billbindc

This is This is the absurd culmination of this episode. By doing it too aggressively and too early, China just gave everyone else a big heads up on a set of tools it was developing that had been filtered out in the past from NORAD screens. Now, well there goes that in the case things get wild and wooly over Taiwan. It's the nth example that the "China plans long term" thing is complete balderdash.

This exactly. It's very obviously a colonial war. The only way to be on board is if you simply hate the Western status quo so intensely you don't care about the damage done to folks who seem far way or if you think that colonialism as such is a good thing. Together, it's basically Rindersteak Nazism.

https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89008 A perceptive take on Prigozhin here.

Personally, I don't find myself to be too surprised by support for arming Ukraine from many in the center/left vs that of the far left/far right. In the years leading up to it, there was something like a reactionary International forming with a predilection for Caesarism and Putin was seen as the epitome of their ideal. In that world, the dissenters were talking about Salazar's Portugal as a better model! And the parts of the far left supported that sort of thing because the real struggle is against the 'social fascists' (aka 'neo-libtards') in the middle who defend the status quo. So...if you are at all moderate and can actually see that overturning the global order on behalf of Vladimir ****ing Putin is an evil idea there's only one moral and obvious practical thing to do. Putin helped quite a bit by pulling a slapstick version of Fall Weiss on Kyiv. Now to stick with the job and finish him. Slava, etc.

US State Department also just made a similar statement about Russia. Seems pretty clear that there's a broad expectation of accelerated seizures of Western citizens in these countries.

Just in case you were wondering if a: the US was in for the long term and b: if they were going to keep letting Elon Musk **** things up: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/federal-contracting/starlink-competitor-touts-pentagon-partnership-blasts-musk

In part due to Russian destabilization, the government resigned. The new PM is going to be a former Interior Minister who is a hard ***, very pro Western and EU. Moscow got the opposite of what they wanted out of their efforts.

Ah yes...the dreaded "this thing is bad because other things" analysis has reared it's ugly head. <eye roll>

As I noted before...Prigozhin was never in a position to vie for power since he has no basis of support independent of the good will of Putin himself. Kadryov is indispensable in Chechnya while Surovikin could lay claim to the support of younger officers in the MOD. His time on the meat hook is coming.

Dear god what are you talking about? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian–Ukrainian_Friendship_Treaty Before this all kicked off in 2014 Russia was in no danger at all of losing that base.

And the last time he talked about pulling Starlink out was during the last big Ukrainian offensive. Musk's sympathies are pretty clear.

The definitive take down of Hersh’s claims: https://oalexanderdk.substack.com/p/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe

Not sure if I've talked about the larger picture but as I see it, China expected Russia to roll over Ukraine and calculated that Taiwan would have been something like a fait accompli thereafter...particularly as there's going to be pretty big window of opportunity in 5 years or so when China will enjoy a bit of a force mismatch as the US coalition belatedly catches up. Instead, Russia muffed it and the West turned out to be much less of a paper tiger than expected. So China is in a strange place. As Hal Brands and William Imboden have posited, China is at a peak moment. It will get relatively stronger for a half a decade and then begin a slowish relative decline as demographics, economics and military preparation of potential opponents gets better. And it's been stumbling badly in its quest for hegemony (i.e. AU subs, Japan arming, Philippine bases, etc). Xi's response was to try and dial things back with the US for now and seek to wedge as a counter balance for European countries against overweening American political power and economic pressures. Just as that was getting into full swing, the PLA's 3rd Department dropped a huge turd in the bowl. I'm not so sure that's a symptom. It looks to me more like there is an internal reaction from the Chinese military to burn any attempt of rapprochement before it gets traction. We'll see.

Just quoting people from 14 or 25 years ago isn't an argument, it's basically just an assertion. And Kennan wasn't always right, just as I demonstrated above in regard to Burns. Yes he was a highly influential voice in shaping containment...but a touchy one who was constantly feeling slighted about his position and what he perceived as the tendency of various administrations to ignore his wisdom. That led him to be pretty reflexively oppositional and it shows above. He also does two things that Westerners often do in their orientalist way in regard to Russia; he attributes pretty much zero agency to the Russians themselves and he believes Russian truculence derives from fear of us rather than anger at what they perceive to be a world that does not give them their due. And yes...you can see how Kennan would find some emotional resonance in that. As to strategic assessment...give me a list of practical, realistic examples in which Ukraine being in NATO would undermine Russian security. And no, a "NATO invasion to the Urals" an acceptably serious response.

I can look at a map and say that Ukraine in NATO doesn't hurt Russia's strategic defense much at all. Russia has 6500 nuclear weapons. It cannot be invaded. The reason NATO expansion happened is because recently liberated countries in Eastern Europe knew a: Russia would eventually want its hegemony back and b; there was no realistic scenario in which NATO would or could attack Russia. Russia's strategic problems have not been at all external. Its problems stem from a political culture that stunted development in favor of resource extraction, that drove its best and brightest overseas and that failed to address issues of mortality, demography and technological lag. In lieu of an actual development vision for Russia that would satisfy the needs of the Russian people, the regime elites utilized ressentiment to redirect their grievances.

Funny thing about that Burns cable everyone cites is that he notes the particularly inflammatory nature of any access to NATO of Georgia and Ukraine. Which then did not happen. And when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, that latter country was no closer to joining NATO than it had been 6 years earlier. What galled Putin was that Ukraine was going towards the EU and refusing to accept Russian hegemony over it’s affairs internal and external. Moreover, the Russian government has clearly said multiple times that this the conflict has always been about restoring the Russkiy Mir. Seminole, I would meekly suggest that arguments made on the basis of singular cables are often unsound. They are typically very contextual in time and space.

Exactly. And I hate to break to the trade folks, but those Aussie subs aren't intended to sit around the Great Barrier Reef when/if the balloon goes up. They are to supplement the naval embargo the US will impose if things get kinetic. DC has belatedly seen that China is potentially planning a big war with much broader aims than simply taking Taiwan...which would be bad enough...and that the only way to stop it is to show China that we are able to do whatever it takes to win it.

I’m happy to take bets on how far the US is willing to go vis a vis decoupling with China. With Russia in DC, there is *some* debate about how far to go on Ukraine. With China, the only debate is whether or not we are going fast enough and far enough. One salient and crucial example is the agreement Netherlands and Japan have made with the US on high end chips. It’s extensive, it’s seriously debilitating to China’s chip industry and Xi is bitter about it. The US is going forward and allies are coming along. To give a sense of how things are being seen here, there is more discussion of *when* we are likely to be in a conflict with China than *if*. With that mindset, the US isn’t going to take no for answer for often or for long.

Hersh's article is describing the usual arc of his claims these days. Sounds big and then quickly collapses under the weight of reality.

Do we know this is what Russians actually think? I mean any Russian with a modicum of historical memory remembers Afghanistan, 1917, the Russo-Japanese War and they live in a society where vocalizing doubt about this war is quite likely to ruin ones life. I would submit that we don't really *know* what Russians think and what is portrayed as Russian thought is very often a projection of Western beliefs about Russia. And because we don't know that really, then definitive statements about how Russians will react en masse at any given moment are really just stabs in the dark. If you don't believe me, I would strongly suggest going back and looking at Western newspapers in the lead up to the Bolshevik Revolution and during its early days. It's sobering.

Very useful: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1623317994624503808.html

Russian budget, no notes.

It must be quite something for the Glavset boys to be reading this thread knowing with absolute conviction that none of the wisdom herein could possibly filter usefully through the sclerotic, corrupt, silovik sh*tshow they work for.

The tell on these "exposes" by Hersh is that he always has just one source who covers about 6 sentences in the article propped up by pages of background, supposition and endless adjectives like 'vast', 'elites', 'deep' etc. Fanboi fic for the Taibbi crowd.

Agree that Prigozhin is not an GRU subordinate but I don't think he's much aligned with the FSB either. He was, to be clear, but he tried to become a power on his own and it looks right now like he failed. The FSB went from seeing him as a useful tool to a an interloper and an incompetent one at that.