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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   38653 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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Winding back a bit to option A, to put things into perspective, what we’re presently doing is pretty much what led to WW2. Chamberlain and the rest of the west were in a stance of appeasement. By not actually fighting evil, we let it grow. Just as appeasement emboldened Hitler to push further, letting Russia keep gains now might signal to Putin—and others—that aggression pays.

I always find it strange that appeasement is compared to the lead-up to WW2, and never to the repeated appeasement given to Communists throughout the Cold War. First in letting Stalin conquer Eastern Europe including betraying Poland, whose independence was the supposed purpose of WW2 in the first place! Then in the Berlin Blockade, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, in China, in Korea, in Vietnam, in Angola, and in Finland. In fact, between the Greek Civil War of 1946-49 and the invasion of Grenada in 1983, at no point did the US dare to deploy a decisive amount of force against any Communist opponent, even though from a sheer balance of military force perspective the west could have steamrolled North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba etc in a total war situation.

The result of all this appeasement... Is that the USSR lost.

First of all, I think appeasement is a decent framing because Putin has long been suspected of wanting to take over some of the Baltic states, also former USSR, also long-time actual NATO members. A lot of people seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking that if it wasn't Ukraine wanting to join NATO, there's no issue. I think that was false then, and still false now. If Ukraine gets rolled, those Baltic countries are still on the table, though the longer the war goes on and the more Russia bleeds it does become less likely.

Second of all, the Korean war... exists? I know, the US didn't like re-mobilize the whole country for total war, but it still had an absolutely massive military with tons of WW2 surplus stuff. The US put quite a bit of effort into winning the war and ended up in a stalemate. That's an absolutely massive counterexample such that we don't even need to talk Vietnam (where we dropped an absolute fuckton of bombs and literally drafted people... I fail to see how much more decisive we could have been!)

I think there's still an argument to be made lost in there about appeasement and Communism, but most historians seem to think that Containment wasn't super effective. But replacing it with a more aggressive military policy doesn't make a lot of sense either since the whole MAD thing was already a major factor as early as 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis. That means in the short 15-year window of time before that, during which we did fight a major war which we failed to win, is the only possible time period. What would you have done differently in the, what, 1955-1960 window?

The Korean War had about 1/10th the manpower deployment, 1/10th the expense, no rationing, extremely limited factory conversion, no conversion of civilian vehicle production to military, no massive naval buildup, and two fewer uses of nuclear weapons. Sure, when the US fought in Korea it was a no holds barred fight relative to what would come later, but they were still throwing punches pinky finger first rather than putting the entire industrial weight of the US behind it.

Vietnam has an obvious appeasement moment in the Paris Peace Accords followed by the accord-violating 1975 offensive, where the US pretty much deliberately allowed South Vietnam to fall to invasion. You don't even need to get into the rest of the war effort and whether the US didn't commit enough resources, the 1975 offensive is too obviously appeasement in the face of an ally being invaded.

Of course, this is not an argument for escalating the Korean or Vietnam War. There are plenty of good reasons not to, do not think of this as me saying the US should have turned the Chinese border into a belt of cobalt. But every argument against escalating the Vietnam or Korean war has a 38th parallel in not escalating the Ukraine War, but when you do it there, it's suddenly the Munich Conference.

As for nuclear weapons, Russia still has them. If appeasing a nuclear power is Munich in 2025 then it's also Munich in 1965.

but most historians seem to think that Containment wasn't super effective.

It continually baffles me that historians say this because... where is the soviet union now? I think the domino theory was probably bullshit, but forcing your enemies to expend resources at an unfavorable rate forever just works™. The mistakes america made was with picking the wrong enemies-- we could have easily had that one vietnamese dude as an ally, and later Iraq proved to be a lesser evil than hardcore islamists like ISIS.

The counterfactual to consider is what if the Nazis had nuclear weapons?

I don't really like this counterfactual because it was never even remotely plausible, so you have to make at least one other massive counterfactual and then we're just too far from reality for the exercise to be intellectually useful.

Ugly, starts with the nuking of Moscow and probably ends with the nuking of Berlin and other European cities by the United States. (I'm not sure if London gets nuked, but the UK becomes untenable for staging of operations even if they don't surrender)

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