This is one of those rare cases when some of assumptions are just wrong (I lived in Russia since 1972 when I was born, until 2014):
- There are three different kinds of Ukraine:
-- western part was annexed by Soviets as a part of Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, never really belonged to Russian Empire historically, and the population genuinely hates Russia as occupants;
-- eastern part & Crimea _was_ actually Russia before Soviets;
-- central part (think Kyiv) is 50/50, but mentally it's very different from Russia anyway.
- Ukrainian language is not in any way a 'peasant dialect' - it's very distinctive and different from Russian; maybe less different than Polish, but a typical Russian speaker will be able to comprehend a literary Ukrainian maybe only slightly better than Polish.
- Events of 2014, _regardless_ of State Department involvement, were quite real, genuine restoration of the national sovereignty.
- Ukrainians have a serious grudge for Russia, and reasonably so (Holodomor etc); the hybrid war in the eastern provinces didn't make it any better. They do recognize themselves as a different nation now.
- Putin as a reactionary leader is quite an overstatement - he doesn't have neither knowledge nor the vision for this role. If nazis were "Carlyle implemented by swine" - current Russian regime is "Carlyle implemented by a mini pig". Some of his guesses are intuitively correct, but they are not systematic, and his background (communist indoctrination + second-rate KGB officer job in Eastern Germany) doesn't do him any good.
Current Kremlin elite has a very special mythology, a strange mix of Soviet ideology and awe for pre-revolution Russian Empire. The problem is, they're borrowing worst parts from both, and corruption level in the elite is unimaginable by even very low Western standards.
I would say that expecting them to be some sort of a dedicated reactionary force is a wishful thinking.
To quote the old Reagan Republicans at Powerline: "I am a biased observer, but it seems likely to me that Russia’s aggressiveness is driven in part by the fact that the President of the United States suffers from senile dementia. If I were Putin (or Xi, but that is a matter for another post), I would view the Biden administration as a once-in-a-century opportunity to make strategic gains that will be difficult or impossible to reverse. I fear that is what we are seeing." We may soon see the downsides (upsides?) of Roman-style rule by courtier. There would be no such opening with Trump in the WH.
Cleaning up the streets is easy (comparatively). Creating wealth for the people is hard. You have to institute the rule of law and the sacredness (culturally) of contract. The problem with dictators (as opposed to Hoppe-oriented enlightened monarchs) is they don't really have any skin in the game. The Chinese are just being Chinese, as they've been for 3,000 years. The Russians are not the Chinese, and they can't be made to be Chinese even if Xi and his cohorts magically became the rulers of Russia. And Putin, while smarter than Western "leaders" (as if that was hard), is not China/Xi smart.
As you point out, the question of succession has plagued every non-monarchial dictatorship since Augustus. Xi desperately wants to displace the dollar as the reserve currency, and it seems like the Fed wants to help. But for the Renminbi/yuan to displace the dollar, it would have to be fully convertible to other currencies and businesses would have to be able to take the yuan out of the country and hold it in non-Chinese banks. You don't think the Saudis are going to accept yuan for oil if they have to have their deposits in a Chinese bank, do you? But if the yuan became convertible and exportable, the entire upper-middle class of China would leave for the Western Hemisphere. The oligarchs would stay--they own property. The poor and lower-middle class would stay--someone has to make iPhones. But the capital would flee. So Xi is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The only way to destroy the United States in an afternoon (it might take a few years to build up credibility, but it would utterly destroy the US), is to ruthlessly tie the yuan to gold and then let the economic chips fall where they may when they demand all payments in gold (or gold-backed yuan). Obviously, the US financial house of cards would collapse basically instantly, as the Saudis would in fact take gold for oil. The Russians could join in and tie the ruble to gold too, just to stamp on our battered body.
But...but...but...doing this would remove forever the ability of the government to engage in graft and major-league corruption, which is the raison d'etre of both the Russian and Chinese governments. So they're in a bind. Destroying the hated United States while suffering zero casualties is literally minutes away, but the price to the leadership--honest governance with only a little skimming of tax money, rather than the wholesale death-defying level of corruption dominant in those countries--is too much. So until the Fed ruins the dollar all by itself, the US will remain the de facto leader of the world, financially and militarily.
You see, even if the US *wanted* to get out of Europe, it couldn't. All of European banking is also at its root based on the dollar. Bretton Woods may be "overthrown", but its ghost is still there guiding the remains of the Second World War. You talk about Putin supporting elements of reaction. Fine. I wish him well. But given how meekly and voluntarily that the peoples in Europe--all of Europe, not just the West--have submitted themselves to the absurd and unworkable (not to mention idiotic) covidtalitarianism of the last two years, the idea that there is any popular mandate in favor of the cultural/political sanity a good dose of reaction would bring is not supported by the data. Sure, people protest mandatory vaccines, everyone will protest state-mandated poisoning of children, but even when given a chance, they won't even cast their votes against these Branch Covidian dictators.
The people of Poland, Czechia, and Hungary have shown a boldness in protesting the giant amorphous blob of governance that is the EU, and good for them. But have any of these governments shown even a quarter of the initiative against Faucism that Governor DeSantis has shown in Florida? Not a one. These leaders may have gotten off the train to Crazytown when it comes to the ridiculous gay/trans agenda, but if they can't even see that masks don't actually do anything and that the vaccines do very little and only temporarily, even when these facts are staring them in the face at less than the required six-foot social distance, I doubt the people even have the gumption to say "men aren't women" and make it stick.
So, all hail your idea. Let Putin try being the leader of the free world for a while. Certainly the sociopathic demented pedophile nominally in that position isn't going to be doing any leading. But Putin wouldn't know what to do with Ukraine if he did invade, much less Poland or Hungary--or Germany. It'd be a bloodbath of civil war and the US would be dragged back in AGAIN, and like the last time, the US Army would sort things out and then the US State Department would royally fuck things up again like they did after the last three European Wars came to an end. So maybe the status quo isn't so bad after all.
South Sudan may be a joke because of its corruption, but not because it is an inorganic construct. The South Sudanese are totally different from the Sudanese, since they are mostly Christian, speak English and are Nilotic blacks. Folks from Sudan proper are Muslim, speak Arabic and are Saharan browns. Had you said the name is a joke, sure, but that can be easily rectified (actually Sudan proper should change its name to Nubia). The fact that the State Department happened to be on the side of ethno-statism is a nice broken clock-is-right moment.
Bilbo Baggins, Equity Lord and CEO-monarch of the new American Operating Company peers over a map of Europe. "And why shouldn't I?" He mutters to himself. "Why shouldn't I keep it?" Why shouldn't he, indeed.
Your original handle's mentor advised those seeking wisdom to call things by their proper names. Your own Formalism echoes this. Should we treat France like a sovereign and independent country? Well, to answer that, shouldn't we first ask, "is it?"
In the case of France, I think the answer is pretty clearly, "no." On questions of defense, it must defer to State. And if their defense doesn't come from the sovereign region of France, it isn't sovereignty. It's just sparkling suzerainty.
So, as it's sole provider of hemispheric defense services, France ought to be paying us tribute. It currently isn't, and so the first thing that needs to be done is to turn this nonpaying consumer of sovereignty services into a paying customer. Paying in what? Why, paying in dollar of course. The French will work making wine and cheese which we will then buy and they will take those dollars and pay their defense fees. Think of it like MMT, except based.
As an aside, no discussion of a coup no matter how cozy is complete without discussing the MIC. Yes, there would have to be a MIC in the new regime. It can be a leaner and meaner one, producing the minimum viable defense products, but it will still be there, turning butter into tanks.
Coming back to Europe, there's no reason why they can't be given plenty of local autonomy under your leanest and meanest possible defensive posture. You can make it obivous to everyone in Europe what a sweet deal being your tributary is by simply crunching the numbers and figuring out exactly what it would take for them to start defending their own continent.
If they still aren't willing to pay, well, I suppose they might prefer rule from Moscow, and your plan serves as a fine option B for them.
There do seem to be some open questions about borders in the East. It seems to me that the best course of action there is to sit down with old Vlad and just work out where the lines should be. I would expect Russia, who is in fact an independent military peer, to be amenable to this. This alone would be a refreshing change of pace from current State policy.
CY: “Liberal ideas are not indigenous to the region. They are Anglo-American ideas.”
– I guess “liberal ideas” boil down to the slogan “People should do whatever they please”, as opposed to the French slogan “People should rationally coordinate their activities”, the German slogan “People should channel the nature-gods”, the Italian slogan “People should be beautiful” and the Spanish slogan “People should be noble”? And the “People should do whatever they please” slogan results in interesting hobbies on the one hand and in irresponsible decentralized oligarchy on the other hand – resulting in irresponsible decentralized oligarchy because what a lot of people naturally want to do is to dominate other people?
So libertarian dictatorship (monarchy) would be good for us AngloAmericans because it would let interesting people pursue their interesting hobbies while preventing boring jerks from dominating everyone else in unofficial irresponsible ways?
I think that we should figure out what’s good about us and focus on how to protect and promote that good thing rather than on what’s bad about us and how mean we are to other people such as the poor Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, and Spanish whose wonderful diverse vibrancies we’ve messed up.
Will the gap between real and ideal Putin that's resulted in Crimea being a "half-ruined backwater ruled by some petty local thug" rather than "California with Police", result in a Russia centered Europe being some broken remake of the Warsaw Pact rather than glittering hub of restored order?
As to if that's better or worse than Europe's current trajectory, I have no good answers.
The neo Westphalian Europa is probably a fantasy but think about how cool it would be. Imagine the uniforms! The re-channeling of Teutonic autism into the revived Prussia. One can dream
Dear Curtis Yarvin, have you seen the new Amanda Milius interview on Tucker Carlson Today, the same Tucker show where I first heard about you? She made the popular documentary about the Lee Smith book of how the Deep State sabotaged the Trump administration. It's a much better interview than her self-centered (and drunken) recent appearance on Timcast IRL (and Timcast Members Only pay wall, for the worst drunken section). Her dad wrote the film Apocalypse Now and also Red Dawn. You two should interview each other on a Malice podcast. You two might keep up with each other pretty well, talking politics, etc. I'm not sure if you should encourage alcohol until you have established that you can get along sober first. She might be annoying when drunk, unless you are equally inebriated, but I don't know.
One of the most entertaining parts of any GM post is the Talk page of the Wikipedia articles he links to. Always funny seeing nationalist nerd fights about something that happened in Eastern Southwest Slimeymudholestan in 1708.
This is one of those rare cases when some of assumptions are just wrong (I lived in Russia since 1972 when I was born, until 2014):
- There are three different kinds of Ukraine:
-- western part was annexed by Soviets as a part of Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, never really belonged to Russian Empire historically, and the population genuinely hates Russia as occupants;
-- eastern part & Crimea _was_ actually Russia before Soviets;
-- central part (think Kyiv) is 50/50, but mentally it's very different from Russia anyway.
- Ukrainian language is not in any way a 'peasant dialect' - it's very distinctive and different from Russian; maybe less different than Polish, but a typical Russian speaker will be able to comprehend a literary Ukrainian maybe only slightly better than Polish.
- Events of 2014, _regardless_ of State Department involvement, were quite real, genuine restoration of the national sovereignty.
- Ukrainians have a serious grudge for Russia, and reasonably so (Holodomor etc); the hybrid war in the eastern provinces didn't make it any better. They do recognize themselves as a different nation now.
- Putin as a reactionary leader is quite an overstatement - he doesn't have neither knowledge nor the vision for this role. If nazis were "Carlyle implemented by swine" - current Russian regime is "Carlyle implemented by a mini pig". Some of his guesses are intuitively correct, but they are not systematic, and his background (communist indoctrination + second-rate KGB officer job in Eastern Germany) doesn't do him any good.
Current Kremlin elite has a very special mythology, a strange mix of Soviet ideology and awe for pre-revolution Russian Empire. The problem is, they're borrowing worst parts from both, and corruption level in the elite is unimaginable by even very low Western standards.
I would say that expecting them to be some sort of a dedicated reactionary force is a wishful thinking.
To quote the old Reagan Republicans at Powerline: "I am a biased observer, but it seems likely to me that Russia’s aggressiveness is driven in part by the fact that the President of the United States suffers from senile dementia. If I were Putin (or Xi, but that is a matter for another post), I would view the Biden administration as a once-in-a-century opportunity to make strategic gains that will be difficult or impossible to reverse. I fear that is what we are seeing." We may soon see the downsides (upsides?) of Roman-style rule by courtier. There would be no such opening with Trump in the WH.
Cleaning up the streets is easy (comparatively). Creating wealth for the people is hard. You have to institute the rule of law and the sacredness (culturally) of contract. The problem with dictators (as opposed to Hoppe-oriented enlightened monarchs) is they don't really have any skin in the game. The Chinese are just being Chinese, as they've been for 3,000 years. The Russians are not the Chinese, and they can't be made to be Chinese even if Xi and his cohorts magically became the rulers of Russia. And Putin, while smarter than Western "leaders" (as if that was hard), is not China/Xi smart.
As you point out, the question of succession has plagued every non-monarchial dictatorship since Augustus. Xi desperately wants to displace the dollar as the reserve currency, and it seems like the Fed wants to help. But for the Renminbi/yuan to displace the dollar, it would have to be fully convertible to other currencies and businesses would have to be able to take the yuan out of the country and hold it in non-Chinese banks. You don't think the Saudis are going to accept yuan for oil if they have to have their deposits in a Chinese bank, do you? But if the yuan became convertible and exportable, the entire upper-middle class of China would leave for the Western Hemisphere. The oligarchs would stay--they own property. The poor and lower-middle class would stay--someone has to make iPhones. But the capital would flee. So Xi is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The only way to destroy the United States in an afternoon (it might take a few years to build up credibility, but it would utterly destroy the US), is to ruthlessly tie the yuan to gold and then let the economic chips fall where they may when they demand all payments in gold (or gold-backed yuan). Obviously, the US financial house of cards would collapse basically instantly, as the Saudis would in fact take gold for oil. The Russians could join in and tie the ruble to gold too, just to stamp on our battered body.
But...but...but...doing this would remove forever the ability of the government to engage in graft and major-league corruption, which is the raison d'etre of both the Russian and Chinese governments. So they're in a bind. Destroying the hated United States while suffering zero casualties is literally minutes away, but the price to the leadership--honest governance with only a little skimming of tax money, rather than the wholesale death-defying level of corruption dominant in those countries--is too much. So until the Fed ruins the dollar all by itself, the US will remain the de facto leader of the world, financially and militarily.
You see, even if the US *wanted* to get out of Europe, it couldn't. All of European banking is also at its root based on the dollar. Bretton Woods may be "overthrown", but its ghost is still there guiding the remains of the Second World War. You talk about Putin supporting elements of reaction. Fine. I wish him well. But given how meekly and voluntarily that the peoples in Europe--all of Europe, not just the West--have submitted themselves to the absurd and unworkable (not to mention idiotic) covidtalitarianism of the last two years, the idea that there is any popular mandate in favor of the cultural/political sanity a good dose of reaction would bring is not supported by the data. Sure, people protest mandatory vaccines, everyone will protest state-mandated poisoning of children, but even when given a chance, they won't even cast their votes against these Branch Covidian dictators.
The people of Poland, Czechia, and Hungary have shown a boldness in protesting the giant amorphous blob of governance that is the EU, and good for them. But have any of these governments shown even a quarter of the initiative against Faucism that Governor DeSantis has shown in Florida? Not a one. These leaders may have gotten off the train to Crazytown when it comes to the ridiculous gay/trans agenda, but if they can't even see that masks don't actually do anything and that the vaccines do very little and only temporarily, even when these facts are staring them in the face at less than the required six-foot social distance, I doubt the people even have the gumption to say "men aren't women" and make it stick.
So, all hail your idea. Let Putin try being the leader of the free world for a while. Certainly the sociopathic demented pedophile nominally in that position isn't going to be doing any leading. But Putin wouldn't know what to do with Ukraine if he did invade, much less Poland or Hungary--or Germany. It'd be a bloodbath of civil war and the US would be dragged back in AGAIN, and like the last time, the US Army would sort things out and then the US State Department would royally fuck things up again like they did after the last three European Wars came to an end. So maybe the status quo isn't so bad after all.
South Sudan may be a joke because of its corruption, but not because it is an inorganic construct. The South Sudanese are totally different from the Sudanese, since they are mostly Christian, speak English and are Nilotic blacks. Folks from Sudan proper are Muslim, speak Arabic and are Saharan browns. Had you said the name is a joke, sure, but that can be easily rectified (actually Sudan proper should change its name to Nubia). The fact that the State Department happened to be on the side of ethno-statism is a nice broken clock-is-right moment.
Bilbo Baggins, Equity Lord and CEO-monarch of the new American Operating Company peers over a map of Europe. "And why shouldn't I?" He mutters to himself. "Why shouldn't I keep it?" Why shouldn't he, indeed.
Your original handle's mentor advised those seeking wisdom to call things by their proper names. Your own Formalism echoes this. Should we treat France like a sovereign and independent country? Well, to answer that, shouldn't we first ask, "is it?"
In the case of France, I think the answer is pretty clearly, "no." On questions of defense, it must defer to State. And if their defense doesn't come from the sovereign region of France, it isn't sovereignty. It's just sparkling suzerainty.
So, as it's sole provider of hemispheric defense services, France ought to be paying us tribute. It currently isn't, and so the first thing that needs to be done is to turn this nonpaying consumer of sovereignty services into a paying customer. Paying in what? Why, paying in dollar of course. The French will work making wine and cheese which we will then buy and they will take those dollars and pay their defense fees. Think of it like MMT, except based.
As an aside, no discussion of a coup no matter how cozy is complete without discussing the MIC. Yes, there would have to be a MIC in the new regime. It can be a leaner and meaner one, producing the minimum viable defense products, but it will still be there, turning butter into tanks.
Coming back to Europe, there's no reason why they can't be given plenty of local autonomy under your leanest and meanest possible defensive posture. You can make it obivous to everyone in Europe what a sweet deal being your tributary is by simply crunching the numbers and figuring out exactly what it would take for them to start defending their own continent.
If they still aren't willing to pay, well, I suppose they might prefer rule from Moscow, and your plan serves as a fine option B for them.
There do seem to be some open questions about borders in the East. It seems to me that the best course of action there is to sit down with old Vlad and just work out where the lines should be. I would expect Russia, who is in fact an independent military peer, to be amenable to this. This alone would be a refreshing change of pace from current State policy.
"but without porn, K-pop or the gay". I read this on a Blue Monday and worth the price of admission alone
I'm assuming you meant "safe, clean streets without no-go areas," not "safe, clean streets with no-go areas" as written.
CY: “Liberal ideas are not indigenous to the region. They are Anglo-American ideas.”
– I guess “liberal ideas” boil down to the slogan “People should do whatever they please”, as opposed to the French slogan “People should rationally coordinate their activities”, the German slogan “People should channel the nature-gods”, the Italian slogan “People should be beautiful” and the Spanish slogan “People should be noble”? And the “People should do whatever they please” slogan results in interesting hobbies on the one hand and in irresponsible decentralized oligarchy on the other hand – resulting in irresponsible decentralized oligarchy because what a lot of people naturally want to do is to dominate other people?
So libertarian dictatorship (monarchy) would be good for us AngloAmericans because it would let interesting people pursue their interesting hobbies while preventing boring jerks from dominating everyone else in unofficial irresponsible ways?
I think that we should figure out what’s good about us and focus on how to protect and promote that good thing rather than on what’s bad about us and how mean we are to other people such as the poor Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, and Spanish whose wonderful diverse vibrancies we’ve messed up.
Why only to the English channel?
I want to be made King of Bavaria under the new order. I will resume the important work of Mad King Ludwig!
I guess the real question here is:
Will the gap between real and ideal Putin that's resulted in Crimea being a "half-ruined backwater ruled by some petty local thug" rather than "California with Police", result in a Russia centered Europe being some broken remake of the Warsaw Pact rather than glittering hub of restored order?
As to if that's better or worse than Europe's current trajectory, I have no good answers.
The neo Westphalian Europa is probably a fantasy but think about how cool it would be. Imagine the uniforms! The re-channeling of Teutonic autism into the revived Prussia. One can dream
Dear Curtis Yarvin, have you seen the new Amanda Milius interview on Tucker Carlson Today, the same Tucker show where I first heard about you? She made the popular documentary about the Lee Smith book of how the Deep State sabotaged the Trump administration. It's a much better interview than her self-centered (and drunken) recent appearance on Timcast IRL (and Timcast Members Only pay wall, for the worst drunken section). Her dad wrote the film Apocalypse Now and also Red Dawn. You two should interview each other on a Malice podcast. You two might keep up with each other pretty well, talking politics, etc. I'm not sure if you should encourage alcohol until you have established that you can get along sober first. She might be annoying when drunk, unless you are equally inebriated, but I don't know.
Hi all, if you're on Urbit, join the group! ~tonwyn-moslev/gray-mirror
All I know is that it is time the US stopped occupying Germany. Bring the troops home.
One of the most entertaining parts of any GM post is the Talk page of the Wikipedia articles he links to. Always funny seeing nationalist nerd fights about something that happened in Eastern Southwest Slimeymudholestan in 1708.