This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'll stop you right here. No, the fall of the Soviet Union and the Yeltsin era was catastrophic for Russia in a way that Ukraine is not. Massive impoverishment of the population, economic collapse, social collapse, demographic collapse, military collapse. Gorbachev had a strategy to reform the Soviet Union with policies of perestroika and glasnost. He wanted socialism with a human face and to preserve the Union. It failed massively and disastrously. I'm not sure if Yeltsin had a strategy other than 'remain in power' but it certainly wasn't good for the country.
https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp-per-capita-ppp
It's possible to reform a socialist country into a market economy without shock therapy, without shelling Parliament, without a decade of chaos. China did exactly that. Ideology is a part of national strategy, if people stop believing that's a problem in and of itself. With better management of the economy and internal politics, the crisis of belief would've been mitigated. They could've transitioned to other sources of legitimacy in a more graceful manner. And hey, there are people in the West today who still believe in socialism. Indeed, the Russian communist party was quite competitive electorally - it took some trickery to keep them from ejecting Yeltsin.
You don't see the kinds of hysterically aggressive Western nationalists that are found in China. There's a reason why I highlighted Little Pink and not lying flat. You don't see many novels in the West heaping xenophobia and revanchism into their story, demonizing national rivals. Furthermore, US social elan is in a pretty poor condition - January 6th is proof of that.
Above you were saying that the fall of the Soviet Union was a failure of ideology, unrelated to security issues (which is wrong, given how Chechens and Islamists immediately took advantage of Russian weakness). Anyway, you were saying strategy was about security. Now you want to say that US strategy encompasses more than security? I had a look through the document you nominate as the holy text of US national strategy and there's loads of ideological and legitimacy content in there, the need to defend democracy and human rights. Plus there's a fair bit of DEI stuff as well - they want more STEM for girls, there's anti-racism content, they affirm diversity as a national value...
They don't outright say DEI is at the core of their ideology, they say many things they don't really mean. It's a public document, not to be viewed as a window into their innermost beliefs. Only in the implementation, in the specifics of outcomes do we see what they truly desire. That's what's important and why I brought up the DEI/CHIPS article in the first place.
And yet, none of this challenges the point you are protesting, which is that of a catastrophe of strategy as opposed to a catastrophe of other forms. That the fall of the Soviet Union was catastrophic for Russia in a way that Ukraine is not a rebuttal- it is the original argument!
The distinction- and this returns to the original context of that quote you've chosen to focus on- is of the nature of choice and necessity. The commonality of Stalin being backstabbed by the Nazis after making an alliance with them, and Russia's decision to invade Ukraine on incredibly mis-informed impressions born, is that they were the results of unnecessary strategic decisions born of bad information (that the leaders themselves cultivated). Stalin disregarded numerous indicators and warnings of the attack before it occurred to the detriment of his military forces, and the choice to ally with the Nazis to partition eastern europe before that was equally unnecessary for Russian defense, making the direness of 41-42 a result of unnecessary decisions. Similarly, Putin disregarded numerous indicators and warnings that he was not going to be welcomed as liberators and warnings, including the fact that a previously astroturfed uprising failed to garner major Russophile-support a half-decade previously. The consequences of both, beyond being massively costly, were that they were the result of unforced decisions driven by bad strategic understandings, and would have been considerably better for the Russians had they had a more accurate understanding of the strategic situation.
By contrast, Gorbachev's decision to undertake reforms were taken because of accurately-identified issues, and the fact that many of the factors went on to undermine his desired result actually validates the strategic perception that went into them. Gorbachev wanted socialism with a human face not because that had never been done before, but because he recognized it was (rightfully) perceived as fraudulent by many across (and below) the system. Gorbachev identified that change would be needed to keep the system together as something other than a conquest-suppression state because that's how the system was built and enforced, as opposed to the ideological paeons that official position had been taking for decades. And Gorbachev identified a need for major economic system change, as the communist materialist rational had abjectly failed to the degree that the late-Soviet economy was taking perfectly good raw resources and turning them into inferior goods. That the 90s followed doesn't mean that the strategy of change was a wrong decision- it's reflective that any strategy taken for the 90s was starting from an incredibly bad position, and that the issues derived from those issues aren't the result of the strategy chosen, but the realities the strategy had to be chosen from.
When I referenced there is a common failure point to assume that historical states actually work like video games, with the results in control of the player's agency, this is the sort of rhetoric I'm alluding to. This demonstrates both an ignorance of the history and politics involved, as well as a conflation of the merits of the deciding on a strategy with the strategy's results.
The first point returns to the point of the original first question on the value of planning, and the importance of tying that to realistic understandings of the dynamics and actors involve. Come the late 80s/early 90s, there was no 'graceful' alternative to maintaining the Soviet Empire because from the start to the end the Soviet Union from the start was an incredibly ungraceful conquest-and-suppression state, that directly and violently both annexed its extremities, violently put down attempts to gracefully leave the imperial sphere, and systematically relies on pervasive surveillance states and systemic abuses to disrupt dissent. The result was a Union where even Crimea wanted to leave it, and when ungraceful suppression was ended, did. The constituent conquests were not looking for another source of Russian imperial legitimatization to be subjugated under, they did not want the Russian empire, and only continued ungraceful suppression would keep them in it as the Soviets were well on their way to yet another uprising come the late 80s. This is the strategic context Gorbachev was operating in, and from which any strategic decision on maintaining the broader union was being made from.
Similarly, the 90s was indeed an incredibly corrupt time and impoverished time... and was always going to be in transition, as the sort of corrupt leaders who led and looted Russia in the 90s were literally the sort of leaders the Soviet Union had on hand and was producing for decades, and their level of competence and public care was always going to be reflective of that no matter what style of reform onetook in a continuity of government effort because they were the continuity of leadership. The 90s didn't occur, and then a whole host of corrupt gangsters emerged to be corrupt and mismanage the system- the Soviet system had been run by the same sort of people for decades, and their mismanagement was what brought the situation to Gorbachev's position in the first place. The transition being run by gangsters wasn't a strategic choice, it was a limitation enforced onto the strategy by the previous generations of the Soviet Union being a suppression state led by, and selecting for, gangsters.
Which goes back to the point that strategies are chosen for addressing strategic problems, and not the implicit inverse where the strategic problems are a result of choosing the strategy. Unlike in some video games, there is no easily-identified 'corrupt politician' flag or a counterpart 'honest bueracrat' trait, and there is no magical anti-crime/encourage loyalty option. Strategies are chosen from the problems facing the chooser, and the failure of a strategy to pan out as desired is not the same as a failure of strategy, or that the strategic considerations that went into choosing it. Sometimes a bad hand of options is a bad hand of options, and the 90s were going to be a bad hand for the Russians due to many factors the Russians had stacked against themselves.
The reform of the Soviet Union was always going to be carried out by gangsters, for gangsters, after the same gangsters had looted Russia and the empire for decades.
If you mean 'see' as in that it's not covered by the media, this is because the general political tribal dynamics of the media class tend to see nationalism as uncouth and coded as their opposition parties.
If you mean 'see' as in 'it's not there,' this would be flatly incorrect, and anyone who lived through the early 2000s could probably recount more than a few American examples.
And above was a different topic, while this is on the American national strategy.
I realize it can be embarrassing to have been predicted and called out, but the sub-thread you are and were responding to was not on the fall of the Soviet Union, but the specific national policy documents the Americans use to present national strategy which you mis-characterized (your original second question), and your objection demonstrated your lack of awareness on the role of the document.
As we are back to the American national strategy, I will offer you a direct question to establish your familiarity with American national strategy, which in full forewarning I will call out if you try to evade.
Before I posted the link, and before you posted your opening thesis on American strategy, had you ever read or reviewed an American National Security Strategy?
No, not really. The Chechens are precisely the sort of release-or-suppress challenge that the Russians faced across the broader Soviet empire, validating strategies made with that consideration in mind, and the Islamists were fighting Russia even at the Soviet Strength, hence Afghanistan.
Come the late 80s, the Soviets were facing the buildup to a number of major uprisings as the Polish and Baltic independence movements gained steam, and come March 91 after the Americans cut through the Soviet-style Iraqi Army it was very apparent to the broader world that in a conventional conflict in Europe, the Russians were likely to be decisively beaten in any conflict with the Americans- including if the Americans intervened in any attempted Soviet suppression campaign in eastern Europe.
The Soviet strategic challenge of the early 90's wasn't simply that the state was decrepit and the economic system breaking and the society didn't want to be a part of it. It was also that the primary military competitor was not only ideologically inclined to intervene when the next anti-Soviet/pro-Western uprising occurred, but had demonstrated to a global audience that doing so was well within its martial capacity. The only credible model for contesting tactical defeat over non-existential imperial holdings would have been nuclear- and if you don't see the numerous ways that could have turned out worse for Russia than the 90s, you aren't trying.
Yes, and your attempt to play semantic on this demonstrates that you aren't familiar with the American strategy architecture, which undermines the credibility of your assessment of American strategy when you don't even know what it's based on or derives from. Hence the question if you'd ever read it before your opening post.
The National Security Strategy is a document whose publication is required by American law. The law specifies what the document is going to be referred to as. The National Security Strategy isn't called such because it focuses solely 'Security' in the framing you are appealing to, it is called such because in the 1980s 'National Security' was the buzzword de jure that was written into the law as what the document would be referred to.
This is classic example of (bureaucratic) semantic drift, in the same way that 'Homeland Security' refers to a framing that had a particular moment of emphasis in the Bush era US government and which Obama then diminished, and broadly refers to the same concepts that another set of words could. (Bush used Homeland Security to emphasize the implications to the north american continent, but other Presidents tend to National Security for it's broader implications for overseas interests and allies.)
And yet, 'more STEM for girls' is not the strategy, it is the identified policy to achieve a strategy. And not a particularly controversial policy objective, unless you think less STEM for girls is somehow the preferable end-state.
Come now, I know you've opened the document now. I also know which section you are pulling from, what higher-level goal that example supposed to advance, and how STEM is treated across the document.
The answer for the audience:
STEM for girls is in reference to page 15, as in
This is part of the "Investing in our People", which is a subset of "Investing in our National Power to Maintain a Competitive Edge," which itself is the first part of Part II: Investing in Our Strength.
In this context, STEM for girls is not the strategy- STEM "especially" for women and girls is one of multiple elements of the goal of developing the national workforce.
And if one values STEM over other degree fields, then the lower hanging fruit in terms of which gender could have STEM expanded more is...
Well, 'women are under-represented' is another way of framing 'the absolute and relative number of women who could be in STEM is low.' There is absolutely a reasonable policy debate to be had as to whether it's better to increase STEM by increasing the number of men doing it, or whether women in STEM is a relatively low-hanging fruit that should be encouraged, but DEI-esque systemic encouragement of "under-represented demographics" is, again, a way to frame 'the absolute and relative number of [demographic] in STEM is low' when bigger STEM number is considered better.
Given that additional references to STEM in the document are-
...and I think an accurate characterization of American STEM strategy is not 'DEI for its own sake,' or even 'STEM for girls,' but rather 'STEM from any source', with DEI-coded policies being a way to encourage an overall increase in STEM-participation not only by demographics in the United States, but demographics from outside of the US to be head-hunted into the United States.
In other words- the American National Strategy is to encourage STEM training (especially among the demographic least participating), attract more STEM talent from across the world, and improve the recruitment/retention of STEM.
This is indeed something very compatible with DEI-ideology. It's also the sort of policy you'd expect to see if you believe STEM should be increased as a matter of national strategy.
There's certainly an argument to be made on the strategic merits of quantity vs quality, but arguments that DEI fails this on a strategic level while PRC diploma-mills of STEM are uniquely successful are going to face internal contradiction. For people who believe the PRC has a STEM advantage because it's increasing the numbers of STEM graduates, and that Westoid commentary on the quality of PRC STEM education is suspect is just silly cope...
Congratulations. You officially won the argument and convinced key American elites years ago. DEI and migration policy are how the US government under a Democratic administration believe the US will long-term compete with PRC STEM diploma numbers, and it made it into policy.
Thank you for your service.
While I am always pleased to see yet more flourishing psychics able to divine the True Beliefs of people they've never met, I will again conclude that this is demonstrative of the point that you do not understand American strategy, or how the most governments think of strategy or approach it at a state-level.
While it may strain your belief, the American strategy is indeed a public document, and it is indeed intended to be a window for others both inside and outside the US to understand the objectives and directions of the US government. This is for many reasons, ranging from that coordination of the US government and its allies and aligned civil society is hard if no one knows what the strategy is (and when most don't have security clearances to view classified items), to that secret national strategies are stupid for a host of reasons and liable to be posted online within a few weeks anyway.
Contra wiki-leaks founder, the American government (and Western governments in general) do not operate as a conspiracy, where the public motives are false and the true motives are state secrets. The West generally operate as democratic administrations with relatively high turnover of national leadership, often between parties with personal and partisan animosity and no particular interest in keeping their predecessors differing secret desires a secret. There are indeed classified policy documents out there- when you review them, you will find that they are consistently about the 'how' of implementing the strategy, not secret real strategies in and of themselves. The distinction between 'how' and 'what' is part of the endurance of continuity of activities: because the public intentions are generally non-controversial, there are rarely strong motives to unearth the more secretive 'how' programs. (However, it does occasionally happen- see the European government phone-tapping schedules, where upon realizing they were spied upon while in office, new governments have outed previously secretive political espionage programs. This sort of revelation is far less common in states with far less administration turnover.)
Ultimately, national strategies aren't just a plan of how to operate, they're also a signaling and communication device. A secret strategy that no one outside a select few knows is a bad strategy at the scale of the nation-state, because the scale of governments overseeing coalitions of hundreds of millions of people is too large to be coherent. Public strategies are far superior for the purpose of coordination, as in the absence of specific direction anyone can know a more general direction, and it has also been a way for governments to signal evolutions in their postures that mitigate the risks of strategic surprises to their allies and their enemies.
Yes but the way he dealt with issues was poor. Reducing military spending would've greatly ameliorated the economic situation, it was sucking up a good 10%+ of the Soviet economy. Gorbachev didn't even have the power to control military spending but he thought he could radically alter the whole ideological and economic structure of the Soviet Union - in a controlled way! The man was dreaming.
If a strategy is launched in an inept and naive way and fails, it's a failure of strategy. A return to hardline Stalinism would be a 'strategy of change' yet that wouldn't have helped either. Change and reform is not sufficient, it needs to be the right change done in the right way. Implementation is important - gradual and controlled marketization beats chaos. Nothing about the Soviet system required handing everything over to robbers in a mad rush to privatize all assets before the communists could be elected, the Yeltsin approach was extremely counterproductive. Gorbachev's ineptitude led to the hardliner coup, he didn't manage the situation sufficiently well. Now nobody had ever done this before, it's a difficult task that he wasn't trained to do. Indeed, the Soviet failure helped inform China's success. Yet it was still a failure.
However, good management is not some made up video-game skill, it requires a sound understanding of the people and institutions that control a country, it requires certain personal characteristics that Deng clearly had. Even Putin did a decent job in cleaning up much of the mess that Yeltsin left behind - Putin is not an exceptional leader but he's not a Gorby/Yeltsin-tier blunder-addict.
That was the result of mismanagement and a certain level of naivete (itself a result of poor management) about how things would be outside the Soviet Union. As late as 2013 Ukraine regretted leaving the USSR.
Anyway, you started this diversion saying the war in Ukraine was the worst disaster for Russia since '41 - did you miss the increasingly frantic rhetoric coming from Macron and the Pentagon about how the Russians are about to roll the Ukrainians?
It's not looking good for the rules-based order.
No, American nationalism is not on the same order as Chinese nationalism today or in the 2000s. Not even after 9/11. The US ambassador in Beijing was trapped for days after the Belgrade embassy bombing as hordes of rioters threw rocks. China routinely blows up tiny maritime incidents into completely disproportionate affairs. The most popular movie in US history wasn't a patriotic war story like Saving Private Ryan toned up to 11 with 'the eternal glory of the US Army remains in our hearts forever and ever, amen' on the postscript. What are you thinking of - Islamophobia? China is way more Islamophobic than the US has ever been, as the US govt delights in telling us so often.
Firstly, the Iraqi army is not the Soviet army. Just the arsenal Ukraine inherited from the Soviet Union is a whole other world to the SA-8s and Rolands Iraq was fielding. The Iraqi army was also saddled with Iraqi soldiers, who were not known for excellence under US tutelage either. We've yet to see how Airland Battle deals with S-300s or the arsenal of a proper military. Secondly, conventional inferiority was no problem for NATO in the 1970s or Russia today, they have nuclear deterrence.
This may be news to you but you do not have to read these documents to discuss national strategy. You can look at what actually happens in the real world. You can interpret govt priorities with your own eyes. This is better than trusting in the documents. Govts lie! The Chinese might say that they're interested in purely peaceful development - yet actually build up a gigantic navy and forces targeting their near abroad. The US might say it's worried about Iraqi WMDs and Saddam's links with terrorists - but have other motivations and goals for invading Iraq.
And when govts don't lie, they try to be tactful, they massage their words and adopt a certain frame. The Chinese adopt this supercilious tone where their military may be forced to take action if foreign provocateurs incite a rogue province into illegal independence activities. That's not a lie but it's not straightforward communication. Better to ignore the cheap talk and look at results.
The migration policy of having a de facto open border? I note this is contrary to what is indicated in your august strategy document. US migration policy isn't primarily about improving the quality of the STEM workforce but about demographic and political change, plus serving certain corporate interests. The vast majority of the millions of people arriving in America (many flown in at state expense) are not trained in STEM. In fact US legal immigration is a rather byzantine and complicated mess, making it difficult for the most skilled to arrive.
This is where the advantage of my 'look at what's actually going on' approach kicks in. I can observe that DEI and migration policy is not motivated by a desire to acquire STEM talent. If they wanted talent, they could adopt a points-based system like Australia and enforce the border. If they wanted talent, they'd favour meritocracy as opposed to diversity quotas and affirmative action. It's not rocket science. This policy isn't secret - its publicly observable and it does get communicated. But people massage the truth, they arrange their intentions in certain ways to make it sound more defensible. Children are taught things like 'diversity makes us stronger' in school and via the media, just like how China is taught nationalism via school and the media.
Furthermore, relying on Chinese STEM talent to counter China has a number of rather obvious flaws. This is what I was pointing out initially. The DEI and Rules-based order strands are in conflict. The US wants to skim off Chinese STEM talent but not end up training them so they take skills back to China, not have them spy for China. They want to whip up popular sentiment against China (another thing you won't find in official strategy documents but which can be observed through funding of various organizations and media slant) but do so without inciting racism or civil unrest. These are the contradictions I've been talking about the whole time.
The purpose of a system is what it does, not what it says in the PR brochure.
Ah, excellent. While the abandonment of previous lines of argument to ever shifting deflections and changes of argument is as enjoyable as always (Really? You tried to use Macron warning about a Ukrainian defeat as a counter to Russia's invasion of Ukraine being a strategic disaster of choice? In the same post rejecting government strategic positions as unreliable due to lying, no less?), I think we can close this exchange by returning to one of the original points that you've been defending against all this time, which your attempt to avoid acknowledging illuminates nicely.
As was forewarned-
And your response is more than telling.
This is a rather unsubtle attempt to waive aside the relevance of having read the American strategy, when a simple affirmation would have bolstered your position considerably more in a single word. Add to that your earlier ignorance of the documents in question and attempt to cherry-pick contents of the document after introduction without awareness of how they fit into their own location, I feel reasonable concluding...
No, you did not read or review the American National Security Strategy before your commentary on American national security strategy.
And given your word choice in this non-rebuttal to as to what the Chinese 'might' say in their strategy- as opposed to what they do say in their strategic policy documents- I strongly doubt you've read Chinese equivalents either.
Which makes a fair degree of sense, given your obvious lack of familiarity with not only American strategic thinking, but how Western strategic policy systems work in general, including the distinctions between strategies and policies. And your simultaneous attempt to assert that it doesn't matter if you read national policy documents or not because of your powers of observation, but also that the American national strategy document isn't the real strategy anyway so, like, it double doesn't matter if you read it or not.
I fully expect you to continue this denial of relevance defense, of course. After all, it's far more palatable to deny that the strategy exists or that it matters if you are aware of it than to concede that you didn't read it before trying to summarize it in boo-words.
While prioritizing the personal truths of one's own interpretation is typically more associated with progressive DEI advocates than detractors, it's a common enough retort when challenged over inconvenient external objective facts that might challenge their interpretation, like the publicly available national strategy documents that anyone could check their claims against.
Which returns to the original question that led to this exchange, and the structural answer that resulted.
No. Because you never bothered to learn what their strategies are, and it shows in what you've chosen to project and focus on instead.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link