billbindc

Picking Vance will likely turn out to be a mistake. Even some 43% of Trump supporters want aid to continue to Ukraine. There are tectonics moving on the Democratic side that will likely lead to a much more vigorous campaign. Vance will provide great fodder for it.

Just remembered suddenly the guy writing about the old Marine who supposedly dated back to Tet and was now fighting in Ukraine with an apparent ability to discern strategic truths from shrapnel on the North side of a tree and the state of the Russian army by the stains on a mobik's combat smock. Out of curiosity, what ever happened to that fabulist?

AI isn't going to revolutionize as many things as folks imagine...but one thing that it is likely to is the ability to filter noise to isolate particular sounds and at great distance.

Stealth seems like a likelier option than a powered battle suit...and really a necessary concomitant. If Watling it to be believed, as time goes on signals discipline will need to include not just IR and EM but also sound, etc. Think the movie Quiet Place but with smarms of smart drones instead of beatable-by-one-smart-trick alien attack dogs.

Following the general trend on here in terms of broken offense, tanks, etc...leads to a question I've been considering. If offense is really broken then are not the risks to Ukraine of a ceasefire on current lines much lower? We hear, every time this comes up..."Ukraine can't have the war end here because Russia will just reload and try again". That's likely true but isn't the converse also true that Ukraine will do the same and given the inherent advantages of defense be able to do so far more effectively, all things being equal, than Russia will? Note that obviously, this thought experiment would require a peace in which Ukraine is not forestalled from buying arms, reviving its economy, etc. I would be interested to hear what you folks think.

It should be clear that Fukuyama's idea of the 'end of history' is nothing like this all-too-popular and later misconception. Far from being a claim that struggle was over, he actually predicted exactly the civilizational conflict we are engaged in throughout the West right now. “But supposing the world has become “filled up”, so to speak, with liberal democracies, such as there exist no tyranny and oppression worthy of the name against which to struggle? Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy.”

"The South Korean defense industry just entered the chat."

If accurate...wow:

Prigozhin's ride...a year later.

I would argue that that offensive was aimed at Odessa without which it fell far short of objectives.

Has there been a single Russian offensive in this war that has gone better or even as well as expected? I can’t think of one.

Add in the 'either give me Ukraine or I nuke the world' speech and yes, you have all the fixin's for a hearty meal of Russia-is-increasingly-****ed.

Putin raising the specter of nuclear immolation again. I don’t think that the basic calculus has changed…nuclear weapons use doesn’t get Russia a win and I think that the moment Putin seriously begins to contemplate destroying the world over Ukraine is the moment someone in Moscow puts a bullet in him. My read is that things are going worse for Russia than we think from the outside. Putin making such blatant statements towards South Korea, climbing into bed with Kim almost as a junior partner, basically holding a nuclear gun to his own head…doesn’t read like winning.

It ain't a world war yet, but Vladi's trying. Trying real hard.

Interestingly, the founding generation of the American republic actually identified far more with the Spartans...viewing Britain as the epitome of the rapacious, hypocritical Athenian empire. Then we got a navy...

I think the way to approach it is that the US thinks its hegemony exists because as a nation it has a superior system...not that it has a superior system because it maintains a hegemony. For a contra example, may I suggest Russia?

I disagree with you for once. Per Jefferson: "We shall divert through our own Country a branch of commerce which the European States have thought worthy of the most important struggles and sacrifices, and in the event of peace [ending the American Revolution]...we shall form to the American union a barrier against the dangerous extension of the British Province of Canada and add to the Empire of Liberty an extensive and fertile Country thereby converting dangerous Enemies into valuable friends." In conception and execution, the American project has been imperial from it's start. Modern America has been at pains to obscure that fact but the United States has been an expansionist empire and a relatively liberal one since 1865. Where it differs from the norm signally is in the 'converting dangerous Enemies into valuable friends' part. Relations with Mexico and Canada are, not coincidentally, quite close and extraordinarily friendly given how things began in both cases. Germany, Japan, Italy, Britain, Vietnam, Spain...it's hard to come up with anyone the US fought a hot war with who has not become an ally on paper or de facto. America was and still is an empire but with a big difference...it prefers friends to vassals and exerts more soft power than anyone since perhaps Rome (which makes sense given how obsessed the Founders were with what they understood of the Republic). If American wins this round of the global hegemony sweepstakes, it will be because we have leadership who understands this. If we get Trump, we will be carelessly knocking over a key pillar of our power.

Trump has said he will 'solve' the war in Ukraine if he begins *before* inauguration day. What does that mean? Well, we are not giving aid to Russia and we are already exerting about as much duress as we can short of going to war with Moscow directly. On the other hand, we are providing the lifeblood of military aid, diplomatic support and ISR to Ukraine without which it can only fight in greatly reduced circumstances. We both know Trump's track record in making deals. Do we really imagine he'll take the harder road?

There is no evidence of that yet. What we do see is China trying to build up it's own. I would imagine that the DPRK can go to China if it needs restocking but that nothing is moving until Xi really decides he isn't going to make a try for Taiwan. Kim's stocks are also already pretty gigantic and what we are seeing in Ukraine seems like he's getting Russia to over pay for the clearance rack.

Something to add is that folks should be quite clear on the reality that none of this happens without China acquiescing to it. The DPRK's banking, trade, food supplies all depend on China fairly abjectly. So..while Xi is refusing to directly provide official Chinese aid to Moscow in the Ukraine war it should be understood that he is willing to let proxies do so. This is not necessarily because he wants Russia to win but rather that he does not want it to lose either.

"Not satisfied with taking on the Ukrainians, Russia has decided to go fully suicidal and take on the Vietnamese, the Finns, the..."

Round two of the deck reshuffling in the Kremlin. It is *quite* interesting that Putin is importing his niece into that position and he's throwing a bone to the Patrushev clan. All signs of attempts to coup proof, pay off and tie potential challengers to the regime.

You don’t vote for someone based on the concept that you “wait until he gets elected” to judge him. Trump held up aid *the last year he was in office* and he’s continued to regurgitate praise for Putin, Xi, etc. He has a track record, he’s said he will “settle” the conflict before he even gets into office and he has routinely said he will force a deal on the parties. Since his leverage with Putin is virtually non-existent, we know what deal will disfavor the party he has already descried, abused and strong armed. The spending claims are the window dressing, not the reality. Please…do not kid yourself or anyone else.

My argument is definitively *not* that we can push for maximalist victory. My argument is simply that Putin sits atop the system but he is not the system personified. Ergo, if we behave in a sober manner, chances are more likely that the internal incentives control for behavior. What discourages China is the degree of will/power/military force the US is willing to commit to vis a vis Russia and what that suggests about a response to a seizure of Taiwan (which is far less likely than a blockade).

I would point out that Prigozhin proved the weakness of Putin but the strength of the systema and nobody is going to be in the position Putin was in early 2022 for a very long time. Yes everything is contingent and bad bounces happen but in general countries remain within the ruts of the road their wheels already know. Russia was a weak, declining power with a rapacious elite most interested in self aggrandizement before this war began and it's more likely to revert to that norm than anything else. Call me an optimist.