billbindc

If the argument is “I don’t even remember what I thought in 2014 but how dare you suggest that propaganda works!” you probably want to sit this one out.

He had a roofing company at one point which does not surprise me. Every project I've been involved in has involved the kind of grandiose fantasizing you normally only see in a certain kind of politics.

Routh is a fantasist, loon and liar. Follow the thread...from June:

Excellent roundup: https://www.wsj.com/world/ignore-the-defeatists-americas-strategy-is-working-inukraine-f13ba4ef

Literally in the middle of watching this for the nth time. Well done.

If it's ok...I can pass on a personal experience on this front. I actually ran into a French influencer while on a trip in Japan who, when he realized my wife and lived in DC, proceeded to regale us with the glories of his life in Saint Petersburg and how immigration was ruining France. He did not, for some time, realize that we know France quite well and also assumed because we played dumb that we didn't understand anything about the war in Ukraine. It was utterly fascinating to see in microcosm how the game is played by these folks and how in his version it was tailored to a French perspective. And he is one of quite literally thousands. What we did not know until today is that, as an RT employee, he works pretty much directly for Russian intelligence. Coda: after we let him yammer on for a while, he stumbled into a critique of 'decadent art' only to discover that my better half is a working artist and topic expert. He was gone, in outraged confusion, within three minutes. Personally I felt cheated I didn't get my shot. C'est la vie.

Sure. To be clear, Kofman is generally in favor of giving Ukraine more scope of action. He just wants to make it clear that it's far more complicated than advocates often contend.

I have my problems with Kofman but he brings up an extremely important point here about what expanded targeting means and why it is such a complicated escalation issue:

What's very much on topic is how much more complicated supporting Ukraine would have been for the US if it were still ensnared in Afghanistan and too little attention is paid to the fact that the Biden administration had already concluded Russia was invading as it was finalizing a withdrawal. Messily done, certainly, but the die had been cast by the previous administration and their eyes were on the much bigger challenge to come.

I have never described it that way but rather as an ongoing process involving lots of well informed military and diplomatic bureaucracies that are doing their best with both triumphs and constraints that we don't necessarily see. What I *do* scoff at is the arm chair quarterbacking from folks who admit to neither. It's unserious, too easy and entirely unenlightening.

All great points by the Capt and Steve with just one thing to add: the US isn’t just managing escalation with Russia. It is also managing it with China and the EU…between how much aid we can forestall from the ambitions of the former and how much we can coax against the fears of the latter. It’s an extraordinarily difficult job that will be safely ignored…may I say post facto…by everyone who doesn’t bother to read the diplomatic history of these times. But feel free to critique from the cheap seats. It’s easy, fun and you don’t have to pay the price of being wrong.

He certainly had a very bad night but don’t count your chickens yet.

I think the easiest answer to the question is that it wasn't yet done because many other more (and often extremely) pressing issues had to be dealt with first. It is also a question of high pertinence to Finland, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Bulgaria, etc, each with it's own political and military perspective. It's vanishingly easy for us to yell "Do somefink." from the sidelines...quite another to actually create NATO wide policy.

A rather large lack of detail in what the US says China is providing Russia. I'm sure on some level it is true but what that level is matters quite a lot. Watch that space, I guess.

I think it's quite worthwhile to consider whether or not we have all the factors that go into the decision. We have no idea but we can certainly guess...judging by Romania's long coast on the Black Sea...what leeway is being allowed to other combatants in this war. Without that knowledge there is no way to know what the Romanian government is balancing against an errant drone or two that was probably not escorted to an Odessa it did not actually hit.

It isn't. 1. Identifying what you are seeing on the screen is not necessarily that clear. 2. There are going to be innocent mistakes/omissions on flight plans. 3. Sure...but by the time you have fully ID'd a tracked object action may be impossible/dangerous. While there is certainly no obligation to hold fire against a hostile incursion, avoiding precisely that sort of trigger happy attitude is the foundation of efforts to manage escalation into a larger war. Russia's inability to measure twice and cut once is exactly why it is in the worst military and economic quagmire since Austria-Hungary decided to punish the Serbs.

I am well aware that you cannot see the difference.

Escorting and monitoring are different in the way that 'grotesque insinuation' and 'description' are different.

Sure. Which is why the much maligned “restraint” of the Biden White House is going to look pretty good in the history books.

I never rely on anything when it comes to Putin's Russia but they certainly have shown a tendency after the initial invasion decision to be risk averse on the very big things. The MoD still calls the US Sec of Def in order to try to avoid escalatory situations, it has not blown up a nuke plant or made more than the occasional shot at the Kyiv dam. And there is certainly plenty of reason for Russia to listen to the restraining demands of China and to a lessor extent India...who have both made it very clear that they will react very badly to somebody splitting atoms over Niu York. This applies to failure points short of full state collapse as well. An internal power struggle will have factions who seek external support. Whoever seizes control of the nukes and keeps them under control will have a powerful argument to receive external aid. So...sure....worry. But pretty much all of the incentives and likelihoods argue against things going nuclear.

Given that Russia can barely sustain a shovel-in-bodies-and-hope-for-the-best offensive right at the end of their GLOC, it's clear using nukes will never really be a utility question. They will be used if Russia can ever see a situation in which that use will destroy the political support either within Ukraine or from Ukraine's supporters in the fight but as things stand now, Russian going even with WMD's will create greater support from the US/EU and likely results in retaliation that the lumbering beast that is the Russian military will have difficulty adjusting to. Can you imagine adding the burden of providing NBC protection to the Russian Army when they already are sending out contract soldiers in track shoes? Desperation, mistakes, misapprehension could change the calculus but so far Russian planners have not been wildly successful in changing the game and I doubt the introductions of WMD would change that record.

Not sure where the strawman became that the US fights purely out of altruism but it certainly does not come from what I have stated. The reality is that the US fights for what it perceives to be its interests and then often overcommits to fights because of an accurate assessment that there will be domestic political blowback for whichever pol finally makes the call to end involvement. China, Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan, inter alia all illustrate the point. That doesn't mean that the US is entirely reliable, etc, etc.

Taffy definitely out fought Kurita but I wouldn't say Kurita fled. He realized that he had been at it too long and that the superior resources of the US fleet were going to eventually crush him. Yes, he was confused about the particulars but his withdrawal was reasonably well considered.

I am not saying we are nice guys...which I think you know has not ever been my take and Afghanistan proves rather than refutes the point. The US stayed in Afghanistan for at least 12 years after all logic, commitment or strategy made any sense. American domestic politics treats foreign policy as if sunk costs fallacies don't exist and just to show you an irrefutable data point just look at what happened to Biden's approval rating before and after the Afghanistan withdrawal.

I think you make a big mistake in assuming that American foreign policy…even in proxy wars…is simply cold hearted calculation. Inevitably, our domestic politics gets involved in every conflict we really engage in and a lot of soft factors get introduced into the decision making process. It’s a very obvious fact when you think it through. We would not have been in Vietnam for long at all if it had been otherwise. “Who lost China?” would not have been a powerful American political charge for decades. I would also take exception to the idea that the US will walk away from Ukraine in anything but a Trump driven abject surrender to Russian objectives. The simple reality is that “Russia in a box” is going to be a decades long process and Ukraine will be an integral part in that struggle…either as an American ally or an expanded manpower and resource base for further Russian pressure on Europe.