).
My broader point, though, is that, despite the Iron Curtain, the world was the United State's oyster in a very real way in 1950 that it is not for China in 2025.
Shrike
2d ago
I wouldn't say it's opposed - the Europeans started the war, the United States finished the war (in part) by strategically bombing Germany and its allies/occupied territories (including France, Italy, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Austria, the Netherlands).
Shrike
3d ago
I don't see how Western industry can compete without actively improving infrastructure to drive cost reductions.
My understanding is that China heavily subsidizes their auto industry. I don't know that this is necessarily a bad thing, particularly if you are getting something off of the ground, but it's not necessarily clear to me that Chinese cars will be able to compete at this level long-term. The strategy here is perhaps similar to that once practiced in the US by monopolies: undercut hostile industry to kill it, then raise prices to whatever you want.
N.b. I am not a China booster
Noted, although do forgive me if I forget (I don't always track usernames well...)
Western stagnation is recent, but deep - and in these conversations, we tend to embrace the worse possible choices; for less short term pain guaranteeing great pain later.
Yes, I do think this is a huge problem. But it's not unique to the West and it's not clear to me that China's coherent planning is actually going to be a win for them over the medium and long term.
Shrike
3d ago
if China is just 1950s America, and 1950s America was just 19th century Britain, aren't we headed for the same stagnation and broad irrelevance of the UK today?
I think this is too fuzzy an analogy to be much help.
In the 1950s the United States had quite recently literally destroyed the infrastructure of its major European competitors and made sure that only plausible hostile industrial competitor was thousands of miles away and surrounded by friendly client states. Compared to America of 1950, China doesn't have such an advantage, it has a dramatically worse age pyramid, and a worse debt-to-GDP ratio to boot. In fact, this is even true of China compared to America of 2025. To the extent that "America in 1950" describes any country in 2025, it's, uhhh, well it's the United States.
Shrike
3d ago
There are now lower-performance Western alternatives to the E-3 (and now the E-7), such as the Saab 340 (I think Embraer may also market one?) but that's not a carrier-based aircraft. The French Navy also used F-8 Crusaders until the end of 1999, so I suspect the French were willing to set aside their pride to simply buy a reliable off-the-shelf solution (carrier aviation is already hard enough.)
I wouldn't be super surprised if the French produced their own AWACs to replace the Sentry. I imagine the US had a bigger edge in airborne radar use and production during the Cold War than it does today, if only because the French now have a decent amount of experience operating them.
Shrike
3d ago
Never, ever, would they consider buying US aircraft or missiles.
The French are flying US aircraft (E-2s) off of their aircraft carrier right now. (ETA: I think your post is directionally accurate, though.)
Shrike
3d ago
Trump is single handedly ushering in a multi-polar world.
The multi-polar world openly happened under Obama, when the US removed the capability to fight two major land wars from its national strategy, Russia invaded Ukraine, and the US started to pivot to the Pacific.
Shrike
3d ago
Hawaii is in the Pacific. If the US "lost" any part of the Pacific, it's a small portion known as the "South China Sea."
I continue to maintain that the idea that the US has yet meaningfully lost a great power competition in the Pacific is extremely premature, though, at least for anyone without access to classified records. I think China boosters are failing to learn the correct lessons from the war in Ukraine and are often relatively innumerate about the capabilities that are likely to matter in a high-end war, only some of which are ships and many of which are not even "military."
Shrike
5d ago
Intel communities likely have cutting edge algorithms for things like "image analysis" and "signal emission triangulation." I would be very surprised if they were meaningfully ahead of commercial when it comes to LLMs. If anything they are likely at parity or behind since there's significant security risks to using most LLM models and designing a model that can be used securely takes up time, so you'll end up developing a secure solution using a model that will be outdated by the time you actually deploy it securely.
Shrike
9d ago
(correctly) that citizenship is irrelevant to the US's ability to kill wartime enemies on the battleground
I agree with this, but at least in al-Awlaki's case, there wasn't any allegation that he was on the battlefield, except I suppose in the very broad GWOT context in which the entire world was the battlefield.
the AUMF is the critical distinction
It's not clear to me that the AUMF isn't in play, since the Trump administration hasn't released their legal reasoning yet, have they?
Nor is it clear to me that the AUMF is actually a very clear bar on to strikes on narcos. Didn't the AUMF give the President leeway to go after anyone that aided those who assisted in the 9/11 plot (all broadly defined)? It doesn't seem crazy that TdA and the Taliban, for instance, might have done e.g. a drug or arms deal. At which point you could probably invoke the AUMF.
Returning to the Obama administration again, we see that they used the AUMF as their justification for strikes against ISIS. That seems less ridiculous because ISIS and Al-Qaeda and the Taliban all sort of look the same if you squint but is that really the case legally? I'd need to do more digging into the question to have a very strong opinion, but from my admittedly pretty superficial understanding of this all it looks like the AUMF has already been stretched all out of proportion to provide a legal fig leaf for doing whatever the President wants, so I would not be surprised if this is being done again.
Shrike
9d ago
Sure, agree with all of this. But even if they were clearly hostis humani generis, summary execution would not have been the usual means of dealing with them if they were not offering resistance or threatening violence.
Shrike
10d ago
To your point, I suspect there are already problems with that. I agree that The Company Formerly Known As Blackwater is unlikely to have a corporate policy saying "steal cocaine illegally" and their guys probably aren't particularly less trustworthy than cops/soldiers, so if you screened organizations carefully you could probably weed out people going into it specifically to exploit their access to drugs.
Shrike
10d ago
It's much easier to send a missile than to catch a boat. The missile all move faster than boats, for one.
Sure, but two Hellfires (in a double-tap situation like the one at hand) is going to run around $300,000, so you are probably losing money just to save time, if you contrast it with the cost of putting four guys that you're already paying in a speedboat out there or what have you. Granted, some of that depends on the specifics of the situation, and granted also that the .gov will allocate a certain number of Hellfires for firing as practice every year, but until the cartels start shooting back it's mostly just a question of if you want to give the Chair Force guys or the Coast Guard/high speed low drag types a live-fire exercise. It is true that sending the Navy SEALS or whoever out to arrest them is more dangerous than simply bombing them, but they do a lot of dangerous training anyway.
The reason for this is because of how long it takes to put people to death.
Yes. Dronestriking people is more theatrical, but it would be better (assuming for the sake of the discussion that it's good to execute drug smugglers) to do it via arresting and trying them, if only because we aren't going to drone strike the guys we apprehend at a border checkpoint. (Well, probably not, but see below).
coming around to due process and rule of law, but right now those are empty words that mean, in effect, no punishment for criminals.
Caveat that this is under-researched and I would be glad for pushback:
See, what seems to be under-discussed is the "can we drone strike US citizens with the military without due process by accusing them of being terrorists" ship sailed under Obama a decade ago. What's interesting about what Trump is doing is that now we've expanded what constitutes a terrorist to "member of a cartel." I have not done a deep-dive on the legal backing here (and IIRC the Trump admin hasn't released their exact legal reasoning!) but it seems to me that there's precious little reason not to drone strike US citizens assessed by US military intelligence as being drug dealers, under these legal theories, and then I'm not really sure what would stop you from doing it domestically except "bad optics." (Posse Comitatus prevents the US military from being used domestically for law enforcement purposes but my understanding is that this is not law enforcement but rather counter-terrorism under the auspices of an AUMF).
Which, frankly, wouldn't be surprising given the incentives. But I oppose it because I don't actually think it's a good idea to drone strike Americans in Kansas or wherever for drug-running, and also because I do not think the US government is nearly as good at determining if someone is actually "a bad guy" as TV would have you think, and finally because if the government can drone strike American citizens without having to show proof that they are actually doing bad stuff (which is the point of a trial!) then it's pretty tempting to just...blow people you don't like up and say "they were bad guys trust me bro."
Shrike
10d ago
I support this purely because of the vibes.
I suspect the real flaw in this plan has to do with ensuring that the privateers simply don't keep the drugs and sell it on the street. Unless the US government is offering a price above street value, the temptation to do this would be powerful (and even if the US did offer those sorts of bounties, I suspect that you'd still see problems with guys trying to take home narcotics and whatnot).
Shrike
10d ago
Historically, though, while using military force against pirates, slavers, etc. was commonplace, you executed hostis humani generis after a trial if they surrendered or were in a position to be captured. You weren't supposed to just summarily execute guys you thought maybe were pirates or slavers if they weren't actively committing piracy, manstealing, or resisting arrest. This actually mattered historically - for instance, several people who were tried for piracy because they were part of Blackbeard's crew were acquitted, so the trials weren't just pro forma. But the ones who weren't acquitted were generally hung pretty promptly.
There's no real logistical obstacle to taking these guys in and trying them for smuggling drugs, the US military/Coast Guard has a long arm and could easily arrest these smugglers instead of airstriking them. But the political situation in the United States has evolved (or devolved, if you prefer) to the point where it's significantly easier and cheaper to use the military to blow up hostis humani generis by basically executive fiat than it is to pass a bill saying "we will execute you if you smuggle lots of drugs into the United States" and then...execute people who smuggle lots of drugs into the United States.
It is not hard to understand. "Modal Christians" of pre modern trad age were not theologians, but illiterate peasants who never heard about any "creeds" and practiced their faith mixed with various village traditions and superstitions (often extremely unchristian).
Even if this is true (and I suspect it's greatly overstated: the Christian of the past you describe, far from never hearing about any creeds, could probably recite the Nicene creed from heart because he learned it during Mass, albeit in Latin), this has no bearing on the post I was responding to. In my country even 200 years ago the majority of citizens could read.
Furthermore, there's a category error in measuring modal by time rather than population. Thanks to population growth, the modal Christian by population - which is the correct way of measuring a the most frequent number - is actually much closer to the megachurch than to the medieval mass than one would think. Exactly how close is an interesting exercise, and probably worth much more time and attention than the minimal effort I've put into it, but:
The entire population of Europe in 1600 was around 80 million, smaller than the population of Germany today. Or, to look at it another way, the world population only crossed the 1 billion mark in 1800; the Catholic Church alone reports over a billion practicing members today. It looks like (napkin math based on guestimates of population growth over time so this could be wildly off) only about 50 billion people ever lived worldwide between the time of Christ and 1950 (Novus Ordo, the current Catholic mass in the local tongue, came into effect around 1970) and the vast majority of them I think we can safely assume were not Christians, with Christianity really only taking off outside of Europe and the Middle East during the Age of Discovery (say 400 years ago).
So if you actually measure by the number of Christians then you'll find that the modal Christian is actually skewed surprisingly close to the present - with around 2 billion Christians alive today, Protestants and Eastern Orthodox holding service in the local tongue, and the Catholic Novus Ordo kicking in around fifty years ago, it's possible the majority of Christians who have ever lived received their teaching in the native tongue, and the majority of those likely read or heard (at a minimum) the Nicene Creed, which is looked up to by Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox.
Obviously you could litigate to what degree those numbers represent committed Christians. But obviously the clergy and committed Christians are going to be the ones doing the gatekeeping, and they will be more familiar with the creeds than the average layperson, not less.
This is how real trad life looked like, and it is irretrievably lost.
I think this sort of life is alive and well, just not where you live.
Shrike
20d ago
In reality the modal church of 100-200 years ago is so far removed from the modern modal church that there is no real reason to comparatively consider anyone Christian today.
I honestly don't understand what you mean by this. There are creeds from more than a thousand years ago that Christians today still hold to - those are what have traditionally been used to gatekeep Christianity, and churches today still hold to them.
Obviously a lot of cultural things have changed (for instance, we speak English now and dress funny) but (to pick a random culture war issue) one of the earliest Christian texts (the Didache) specifies that Christians are not to commit abortion: this is a stance the largest church in the world (the Catholic church) still agrees with, and the largest Protestant denomination, at least in the United States, also agrees with it!
To maybe bring it home just a bit: [as per Wikipedia, I don't think this is controversial] the big fight between the fundamentalists and the modernists in American Protestantism started in the mid-1800s when higher criticism crossed over from Europe and really blew up in the 1920s (so: 100 years ago). By the way, whenever you see people talk about mainstream Protestantism versus evangelical or fundamentalist Protestantism, this is essentially what they are nodding at: the mainstream Protestant denominations (that are currently in decline) were the ones were the modernists won - a fight so important that 100 years later it is still referenced in e.g. Pew's polling. This clash of worldviews prompted a guy named Bob Jones to found a university (Bob Jones University); established in 1927. A guy named Billy Graham (b. 1918; d. 2018) attended Bob Jones (before transferring). And as it happens, so did the pastor of the church I went to last Sunday.
At least in the United States, then, not only would Christian time-travelers moving backwards and forwards in time 100 - 200 years be able to understand each other and have theological conversations from shared texts such as the creeds and Scripture, and not only would they largely find that people in their denominations agreed with them on important matters such as what constituted a Christian, what was necessary for salvation, what was and was not sin, etc., but the time-travelers from 100 years ago would find that people today are studying the writings of their contemporaries and they would find that the institutions that they had created were absolutely instrumental in shaping the landscape of 21st century America. They would find that the pastors and preachers went to the institutions that they created because they shared their theological convictions. And if they went to those institutions, they would probably find people they knew teaching there, or if not, people who had learned from those they had taught.
I don't recall if you're American; maybe you aren't and your experience is different. But where I am, the church politics of 100 - 200 years ago are still very much alive, and the doctrines and creeds that are taught go back much further.
Shrike
26d ago
If you believe in God, then being morally scrupulous is much more reasonable, I think.
Shrike
26d ago
And I'm sure Russia would like to achieve a similar outcome in this case via "denazification" although achieving it might be more difficult.
Shrike
27d ago
Russia also can't achieve its goal (rapid overthrow signalling rebirth of the empire)
I don't see the need to stretch for some 4D chess signalling goal when Russia's actual and obvious goals (ceding territory, neutralization, demilitarization, "denazification") have been stated openly and repeatedly and are borne out by their actions.
I maintain that the Wests continued interest in Ukraine is not (just) to continue poking the bear but to ensure the bear doesn't get kidney punched and does a nuclear spergout. Leashing the dog is better than letting it run wild in its dying breath.
What nobody seems to have contemplated is how Ukraine is going to feel about all of this in the aftermath, although quite possibly they will be so reduced to a nonentity that it will not matter if they grow to hate the West for precisely this attitude.
Definitely! But that hasn't stopped it from happening.
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