War propaganda, 'Realists' and neocons, and the denigration of the war sceptics

[NoXion]

Especially as there are tens of millions of them, none of them thinking exactly the same thing.

There does however seem to be a strong consensus among Ukrainians as to how to greet heavily armed murderers and rapists coming over the border from Russia.

They're certainly not throwing flowers on their tanks.

 

[ska invita]

If Russian forces fare well in the east and the south, the Kremlin could eventually decide to enlarge its own war aims and seek to swallow more of Ukraine.
Alternatively, if Russian forces falter in the coming weeks and Vladimir Putin faces a further defeat, he could well look to use weapons of mass destruction, or to trigger a wider conflict to change the course of the war. Accidental escalation is also a real risk, with Russia already carrying out strikes near NATO territory and Russian and NATO forces operating in close proximity.'

...which correctly suggests this situation is doomed if you do, doomed if you dont - the logic is the analysis doesn't suggest there is any clear answer to the problem, when the problem is a rampant and brutal russian rampage.

The problem with any deal and agreement to seceed territory is exactly that Russia "could" (v likely over time) "decide to enlarge its own war aims and seek to swallow more of Ukraine".

I can see the cold logic from NATO that grinding to a stalemate is the best possible outcome as it limits both of those scenarios: enough pain for Russia to stop it expanding further and enough engagement to stop it trying some "escalation"...and hope general fatigue creates a fade out to the conflict. This also achieves the US's stated aim of "weakening" Russia. But stalemate = deliberately dragging out the war, with all the greater costs that infers.
There are no good options here. But I remain convinced it will end in secession of territory.

 

[RD2003]

There does however seem to be a strong consensus among Ukrainians as to how to greet heavily armed murderers and rapists coming over the border from Russia.

They're certainly not throwing flowers on their tanks.

Is anybody claiming that they are?

Or that there wouldn't be a broad consensus under the circumstances?

Even within that consensus, however, there will obviously be a multiplicity of views, and millions are no doubt wishing the country could have taken a course which would have avoided all this.

When it's all over, these views will find expression, and society will go back to being at war with itself.

 

[RD2003]

I know this link has already been posted in the main war thread, but the article is far too sensible to be shouted down by morons and war enthusiasts (de-facto supporters of those they otherwise purport to decry.) The west’s calls for a total victory in Ukraine can lead only to ruinous escalation | Simon Jenkins


'As ever more lethal “defensive” weapons are delivered by western powers to Ukraine, Russia’s complaint of a proxy war looks ever more plausible, and Vladimir Putin will continue to rattle his nuclear arsenal. If he can flatten entire Ukrainian cities with bombs, why not with nuclear howitzers? Western hawks have spent their lives practising for such a confrontation. You can sense they are eager to test Putin’s mettle – at a safe distance from home. The hawks must know he will not withdraw from all of Ukraine. So why not see how far his nuclear bluff can be called?'

'As today’s wars drag on, their effect on public emotion ebbs and flows, while vested interests flex their muscles. When the Soviets occupied eastern Europe after the second world war, the west’s discipline was absolute. It followed George Kennan’s doctrine of containment, not rollback. The Soviet suppression of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 was not contested. A nuclear confrontation was agreed to be unthinkable. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962, and the ageing Andropov’s moment of madness in 1983 (when the Kremlin, spooked by a Nato exercise, almost launched a nuclear strike) saw military chiefs in paralysed excitement. Recent studies have shown how close the world came to disaster, averted only by frantic back channels, secret compromises and split-second decisions.'

'From the moment a conflict becomes hot, war fever distorts reason with emotion. Fuelled by the media, it poisons every bid for peace with the cry, “too many have died to allow compromise”. Strategy is distorted, too. Just as we were told in 2003 that Iraq was planning a missile assault on Britain, so now we must believe that Putin is a similar threat to our security.

The doctrine of cold war containment, tacitly agreed by Moscow and Washington, held to the scrupulous avoidance of an east-west confrontation between the major powers. Everything else was subordinate. Now we are at just such a turning point.'

 

[RD2003]

The danger now is that we no longer have adults in charge. It's because something about the culture that's emerged over the past few decades (possibly four or five decades) means that nobody truly grows up anymore. That's me. you and the leaders we pretend to criticise. (Just thought I'd add that, as I'm getting a bit fucking pensive on the white wine.)

 

[RD2003]

One for the military geeks and self-styled amateur experts. 'Crisis vignettes' and everything. Pro-NATO.

The Coming Storm: Insights from Ukraine about Escalation in Modern War

CSIS crisis simulations run as part of the new On Future War series show that the longer the war in Ukraine lasts, the more likely it is to escalate and spread beyond the country’s borders.

www.csis.org

'

'DIPLOMACY AND SIGNALING​

• Talk. As politically unpopular as it might be, the United States—not just France—will need to directly engage Moscow. Talking does not mean reducing coercive pressure. Rather, it means clarifying red lines and expected behavior to better frame bargaining positions.
• Test. The government should use data science to test signals and rhetoric before making official statements. Leaders must choose their words more carefully and apply best practices from marketing that test how groups receive those words and make sense of them. Recent statements about regime change, alongside imposing costs on Russia in the long term, are counterproductive and would likely have been shown to be so if tested prior to signaling Russia. The fact is much of public signaling—which is central to crisis response—is left to speechwriters and principals, absent empirical testing and natural language processing that evaluates key themes, sentiment, and other vectors to help calibrate the message.'

Another reminder that history never ended: 'Ukraine is the beginning, not the end, of a more acute phase of twenty-first-century great power crises. Analyzing the conflict and using it as a jumping-off point for thinking about the future of competition and how best to ensure strategic advantage is a central task of the national security community.'

 

[bendeus]

The danger now is that we no longer have adults in charge. It's because something about the culture that's emerged over the past few decades (possibly four or five decades) means that nobody truly grows up anymore. That's me. you and the leaders we pretend to criticise. (Just thought I'd add that, as I'm getting a bit fucking pensive on the white wine.)

What the genuine fuck is this supposed to mean?

 

[RD2003]

What the genuine fuck is this supposed to mean?

As Samuel Beckett said, it means what the words on the page say.

 

[bendeus]

As Samuel Beckett said, it means what the words on the page say.

So the infantilising postwar culture has produced infantile leaders unlike the really mature ones who preceded them?

 

[RD2003]

So the infantilising postwar culture has produced infantile leaders unlike the really mature ones who preceded them?

Maybe. There is evidence. Just look at the person you are compared to your mum and dad.

 

[bendeus]

Maybe. There is evidence. Just look at the person you are compared to your mum and dad.

that's evidence?

 

[bendeus]

And, fwiw, my old man is an emotional midget incapable of taking responsibility for anything. I'm merely of below-average height.

 

[bendeus]

And, fwiw, my old man is an emotional midget incapable of taking responsibility for anything. I'm merely of below-average height.

(which you could regard as some kind of evidence based upswing)

 

[Smangus]

And, fwiw, my old man is an emotional midget incapable of taking responsibility for anything. I'm merely of below-average height.

Front row material then?

 

[bendeus]

Front row material then?

I'm Boris Johnson and you may claim your fiver

 

[RD2003]

that's evidence?

Don't know. But it's sort of relevant. But we're getting off-topic a bit. Suffice it to say that we have leaders who reflect the fairly juvenile society we live in. Most of them have never seen war, for instance. Johnson has gone from the Bullingdons to pissing about pretending to be a journalist, through some panel shows to power. Biden has concentrated on enriching himself and winning public sympathy over the loss of one of his children, which he was better postioned to weather (yeah, I do know...) than those who have to do the same while having next to fuck all. It's all quite worrying.

 

[Smangus]

I'm Boris Johnson and you may claim your fiver

Crash tackled any 5 year olds lately Boris?

 

[bendeus]

I dunno. I'd say the overwhelming majority of 'leaders' in any period of history and over any geography have tended to have been privileged, cosseted and entirely disconnected from actual life. How this makes the tory grandees of yesteryear fundamentally different from the tory grandees of today I really couldn't say.

 

[bendeus]

Crash tackled any 5 year olds lately Boris?

Too busy building a world beating vaccine programme, old bean

 

[RD2003]

I dunno. I'd say the overwhelming majority of 'leaders' in any period of history and over any geography have tended to have been privileged, cosseted and entirely disconnected from actual life. How this makes the tory grandees of yesteryear fundamentally different from the tory grandees of today I really couldn't say.

I'm not just talking about Tories. Look at the Labour front bench. Maybe it's an age thng, but I find it difficult to see myself and my contemporaries as equal to our parents, let alone our grandparents, who lived through the pre-welfare state days, the 1930s depression and WW2. Maybe it's summat to do with rock and roll, man. After Mick Jagger cavorting about on teatime telly in 1962, perhaps things were destined to never be the same. It all culminated in Shaun Ryder after all (I love classic Jagger and Shaun, but...). Armageddon brews nicely behind our backs while people brood on their sexuality and rage endlessly over trivial arguments that can't be won on Twitter.

 

[RD2003]

(Reminder that we're kind of off-topic.)

 

[Humberto]

I'm not just talking about Tories. Look at the Labour front bench. Maybe it's an age thng, but I find it difficult to see myself and my contemporaries as equal to our parents, let alone our grandparents, who lived through the pre-welfare state days, the 1930s depression and WW2. Maybe it's summat to do with rock and roll, man. After Mick Jagger cavorting about on teatime telly in 1962, perhaps things were destined to never be the same. It all culminated in Shaun Ryder after all (I love Jagger and Shaun, but...). Armageddon brews nicely behind our backs while people brood on their sexuality and rage endlessly over trivial arguments that can't be won on Twitter.

Kids today.

 

[bendeus]

Sure. But the period prior to the four to five decades of which you speak is stacked with loons, nonentities, narcissists and psychopaths entirely unfit to rule, who nevertheless felt it was their God-given right to do so. For some reason Baron von Ungern Stahlberg sprung to mind (unbidden) and he'll do. The past has no more monopoly on good leaders who earned it by dint of their morality and endeavour than the present. I would say, however, that the deep complexities of ruling in the current circumstances expose both the obvious unpreparedness of the 'anointed' and the system that gives them succour to a greater degree than ever before.

 

[NoXion]

(Reminder that we're kind of off-topic.)

If you don't want the thread to go "off-topic" then maybe you should avoid making asides about how there aren't any real grown-ups any more, or whatever the fuck it is that you're trying to say.

 

[RD2003]

If you don't want the thread to go "off-topic" then maybe you should avoid making asides about how there aren't any real grown-ups any more, or whatever the fuck it is that you're trying to say.

The original point was that there are no real grown-ups in charge of war policy anymore. Just people who try to echo the approach of their predecessors (or, more accurately, think they're doing so) while lacking their experience. Possibly this is due to growing up in an infantilised society.

Whatever, having these priveledgedly-educated idiots in charge does not bode well. As we can see with their childish talk of good versus evil, and so on, in relation to Ukraine.

 

[bendeus]

The original point was that there are no real grown-ups in charge of war policy anymore. Just people who try to echo the approach of their predecessors (or, more accurately, think they're doing so) while lacking their experience. Possibly this is due to growing up in an infantilised society.

Whatever, having these priveledgedly-educated idiots in charge does not bode well. As we can see with their childish talk of good versus evil, and so on, in relation to Ukraine.

So how is this different from forever?

 

[Humberto]

So how is this different from forever?

Exactly: Take WW1 and endless pointless death at the behest of a dysfunctional out of touch elite, for example.

 

[krtek a houby]

If you don't want the thread to go "off-topic" then maybe you should avoid making asides about how there aren't any real grown-ups any more, or whatever the fuck it is that you're trying to say.

 

[RD2003]

So how is this different from forever?

As I said, few of them actually have any experience of war, compared to prevous generations. They've grown up playing at politics, a bit like those of us on the far left, exccept for bigger stakes. Let's hope they've at least studied the stuff around the moments we came close to Armageddon.

 

[bendeus]

As I said, few of them actually have any experience of war, compared to prevous generations. They've grown up playing at politics, a bit like those of us on the far left, exccept for bigger stakes. Let's hope they've at least studied the stuff around the moments we came close to Armageddon.

Sorry mate, but this is truly grasping at straws.