I'd like to see more attention paid to the idea that US policy towards Russia is an extension of the old British strategy. The one thing that could never be allowed was Germany with its industrial and technological prowess aligning with Russia with its vast resources. This was the real long term threat to their liberal order. Once you see that, everything from the first world war onward starts to make a lot more sense.
Yeah, and if you want to see some of that strategy in play - read 'The Russia I Believe In' which describes among other things the activity of British and US agents in Russia prior to and shortly after WWI. It's a little known fact that Nicholas' entire court wanted him to side with Germany - but that was thwarted thanks to our dearly beloved Anglo-American establishment.
What doesn't make sense to me though is why the UK is still so hostile towards Russia. Always the first to advocate for new sanctions and weapons shipments - but even before the war, there's quite a bit of evidence of its aggressive intelligence operations against Russia - for example, Navalny seems to be backed by the British to at least some extent.
From a hard realist perspective it seems mostly pointless for the UK to still be pursuing this strategy to the degree that it does. Kinda supports the idea that FP/Military doctrines tend to have a degree of automatism to them.
Many people, including this author argue that England is really just the United States in terms of foreign policy. The fact that it doesn’t behove the English doesn’t matter.
So instead we align Russia with China. But all is well, 🇺🇸 we now have a resource rich Global South that went RU CN , oh dear. If ye do not abut their borders they RUCN 🇷🇺🇨🇳cannot and will not help you, but thanks for standing on principle. We have Navy. We’ll sail 🇺🇸 in ⚓️⛴ bye and bye. Nice resources you got there, be a shame if you didn’t share...
Yes, the snakehandler's goal is to make sure no-one gets bit, but this analogy is wrong because we're not the snake-handler of the planet; we're another one of the snakes.
Yes, in the grand scheme of things it was probably unwise for the U.S. to expand NATO east of Germany. It was also probably unwise to not slowly cede security leadership in European affairs over to the Europeans after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But neither of those mistakes is sufficient to justify, or even explain, Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Nations, even great ones, often put up with insults to their national honor and security out of necessity, or ideology, or just plain cost-benefit analysis. The U.S. tolerates the presence of massive quasi-governmental, quasi-criminal business-enterprises on its southern border directly degrading its own rule of law and killing thousands of its people with smuggled fentanyl. We haven't invaded Mexico or attempted to purge Sonora and Chihuahua.
So given that Putin is a snake, given that we can influence, but not control his behavior, and given that he has reached out and bitten another fellow-creature, what do we do? I would submit that *giving the bite-victim tools to make it hard to swallow* is hardly the worst response here. Sure, the bite victim is still getting bitten, and that sucks. We used to recognize that war was an unfortunate, but legitimate tool of national diplomacy - the *ultima ratio regum*, or last argument of kings. But helping the defender in a war does not mean you are in favor of every casualty that gets inflicted - it means you sympathize with the defender's struggle not the get conquered.
Russia went into the Donbass because Ukraine had restarted the civil war in early Februrary 2022 with several hundred artillery salvos per day into Donetsk and Lugansk. NATO had trained and equipped a force of 90,000 on the Ukrainian side of the Line of Control and Kiev (which had refused to implement the Minsk agreements). Furthermore, Washington had not bothered to make any response to a draft peace deal that Moscow had forwarded to the US in December 2021.
Washington and Kiev chose war over peace. They thought that they could intimidate Russia. Washington was angling to draw Ukraine into NATO so that they could put nuclear missiles in the Eastern Ukraine, missiles with 8 minutes flying time from Moscow (as compared to the 15 minutes flying tjme for the Tomahawk missiles already in place in Poland and Rumania).
If we “sympathized” with Ukraine we would have not made them give up the Nukes, or already admitted them to NATO before.
Here’s what we 🇺🇸 did in 🇺🇦:
We exceeded our usual game of leaving the Bride at the altar by stealing her ☢️ dowry and leaving her gang raped corpse in the alley behind the Church.
There is no way that a country like post-Soviet Ukraine could ever have been trusted with nuclear weapons. No way. Leaving weapons like that in the hands of a country that unstable and as poorly governed would have been reckless.
As for admittance to NATO, Ukraine does not (or cannot) contribute to the safety of the USA. It is a strategic liability.
The big mistake of the US was in assuming that Russia's period of weakness would last forever. The other mistake was not insisting on Ukrainian neutrality. It worked for Finland and Austria. All of Eastern Europe would be better off with mutual non-belligerency pacts and formal neutrality between NATO and Russia. Eisenhower wanted post-war Poland as a neutral buffer state. He'd be besides himself at the spectacle of NATO committing itself to fight for Estonia or Latvia.
Leave the sympathy gig to the strategists of think tank land and academia...they need to maintain their state of confusion. In the real world alliances work best when they are realistic, not sentimental. And to paraphrase Bismarck on the Balkans, all of Ukraine isn't worth the legs of any 18 year old from the Rust Belt.
Sadly that is the lesson everyone is (or will) draw. Unprecedented nuclear proliferation is now assured. I understand that the US has apparently already handed out tactical nukes (via a loans program) to some NATO allies. Given miniaturisation etc they can make super low-yield weapons.
>I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind.
What Orwell said of the Left then is only too true of the Right today.
I've been following your work for nearly a decade, but reading your writings on Ukraine has been a disenchanting experience. Sailer got it right from the start, Hanania and Karlin were eventually disabused of their Russia Stronk illusions, but like much of the Right, you're pretty late to the party. You've long been warning against the temptations of the oppositional reflex, but when it comes to the war, your epistemic competence has been impaired by spite-driven cognition. It's not only the libs who've succumbed to the deranging effects of wartime partisanship, who see in foreign surrogates the avatars of their desires. I get it, you want based Putin to humiliate your enemies by crushing their fake and gay colony and ushering in a multipolar world, to succeed where Germany twice failed. Alas, calling Putin a snake, a cunning and able predator, is too generous.
>As of mid-February 2023, it is really starting to feel like the Ukrainians are crumbling a little on the battlefield. The best indicator of this is the Pentagon itself, which may not have won a lot of wars lately, but which is neither blind nor stupid—and whose desperation to get more and better gear to the front is palpable.
When has this ever not been true? Ukraine has always been "crumbling" since day one—so has Russia. Such is the nature of a knife fight. Then they bandage their wounds and go for another round. Where you see a trend, I see a cycle. If you want to honestly convey the state of a war, you have to describe the state of all the belligerents, not just the problems of one side. The attempts of Russia's nominally elite units to storm Vuhledar give some idea as to the extent of their force degradation. As for artillery, Phillipe Lemoine—not a Russophobe—ran the numbers, opaque and speculative though they are, and found that Russia's munitions advantage is real but doesn't appear to be overwhelming or bottomless.
It's nice to see that you've started to acknowledge that the eventual outcome is uncertain in place of your usual strident predictions of Ukraine's inevitable defeat, though what changed your mind you don't say.
>Therefore, if I was playing China and my goal was to make the world a peaceful happy place to buy my cheap plastic junk, I would not send a fuckton of weapons to Canada.
The last time you made this analogy, you said that China was provoking the United States by arming Canada with "advanced nanotech Chinese weapons"—what are the real-world analogues of these weapon systems even supposed to be? The reality is that the West was hardly "flooding Ukraine with weapons" until the invasion—Obama declined to provide lethal aid and Trump did so reluctantly under the condition that the Javelins could only be stored in western Ukraine where they would presumably deter a Polish invasion. The initial defense was largely fought with the same Soviet junk the Russians use. Don't take it from me, here's Anatoly Karlin, a Russian nationalist.
>The reality (for Putin) is actually sadder; there was no major or concerted Western effort to built up Ukrainian power from 2014-22 (this is just very clear from the numbers). But it's actually more profitable for both Putin and Merkel to pretend there was.
Another one of your questionable notions is that Ukraine is an object of leftist enthusiasm, or as you put it, "the heirs of Pete Seeger […] baying for guns and tanks and blood in some Dnieper meatgrinder, as eagerly as they once sang for peace and love and flowers". It's strange you persist in this claim despite your debate with Ben Burgis, during which you both discovered common ground on this issue. The party line among Jacobin and The Nation, Chomsky and Pilger, Chapo Trap House and Radio War Nerd was unanimous in insisting that Russia would never invade. Once Russia invaded, they pivoted to the realist shtick, preaching that the strong do what they can the weak suffer what they must, that Ukraine must submit to Russia's demands, that weapons only prolong the conflict, etc. Basically, they see Ukraine as another South Vietnam, a corrupt reactionary American client state whose defeat would serve to embarrass the empire and get their rocks off. Russia for its part retains some lingering goodwill thanks to its Soviet inheritance, which is especially apparent in the careers of Russia hands like Stephen Cohen who went from admiring the Soviet Union to lobbying on behalf of its successor. Seymour Hersh just came out with some hallucinatory claim that Russia has an unscathed army of 350,000 regulars waiting to finish off Ukraine—any day now. And their suspicion of Ukrainian nationhood goes as far back as 1848, when Engels had already identified the Ruthenians as a nation of inveterate reactionaries fated for extinction and employed by Metternich to intrigue against the revolutions of progressive peoples, a prejudice confirmed in their minds because of all the stuff about the Holodomor, collaborators, decommunization, etc.
I'm also not sure how you reconcile your castigation of liberal nationalism with your veneration of Atatürk, the liberal nationalist par excellence. Turkish nationalism good, Ukrainian nationalism bad—how does that work? Wouldn't a Ukrainian Atatürk be doing exactly what Zelensky is doing—waging a war of national unification, imposing a unitary national identity, standardizing the language, westernizing his country, etc.? Turkish identity was also synthetic until Atatürk made it real, after all, nor was Atatürk without his foreign backers. You say liberal nationalism succeeds in combining "the mass appeal of nationalism with the highbrow pull of leftism"—that sounds a lot like your Caesarian alliance of democracy and monarchy, of orcs and elves, a formula for installing a ruling class of competent elites by popular assent. I mean, if it worked for Turkey… And if linguistic nationalism is a menace by which countries generate conflict in the realms of their enemies, one can understand why nations in Russia's periphery might resent their nosy neighbor for claiming an interest in protecting Russophone populations abroad and why they seek the protective embrace of daddy America.
It's all well and good to rant against the lib, but if Putin's conduct makes even the lib look photogenic by comparison—basically doing what Trump did but on the international stage—what does that say about the alternatives? It turns out that being ruled by our gang or their gang—boring Eurocrats or magical multipolar grifters—has profound implications for state competence. Probably the most bearish indicator for Russia is that the only people who will openly defend its cause are the same glue-huffing grifters and perverts who are magnetically attracted to every losing cause—and worse, Russian propaganda makes a point of pandering to low-IQ populist dissent. Haven't we seen this show before?
If Russia is ever going to pose a competent challenge to the liberal world order, maybe it needs its own Atatürk first. Alas, Putin seems intent on denying the benefits of liberal nationalism not only to his own country but to others as well.
Russia's challenge to the liberal world order is serious. Not a single state on the mainland of Asia has imposed sanctions. Not one.
Sa'udi Arabia is openly snubbing Biden. China and Iran have negotiated major new transportation and energy initiatives with Russia. Turkey, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Algeria are sympathetic to Moscow. China continues to divest itself of US treasury bills. Japan buys Russian oil. Central bankers across the world load up on gold out of uncertainty over the US dollar.
Russian competence is evident from the fact that the US requires Russian assistance to get its astronauts from the international space station back to earth. Russia has several types of hypersonic missile in service and these are in serial production. The US does not have any hypersonic missiles in service. Russian air defences can knock out satellites in low orbit and NATO cannot establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine because they dare not test American combat avionics against either Russian fighter planes or air-defence systems.
The glue-huffing grifters and perverts to which you refer have an abundance of weaknesses but they are not wrong on the basics. Russia has a government that does not hate its own people and that prioritises sovereignty and national cohesion. Russia has corruption aplenty, but it does not have affirmative action or DEI. Russian cities enjoy public safety while in the USA the Cathedral sponsors pogroms, riots and a crime wave, turning the country into Cthulhuland.
Well said Philip and I think Curtis is saying that liberal nationalism is a power grab that cares not about the destruction of its client states like little Ukraine. Similarly the US homeland is destroyed by the nonsense of progressive dogma.
Thanks but it is pretty obvious. Russia's industrial and technical achievements and its economic capacity speak for themselves. People outside of the West notice this and make their calculations accordingly. We, however, rely on Cold War era cliches and preconceived opinions that have not been relevant for a generation.
Putin's Russia is not an ideal of mine, but I can appreciate its utility for the Russians and the appeal of a state-capitalist system with an inclusive (non-chauvinist) nationalist character for many around the world, especially in countries where oligarchic excesses are a threat to the middle classes.
Putin is an unacknowledged Yarvinite. The last twenty years in Russia has been a Yarvinschina. Putin is a Russian CEO monarch who acted as a much needed agent of change to preserve Russia's sovereignty and to prevent either open class-warfare or an extremist, chauvinist, reaction. His record on anti-corruption, economic management, promoting the rule of law is not acknowledged in the West.
Putin's character as a successful agent of moderation or constraint, a katechon to use Schmitt's terminology, makes him repellent to the Western oligarchs and their Russian fifth column. They fear any comparable fogure emerging in the West for very good reason.
The failure of the Orange Bonaparte in America should not blind us to the relative success of a dynamic form of elite-directed populism elsewhere. Putin's success is probably unachievable in the US because the cultural and social fabric are more fragile in the US than they were in Russia when Putin came to power. The legacy of Soviet elite education provided Putin with the human capital to aim high. The hollowing out of education in the US will constrain any future renaissance. The survival of extended families in Russia also helped Putin a lot by providing a bedrock of social resilience. In the US, by contrast, the fragility of the post-nuclear form of kinship, especially amongst the subaltern population, guarantees anomie and atomisation on a scale that will frustrate recovery from the present mess.
A neologism. Has the sense of 'Yarvin-phenomenon'. I coined the expression to describe the Putinist CEO-monarchy or CEO-autocracy. Putin is, in a sense, acting out the very role that Curtis Y. has sketched in GRAY MIRROR.
Since Curtis' surname is Slavic, it sounds apt...at least to me. The expression was inspired by 'Makhnovshchina' which is used to describe the Makhno uprising/phenomenon in Ukraine during the Civil War (Makhno was the anarchist general); also the Yezhovshchina to describe Yezhov's purges a decade later.
>Probably the most bearish indicator for Russia is that the only people who will openly defend its cause are the same glue-huffing grifters and perverts who are magnetically attracted to every losing cause—and worse, Russian propaganda makes a point of pandering to low-IQ populist dissent.
Real talk.
Excellent comment, enjoyed it more than the article and will be shamelessly stealing your talking points to use against those exact people.
Russia does not need to be defended by anyone. The Russian Army is doing fine just by itself. The glue-huffing grifters are irrelevant.
The success of narrative management in the West suggests that the regime in America is secure. It is spinning an infotainment cocoon around the continent. But convincing a culturally isolated and undereducated mass of proles (including ones larping as sophisticates) is one thing. Fooling the political and business elites of Asia and the Middle East is another. And the sub-elite middle classes there are alert enough to know the difference between US style capitalism and the Russian one.
If Russia is indeed weaponising a few elements in the West this is an ultra low-cost way of fucking with Uncle Samantha. Any evidence of genuine Russian connection (however innocent or inconsequential) will misdirect attention and resources on a significant scale in the West. It may well drive the diverse workforce of the Washington intelligence community into a frenzy. If Russia can fortify the resolve of the Deep State in Panem-on-the-Potomac to escalate its conflict with its own people that is a win for Moscow.
At the moment Moscow has opened up scholarships for tertiary education (free of charge) to US citizens. Guess where the guys who are too pale for the DEI crowd are going to go? It only takes a very, very, small number for the point to make a profound impact.
In the long run the only bearish indicator in Russia of any consequence is completed fertility per female. War may help. A post-war baby boom.
Re Russian propaganda, I prefer Russia Today's website or the outstanding Strategic Culture Foundation (one of its columnists, Alastair Crooke, is former MI6)
They are in a no-win situation. Shilling for Russia would be cost-free if they were properly situated politically: organically connected to a constituency with sufficient cohesion and opportunity to exert itself against the regime. There might be an advantage in pointing out that there are alternatives to the system on offer at home. Fundamentally, Russia is not the issue. The masses do not care about Russia. The elites do because they seek to plunder it. The blue-haired freaks care about whatever their mobile phones order them to care about.
The Right has, however, chosen to play the role of Loyal Opposition. They misdirect the energies of their followers, just as the Left does with theirs. The Left is more successful politically because the regime values the services that the Left provide with the task of managing relations with key regime constituencies (African-Americans, unmarried women, college educated whites). The constituencies of the Right are not as important in the political calculus.
The organised Right is just a weaker, less lucrative grift, than the Left. This could change in a heartbeat if the regime thought it best to shake things up. Were that to happen the glue-huffers would be pushed aside for more energetic and more useful people. IMHO low energy dissidence is a larp. It thrills people who confuse opinions with reality and psychic arousal with agency. Yawn.
Go to the Ukrainian front, high IQ principled tough guy. The truth is we’re just tired of playing the sap, in particular for certain shirking types. Something tells me I’m reading a Kagan or Nuland cousin here by blood and marriage? Not that blood is a bar to marriage for Lice ridden shetl schvartzen , the spawn of pimps and peddlars of opiates talking about glue huffing?
No one is supporting Russia, they are just tired of fighting certain peoples blood feuds. Go take vengeance yourselves.
Hope you enjoyed the ride, soon enough its back to lice, vermin and street hustling.
Do we need the gratuitous jew hating to prefer that America's tax dollars help Americans? Asking for a friend, by which I mean the 50% street hustler blood pumping in my very own veins. And nary a drop of said blood makes me ok with how Izrayul has US by the cojones either. Deliberately misspelling because I have expressed these views publicly once and recieved death threats!
What you (or any of us) need, deserve or expect are all formally separate.
I expect that once the implications of the Ukrainian fiasco sink in the attribution of blame will become intense. Zelenskyy's origins made him the perfect front-man for a US controlled regime comprised by ultra-nationalists who dream of a Ukraine without Jews. It is post-modern political theatre conducted to conceal the geopolitical drivers of the conflict (the need of the US oligarchy to seize Russian natural resources to bail out a dying, debt-dependent, form of capitalism and the need of the US military to get nuclear missile bases established in the eastern Ukraine to compensate for the military decline of a deindustrialised USA).
And the centrality of the neocons to the narrative conceals the presence of another diaspora very dear to the Anglo-American intelligence agencies since the 1940s (Galician and Volhynian Ukrainians, many of whom remain admirers of the Bandera movement).
The US Deep State have used Zelenskyy's ethnic origins to white-wash the character of their sinister and criminal client-state while mobilising support for Ukraine amongst US Jews who are remain loyal to the Democrats. Once Zelenskyy is killed off or in exile, the Deep State psyops people will pump out endless provocations about the neocons (utterly disposable as they are) while the surge in inter-ethnic rivalry and contempt within white America will constrain/warp the development of the right.
The Obama faction will use the backlash against the neocons to their advantage in the struggle for control of the Democratic leadership.
In the meantime...Slava Yarvina!...Glory to Yarvin!
>Madam read what I responded to, and the idiot Byeyongshin: YOUR IDIOT: is all over this thread calling RW and non-elite whites glue sniffing, paint huffing morons for “supporting Russia” simply because we’re tired of being sent to settle the tardive blood 🩸 feuds of Galician pogroms from the 19th century.
You kick mine, I kick yours.
This is simple.
And I don’t hate, just punch back.
And BTW it has little to do with Jews, less with Judaism, and almost nothing to do with Israel.
Here’s your problem, and you already know it; these grifters exist in every group, but Tribal loyalty is THEIR MAIN GRIFT and you know it. They’ll sell you out - like last time and the times before- and you all damn well know it. They’re running Nazis live now. That’s how Jewish they are, and it wasn’t revealed to me by Huffing paint in Delphic Temples.
Meet your Karmic problem, its not us.
Israel got 💩 to do with this.
Israel isn’t even shipping Ukraine weapons or allowing their weapons to be used.
You kick mine, I kick yours. Not gratuitous, just normal.
He’s definitely got a high IQ, and a learned fellow, I am very prone to listen to him. At the same time I always find you Mr long warred to be very solid.’ Hum.
Curtis for me is an eye-opener. His entire project seems to based on outcomes, which is my distinct preference. “If the rules you followed, brought you to this, what good are your rules,” Cohen Brothers, no country for old men.
Having America as a friend is likely to get you killed. Power hungry avarice is liberalism.
Damn, you're way off base. 0.0% Jew, and I've been to war unlike you. Your characterization of this war as a Jewish blood feud is also nonsensical (maybe you'd have a point looking at some of Russia's dual-citizen oligarchs).
It is rational state behavior to take advantage of weakness. Once Russia failed to achieve its objectives, once it was apparent that Ukrainians actually were capable of putting up a fight and really didn't want to be a part of the eternal shithole Russia, the US smelled the blood in the water and used this opportunity to further harm Russia. Vatniks, on the other hand, can't explain the purpose of sending so many of their young men to their deaths without some gibberish about "denazification."
As I am sure you are aware, plenty of right-wingers (especially the very-online contingent) are openly supporting Russia's invasion, regurgitating Russian lies about mercenaries and biolabs, etc. That Jackson Hinkle clown that Tucker had on is selling "Z" merchandise and praising Stalin. Though I don't think there will be much further escalation between the US and Russia, supporting a foreign enemy is so incredibly stupid and dangerous, providing a perfect excuse for further abuse should the conflict escalate.
My principle is simply, "don't do stupid shit that makes your life worse for no reason."
There are two different wars in Ukraine, the fantasy war, and the real war. They are nearly opposites of each other. The fantasy version is so pervasive that even otherwise intelligent people are taken in by it. Really, Ukraine's handlers have done an amazing job at waging a propaganda campaign.
But, fictional propaganda, always sourced from Ukrainian gov't officials, is the only theater in which Ukraine is winning. The real war, the one that counts, is generally going according to plan for Russia. Granted, Ukrainian resistance and large-scale NATO armament, intel & advisory have made it more difficult, and screw-ups/setbacks happen. However, Russia is still winning, with its air/artillery superiority attriting the AFU at a 5:1 ratio, I'd estimate, and that's in Russia's favor. Total casualties may be something like 20k for Russia, 100k for Ukraine.
I look forward to the eventual Russian victory. I fully expect the cognitive dissonance to exceed the 2016 election, as the fantasy war gets imploded by the real one.
Uh huh, I have been repeatedly to war that's what long warred means.
Denigrating your enemies as paint huffing morons is a bit of a marker, aka shibboleth. Bullsh_t. But perhaps you just picked it up?
Since you're a soldier look at a map: where is the USA, where is Ukraine, where is Russia?
We USA paid corrupt Ukrainians to send their young men to slaughter because it suited us, the Ukrainians are being slowly annihilated in hopeless defenses and even more ridiculous offensive actions, the Russian shakes his head and kills them - this is the stupid shit that made our lives worse for no good reason and almost no reason that benefits us.
That some provocateurs are selling Z merch , probably at behest or with blessing of IC is irrelevant to not supporting the ultimate stupid shit of picking a pointless fight with a nuclear power on it's own borders.
Not accepting your BS , your putative CV, nor retracting the rebuke.
But since you're salty and support the war, head to Poland and the Ukraine Legion, they'll take any bullet sponges they can find. Every dead foreigner is money in the bank for Ukrainian's and their US paymasters, the Ukrainian government is in Monaco and has several houses each in London and other choice locations.
No American blood for Europe. None of it. We played the fool enough.
Your other points are good but you're missing the mark re Moldbug's take on leftist support of the war. We're not talking about tankies, Twitter-marxists and left-behind socialists here; we mean the mainstream left. These are the public hordes cheering for Russian Death-- the Reddit party line. They're pretty common offline too, among career bureaucrats, journalists and "left of center" normies.
Moldbug says "leftists" to mean mainstream public opinionmakers. Classical Marxist-Leninists and other cast-aside tentacles of the Cathedral are spiritually the same, but don't matter aside from occasional contributions to helping Cthulhu swim left.
It is very hard to follow. The term Left is practically meaningless. For me, I'd say that the Left are simply people who collect the rent politically on labelling themselves progressives. The Right are those who grift by labelling themselves conservatives.
The genuine progressives and genuine conservatives are found in old photo albums...live ones have been sighted partying with Bigfoot.
I don’t think there was ever a time when the “real” progressives and conservatives were out there doing good. If they were good, they wouldn’t fall under those labels.
I detest when someone about to say something not entirely bullish about the Ukrainians, the West and the war begins with ritual disparagement of Mr. Putin. It matters not what is actually said or to what extent it is true—what matters is that the not entirely bullish figure bends the creaky knee to conventional opinion, and in so doing earns permission to utter a seldom heard disparaging word. The knee agreeably creaks and the dissident bleats: “I may be about to say unpalatable things, but recognize first of all I am no fan of the Snake nor of the Muscovites—no pawn of either am I”.
The creaker/bleater has taken the vax, tatted his chest, reaffirmed his incrowdhood, signaled solid reliability and hirsute obedience even as he ventures to talk bad boy dirty.
“Did I mention that I do not like and do not value the reptile Putin, the universally hated by everyone in the Bay Area not a dirtbag Putin, the argument-slaughtering Putin who must be disposed of before the plastic knives come out…and I carve”
I could not read the article after this craven, quisling, petitioning start.
Yeah I think the recycled chompsyian rhetoric I’ve seen from right wingers, who taste something bad in the milk, that Ukraine policy is all about weapon contracts and Hunter Biden’s paltry payoffs, are missing the mark. Theres many better ways to make money such as engaging in straight forward colonialism yet that is considered completely out of bounds
Not sure any of our elites really care about money. Hunter and Joe are clowns and stooges for the ruling class. We are feed the corrupt stories for entertainment purposes only.
3. On Atlantic and PACRIM silly “allies” are now duly informed that they are vassals. Hungry, cold ones too.
4. 🇺🇸 is reshoring industry at a wartime pace. (Let us consider we have New Deal/Wartime Emergency govt since 1933 and FEDGOV can’t operate without Emergency or war-it just can’t).
5. The Global South is about to discover that RU CN 🇷🇺🇨🇳 can’t project power beyond their bordering nations, as we have Navy and they don’t, not enough.
>Nice resources ya got there, be a shame if you don’t sign this Trade agreement-
Yes, the 500 year run of 🇬🇧🇺🇸idiots with remarkable luck continues.
Great comment, agree it’s a win for GAE elites. Only thing is the use of flags to represent the teams engaged in the conflicts. I agree w moldbug on the fact that “public opinion” under a regime is remarkably easy to be created and moved- it’s a symptom/ effect, not a cause. The symbol of a flag to represent, in theory, the collective majority sum of public opinion of a group of people free, is modern mythology on a global scale.
Curtis, the great question that you have yet to address properly is the performance of the Cathedral in diplomacy and war. You acknowledge in passing that you "almost wonder if we need better snake guys". Yet you do not elaborate.
I for one would love your take on what better snake guys would look like given the nature of the Cathedral as well as your ideas on the implications of the war for the Cathedral's future at home and abroad.
There will be no effect on the cathedral; it will mutate in favour of self preservation. It will be the death of 1000 cuts . The mechanism is the selective advantage of dominant ideas (regressive ideas bedamned!) and it propels us forward we know not where! Curtis has explained the mechanism of this fallen world: both why and how it fell and why there will be no resurrection.
Besides, he stated his position , says he doesn’t think foreign policy should not be bizarre.
Hear what you are saying but should have explained myself better. My assumption is that Russia is winning the war and that NATO, the Pentagon and the US State Department has sustained extremely serious reputational damage at least internationally.
I am interested in how the Cathedral will fare under conditions of escalating rivalry with Russia and China. My guess is that they will restructure supply chains etc but in terms of the culture they will turn America into the Hermit Republic so as to maintain narrative control. They will spin like crazy and pretend that Russia has somehow lost or that NATO deterred Putin from marching on Paris and London.
The key issue is which ideas will be selected and imposed by the Cathedral?
How does a meritocracy maintain its pretensions to competence when everyone can see that the system no longer selects for competence in its leadership cadre and that the state is inept at warfare?
Pretensions of competence indeed and catastrophic failure everywhere: good questions. Hermit eh? Hum, I wonder. More likely they we declare victory and conjure a new crisis. Our friend Nicole Soldo says that America is no longer a mercantile empire but now an idealogical empire. Professor Deneen of the post liberal substack calls it the political Gnosticism of the liberal imperium. We are in highly religious times, a new dark ages. Curtis is the man!
Hermit-like as in intellectually and morally isolated. Living in a media-saturated bubble.
I agree that a fraudulent declaration of victory is by far the most likely outcome in Ukraine. So long as Russia gets what it needs (Ukraine as a no go zone for NATO and a Banderist free arrangement for the Ukrainians east of Wolyn and Galicia) they will let the US pretend whatever they like. The US needs bragging rights for domestic consumption.
Russia appears to have written Europe off and is probably happy to let the US trash Germany and France. If the Cathedral plays its cards well Russia and China will co-operate with Washington to manage the relative decline of US power. Planetary hegemony is over. The main game is regime survival and neither Moscow nor Beijing needs a Meiji-like restoration of a decadent superpower now run by gangsters and a technocracy compromised by diversity hires. The normalisation of incompetence suits America's rivals, so long as it does not extend to mismanaging the geopolitics or the nukes.
America benefited from having Yeltsin in the Kremlin, now the Kremlin benefits from Biden and his friends in the Beltway. America is having an extended version of the worst aspects of late Soviet and early post-Soviet Russian experience. Legalised plunder. Illegitimate institutions. Fraudulent elections. Industrial catastrophes. Spikes in mortality rates.
Since 2001 we’ve been the USSA - United Security State America. It must be amusing to some in the former USSR to see the pattern repeat, albeit as farce.
Undoubtedly amusing, but also disturbing. The Kremlin would not wish to see a state as consequential as the US collapse. It would destabilise the world.
Russia is ultimately indifferent to the nature of the regime within the US. What they seek is a reliable and realistic negotiating partner. The internal rot within the US today (which resembles the looting and social decay of the 1990s in Russia) is a benefit to Russia if it constrains Washington in its foreign policy, a threat if the decay adds to the unbalanced and reckless quality of US statecraft.
Putin said a while back that the US was on the same path as the former Soviet Union. An extraordinary comment from someone who experienced it first hand.
Couple comments, 1) “The Cathedral” does not “select” , as if through some collective deliberate process and then engage a plan of imposition- My understanding is it is more akin an autonomous consensus making algorithm, with many different software interfaces, with the core selection criteria is which idea confers the most “prestige “ or emotional feeling of “powers” to each respective customer. As along as we can’t break the addiction cycle, we are trapped in the never ending cycle. We’ve broken our chains from the Almighty to find ourselves in bed with our coke dealer. 2) Meritocracy has never been a part of the political formula for the ruling class in the GAE. So no need to worry about that one. 3) if you look at the regime’s atrocities over the last century, one thing you’ll see is there is never a need to apologize or save face, or come up with some crazy stories to stitch it all back together. Lol. It’s too easy to just start the story over again and you realize “public opinion “ forgets :)
Comment 1) is very well made. The selection is not deliberative but is (to zoomorphize) instinctive, like a school of fish or a flock of birds moving in a coordinated manner.
2) Meritocracy has been largely irrelevant (with the exception of the spasm of Sputnik which spurred the Western gov'ts to improve STEM tuition for the masses) but is now perhaps becoming an issue. The Russians and Chinese take the education of their leadership very, very seriously. Russia has just pulled out of the Bologna process (which regulates tertiary qualifications in the OECD) because it is insufficently rigorous. And affirmative action is hotting up.
Permanent interstate competition is perhaps going to expose the weaknesses in the human capital of the Cathedral. This may be concealed from the public in the West, but not in the rest of the world.
Then again, maybe I am just being a bitter and twisted sperg-adjacent malcontent desperate to see my betters humbled by their rivals overseas.
3) Totally true.
If you do not mind me asking, are you the Aussie novelist?
I see your thinking- but there may be a difference between “education/training” and say something like “relative strength as part of a ruling elite”- I agree that on the surface they are very much more concerned with formal education and selection amongst their system of hierarchy- but hard to tell what that means. An educated person is much easier to dupe then a person from a “uneducated “ background. In my personal perspective formal education can accentuate an individual who already poses an inherent strength as a natural elite- but they often times are repulsed by said system of credentialism and formal ideological / orthodox thinking. So if all we are left with in Places like China are those “persons” who could swallow the gruel for an exceptional period of time and prove to be useful supporting cast members, not sure we should be too scared of them. It is MoRE likely that Xi is surrounded by inept supporting class of people and there is a contingent Chinese natural elite that is aligned with US interests standing by for installment. Likely these natural Chinese elites have been seduced by liberal West, and have plans to modernize China and revitalize their homeland once the opportunity arises.
I fully agree that an educated person is easier to dupe than an uneducated one. The former are primed for neurolinguistic manipulation.
Re the CCP elite, I would not assume that there are any inept cadres at the senior level. The CCP are ruthless about selection. Gaining membership involves examinations, long probationary periods. And the Chinese elite are intellectually super-serious. Xi especially. This article is an eye-opener.
I doubt that revitalisation is on the agenda of any potential American fifth column in China. The Yanks want a Chinese Gorbachev, followed by a Yeltsin, in the Zhongnanhai (the Chinese Kremlin). The natural elite of China outside the CCP must pray that Washington never gets the chance to wreck China.
The most important point has been left unstated: the dynamic that causes the hive mind behaviour of the cathedral is visible everywhere. My workplace is rife with it and so is yours. The dynamic is everywhere. And I don’t think it’s that complex. People have to earn a living so they have to get along and to get along they have to go along. It’s not insidious. People like to think of themselves as being good; good is a strong motivator. The bizarre distortions of groupthink are the product of practical considerations and ambition. This dynamic is everywhere. This is our deal with the devil. This is our vainglorious self belief. This is our Faustian bargain. Curtis calls it the mysterious force. His most compelling argument is that the scholars of Princeton and Yale in the 1950s had a consensus just as they do today, but the two groups across time would accuse each other of great malfeasance. This is the mechanism of all human polity from the family up; this explains our fallen world and because it is known it can be allowed for, the distortion effect can be mapped and course corrections compensated. The selective advantage of dominant ideas and the uncompetitive disadvantage of regressive ideas can be factored in.
I changed my mind it is insidious. The motivation is not to be evil but the outcome is a fucking disaster, which is insidiously slow motion evil that destroys.
The term is a nasty one but revealing. It reduces the human element to another factor of production. And of course they squash it: the purpose of education is to identify talent, develop the minimum needed to keep the system running and suppress the rest.
Competition between rival regimes may force change in Turbo America and key areas of the GAE. If the regime is serious about competing with Russia and China they will have no choice. If, instead, they prioritise the persistence of existing policies, they will have to settle for an arrangement with Russia and China.
Uh, Ukraine was defeated last year, and is as pathetic as the French in 1870 after Sedan . The Russians are letting them finish committing suicide . No hurry.
The Russians could finish this in 21 days, they just want to keep NATO where it is - spouting but not shooting. NATO and really USAF/USN would reverse fortunes and escalate the issue.
And the Russians have still to send in their main force. They are winning using the Donetsk and Lugansk forces, border regiments, Wagner Group and the Caucasian troops under Kadyrov.
Biden is doing a great job destroying the credibility of the US. His flunkies in the European governments are doing an even better job of making themselves look utterly ridiculous. No need for Moscow to bring this to an end.
Not sure that the USAF/USN could do much in Eastern Europe without exposing themselves to extraordinary risks from Russian air defense systems and anti-ship missiles. General Cavoli appears to be taking a very cautious approach. Which is wise. https://youtu.be/24oujaTMvqk
You may well be right. I am a civilian with no background or capacity for independent analysis of the military situation. I rely on the work of others: Col's Douglas MacGregor, Scott Ritter and Jacques Baud (all retired), Brian Berletic and Andrei Martyanov. These are all contrarians. It is eminently possible that I am deluding myself. Time will tell. For now I will wallow a bit longer in possible delusion.
To use a casual phone conversation, carried out with a prankster trying to coerce a silly statement out of a public official, to strawman our foreign policy position is a really duplicitous tactic on your part.
Russia's role is expanding. But they will be very cautious. Russia is also improving ties with Al-Sisi's Egypt. And they have just pulled off a huge arms deal with Algeria and conducted joint naval exercises with South Africa and China (this really stings the US since South Africa is close to Antarctica and the Cape is a strategic bottleneck for oceanic traffic).
Russia's interest is in fortifying regional forces that are capable of supporting a multi-polar world.
Ethiopia is a prime case of a country with a natural interest in resisting GAE: the GAE loves to dismember large states and encourage separatism as part of a divide and conquer strategy. Ethiopia's national interests demand resistance, regardless of the regime in power in Addis Adaba.
Interesting tidbits from a document I found from the Federation of American Scientists a few years ago: “...descriptions of the traditional US role in the world since WWII...can be described in general terms of consisting of four key elements: global leadership; defense and promotion of the liberal international order; defense and promotion of freedom, democracy and human rights, *and prevention of the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia*
(Apologies for this getting lengthy, but here’s more on point four):
“A fourth element of the traditional US role in the world since WWII - *one that US policymakers do not often cite explicitly in public* - has been to oppose the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia...it incorporates two key judgments: (point 1 is that US interests would be threaded) ...point 2: “that Eurasia is not dependably self-regulating (at) preventing the emergence of regional hegemons, meaning that the countries of Eurasia cannot be counted on being able to prevent, through their own actions, the emergence of regional hegemons and may need assistance from one or more countries outside Eurasia to be able to do this dependably.”
Again, sorry for the length but damn, I think we’re obviously seeing this policy/ strategy currently playing out.
I don’t blame us for staying in Western Europe given the history. We 🇺🇸 can’t be sailing to Europe every 20 years for war and we certainly would be - but I DO blame the madness of moving East of the Elbe. If we can’t have restraint from even ourselves then we should part. Or should have. I feel like Ernst Junger watching the rise of madness in his own country.
They are certainly incompetent, because that is the outcome begat by the “selective advantage of dominant ideas.” That is the distortion field that afflicts all and any polity. That is the nature of our fall. That is the poison fruit of our intelligence. That is the intersection of our intelligence with our ambition and the practical considerations of a career.
There is no solution, but what Curtis has done is concretely demonstrated the distortion it causes . With that knowledge maybe we can move forward. Maybe.
Caught up with everything beside Uncle Yarv posts. If history is a harsh misstress with a sense of humour you will be preserved as the humour of our geist for posterity. "Here is someone who did the work, no one listened to him by the way", I did, well anyway. Love your stuff, I will order the book when its back in print for the introductory note to your old blog. See you again later.
(hope you don't mind a late post! I meant to reply back in Feb)
Solid analysis as always. The strategy seems to be to cloak imperialism in the guise of democracy & egalitarianism, which is subtle indeed. That seems similar to what the French did, with their colonial "civilizing mission", although with some differences too. Your comments on the manufactured consent of democracy were also accurate. A quote:
[quote]In his famous 1928 book “Propaganda”, Edward Bernays explained: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”[/quote]
But it seems that our erstwhile masters are getting high on their own supply, and as military aid & sanctions are insufficient to stop the Russian bear, they're trying to *meme* a Ukrainian victory into reality. They've succeeded in convincing many credulous people into believing the near opposite of what's actually happening in Ukraine, all for the hamster race you describe at the end. As I said in my other comment, I look forward to Russian victory, particularly because of the imploding delusions, and the mass cognitive dissonance which should exceed 2016. It will also be the greatest defeat of Liberal Nationalism in its history, as far as I'm aware.
Here also is what has happened in terms of results.
==============
Disclaimer:
I do not support our Ukraine policy or still being in NATO, I’d love to see the 🇺🇸 Republic rise from ruins, but none of these things happened or are likely.
==============
Our host never tires of reminding us politics is Power, and it’s goal is more power and to stay in power.
In the last 3 years the 🇺🇸American Empire has;
1. Crushed Domestic Populism Left and Right at home and in the core of the Empire; NATO via COVID and direct measures such as the bullet to Babbit’s throat, Jan 6 imprisonments, Trudeau having the Mounties ride down the Truckers, etc.
2. The people crushed in the American core and populism abroad a controlled farce, there remains our idiot regional managers in France and Germany who were being bought out by China and worse (France, Macron you oaf) talking openly of 3d ways for Europe and oh dear a sort of resurrection of the Russian Franco alliance that worked so well in the past.
---UKRAINE WAR and consolidating 🇺🇸 Empire. ---
3. China; 🇨🇳 It should be mentioned and not in passing that the Anglo way is indirect, and China’s Diplomacy globally for a decade isn’t just a daily shoe banging and pronouncements of world power but treating other nations in public as Drunken businessmen in Vegas talking to prostitutes.
Indirectly this along with the known grown ties to Russia 🇷🇺 required a most reluctant response (we had the entire rest of the Pacific on chasing us for strength and we’ve shown it).
The main checking of China of course was pulling our 🇺🇸 trained chip fab engineers and producers out of 🇨🇳 last fall by threatening their 🇺🇸 passports and of course interests. For those not following the story closer than comments allow 🇨🇳 has been trying to get advanced Chip fabs going for a decade, no amount of money helped because, well, they can’t keep a team together, of course now we know it was our team, or rather team 💵. Meanwhile Oaf Macron had to get his paws burnt fiddling round core Anglosphere statelet Australia 🇦🇺, and did.
4. PACRIM now in hand, and of course we’re reshoring into 🇺🇸 even dear friends from - Taiwan.
5. This leads us to the Atlantic Rim, or NATO; that’s now firmly under Uncle Sam’s tender boot, and soon we’ll be sending food aid to Germany and England again at this rate. 🇺🇸 EMPIRE secure. No more indiscreet Infidelity from core satellites.
6. In a wise move, Japan rearms, while she still can. She’s also very close to the Liberals in the floating Chip Fab of Taiwan 🇹🇼 BTW who have fond memories.
The KMT most will be surprised to learn would prefer reunification with China.
7. Most important results for 🇺🇸 Americans is we’ve just rediscovered Industrial War and are reshoring to American shores (and when not, away from China) and the biggest problem for American manufacturers is too small and old a labor base, but that will change. > at last something for we MAGA types (it is wise to grant concessions after crushing dissent).
9. Again important to us MAGA types isn’t just jobs, but you know ah well we’re going to need resources and secure supply chains; which means PROFITABLE wars Mr. Yarvin, in the Southern Hemisphere of course, which means need WiPipo.
10. Good news is there’s an excellent chance the entire effort will get pushed into an infinitely safe direction- the Infinite.
Oaf Macron (who once encouraged the use of Jupiterian themes about his administration, in allusion to Louis Quatorze himself) was stung by an Aussie leader who is as dumb as rocks, but putty in the hands of advisers and super loyal to Uncle Sam.
The French sub deal was perfect for the defence of Australian territorial waters, but inconvenient for US plans for blockading Chinese access to key sea lanes using an expanded nuclear submarine fleet. The US can now get Australia to finance the expansion and upgrade of submarine building infrastructure in the US. How capable the US still is in the most advanced realm of shipbuilding remains to be seen. Nuclear subs are awesomely ambitious even for superpowers.
I suspect that the submarine contracting debacle was followed very attentively in Sweden. The designs for the French subs were from Sweden. French industry now under the gun, as it were.
Anglos are coarse in everything except cunning. China is re-learning that lesson the hard way.
The AUKUS treaty (which I have not read) was accompanied by some curious developments. The US has amended the law to allow Australian and UK firms to bid directly for US defence work on an equal basis with US and Canadian ones. The ties and networks crisscrossing Greater Anglostan are getting denser, stronger, and (for those in the right old boys' clubs) more profitable.
A former Australian cabinet minister (Brendan Nelson) has just been appointed to the board of Boeing. He will add zero value to Boeing's activities but his appointment pours copious amounts of accelerant on the ambitions of the Australian political class.
I'd like to see more attention paid to the idea that US policy towards Russia is an extension of the old British strategy. The one thing that could never be allowed was Germany with its industrial and technological prowess aligning with Russia with its vast resources. This was the real long term threat to their liberal order. Once you see that, everything from the first world war onward starts to make a lot more sense.
Yeah, and if you want to see some of that strategy in play - read 'The Russia I Believe In' which describes among other things the activity of British and US agents in Russia prior to and shortly after WWI. It's a little known fact that Nicholas' entire court wanted him to side with Germany - but that was thwarted thanks to our dearly beloved Anglo-American establishment.
What doesn't make sense to me though is why the UK is still so hostile towards Russia. Always the first to advocate for new sanctions and weapons shipments - but even before the war, there's quite a bit of evidence of its aggressive intelligence operations against Russia - for example, Navalny seems to be backed by the British to at least some extent.
From a hard realist perspective it seems mostly pointless for the UK to still be pursuing this strategy to the degree that it does. Kinda supports the idea that FP/Military doctrines tend to have a degree of automatism to them.
Many people, including this author argue that England is really just the United States in terms of foreign policy. The fact that it doesn’t behove the English doesn’t matter.
So instead we align Russia with China. But all is well, 🇺🇸 we now have a resource rich Global South that went RU CN , oh dear. If ye do not abut their borders they RUCN 🇷🇺🇨🇳cannot and will not help you, but thanks for standing on principle. We have Navy. We’ll sail 🇺🇸 in ⚓️⛴ bye and bye. Nice resources you got there, be a shame if you didn’t share...
Yes, the snakehandler's goal is to make sure no-one gets bit, but this analogy is wrong because we're not the snake-handler of the planet; we're another one of the snakes.
Yes, in the grand scheme of things it was probably unwise for the U.S. to expand NATO east of Germany. It was also probably unwise to not slowly cede security leadership in European affairs over to the Europeans after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But neither of those mistakes is sufficient to justify, or even explain, Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Nations, even great ones, often put up with insults to their national honor and security out of necessity, or ideology, or just plain cost-benefit analysis. The U.S. tolerates the presence of massive quasi-governmental, quasi-criminal business-enterprises on its southern border directly degrading its own rule of law and killing thousands of its people with smuggled fentanyl. We haven't invaded Mexico or attempted to purge Sonora and Chihuahua.
So given that Putin is a snake, given that we can influence, but not control his behavior, and given that he has reached out and bitten another fellow-creature, what do we do? I would submit that *giving the bite-victim tools to make it hard to swallow* is hardly the worst response here. Sure, the bite victim is still getting bitten, and that sucks. We used to recognize that war was an unfortunate, but legitimate tool of national diplomacy - the *ultima ratio regum*, or last argument of kings. But helping the defender in a war does not mean you are in favor of every casualty that gets inflicted - it means you sympathize with the defender's struggle not the get conquered.
Russia went into the Donbass because Ukraine had restarted the civil war in early Februrary 2022 with several hundred artillery salvos per day into Donetsk and Lugansk. NATO had trained and equipped a force of 90,000 on the Ukrainian side of the Line of Control and Kiev (which had refused to implement the Minsk agreements). Furthermore, Washington had not bothered to make any response to a draft peace deal that Moscow had forwarded to the US in December 2021.
Washington and Kiev chose war over peace. They thought that they could intimidate Russia. Washington was angling to draw Ukraine into NATO so that they could put nuclear missiles in the Eastern Ukraine, missiles with 8 minutes flying time from Moscow (as compared to the 15 minutes flying tjme for the Tomahawk missiles already in place in Poland and Rumania).
Just came across a very good fact-based analysis by a retired Swiss colonel.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/09/former-nato-military-analyst-blows-the-whistle-on-wests-ukraine-invasion-narrative/
Thanks for posting this
The Ukrainians provoked the war at our behest.
If we “sympathized” with Ukraine we would have not made them give up the Nukes, or already admitted them to NATO before.
Here’s what we 🇺🇸 did in 🇺🇦:
We exceeded our usual game of leaving the Bride at the altar by stealing her ☢️ dowry and leaving her gang raped corpse in the alley behind the Church.
That’s 🇺🇸 our sympathy.
There is no way that a country like post-Soviet Ukraine could ever have been trusted with nuclear weapons. No way. Leaving weapons like that in the hands of a country that unstable and as poorly governed would have been reckless.
As for admittance to NATO, Ukraine does not (or cannot) contribute to the safety of the USA. It is a strategic liability.
The big mistake of the US was in assuming that Russia's period of weakness would last forever. The other mistake was not insisting on Ukrainian neutrality. It worked for Finland and Austria. All of Eastern Europe would be better off with mutual non-belligerency pacts and formal neutrality between NATO and Russia. Eisenhower wanted post-war Poland as a neutral buffer state. He'd be besides himself at the spectacle of NATO committing itself to fight for Estonia or Latvia.
Leave the sympathy gig to the strategists of think tank land and academia...they need to maintain their state of confusion. In the real world alliances work best when they are realistic, not sentimental. And to paraphrase Bismarck on the Balkans, all of Ukraine isn't worth the legs of any 18 year old from the Rust Belt.
Perhaps Philip but point remains no Nukes no sovereignty
Sadly that is the lesson everyone is (or will) draw. Unprecedented nuclear proliferation is now assured. I understand that the US has apparently already handed out tactical nukes (via a loans program) to some NATO allies. Given miniaturisation etc they can make super low-yield weapons.
>I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind.
What Orwell said of the Left then is only too true of the Right today.
I've been following your work for nearly a decade, but reading your writings on Ukraine has been a disenchanting experience. Sailer got it right from the start, Hanania and Karlin were eventually disabused of their Russia Stronk illusions, but like much of the Right, you're pretty late to the party. You've long been warning against the temptations of the oppositional reflex, but when it comes to the war, your epistemic competence has been impaired by spite-driven cognition. It's not only the libs who've succumbed to the deranging effects of wartime partisanship, who see in foreign surrogates the avatars of their desires. I get it, you want based Putin to humiliate your enemies by crushing their fake and gay colony and ushering in a multipolar world, to succeed where Germany twice failed. Alas, calling Putin a snake, a cunning and able predator, is too generous.
>As of mid-February 2023, it is really starting to feel like the Ukrainians are crumbling a little on the battlefield. The best indicator of this is the Pentagon itself, which may not have won a lot of wars lately, but which is neither blind nor stupid—and whose desperation to get more and better gear to the front is palpable.
When has this ever not been true? Ukraine has always been "crumbling" since day one—so has Russia. Such is the nature of a knife fight. Then they bandage their wounds and go for another round. Where you see a trend, I see a cycle. If you want to honestly convey the state of a war, you have to describe the state of all the belligerents, not just the problems of one side. The attempts of Russia's nominally elite units to storm Vuhledar give some idea as to the extent of their force degradation. As for artillery, Phillipe Lemoine—not a Russophobe—ran the numbers, opaque and speculative though they are, and found that Russia's munitions advantage is real but doesn't appear to be overwhelming or bottomless.
It's nice to see that you've started to acknowledge that the eventual outcome is uncertain in place of your usual strident predictions of Ukraine's inevitable defeat, though what changed your mind you don't say.
>Therefore, if I was playing China and my goal was to make the world a peaceful happy place to buy my cheap plastic junk, I would not send a fuckton of weapons to Canada.
The last time you made this analogy, you said that China was provoking the United States by arming Canada with "advanced nanotech Chinese weapons"—what are the real-world analogues of these weapon systems even supposed to be? The reality is that the West was hardly "flooding Ukraine with weapons" until the invasion—Obama declined to provide lethal aid and Trump did so reluctantly under the condition that the Javelins could only be stored in western Ukraine where they would presumably deter a Polish invasion. The initial defense was largely fought with the same Soviet junk the Russians use. Don't take it from me, here's Anatoly Karlin, a Russian nationalist.
>The reality (for Putin) is actually sadder; there was no major or concerted Western effort to built up Ukrainian power from 2014-22 (this is just very clear from the numbers). But it's actually more profitable for both Putin and Merkel to pretend there was.
Another one of your questionable notions is that Ukraine is an object of leftist enthusiasm, or as you put it, "the heirs of Pete Seeger […] baying for guns and tanks and blood in some Dnieper meatgrinder, as eagerly as they once sang for peace and love and flowers". It's strange you persist in this claim despite your debate with Ben Burgis, during which you both discovered common ground on this issue. The party line among Jacobin and The Nation, Chomsky and Pilger, Chapo Trap House and Radio War Nerd was unanimous in insisting that Russia would never invade. Once Russia invaded, they pivoted to the realist shtick, preaching that the strong do what they can the weak suffer what they must, that Ukraine must submit to Russia's demands, that weapons only prolong the conflict, etc. Basically, they see Ukraine as another South Vietnam, a corrupt reactionary American client state whose defeat would serve to embarrass the empire and get their rocks off. Russia for its part retains some lingering goodwill thanks to its Soviet inheritance, which is especially apparent in the careers of Russia hands like Stephen Cohen who went from admiring the Soviet Union to lobbying on behalf of its successor. Seymour Hersh just came out with some hallucinatory claim that Russia has an unscathed army of 350,000 regulars waiting to finish off Ukraine—any day now. And their suspicion of Ukrainian nationhood goes as far back as 1848, when Engels had already identified the Ruthenians as a nation of inveterate reactionaries fated for extinction and employed by Metternich to intrigue against the revolutions of progressive peoples, a prejudice confirmed in their minds because of all the stuff about the Holodomor, collaborators, decommunization, etc.
I'm also not sure how you reconcile your castigation of liberal nationalism with your veneration of Atatürk, the liberal nationalist par excellence. Turkish nationalism good, Ukrainian nationalism bad—how does that work? Wouldn't a Ukrainian Atatürk be doing exactly what Zelensky is doing—waging a war of national unification, imposing a unitary national identity, standardizing the language, westernizing his country, etc.? Turkish identity was also synthetic until Atatürk made it real, after all, nor was Atatürk without his foreign backers. You say liberal nationalism succeeds in combining "the mass appeal of nationalism with the highbrow pull of leftism"—that sounds a lot like your Caesarian alliance of democracy and monarchy, of orcs and elves, a formula for installing a ruling class of competent elites by popular assent. I mean, if it worked for Turkey… And if linguistic nationalism is a menace by which countries generate conflict in the realms of their enemies, one can understand why nations in Russia's periphery might resent their nosy neighbor for claiming an interest in protecting Russophone populations abroad and why they seek the protective embrace of daddy America.
It's all well and good to rant against the lib, but if Putin's conduct makes even the lib look photogenic by comparison—basically doing what Trump did but on the international stage—what does that say about the alternatives? It turns out that being ruled by our gang or their gang—boring Eurocrats or magical multipolar grifters—has profound implications for state competence. Probably the most bearish indicator for Russia is that the only people who will openly defend its cause are the same glue-huffing grifters and perverts who are magnetically attracted to every losing cause—and worse, Russian propaganda makes a point of pandering to low-IQ populist dissent. Haven't we seen this show before?
If Russia is ever going to pose a competent challenge to the liberal world order, maybe it needs its own Atatürk first. Alas, Putin seems intent on denying the benefits of liberal nationalism not only to his own country but to others as well.
Russia's challenge to the liberal world order is serious. Not a single state on the mainland of Asia has imposed sanctions. Not one.
Sa'udi Arabia is openly snubbing Biden. China and Iran have negotiated major new transportation and energy initiatives with Russia. Turkey, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Algeria are sympathetic to Moscow. China continues to divest itself of US treasury bills. Japan buys Russian oil. Central bankers across the world load up on gold out of uncertainty over the US dollar.
Russian competence is evident from the fact that the US requires Russian assistance to get its astronauts from the international space station back to earth. Russia has several types of hypersonic missile in service and these are in serial production. The US does not have any hypersonic missiles in service. Russian air defences can knock out satellites in low orbit and NATO cannot establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine because they dare not test American combat avionics against either Russian fighter planes or air-defence systems.
The glue-huffing grifters and perverts to which you refer have an abundance of weaknesses but they are not wrong on the basics. Russia has a government that does not hate its own people and that prioritises sovereignty and national cohesion. Russia has corruption aplenty, but it does not have affirmative action or DEI. Russian cities enjoy public safety while in the USA the Cathedral sponsors pogroms, riots and a crime wave, turning the country into Cthulhuland.
Well said Philip and I think Curtis is saying that liberal nationalism is a power grab that cares not about the destruction of its client states like little Ukraine. Similarly the US homeland is destroyed by the nonsense of progressive dogma.
US does have hypersonic missiles. But your right about the rest. Russia is a strong rouge satellite state.
This had to be said, thank you.
Thanks but it is pretty obvious. Russia's industrial and technical achievements and its economic capacity speak for themselves. People outside of the West notice this and make their calculations accordingly. We, however, rely on Cold War era cliches and preconceived opinions that have not been relevant for a generation.
Putin's Russia is not an ideal of mine, but I can appreciate its utility for the Russians and the appeal of a state-capitalist system with an inclusive (non-chauvinist) nationalist character for many around the world, especially in countries where oligarchic excesses are a threat to the middle classes.
Putin is an unacknowledged Yarvinite. The last twenty years in Russia has been a Yarvinschina. Putin is a Russian CEO monarch who acted as a much needed agent of change to preserve Russia's sovereignty and to prevent either open class-warfare or an extremist, chauvinist, reaction. His record on anti-corruption, economic management, promoting the rule of law is not acknowledged in the West.
Putin's character as a successful agent of moderation or constraint, a katechon to use Schmitt's terminology, makes him repellent to the Western oligarchs and their Russian fifth column. They fear any comparable fogure emerging in the West for very good reason.
The failure of the Orange Bonaparte in America should not blind us to the relative success of a dynamic form of elite-directed populism elsewhere. Putin's success is probably unachievable in the US because the cultural and social fabric are more fragile in the US than they were in Russia when Putin came to power. The legacy of Soviet elite education provided Putin with the human capital to aim high. The hollowing out of education in the US will constrain any future renaissance. The survival of extended families in Russia also helped Putin a lot by providing a bedrock of social resilience. In the US, by contrast, the fragility of the post-nuclear form of kinship, especially amongst the subaltern population, guarantees anomie and atomisation on a scale that will frustrate recovery from the present mess.
Yarvinschina ? 🤣
A neologism. Has the sense of 'Yarvin-phenomenon'. I coined the expression to describe the Putinist CEO-monarchy or CEO-autocracy. Putin is, in a sense, acting out the very role that Curtis Y. has sketched in GRAY MIRROR.
Since Curtis' surname is Slavic, it sounds apt...at least to me. The expression was inspired by 'Makhnovshchina' which is used to describe the Makhno uprising/phenomenon in Ukraine during the Civil War (Makhno was the anarchist general); also the Yezhovshchina to describe Yezhov's purges a decade later.
Oh I get it lol
>Probably the most bearish indicator for Russia is that the only people who will openly defend its cause are the same glue-huffing grifters and perverts who are magnetically attracted to every losing cause—and worse, Russian propaganda makes a point of pandering to low-IQ populist dissent.
Real talk.
Excellent comment, enjoyed it more than the article and will be shamelessly stealing your talking points to use against those exact people.
Russia does not need to be defended by anyone. The Russian Army is doing fine just by itself. The glue-huffing grifters are irrelevant.
The success of narrative management in the West suggests that the regime in America is secure. It is spinning an infotainment cocoon around the continent. But convincing a culturally isolated and undereducated mass of proles (including ones larping as sophisticates) is one thing. Fooling the political and business elites of Asia and the Middle East is another. And the sub-elite middle classes there are alert enough to know the difference between US style capitalism and the Russian one.
If Russia is indeed weaponising a few elements in the West this is an ultra low-cost way of fucking with Uncle Samantha. Any evidence of genuine Russian connection (however innocent or inconsequential) will misdirect attention and resources on a significant scale in the West. It may well drive the diverse workforce of the Washington intelligence community into a frenzy. If Russia can fortify the resolve of the Deep State in Panem-on-the-Potomac to escalate its conflict with its own people that is a win for Moscow.
At the moment Moscow has opened up scholarships for tertiary education (free of charge) to US citizens. Guess where the guys who are too pale for the DEI crowd are going to go? It only takes a very, very, small number for the point to make a profound impact.
In the long run the only bearish indicator in Russia of any consequence is completed fertility per female. War may help. A post-war baby boom.
Re Russian propaganda, I prefer Russia Today's website or the outstanding Strategic Culture Foundation (one of its columnists, Alastair Crooke, is former MI6)
https://strategic-culture.org/.
>If Russia is indeed weaponising a few elements in the West this is an ultra low-cost way of fucking with Uncle Samantha.
Literally all it does is further ghettoize the right-wingers stupid enough to shill for Russia
They are in a no-win situation. Shilling for Russia would be cost-free if they were properly situated politically: organically connected to a constituency with sufficient cohesion and opportunity to exert itself against the regime. There might be an advantage in pointing out that there are alternatives to the system on offer at home. Fundamentally, Russia is not the issue. The masses do not care about Russia. The elites do because they seek to plunder it. The blue-haired freaks care about whatever their mobile phones order them to care about.
The Right has, however, chosen to play the role of Loyal Opposition. They misdirect the energies of their followers, just as the Left does with theirs. The Left is more successful politically because the regime values the services that the Left provide with the task of managing relations with key regime constituencies (African-Americans, unmarried women, college educated whites). The constituencies of the Right are not as important in the political calculus.
The organised Right is just a weaker, less lucrative grift, than the Left. This could change in a heartbeat if the regime thought it best to shake things up. Were that to happen the glue-huffers would be pushed aside for more energetic and more useful people. IMHO low energy dissidence is a larp. It thrills people who confuse opinions with reality and psychic arousal with agency. Yawn.
Go to the Ukrainian front, high IQ principled tough guy. The truth is we’re just tired of playing the sap, in particular for certain shirking types. Something tells me I’m reading a Kagan or Nuland cousin here by blood and marriage? Not that blood is a bar to marriage for Lice ridden shetl schvartzen , the spawn of pimps and peddlars of opiates talking about glue huffing?
No one is supporting Russia, they are just tired of fighting certain peoples blood feuds. Go take vengeance yourselves.
Hope you enjoyed the ride, soon enough its back to lice, vermin and street hustling.
Do we need the gratuitous jew hating to prefer that America's tax dollars help Americans? Asking for a friend, by which I mean the 50% street hustler blood pumping in my very own veins. And nary a drop of said blood makes me ok with how Izrayul has US by the cojones either. Deliberately misspelling because I have expressed these views publicly once and recieved death threats!
What you (or any of us) need, deserve or expect are all formally separate.
I expect that once the implications of the Ukrainian fiasco sink in the attribution of blame will become intense. Zelenskyy's origins made him the perfect front-man for a US controlled regime comprised by ultra-nationalists who dream of a Ukraine without Jews. It is post-modern political theatre conducted to conceal the geopolitical drivers of the conflict (the need of the US oligarchy to seize Russian natural resources to bail out a dying, debt-dependent, form of capitalism and the need of the US military to get nuclear missile bases established in the eastern Ukraine to compensate for the military decline of a deindustrialised USA).
And the centrality of the neocons to the narrative conceals the presence of another diaspora very dear to the Anglo-American intelligence agencies since the 1940s (Galician and Volhynian Ukrainians, many of whom remain admirers of the Bandera movement).
The US Deep State have used Zelenskyy's ethnic origins to white-wash the character of their sinister and criminal client-state while mobilising support for Ukraine amongst US Jews who are remain loyal to the Democrats. Once Zelenskyy is killed off or in exile, the Deep State psyops people will pump out endless provocations about the neocons (utterly disposable as they are) while the surge in inter-ethnic rivalry and contempt within white America will constrain/warp the development of the right.
The Obama faction will use the backlash against the neocons to their advantage in the struggle for control of the Democratic leadership.
In the meantime...Slava Yarvina!...Glory to Yarvin!
You kick mine, I kick yours.
>Madam read what I responded to, and the idiot Byeyongshin: YOUR IDIOT: is all over this thread calling RW and non-elite whites glue sniffing, paint huffing morons for “supporting Russia” simply because we’re tired of being sent to settle the tardive blood 🩸 feuds of Galician pogroms from the 19th century.
You kick mine, I kick yours.
This is simple.
And I don’t hate, just punch back.
And BTW it has little to do with Jews, less with Judaism, and almost nothing to do with Israel.
Here’s your problem, and you already know it; these grifters exist in every group, but Tribal loyalty is THEIR MAIN GRIFT and you know it. They’ll sell you out - like last time and the times before- and you all damn well know it. They’re running Nazis live now. That’s how Jewish they are, and it wasn’t revealed to me by Huffing paint in Delphic Temples.
Meet your Karmic problem, its not us.
Israel got 💩 to do with this.
Israel isn’t even shipping Ukraine weapons or allowing their weapons to be used.
You kick mine, I kick yours. Not gratuitous, just normal.
You wanna kick Nazis? START WITH YOUR OWN LMAO.
He’s definitely got a high IQ, and a learned fellow, I am very prone to listen to him. At the same time I always find you Mr long warred to be very solid.’ Hum.
Curtis for me is an eye-opener. His entire project seems to based on outcomes, which is my distinct preference. “If the rules you followed, brought you to this, what good are your rules,” Cohen Brothers, no country for old men.
Having America as a friend is likely to get you killed. Power hungry avarice is liberalism.
Damn, you're way off base. 0.0% Jew, and I've been to war unlike you. Your characterization of this war as a Jewish blood feud is also nonsensical (maybe you'd have a point looking at some of Russia's dual-citizen oligarchs).
It is rational state behavior to take advantage of weakness. Once Russia failed to achieve its objectives, once it was apparent that Ukrainians actually were capable of putting up a fight and really didn't want to be a part of the eternal shithole Russia, the US smelled the blood in the water and used this opportunity to further harm Russia. Vatniks, on the other hand, can't explain the purpose of sending so many of their young men to their deaths without some gibberish about "denazification."
As I am sure you are aware, plenty of right-wingers (especially the very-online contingent) are openly supporting Russia's invasion, regurgitating Russian lies about mercenaries and biolabs, etc. That Jackson Hinkle clown that Tucker had on is selling "Z" merchandise and praising Stalin. Though I don't think there will be much further escalation between the US and Russia, supporting a foreign enemy is so incredibly stupid and dangerous, providing a perfect excuse for further abuse should the conflict escalate.
My principle is simply, "don't do stupid shit that makes your life worse for no reason."
There are two different wars in Ukraine, the fantasy war, and the real war. They are nearly opposites of each other. The fantasy version is so pervasive that even otherwise intelligent people are taken in by it. Really, Ukraine's handlers have done an amazing job at waging a propaganda campaign.
But, fictional propaganda, always sourced from Ukrainian gov't officials, is the only theater in which Ukraine is winning. The real war, the one that counts, is generally going according to plan for Russia. Granted, Ukrainian resistance and large-scale NATO armament, intel & advisory have made it more difficult, and screw-ups/setbacks happen. However, Russia is still winning, with its air/artillery superiority attriting the AFU at a 5:1 ratio, I'd estimate, and that's in Russia's favor. Total casualties may be something like 20k for Russia, 100k for Ukraine.
I look forward to the eventual Russian victory. I fully expect the cognitive dissonance to exceed the 2016 election, as the fantasy war gets imploded by the real one.
Uh huh, I have been repeatedly to war that's what long warred means.
Denigrating your enemies as paint huffing morons is a bit of a marker, aka shibboleth. Bullsh_t. But perhaps you just picked it up?
Since you're a soldier look at a map: where is the USA, where is Ukraine, where is Russia?
We USA paid corrupt Ukrainians to send their young men to slaughter because it suited us, the Ukrainians are being slowly annihilated in hopeless defenses and even more ridiculous offensive actions, the Russian shakes his head and kills them - this is the stupid shit that made our lives worse for no good reason and almost no reason that benefits us.
That some provocateurs are selling Z merch , probably at behest or with blessing of IC is irrelevant to not supporting the ultimate stupid shit of picking a pointless fight with a nuclear power on it's own borders.
Not accepting your BS , your putative CV, nor retracting the rebuke.
But since you're salty and support the war, head to Poland and the Ukraine Legion, they'll take any bullet sponges they can find. Every dead foreigner is money in the bank for Ukrainian's and their US paymasters, the Ukrainian government is in Monaco and has several houses each in London and other choice locations.
No American blood for Europe. None of it. We played the fool enough.
Your other points are good but you're missing the mark re Moldbug's take on leftist support of the war. We're not talking about tankies, Twitter-marxists and left-behind socialists here; we mean the mainstream left. These are the public hordes cheering for Russian Death-- the Reddit party line. They're pretty common offline too, among career bureaucrats, journalists and "left of center" normies.
Moldbug says "leftists" to mean mainstream public opinionmakers. Classical Marxist-Leninists and other cast-aside tentacles of the Cathedral are spiritually the same, but don't matter aside from occasional contributions to helping Cthulhu swim left.
It is very hard to follow. The term Left is practically meaningless. For me, I'd say that the Left are simply people who collect the rent politically on labelling themselves progressives. The Right are those who grift by labelling themselves conservatives.
The genuine progressives and genuine conservatives are found in old photo albums...live ones have been sighted partying with Bigfoot.
I don’t think there was ever a time when the “real” progressives and conservatives were out there doing good. If they were good, they wouldn’t fall under those labels.
Saloman, interesting counterpoint and I appreciate the effort but I wonder do you think this commentary stands up now January 2024?
I have to admit my bias I really like Curtis Yarvin, especially the half of his work I can comprehend.
I detest when someone about to say something not entirely bullish about the Ukrainians, the West and the war begins with ritual disparagement of Mr. Putin. It matters not what is actually said or to what extent it is true—what matters is that the not entirely bullish figure bends the creaky knee to conventional opinion, and in so doing earns permission to utter a seldom heard disparaging word. The knee agreeably creaks and the dissident bleats: “I may be about to say unpalatable things, but recognize first of all I am no fan of the Snake nor of the Muscovites—no pawn of either am I”.
The creaker/bleater has taken the vax, tatted his chest, reaffirmed his incrowdhood, signaled solid reliability and hirsute obedience even as he ventures to talk bad boy dirty.
“Did I mention that I do not like and do not value the reptile Putin, the universally hated by everyone in the Bay Area not a dirtbag Putin, the argument-slaughtering Putin who must be disposed of before the plastic knives come out…and I carve”
I could not read the article after this craven, quisling, petitioning start.
I suggest a rewrite…
boo hoo. perhaps 15 years of his writing is not sufficiently dissident for you? how are we to cope with your disappointment!
Well put. Gray Mirror is not a safe space for the regime compliant who need ideological reassurance.
Yeah I think the recycled chompsyian rhetoric I’ve seen from right wingers, who taste something bad in the milk, that Ukraine policy is all about weapon contracts and Hunter Biden’s paltry payoffs, are missing the mark. Theres many better ways to make money such as engaging in straight forward colonialism yet that is considered completely out of bounds
Not sure any of our elites really care about money. Hunter and Joe are clowns and stooges for the ruling class. We are feed the corrupt stories for entertainment purposes only.
There is the possibility that they are just massively incompetent.
Yet fantastically lucky.
🇺🇸 gains
1. Atlantic Rim Secured ✅
2. PACRIM 🇨🇳 is checked, ✅
3. On Atlantic and PACRIM silly “allies” are now duly informed that they are vassals. Hungry, cold ones too.
4. 🇺🇸 is reshoring industry at a wartime pace. (Let us consider we have New Deal/Wartime Emergency govt since 1933 and FEDGOV can’t operate without Emergency or war-it just can’t).
5. The Global South is about to discover that RU CN 🇷🇺🇨🇳 can’t project power beyond their bordering nations, as we have Navy and they don’t, not enough.
>Nice resources ya got there, be a shame if you don’t sign this Trade agreement-
Yes, the 500 year run of 🇬🇧🇺🇸idiots with remarkable luck continues.
Great comment, agree it’s a win for GAE elites. Only thing is the use of flags to represent the teams engaged in the conflicts. I agree w moldbug on the fact that “public opinion” under a regime is remarkably easy to be created and moved- it’s a symptom/ effect, not a cause. The symbol of a flag to represent, in theory, the collective majority sum of public opinion of a group of people free, is modern mythology on a global scale.
Let me clarify Analysis is not advocacy, I deplore this policy.
It’s evil.
But not completely incompetent unless one thinks Ukraine matters, it doesn’t.
They control the nation until they don’t
"Russia is never as strong as she wishes to appear, but never as weak as she looks." - Churchill in 1939 (paraphrased, maybe apocryphal)
Curtis, the great question that you have yet to address properly is the performance of the Cathedral in diplomacy and war. You acknowledge in passing that you "almost wonder if we need better snake guys". Yet you do not elaborate.
I for one would love your take on what better snake guys would look like given the nature of the Cathedral as well as your ideas on the implications of the war for the Cathedral's future at home and abroad.
There will be no effect on the cathedral; it will mutate in favour of self preservation. It will be the death of 1000 cuts . The mechanism is the selective advantage of dominant ideas (regressive ideas bedamned!) and it propels us forward we know not where! Curtis has explained the mechanism of this fallen world: both why and how it fell and why there will be no resurrection.
Besides, he stated his position , says he doesn’t think foreign policy should not be bizarre.
Hear what you are saying but should have explained myself better. My assumption is that Russia is winning the war and that NATO, the Pentagon and the US State Department has sustained extremely serious reputational damage at least internationally.
I am interested in how the Cathedral will fare under conditions of escalating rivalry with Russia and China. My guess is that they will restructure supply chains etc but in terms of the culture they will turn America into the Hermit Republic so as to maintain narrative control. They will spin like crazy and pretend that Russia has somehow lost or that NATO deterred Putin from marching on Paris and London.
The key issue is which ideas will be selected and imposed by the Cathedral?
How does a meritocracy maintain its pretensions to competence when everyone can see that the system no longer selects for competence in its leadership cadre and that the state is inept at warfare?
Pretensions of competence indeed and catastrophic failure everywhere: good questions. Hermit eh? Hum, I wonder. More likely they we declare victory and conjure a new crisis. Our friend Nicole Soldo says that America is no longer a mercantile empire but now an idealogical empire. Professor Deneen of the post liberal substack calls it the political Gnosticism of the liberal imperium. We are in highly religious times, a new dark ages. Curtis is the man!
Hermit-like as in intellectually and morally isolated. Living in a media-saturated bubble.
I agree that a fraudulent declaration of victory is by far the most likely outcome in Ukraine. So long as Russia gets what it needs (Ukraine as a no go zone for NATO and a Banderist free arrangement for the Ukrainians east of Wolyn and Galicia) they will let the US pretend whatever they like. The US needs bragging rights for domestic consumption.
Russia appears to have written Europe off and is probably happy to let the US trash Germany and France. If the Cathedral plays its cards well Russia and China will co-operate with Washington to manage the relative decline of US power. Planetary hegemony is over. The main game is regime survival and neither Moscow nor Beijing needs a Meiji-like restoration of a decadent superpower now run by gangsters and a technocracy compromised by diversity hires. The normalisation of incompetence suits America's rivals, so long as it does not extend to mismanaging the geopolitics or the nukes.
America benefited from having Yeltsin in the Kremlin, now the Kremlin benefits from Biden and his friends in the Beltway. America is having an extended version of the worst aspects of late Soviet and early post-Soviet Russian experience. Legalised plunder. Illegitimate institutions. Fraudulent elections. Industrial catastrophes. Spikes in mortality rates.
Since 2001 we’ve been the USSA - United Security State America. It must be amusing to some in the former USSR to see the pattern repeat, albeit as farce.
Undoubtedly amusing, but also disturbing. The Kremlin would not wish to see a state as consequential as the US collapse. It would destabilise the world.
Russia is ultimately indifferent to the nature of the regime within the US. What they seek is a reliable and realistic negotiating partner. The internal rot within the US today (which resembles the looting and social decay of the 1990s in Russia) is a benefit to Russia if it constrains Washington in its foreign policy, a threat if the decay adds to the unbalanced and reckless quality of US statecraft.
Putin said a while back that the US was on the same path as the former Soviet Union. An extraordinary comment from someone who experienced it first hand.
Very solid!
Couple comments, 1) “The Cathedral” does not “select” , as if through some collective deliberate process and then engage a plan of imposition- My understanding is it is more akin an autonomous consensus making algorithm, with many different software interfaces, with the core selection criteria is which idea confers the most “prestige “ or emotional feeling of “powers” to each respective customer. As along as we can’t break the addiction cycle, we are trapped in the never ending cycle. We’ve broken our chains from the Almighty to find ourselves in bed with our coke dealer. 2) Meritocracy has never been a part of the political formula for the ruling class in the GAE. So no need to worry about that one. 3) if you look at the regime’s atrocities over the last century, one thing you’ll see is there is never a need to apologize or save face, or come up with some crazy stories to stitch it all back together. Lol. It’s too easy to just start the story over again and you realize “public opinion “ forgets :)
Comment 1) is very well made. The selection is not deliberative but is (to zoomorphize) instinctive, like a school of fish or a flock of birds moving in a coordinated manner.
2) Meritocracy has been largely irrelevant (with the exception of the spasm of Sputnik which spurred the Western gov'ts to improve STEM tuition for the masses) but is now perhaps becoming an issue. The Russians and Chinese take the education of their leadership very, very seriously. Russia has just pulled out of the Bologna process (which regulates tertiary qualifications in the OECD) because it is insufficently rigorous. And affirmative action is hotting up.
Permanent interstate competition is perhaps going to expose the weaknesses in the human capital of the Cathedral. This may be concealed from the public in the West, but not in the rest of the world.
Then again, maybe I am just being a bitter and twisted sperg-adjacent malcontent desperate to see my betters humbled by their rivals overseas.
3) Totally true.
If you do not mind me asking, are you the Aussie novelist?
I see your thinking- but there may be a difference between “education/training” and say something like “relative strength as part of a ruling elite”- I agree that on the surface they are very much more concerned with formal education and selection amongst their system of hierarchy- but hard to tell what that means. An educated person is much easier to dupe then a person from a “uneducated “ background. In my personal perspective formal education can accentuate an individual who already poses an inherent strength as a natural elite- but they often times are repulsed by said system of credentialism and formal ideological / orthodox thinking. So if all we are left with in Places like China are those “persons” who could swallow the gruel for an exceptional period of time and prove to be useful supporting cast members, not sure we should be too scared of them. It is MoRE likely that Xi is surrounded by inept supporting class of people and there is a contingent Chinese natural elite that is aligned with US interests standing by for installment. Likely these natural Chinese elites have been seduced by liberal West, and have plans to modernize China and revitalize their homeland once the opportunity arises.
I am not from Australia.
I fully agree that an educated person is easier to dupe than an uneducated one. The former are primed for neurolinguistic manipulation.
Re the CCP elite, I would not assume that there are any inept cadres at the senior level. The CCP are ruthless about selection. Gaining membership involves examinations, long probationary periods. And the Chinese elite are intellectually super-serious. Xi especially. This article is an eye-opener.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n11/edward-luttwak/goethe-in-china
I doubt that revitalisation is on the agenda of any potential American fifth column in China. The Yanks want a Chinese Gorbachev, followed by a Yeltsin, in the Zhongnanhai (the Chinese Kremlin). The natural elite of China outside the CCP must pray that Washington never gets the chance to wreck China.
The most important point has been left unstated: the dynamic that causes the hive mind behaviour of the cathedral is visible everywhere. My workplace is rife with it and so is yours. The dynamic is everywhere. And I don’t think it’s that complex. People have to earn a living so they have to get along and to get along they have to go along. It’s not insidious. People like to think of themselves as being good; good is a strong motivator. The bizarre distortions of groupthink are the product of practical considerations and ambition. This dynamic is everywhere. This is our deal with the devil. This is our vainglorious self belief. This is our Faustian bargain. Curtis calls it the mysterious force. His most compelling argument is that the scholars of Princeton and Yale in the 1950s had a consensus just as they do today, but the two groups across time would accuse each other of great malfeasance. This is the mechanism of all human polity from the family up; this explains our fallen world and because it is known it can be allowed for, the distortion effect can be mapped and course corrections compensated. The selective advantage of dominant ideas and the uncompetitive disadvantage of regressive ideas can be factored in.
I changed my mind it is insidious. The motivation is not to be evil but the outcome is a fucking disaster, which is insidiously slow motion evil that destroys.
There’s plenty of human capital (what a term!) in the West, it’s just that the idiocy in charge squashes it.
The term is a nasty one but revealing. It reduces the human element to another factor of production. And of course they squash it: the purpose of education is to identify talent, develop the minimum needed to keep the system running and suppress the rest.
Competition between rival regimes may force change in Turbo America and key areas of the GAE. If the regime is serious about competing with Russia and China they will have no choice. If, instead, they prioritise the persistence of existing policies, they will have to settle for an arrangement with Russia and China.
No evidence whatsoever that Ukraine is collapsing; let's not delude ourselves. Strategic stalemate is where it's at currently.
Uh, Ukraine was defeated last year, and is as pathetic as the French in 1870 after Sedan . The Russians are letting them finish committing suicide . No hurry.
The Russians could finish this in 21 days, they just want to keep NATO where it is - spouting but not shooting. NATO and really USAF/USN would reverse fortunes and escalate the issue.
And the Russians have still to send in their main force. They are winning using the Donetsk and Lugansk forces, border regiments, Wagner Group and the Caucasian troops under Kadyrov.
Biden is doing a great job destroying the credibility of the US. His flunkies in the European governments are doing an even better job of making themselves look utterly ridiculous. No need for Moscow to bring this to an end.
Not sure that the USAF/USN could do much in Eastern Europe without exposing themselves to extraordinary risks from Russian air defense systems and anti-ship missiles. General Cavoli appears to be taking a very cautious approach. Which is wise. https://youtu.be/24oujaTMvqk
The USAF and USN air can change the airspace over Ukraine, not without cost. Significant costs. RU IADS are indeed formidable.
You may well be right. I am a civilian with no background or capacity for independent analysis of the military situation. I rely on the work of others: Col's Douglas MacGregor, Scott Ritter and Jacques Baud (all retired), Brian Berletic and Andrei Martyanov. These are all contrarians. It is eminently possible that I am deluding myself. Time will tell. For now I will wallow a bit longer in possible delusion.
To use a casual phone conversation, carried out with a prankster trying to coerce a silly statement out of a public official, to strawman our foreign policy position is a really duplicitous tactic on your part.
Russians in Africa is real. Soon A restored Russian and Ethiopian alliance will emerge. Fatal blow to the GAE.
Russia's role is expanding. But they will be very cautious. Russia is also improving ties with Al-Sisi's Egypt. And they have just pulled off a huge arms deal with Algeria and conducted joint naval exercises with South Africa and China (this really stings the US since South Africa is close to Antarctica and the Cape is a strategic bottleneck for oceanic traffic).
Russia's interest is in fortifying regional forces that are capable of supporting a multi-polar world.
Ethiopia is a prime case of a country with a natural interest in resisting GAE: the GAE loves to dismember large states and encourage separatism as part of a divide and conquer strategy. Ethiopia's national interests demand resistance, regardless of the regime in power in Addis Adaba.
Interesting tidbits from a document I found from the Federation of American Scientists a few years ago: “...descriptions of the traditional US role in the world since WWII...can be described in general terms of consisting of four key elements: global leadership; defense and promotion of the liberal international order; defense and promotion of freedom, democracy and human rights, *and prevention of the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia*
(Apologies for this getting lengthy, but here’s more on point four):
“A fourth element of the traditional US role in the world since WWII - *one that US policymakers do not often cite explicitly in public* - has been to oppose the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia...it incorporates two key judgments: (point 1 is that US interests would be threaded) ...point 2: “that Eurasia is not dependably self-regulating (at) preventing the emergence of regional hegemons, meaning that the countries of Eurasia cannot be counted on being able to prevent, through their own actions, the emergence of regional hegemons and may need assistance from one or more countries outside Eurasia to be able to do this dependably.”
Again, sorry for the length but damn, I think we’re obviously seeing this policy/ strategy currently playing out.
I don’t blame us for staying in Western Europe given the history. We 🇺🇸 can’t be sailing to Europe every 20 years for war and we certainly would be - but I DO blame the madness of moving East of the Elbe. If we can’t have restraint from even ourselves then we should part. Or should have. I feel like Ernst Junger watching the rise of madness in his own country.
They are certainly incompetent, because that is the outcome begat by the “selective advantage of dominant ideas.” That is the distortion field that afflicts all and any polity. That is the nature of our fall. That is the poison fruit of our intelligence. That is the intersection of our intelligence with our ambition and the practical considerations of a career.
There is no solution, but what Curtis has done is concretely demonstrated the distortion it causes . With that knowledge maybe we can move forward. Maybe.
Caught up with everything beside Uncle Yarv posts. If history is a harsh misstress with a sense of humour you will be preserved as the humour of our geist for posterity. "Here is someone who did the work, no one listened to him by the way", I did, well anyway. Love your stuff, I will order the book when its back in print for the introductory note to your old blog. See you again later.
(hope you don't mind a late post! I meant to reply back in Feb)
Solid analysis as always. The strategy seems to be to cloak imperialism in the guise of democracy & egalitarianism, which is subtle indeed. That seems similar to what the French did, with their colonial "civilizing mission", although with some differences too. Your comments on the manufactured consent of democracy were also accurate. A quote:
[quote]In his famous 1928 book “Propaganda”, Edward Bernays explained: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”[/quote]
But it seems that our erstwhile masters are getting high on their own supply, and as military aid & sanctions are insufficient to stop the Russian bear, they're trying to *meme* a Ukrainian victory into reality. They've succeeded in convincing many credulous people into believing the near opposite of what's actually happening in Ukraine, all for the hamster race you describe at the end. As I said in my other comment, I look forward to Russian victory, particularly because of the imploding delusions, and the mass cognitive dissonance which should exceed 2016. It will also be the greatest defeat of Liberal Nationalism in its history, as far as I'm aware.
Here also is what has happened in terms of results.
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Disclaimer:
I do not support our Ukraine policy or still being in NATO, I’d love to see the 🇺🇸 Republic rise from ruins, but none of these things happened or are likely.
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Our host never tires of reminding us politics is Power, and it’s goal is more power and to stay in power.
In the last 3 years the 🇺🇸American Empire has;
1. Crushed Domestic Populism Left and Right at home and in the core of the Empire; NATO via COVID and direct measures such as the bullet to Babbit’s throat, Jan 6 imprisonments, Trudeau having the Mounties ride down the Truckers, etc.
2. The people crushed in the American core and populism abroad a controlled farce, there remains our idiot regional managers in France and Germany who were being bought out by China and worse (France, Macron you oaf) talking openly of 3d ways for Europe and oh dear a sort of resurrection of the Russian Franco alliance that worked so well in the past.
---UKRAINE WAR and consolidating 🇺🇸 Empire. ---
3. China; 🇨🇳 It should be mentioned and not in passing that the Anglo way is indirect, and China’s Diplomacy globally for a decade isn’t just a daily shoe banging and pronouncements of world power but treating other nations in public as Drunken businessmen in Vegas talking to prostitutes.
Indirectly this along with the known grown ties to Russia 🇷🇺 required a most reluctant response (we had the entire rest of the Pacific on chasing us for strength and we’ve shown it).
The main checking of China of course was pulling our 🇺🇸 trained chip fab engineers and producers out of 🇨🇳 last fall by threatening their 🇺🇸 passports and of course interests. For those not following the story closer than comments allow 🇨🇳 has been trying to get advanced Chip fabs going for a decade, no amount of money helped because, well, they can’t keep a team together, of course now we know it was our team, or rather team 💵. Meanwhile Oaf Macron had to get his paws burnt fiddling round core Anglosphere statelet Australia 🇦🇺, and did.
4. PACRIM now in hand, and of course we’re reshoring into 🇺🇸 even dear friends from - Taiwan.
5. This leads us to the Atlantic Rim, or NATO; that’s now firmly under Uncle Sam’s tender boot, and soon we’ll be sending food aid to Germany and England again at this rate. 🇺🇸 EMPIRE secure. No more indiscreet Infidelity from core satellites.
6. In a wise move, Japan rearms, while she still can. She’s also very close to the Liberals in the floating Chip Fab of Taiwan 🇹🇼 BTW who have fond memories.
The KMT most will be surprised to learn would prefer reunification with China.
7. Most important results for 🇺🇸 Americans is we’ve just rediscovered Industrial War and are reshoring to American shores (and when not, away from China) and the biggest problem for American manufacturers is too small and old a labor base, but that will change. > at last something for we MAGA types (it is wise to grant concessions after crushing dissent).
8. Reshoring is already a Tidal Wave, here;
https://chiefexecutive.net/special-report-reshoring-revolution/
9. Again important to us MAGA types isn’t just jobs, but you know ah well we’re going to need resources and secure supply chains; which means PROFITABLE wars Mr. Yarvin, in the Southern Hemisphere of course, which means need WiPipo.
10. Good news is there’s an excellent chance the entire effort will get pushed into an infinitely safe direction- the Infinite.
Space.
https://a16z.com/2022/11/02/america-space-age/
Oaf Macron (who once encouraged the use of Jupiterian themes about his administration, in allusion to Louis Quatorze himself) was stung by an Aussie leader who is as dumb as rocks, but putty in the hands of advisers and super loyal to Uncle Sam.
The French sub deal was perfect for the defence of Australian territorial waters, but inconvenient for US plans for blockading Chinese access to key sea lanes using an expanded nuclear submarine fleet. The US can now get Australia to finance the expansion and upgrade of submarine building infrastructure in the US. How capable the US still is in the most advanced realm of shipbuilding remains to be seen. Nuclear subs are awesomely ambitious even for superpowers.
I suspect that the submarine contracting debacle was followed very attentively in Sweden. The designs for the French subs were from Sweden. French industry now under the gun, as it were.
Anglos are coarse in everything except cunning. China is re-learning that lesson the hard way.
The AUKUS treaty (which I have not read) was accompanied by some curious developments. The US has amended the law to allow Australian and UK firms to bid directly for US defence work on an equal basis with US and Canadian ones. The ties and networks crisscrossing Greater Anglostan are getting denser, stronger, and (for those in the right old boys' clubs) more profitable.
A former Australian cabinet minister (Brendan Nelson) has just been appointed to the board of Boeing. He will add zero value to Boeing's activities but his appointment pours copious amounts of accelerant on the ambitions of the Australian political class.
TLDR version:Ukraine war Effects
🇺🇸Empire Secure ✅
PACRIM shored up ✅
“Allies” chastened ✅
Atlantic Rim/NATO secure✅
Battle lines drawn for “Global South”✅
(oh dear, 🇷🇺🇨🇳 can’t project far, 🇺🇸 we can as we have the fleet ). Nice REE and Lithium you got there, Africa, global south.
🇺🇸Reshoring Industry ✅❤️
This is awful, its a 💩 world, and I’m glad my Rust Belt neighbors get to go back to factories.
I’m very interested to see the comments on for this matter, 🤔