Ukraine

Making Peace Isn’t Appeasement

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Back in 1908 G K Chesterton wrote a book called Orthodoxy in which he explained his general views but the opening of it has always stuck with me:

Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true.

He went on to discuss the main bee in his bonnet on this – people who say they believe in themselves, pointing out that the madman is the most self-confident person. But this is applicable to any of the cynical maxims our worldly people believe that aren’t true. Another one – this one more relevant post-WWII – is that “you must not appease a tyrant”.

This is considered self-evidently true based on the fact that the British government – led, in turns, by Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain – tried to appease Hitler and the final result was World War Two. Aha!, say our Worldly Experts, the key, then, is to never appease. Never let aggression stand. Go right after those tyrants!

Except, of course, they’re full of it.

As it turns out, I would actually support a general American crusade against evil in the world. I would support raising an American military of 30 millions equipped with the most deadly weapons we can devise to drive through the world killing every last tyrant, murderer, liar and thief we could find. I would then write it in stone on mountains all over the world – in letters carved ten feet deep and towering a hundred feet high – that if anyone in the world set out to do what the dead evil tried, we will be back to kill them all over again. It would be a long, bloody and expensive war but when it was done, all the real evildoers being dead, we could relax in a Long Peace, maybe lasting for centuries before people forgot and started it all happening again.

But that isn’t what anyone wants. I might be the sole person on Earth who can contemplate such a thing. But that doesn’t make me wrong. It just makes me someone who has thought the matter all the way through.

Those who run our world and tell us we must not appease and must not deal with tyrants and so forth are, however, just lying. They’ll appease and deal all they want – when it suits them. And when it suits them to have us oppose the aggressor/tyrant, they’ll have us do so. But only half-hearted. Not all the way! We must stand up to Putin! But, no, not to the point where we’re actually harming him! Its like when we went to war against Terrorism in 2001 but refused to fight the actual Terrorists (you know, the Mullahs in Tehran). All they’re doing, really, is coming up with rationalizations for a policy which profits them the most. And, right now, the policy they want the most is continued war in Ukraine so they can keep harping on the nonsense idea that Trump is somehow Putin’s puppet and his peace deal is worse than Chamberlain at Munich.

Of course, Chamberlain at Munich wasn’t actually Chamberlain at Munich.

The official word we have about Munich is that a craven and stupid Chamberlain sold out the Czechs in the vain hope that it would buy Hitler off and thus avoid a war. The subtext being that Chamberlain should have stood firm and gone to war for the Czechs in 1938.

This is an arguable point – there was much to commend itself in the idea of fighting Nazi Germany in 1938. In hindsight, of course, we can really believe that had this happened, the world would have ended up in a much better place in later years. And it might have – but we don’t know. All we know is what happened. In the event, the Czechs, themselves, refused to fight. They blame the Brits and the French for not fighting but that is, well, bizarre. The choice to fight or not fight was the Czechs. They had a very good army and their defenses in the Sudetenland were formidable. Once the guns went off, no way to know how things might have turned out…lots of people would have loved to see Hitler taken down a notch and if the Czechs had stood tall, they might have found some combat allies. In no event would fighting have made them worse off as surrender merely ensured seven years of Nazi occupation followed by forty six years of Soviet domination.

But here’s the real crux of the matter – if it was morally required to fight Hitler’s regime in 1938 then it was equally morally required to fight Stalin’s regime. Between the two of them, in 1938, there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference. Hitler’s regime went on to plumb the depths of depravity with the Holocaust, but that didn’t start until after WWII began and wasn’t fully implemented until 1942. We can’t demand people at the time know the future – especially something as unimaginable in 1938 as Auschwitz. You can’t, that is, claim that a later event requires prior action. All we can do for 1938 is look at 1938 and see what might be best given what was known at the time.

The first thing to remember about 1938 is that it was just twenty years since the end of World War One. A million Brits had been killed in that war. France had lost more than a million. Nobody in either country wanted a resumption of that. And British and French intelligence had determined, very firmly, that hardly anyone in Germany wanted a war, either. After all, the Krauts had lost nearly two million…and lost the war! The only thing the leaders of the world could see resulting from a war was another slogging match with piles of corpses and victory bought so dear as to be indistinguishable from defeat. Once again – remember! – you do not know about the Holocaust. It hasn’t happened. Hitler’s regime is no more evil than Stalin’s and nobody is demanding war to the death against Stalin. The British, especially, realized how precarious their position was…they were still massively in debt from the war, but their economy was just starting to recover from the depth of the Depression…and they still ruled a quarter of the globe and their Navy was the largest in the world. Another twenty years of peace and the economic ship would be righted…and British global dominance would continue. Go into another World War? Total bankruptcy even if victorious…the Empire dissolved simply for lack of resources to hold it. The end of Britain’s dominant position in the world.

So, sure, who gives a darn about the Sudetenland? That is, who cares about a landlocked nation in the center of Europe that you can’t render direct aid to even if you wanted to? If selling it out got you twenty more years of peace (and British intelligence was appraised of the growing opposition to Hitler in the military plus Germany’s increasingly difficult financial situation as Hitler’s rearmament and public works programs strained the German economy) and the chance that the Hitler regime fades away before anything bad happens? Of course you do that.

But then back come the people who live by cynical maxims – but look at what happened! Europe overrun! War lasting for years! Total destruction of the Continent! All of it could have been stopped if Chamberlain had told Hitler to go jump in a lake at Munich!

Maybe. Maybe not. Once again: we just don’t know what might have happened. We can only know what happened. And, as I said, there was a good argument to fight Hitler in 1938. But there was also a good argument not to: that is, his regime was on shaky ground financially and the Anglo-French alliance was massively more powerful than Germany, even if allied with Italy and Japan. We really condemn Chamberlain before the bar of history not because he appeased at Munich, but because in six weeks two years later Germany overran western Europe. That is, had Hitler not been able to take Paris, then Chamberlain’s memory would tend towards blessed rather than reviled – he would be remembered as the man who rearmed Britain and got her ready for WWII (the bottom line is that the Hurricane and Spitfire fighters, the Lancaster bomber and the Crusader/ Valentine tanks were all products of Chamberlain’s government). And here’s the real kicker – the reason you can’t be too sure about any counter-factual argument – the reason Hitler was able to conquer western Europe in six weeks was a simple (if quite grand) command failure of the French army.

We all know the great German breakthrough at Sedan in May of 1940 – but what most people gloss over (if they even know about it) is the fact that the French had a complete armored division just south of Sedan, perfectly positioned to pinch off that German breakthrough and make mincemeat of the entire German plan. The whole of Manstein’s famous plan was based around a quick breakthrough and a dash to the sea to spread panic among the Anglo-French military organism. If the Germans didn’t breakthrough – and quickly! – then the whole thing would fall apart as the numerically superior and higher quality Anglo-French force redeployed to stop and then roll back the German effort. And what did the French do with their armored division south of Sedan? They dispersed among the infantry forces…blowing their perfect opportunity. This was compounded in following days as a whole series of French errors messed up any chance of a credible response…but even those failures were predicated upon the first.

And that was it. One terrible mistake. Don’t think it’s silly – it has happened plenty of times before. The Austrians at Austerlitz and the Prussians at Jena similarly made mistakes which allowed Napoleon to wipe them out quickly…almost effortlessly, it seems in hindsight. Even though, combined, their armies were larger than Napoleon’s. Take away the mistakes and the Campaign of 1805 would have gone a lot differently. So, too, the Campaign of 1940.

The reality is that the blitzkrieg model of warfare only works if your enemy sort of walks into it – does things which allow you to waltz on through their lines and raise havoc in their rear areas. It worked quite spectacularly in 1940…and thus sowed the seeds of Germany’s defeat because those Krauts really thought they had something there. That is, they could destroy anyone with a combination of tanks and close air support. They ignored their luck at Sedan, plus ignored that, at the end of the day, they sent almost their entire armored force and most of their air force against one small sector of the French line and then the French command pretty much did exactly what the Germans needed to make the gamble pay. That might happen again – but it almost certainly won’t. And for the Germans, it never happened again. Their hubris led them find themselves sixteen months later sitting outside Moscow and Leningrad without the slightest clue what to do next.

What is the reality? That a well managed defense still has all the advantage. The Germans, themselves, showed that – and right at the end of the war. At the Battle of Seelow Heights in April of 1945, the Germans were outnumbered ten to one and they still held the Russians for three solid days…and if the Germans had had anything left to deploy, the Russian attack would have failed.

As it relates to current events, the Russians tried to do a blitzkrieg in Ukraine and after making some advances, found themselves unable to move further save by lengthy and costly siege operations against an alert and well-commanded enemy. What happened in February of 2022 is what was most likely to happened in May of 1940 – save for some incredible stroke of luck. The Germans got theirs. The Russians didn’t. But, on the other hand, it also works the other way – the Ukrainians also lack the power to crush the Russians absent some incredible stroke of luck. The only way either side can triumph is to somehow bring overwhelming force to the crisis point faster than the other side and move reinforcements there. Given general Russian incompetence it is unlikely that Russia can do this, and given Ukraine’s inferior manpower it is unlikely they can as well.

They can keep killing each other! And given Russia’s superior manpower if Putin can hold his people to it long enough, eventually Ukraine would be totally defeated for simple lack of soldiers to hold the line. But this is a project of years – and the side on the offensive is going to lose more dead than the defenders. And it is a massive role of the dice for Putin to even try. We can’t bet on a miracle – we can only count on cold, hard facts. And the cold, hard facts say this war is a stalemate and the result cannot be altered by the forces on the ground…only the intervention of a new, third power Army can alter the equation…and no third power wants to jump in here. We don’t. The Europeans don’t. So, it is time for peace…and, yes, a peace which allows Putin to keep his ill-gotten gains.

Which is not, by the way, outside of human experience. In fact, it is the more common result of warfare. The French lacked the power in 1871 to expel the Germans from France…and so they made a peace where they surrendered Alsace to Germany. It was bad. Unfair. Lousy. But what can you do? You either can do a thing, or you can’t. The French couldn’t beat the Germans that year. Continued fighting would only result in more dead with no alternation in France’s favor…and a solid chance it would get worse for them. Swallow the pride, make the deal. So, too, with Ukraine.

And it isn’t despicable appeasement – it is just diplomacy. We acknowledge Russia’s rule in the Donbas (Ukraine does, too) in return for a cessation of hostilities and a chance for Ukraine to rebuild herself economically and militarily. In other words, for a chance – if really desired – to alter today’s outcome at some future date. If its that important to them – I suspect it isn’t as the lands Putin occupies are mostly inhabited by ethnic Russians and even the most ardent Ukrainian nationalist is not seriously going to want to war on Russia to take in Russians as fellow citizens. This is all that Trump is doing – trying to wrap up Putin’s stupid war and allow the world to move on without more killing.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan5 Comments

Still much to do and many rocks and shoals to navigate around, but it does look at this time like Trump will be able to arrange some peace between Russia and Ukraine. The sticking points will be how much territory Ukraine has to give up and how much of a security guarantee for Ukraine Russia is willing to tolerate. Make no mistake about it, Putin likely isn’t giving up the dream – token US or NATO forces in western Ukraine won’t bother him…a brigade or two near the new eastern border would. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy has the fear that peace will bring an election he’s likely to lose – and then face the music for how the war was conducted – while plenty of Ukrainian power players will be willing to stoke anti-Russian fires for domestic political purposes. It is a tricky situation!

But the pragmatic facts of life are that neither side can afford to continue – last I heard the Ukrainians were drafting kids and old men while Russia seems to increasingly rely upon mercenaries to fill the ranks. Keep in mind that Total Fertility Rate for Ukraine is 1 and for Russia 1.47 (and a lot of that is probably non-Russian ethnic minorities): these countries aren’t producing a lot of fit, young men year by year. Nobody knows how many people have died in the war – both sides lie egregiously about casualties – but its probably some hundreds of thousands dead: and whatever the number of dead the best way to estimate wounded is times two of the dead figure. It is probably in the neighborhood of a million dead and wounded between the sides…this is being bled white. And ultimately for nothing. Putin and Zelenskyy must get out.

This was the image of the day – and maybe an image for the ages:

They’re all waiting on Trump – each and every last one of them totally irrelevant to how this will come out. Trump will decide – and he’ll ultimately decide for Putin and Zelenskyy. The may buck and they may kick and scream and perhaps even derail this particular effort…but eventually they all will have to knuckle under. There is no power like the USA elsewhere in the world. It has been thus since 1945…and the only foreign policy problem we’ve had since then is our refusal to act like we are the most powerful. We’ve been playing this weird game where we let second and third rate powers talk to us like they matter…that we have to get them to agree with us, rather than ultimately just issuing them orders on how to behave. Trump instinctively understands that even in our currently weakened State, we still hold all the cards.

It isn’t as odd as you think – from 1815 to 1914, the world waited on decisions from Whitehall in London. The British government essentially had veto power over everyone else – their sea power gave them this and nobody could really argue with them. And the British didn’t fuss with the concerns of second raters – they were just told what to do and if they tried to fight it they’d swiftly find a British fleet off their coast. The power vacuum we allowed to exist since 1945 is now being filled. By Trump.

The Looming Peace

Mark Noonan12 Comments

As of this moment the trajectory in the Russo-Ukraine War is towards peace – mostly because both nations have failed in their desires. Ukraine wanted to get the Russians all the way out, the Russians wanted to get all the way in – as it turns out, neither are capable of achieving these goals and so a peace of exhaustion is on the horizon. Will Trump be able to broker it? I hope so. We’ll see how sticky both sides get on this…but at the back of the mind for both Putin and Zelenskyy is the fear of sudden and total collapse. That is, their respective armies just fall apart and thus allow the other side to impose it’s will – this is a greater fear for Ukraine than for Russia but it is a distinct possibility for both. Getting out now allows both men to have at least some reserve military power to retain control.

We did learn, once again, the power of a well-knit defense. There is a mental attitude out there that the tank and airplane of WWII cancelled the cannon and trench of WWI – nope, never happened. Blitzkrieg only works when it enters a void – against a tight defense it becomes just a Somme with tanks. First Battle El Alamein, Kursk, Caen and Seelow Heights proved again and again that even a vastly outnumbered defense if well situated and competently commanded can hold off the enemy for a long while and only retreat, if necessary, after extracting a usurious blood price. The use of drones has just added to defensive depth and flexibility – and I do hope our military is paying attention and trying to figure out the best way forward given what we’ve learned.

We also learned, again, that Russia is a quantité négligeable on the world stage. Twice now Russia has appeared to loom up all-powerful: 1815 and 1945. But in both instances Russia only triumphed (over Napoleon and Hitler) because others drained the enemy who also made a whole series of stupid mistakes. Someone on X noted that Russia is a mud-pie with a crown and there is a great deal of truth to this. The Winter Palace is magnificent…but the Russian army invaded Ukraine without properly maintained vehicles and so bogged down within days of the start. Think about that: you’re a Russian officer in command of Motor Rifle Brigade and you know that next week you and your men are heading into Ukraine…and you didn’t even make sure your vehicle tires were in good shape! Think of the level of lazy incompetence this required! And then you remember Russia’s Second Army in World War One…just blindly sent into East Prussia and wiped out by a smaller German force with nobody on the Russian side even knowing that a battle was going on until it was all over. A century on. Multiple total changes in Russian government…and the tip of the spear still gets broken because the Russian organism can’t plan or prepare.

I don’t know what makes the Russians what they are but they are brutally incompetent. Unfortunately, they are also just strong enough to prevent a Ukrainian victory so we’ll have to cut a deal with them…and then try to woo them away from China because grand strategy requires at least a neutral Russia if we ever tangle with China. Foreign policy: its just a lousy thing.

Trump wants to be the Peace President – part of this is simply humanity but the other part of it is that he knows America needs a period of peace and prosperity. We need to rebuild our manufacturing, rebuild our shipbuilding capacity, rebuild our agriculture, rebuild our labor force…we need to grow out of debt and finally start paying it off. We need to revive a general sense of American exceptionalism and patriotism. Of course, we also need God – but Trump knows he can’t make us go to God…but he also knows that the most successful people in a revived America will be those who believe in God. It is time to wind all this Endless War up…this Endless War which started in August of 1914 must finally be brought to a conclusion. End Ukraine. Gaza. Yemen. Sudan…these and a score of other simmering conflicts have to end. Even if doing so requires us to knock some heads together (Trump having a B-2 Bomber fly over Putin was the clearest message possible that intransigence isn’t a good idea: basically, our attack on Iran just showed the world that you only have your most valuable strategic assets as long as we allow you to).

What will the Ruling Class do with peace? Don’t give the least damn. Christopher Steele was out on X – with locked replies, of course – condemning Trump’s meeting with Putin…and it just disgusted me that he’s living well instead of in a van down by the river. The world is out of kilter – made so by people like Steele who never would have risen above dustman level in any sane society. Stupid liars have run things into the ground for too long…and that is also why Trump wants peace: it’ll make the stupid liars unemployed…or at least finally get a real job.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan17 Comments

So, Ukraine managed to whack Russia pretty hard. Gotta say, I’m impressed…big, deep strikes right at the heart of Russia’s strategic power. They claim they did it all on their lonesome but I just have to figure they had US intel help…and probably some tech support on it, too. Trump probably does want to send a message to Putin that it is time to bring this adventure to a close…and with Putin digging in his heels, this is a necessary push.

Naturally, Putin will feel that he has to strike back, hard. That will come before any peace deal is made. It is a matter of prestige for Putin and the Russians that they make Ukraine pay for this. So, get ready for that. I do hope the Ukrainians are because if they can thwart or even just significantly blunt the Russian response then that will be just more pressure on Putin to throw in the towel.

This whole mess could have been avoided if we had a good deal maker in DC when it started with the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2012. The bottom line, as I’ve said all along, is that the Crimea and the Donbas were added to Ukraine by Stalin for domestic, Soviet political purposes. Never in the past had that territory been considered Ukrainian even in theory. The whole purpose of US and Western diplomacy should have been figuring out how to un-draw the lines drawn by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin probably after a few too many vodkas. I’m hopeful this will end with that recognition of reality.

The nut who threw firebombs at mostly elderly Jews in Boulder is in the country illegally. Because of course. We now have two iconic photos from the past 12 months – and together they define the political divide.

MAGA world:

Democrat world:

It is so beautiful, isn’t it? The shirtless, raving lunatic holding a Molotov cocktail and that Pride flag in the background…about to set fire to Jews in a liberal city where refugees are welcome.

Someone linked today on X to a video of Jasmine Crockett (D-Looney Bin) – and along with her cosplaying as ghetto (she’s actually the product of elite, private education and has perfect diction), she was asserting that once the Democrats retake the House, they will impeach Trump. Of course we all know this – because of course they will.

If they get back the House. That is the fly in the Democrat ointment: they have to win. Winning requires building a coalition around some set of actions. We’ve all wondered why the Democrats aren’t toning down the lunatic Leftist rhetoric and we can now see why: they don’t think they have to. Crockett and her like think that because they are being insanely Left they will win the House in 2026. There are older and wiser heads in the Democrat party (Schumer knows this garbage is political suicide but as an elderly Jew he’s got to walk soft in Democrat councils these days) but they can’t call the shots – they can’t get people like Crockett to shut up, that is.

We can’t know what will happen. Mid-terms are notoriously difficult for the party holding the White House. But with voter registration trends still favoring the GOP, with Trump having already raised $600 million for the 2026 effort and with the economy starting to perk up….I’ve got to start thinking that this against Democrat insanity might give us a favorable 2026.

Peace Making

Mark Noonan14 Comments

I don’t think people understand peace-making. We understand war. We understand a cease fire, but we don’t understand peace. This is because there hasn’t been much actual peace-making in a long while. I’m thinking about it and there is the Israeli-Egyptian peace of 1979, the Israeli-Jordanian peace of 1994 and that’s about it since World War Two. We don’t count the peace treaties between, say, the USA and Japan post-WWII because that wasn’t a real negotiation to end fighting – the war was long over and it was just to regulate relations between the two powers. Every other conflict ended in a ceasefire or complete subjugation of one side to another. The process of actually sitting around a table and negotiating the permanent end to a war is rather alien these days, we’re not used to it. I suspect we don’t really know how to do it.

Peace making isn’t easy. The really grand peace treaties – Westphalia ending the Thirty Years War, Utrecht-Rastatt ending the War of the Spanish Succession, Aix-la-Chapelle ending the War of the Austrian Succession – could take months or sometimes years to get done. This is because when you make peace, you have to get people to agree to a permanent solution. Even though you know the parties to the treaty might want to try again at a later date, you still have to work on the assumption that this is it – all claims are to be settled in one document that everyone agrees to. And the kicker is that both the victors and the defeated have to take some hits in the process. The defeated for obvious reasons, but the victors daren’t press the matter too far or the defeated will just keep on fighting…part of the reason the War of the Spanish Succession went on so long even after France was effectively defeated in 1709 was because the terms offered for peace were too humiliating for France…so, the French just dug in their heels and kept fighting until they were offered better terms. You have to give to get – and that is another thing people just aren’t used to these days. Everyone wants it all.

Trump is trying to arrange a peace between Russia and Ukraine and he’s pretty much getting no help from anyone. Our “allies” are undermining, the Ukrainians are trying to sabotage and the Russians are trying to extract every ounce of advantage. This is tough, as Trump would say. And it is made doubly so because I don’t think any of the principals involved – except Trump and his team – understand that the goal is peace. You know: peace. End of the war. Armies are demobilized. Troops go home. People get on with their lives. What the world is expecting is another cease fire…which keeps the armies in place taking pot-shots at each other until some time in the future when it all blows up again. Trump doesn’t want that. And the whole world shouldn’t want that…but they simply don’t understand the basic concept of peace…of being done with it all.

The Russians have won the war – they invaded, took large amounts of territory and absent a NATO army intervening, Ukraine lacks the power to expel them from Ukraine’s territory. But for there to be peace, Russia is going to have to give back a bit of what they stole. And the Ukrainians are going to have to ratify most of the Russian theft. Is this ideal? No. But this is how wars sometimes go…there has been a winner and a loser, but there hasn’t been a total destruction of one side like there was in WWII. This means Ukrainians and Russians have to meet and talk it out until they come to a resolution…and a resolution that neither side is going to be totally happy with (the Ukrainians less happy than the Russians). And once an agreement is struck, sign the treaty – have it ratified by both nations (and anyone else who wished to be a party to it), demobilize the armies, resume normal diplomatic relations and get on with life. If Ukraine won’t accept a deal then it becomes a matter of just how long the West will be willing to sustain their war effort. If Russia won’t offer a deal where they give back at least some of what they gained, then Putin will have to decide how long Russian can sustain it’s war effort. That will be as it will – but the first step to peace is to get the two sides talking. Trump is trying to get that rolling…but I think that the Ukrainian leadership is hoping they can outlast Trump…maybe make it to 2029 still alive and then the no-questions-asked aid will resume…for Putin, his worry would be similar…that once Trump is gone the Western powers will start to stir the pot and encourage a Ukrainian war of revenge.

I hope Trump succeeds. This would be a huge part of his effort to restore norms (all of Trump’s policies are just that – an attempt to get us back to the sane way we used to be). The world isn’t perfect and the arrangements the world makes will also not be perfect. But a bit of good will – and even the least recognition that war involves killing people – and we can get to an agreement which even if not perfect, at least stops the shooting and allows people to live in peace.

And, heck, its got to be better than just grinding ahead. As nobody will ever actually agree to send a NATO army to Ukraine, the hope of the pro-war people is that we can just keep the killing up long enough until Russia suffers and internal collapse. This is not totally insane because Putin’s regime is not totally secure. But Putin has also been in power for quite a long while and the Russians soldiers continue to obey orders so the chances of an internal upheaval defeating Russia as it did in WWI are small…and meanwhile day in and day out, kids are being killed in battle. How many more dead before its ok to talk peace? I think quite enough blood has been shed.

I understand that Ukrainians might feel very different about it…if your house was under Russian occupation you’d much rather keep fighting. I understand the Russians also might feel differently… they’ve expended a lot of blood and maybe figure a much larger slice of Ukraine is their due? I can’t speak directly to that – I’m neither Russian nor Ukrainian. I can only say that I understand it…and I still say that it is better to talk peace. Sure, maybe at some point Putin will tumble from power…and sure, maybe the Russians will finally figure out how to break the Ukrainian line…but, how long? How many dead before either of these events happen? What if they never do?

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God…I’m hopeful that Trump will manage to get them to peace.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan16 Comments

I’ve read some articles which assert that Democrats believe they have a winner in the Maryland Man issue – they figure they can move off from defending the man but garner support by pointing out the procedural error which got him back to El Salvador.

No. Serious! They seem to really think this. That the American people will rise up in outrage over deportations because the forms weren’t filled out correctly.

At first glance we just laugh – but then it dawns on us: the Left are the people who run the bureaucracy, public and private. All they’ve ever done in their life is check off boxes and make certain forms are filled out. They consider this an accomplishment and the height of intellectual achievement. Think about every issue: the Experts says it is so and so and with this report from the Experts there is nothing further to discuss. Just check off that box and move on! And heaven help you if you don’t…because they love to find the clerical or spelling error…makes them feel smart.

We are, as I’ve said, dealing with some very stupid people. And we really should have figured this out a long while ago – we thought the Green stuff was Secret Communism…and it is but it is also very, very stupid…anyone can see that if your goal is to reduce CO2 you’ll build nuclear plants by the dozen. Nope: place mirrors in the desert that don’t work! Student loans – how often do you hear anyone suggest making them dischargable in bankruptcy? Hardly ever, if at all – and it is the simplest solution. If the grad simply isn’t making enough money post-college to carry the freight, file for bankruptcy and be done with it. But they don’t want that – they want to annul the debt. After the forms are filled out, of course. This is the dumbest way to go about it. But the Left is wedded to it (to be sure, this could also stem from a lot of well-off grads just not wanting to pay the bill…if the solution is bankruptcy but you make too much money for that, then where’s the advantage for you?).

I’ve seen a lot of Doomers on X – people who are saying it is all over, Trump has failed, the GOP is finished…and it all would have been better if Trump had done Y instead of Z. We are on Day 92. Just past three months. The Doomers are getting irritating. Sure, maybe the whole Trump experiment fails…but it’ll take a couple years for it to happen. And even if we get whacked in 2026 that doesn’t mean Trump has failed…Reagan got whacked in 1982, after all. Keep in mind as we go forward that there is money to be had in clicks…and hate clicks pay as much as love clicks. Some people will just say things to get clicks. As for me, when I see a Doomer on X or other social media, I hit the mute button. Won’t engage. Not going to give them money for poisoning the well.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard appears to be wary of engaging in military action against Iran. This, and her unwillingness to go to war over Ukraine, is upsetting a lot of hawks. Anyone who has hung around the blog knows that I want no war with Russia but have long figured we should go to war with Iran. These are my opinions informed by my understanding of the facts. Others can come to different conclusions. That’s ok. It is possible for honest people to look at the same set of facts and conclude differently. Nothing doing with some people – because Gabbard doesn’t want war with Russia she is now a Putin stooge and because she’s wary of an attack on Iran she’s also a Mullah stooge.

Stop it, people. Gabbard may be right or she may be wrong – but she’s not a traitor. She’s an honest, patriotic American citizen. She also doesn’t call the shots – Trump does. She gets to say what she thinks and then Trump decides. And only fool would want Trump to only receive one point of view on policy matters. Lets hear every honest opinion and try to sift through them to the best result – understanding that there might not be an actual good choice in a situation…some times it is just picking the least bad option.

Got into an argument on X yesterday. Surprise! Anyways, it started with someone noting a Leftwing account arguing that every Confederate should have been tortured and killed post-war. Naturally, this clickbait was generating a lot of outrage (as was its intent) but I noted that the real problem wasn’t that we didn’t mass murder Confederates, but simply that Johnson pardoned them all. And he did this because he was trying to curry favor with the former Planter Class (whom he despised) for an 1868 Presidential run as a Democrat. It didn’t work – they wouldn’t forgive him for remaining loyal to the Union and being Lincoln’s running mate. But that, really, was the entire post-Civil War failure…it created the whole problem. Which wasn’t the Klan (insane violence is always only a temporary problem) – the problem was we let the Confederates vote themselves back into power and, by outnumbering black Americans in the South, vote black Americans into Jim Crow. If the former Confederates were disenfranchised for good, it never would have happened. The race issue would have resolved itself in a generation or two – by 1920 at the latest.

This, in turn, got me a bunch of “how dare you!” from the Right…the usual blather about how the Confederacy was spotlessly honorable and the men who served her needed to be reintegrated back into civil life. Balderdash – the Confederacy came about because the Planter Class had lost power at the Federal level and wanted to keep stealing the labor of black Americans. There were decades of propaganda built up for it – keeping in mind that the idea of the Confederacy was born under Jackson’s Administration – playing upon racial fears, disdain for Northern tradesmen (greasy mechanics, the South considered them), prospects for conquest south of the Rio Grande and a rather hypocritical view of States Rights (ie, they wanted their States Rights…except in the case of the Fugitive Slave Act which essentially made every State a slave State), the Southern Ruling Class got their war.

And it was a catastrophe. The least justified Civil War in history and then they botched the execution (Washington could have told Lee that his job was to remain in being and free to maneuver; not being tied down to defending one city while the rest of the war was lost out West). A million or so people ended up dead (war, disease, hunger-related illness and so on). They got their arrogant, upper class, Plantation butts handed to them on a platter. Repent? Offer reparation? At least admit it wasn’t such a great idea? Nothing doing – they started working up justifications for themselves, lobbied for pardons and then recaptured the political system they had failed…the worst aspect of it was the fact that the Union was merciful. Nothing is quite so American as Grant’s “let ’em up easy” policy. This should have lead to that repentance (it did in some, most notably James Longstreet, but there were others), but the mercy was spat upon…with a spasm of Klan violence and laws mandating smaller water fountains among other ridiculous indignities.

Look, I get it – great-great-grandpa who served in the Alabama 5th Infantry was a good man who fought for what he thought was right. No, we don’t need to be tearing down statues. There was a greatness in Lee, and the sublime courage Confederate soldiers showed even against hopeless odds still shines across the ages. But lets also not kid ourselves about what happened. Lets keep in mind all those corpses and only say the war was justified if we could go to them and say, “it was good you died for this cause”. It was good for Billy Yank … Johnny Reb? Not so much. He shouldn’t have had to show his sublime courage in a lost cause. Wiser heads should have prevailed. And so it goes with most wars – and that it the primary point I make these days. Sometimes you do have to fight – but only because someone else is doing something so egregiously immoral that there is no other way to stop them.

Intervene or Not?

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Syria has started to descend into murder as predicted by everyone who isn’t an idiot. Remember: those of us who were wary of ending the Assad regime were called Putin stooges. To be sure, the Assad regime was horrible and aligned with both Russia and Iran…but everyone with a bit of knowledge of Syria knew that a post-Assad Syria wasn’t going to be pretty (and this is why our real policy vis Syria was to wean them away from their Iranian/Russian connection). In this particular case, it looks like some Alawites (Assad’s clan) attacked some ISIS types and in response the ISIS types are killing every Alawite, Druze and Christian they can get their hands on…because that’s what ISIS types do.

And, of course, nobody cares. It isn’t Jews killing Muslims or Russians killing Ukrainians so the world is barely taking notice and if the world does, they’ll blame Israel and the United States for it (somehow). Meanwhile, over in the Democratic Republic of Congo a few weeks back 70 Christians were beheaded by ISIS types and there’s been hardly a ripple about it…or about all the other Christians routinely massacred in Africa and elsewhere around the world. It’s funny, isn’t it, that certain things are front and center and others aren’t.

I bring this up because we are told – endlessly – that we have a moral obligation to assist Ukraine. That if we sit this one out we’re being horribly bad people who are letting the bad guys win. Ok. But which bad guys? Is Putin the only bad guy in the world? And if we have an obligation to rescue Ukraine, don’t we have an obligation to rescue the Druze of Syria? Probably not. Because, you see, the Druze don’t have any money. Christians in Congo have even less. Nobody in those places is going to be passing out 50 grand a month no-show jobs…nor would there be juicy contracts for anti-air systems or other high tech war material. Sure, Congo has a lot of resources but the people you need to bribe to extract them are already bribed and the stuff is flowing…who cares if 70 Christians are beheaded in their Church on a Sunday? It seems our moral obligations are a bit selective and mostly driven by money.

Guys, I’m good with either model for America in the world: Isolationist or Interventionist. Personally I prefer Isolationist but I can see the argument for Interventionist. But if we’re going to be Interventionist then it can’t be selective except in the sense of practicality. That is, if we’re going to be Interventionist then the reason why we don’t intervene in A is because at the moment we’re intervening in B and C and so just have to let A slide for a while…but A is on the menu once B and C are dealt with. And if we are Interventionist it can’t be driven by money – because that is totally immoral. It must only be driven by a desire to set things right.

But here’s the real kicker that will show that Interventionism isn’t really the way to go: once you go in, you can’t just back out. The European scramble for colonies wasn’t exactly that. Oh, sure, there was a scramble to get some choice spots but most of the territory which came under European rule did so because of the force of events…you’ve conquered your valuable trading port! Woohoo! But to operate this port you need peace around it but barbarian tribes are raiding the people living right next to your port…killing people and carrying off slaves and so forth. So, you move out and take a bit more territory under control…not out of a desire for more land, but just because you have to. But the further you move out the more you find that causes you trouble and so, eventually, you just take the entire territory under your rule to make sure that basic human decency rules the roost. Once in, you’re in. And I doubt that Americans are really willing (or suited) to be colonial overlords.

This interventionism where we arm various factions, provide food and medical aid for all factions and then watch as the savages murder each other by turns is not really all that good a thing. Syria isn’t the first nation to fall into chaos and murder after we intervened to “help”. The other interventionism where we arm one side in a proxy war also isn’t all that great…the bottom line as we see in Ukraine is that the Ukrainians aren’t very good at it. Russians aren’t, either. But this just means we have a stalemate and lots of death and a risk of a wider war getting out of hand. The Brits tried arming friendly forces to protect their interests in India but it fell apart because the friendly forces were just as bad as the forces causing trouble…and so the British Indian Army was created…with British officers commanding Native troops…who, under British command, performed well. To get Urkaine’s military up to snuff would require American officers in command from battalion on up and fully in charge of training. Why? I don’t know why after 3 years of hard fighting Ukraine’s military isn’t any good. It should be. That amount of battle testing should mean those on the line are Blood and Guts Pattons to a man…they ain’t. It is what it is. The Czarist army made up of Russians and Ukrainians simply melted away in 1917 when they had already won the war against Germany…all they had to do was stay in line for another year and it was all over. They didn’t. True grit isn’t as common as some might think.

So, what I’m saying here is that if we intervene it has to be total intervention. Nations like Ukraine and Congo who are failing the basic tests of being functioning States have to be left entirely alone or taken over entirely. Pick one. No halfsies. This is why I prefer to stay out – the amount of effort required to be successfully interventionist is more than I want America to expend…and the only way to possibly make it work it total takeover and to start taxing the foreigners for the costs of our intervention. And this is what needs to be presented to the interventionists when they get excited about their next killing field: what are you actually trying to accomplish? Another Afghanistan? Another Haiti? Or should we, instead, shoot for the Crown Colony of Malacca…which was peaceful and prosperous under British rule? If I’m to intervene – if I’m to save a people from disaster – then I want it coming with an American Governor-General. Rather not! But if I must, then that is the deal I demand.

There is no Hitler II

Mark Noonan47 Comments

More and more people are seeing what I’ve been seeing for a while: in the opinion of our Ruling Class, every foreign enemy is Hitler, every crisis in Munich and everyone who doesn’t get on board with fighting the new Hitler is Chamberlain. This is what they’ve sold us again and again since 1945. To be fair, nobody wants a repeat of World War Two. Six years of killing, 60 million people dead, uncountable physical damage to the civilized world. It is just too horrible to contemplate going back into such a shambles. But, here’s the thing: a repeat of World War Two has always been highly unlikely. The ingredients are hard to come by.

The first ingredient has to be a Great Power defeated but not destroyed. Germany was completely and utterly defeated in World War One. Had the Germans not called it quits in November of 1918, then the Spring of 1919 would have seen a massive allied invasion of Germany with a 3 million man American army in the van and the total allied armies equipped with tanks and planes to make mincemeat of any German defensive lines (and, as it turns out, the first airborne troops – US General Billy Mitchell envisioned dropping thousands of US soldiers behind enemy lines as the offensive started). Had the Germans fought on then the only result would have been more killing and a destroyed Germany. The Krauts quit to prevent that. They shouldn’t have been allowed to do that.

To be fair, the Allies didn’t have our luxury of hindsight so they couldn’t know that right after the war the Germans would cook up the “stab in the back” legend which excused German military failure and laid the blame for defeat on first the socialists and, later, the Jews. But some Allied leaders did have some foresight…notably Marshal Foch and General MacArthur both pointing out that the peace treaty was, at best, an armistice of twenty years. They could see this because while Germany was defeated even the supposed harshness of Versailles did nothing to cripple Germany’s latent power. It was still a united nation. It still had its industrial base. It retained an army which anyone could see would be exceptionally first rate as the Germans retained only the best of the best in the ranks. All Versailles did, really, was to clear the board and allow the Germans to start building from the ground up a new and more deadly force – and the Germans started working on this within a year of the peace (the Germans built new U-Boats in Holland and tested out tank and plane designs in the USSR, for instance). There’s the first necessary ingredient.

Second is a charismatic leader able to spellbind the Great Power’s people and forge them into a united force for conquest. Can such a person rise again? In theory, yes. But the thing about oddities is that they’re, well, odd. Not easily replicated. Plus in the German case you not only had to get that leader, he had to dovetail in with decades of the preaching of racial superiority by others who came before him…in other words, there had to be plowed ground ready to be seeded with the charismatic leader’s ideology. We do not have in any foreign leader that particular sort of person with that particular sort of ground to work with. Keep in mind how totally Hitler captured the German mind: German soldiers would throw themselves on enemy machine guns shouting “Heil Hitler” while they died. Even at the very bitter end the soldiers desperately fought completely hopeless battles for their leader. The chances we’ll find another like this are very low – almost nil.

And now comes the really hard part: once you’ve got your Great Power defeated but still intact and looking for revenge combined with your charismatic leader you need the most crucial thing: a huge run of luck. I mean like hitting the lottery five times in a row luck. The sort of luck where an observer looking back on it goes, “just ain’t possible!”.

The luck of being appointed Chancellor just as his popularity was waning. The luck of Hindenburg dying just as he’s reaching for total power. The luck of the French not destroying him in 1936 over the Rhineland. The luck of the Anglo-French agreeing to remove the Czech threat to the heart of Germany in 1938. The luck of the Anglo-French delaying Polish mobilization until August 31st, 1939. The luck of Stalin agreeing to back up Germany’s invasion of Poland. The luck of France’s massive army remaining immobile against a German military screen in the West as Poland was destroyed. And then the greatest stroke of luck of all – when Germany invades France and hits the weakest part of the French line in the Ardennes the French general on the scene totally flubs the response even though he had an armored division in place to pinch off the German offensive before it could get going. You can see why Hitler thought himself a providential genius after all that.

This belief, by the way, is what did Hitler in. He really thought he was unbeatable…that a string of very bizarre luck was something he willed into existence. The luck ran out first over the skies of Britain and then in the rubble of Stalingrad. But, still: horrible war. Never want to do that again. And provision should be made in case someone else starts to get on a run of luck like that. But this doesn’t mean that every foreign enemy is Hitler and every crisis is Munich. We must stop being stampeded into bad actions by people who are not only lying to us about the threat but are, themselves, very stupid and ignorant people. That’s why they overuse the Hitler analogy, by the way: they’re too stupid to come up with anything else. We stop letting them use that on us and it’ll stop being used.

Absent a Hitler, any foreign crisis is just a thing to be dealt with based upon our perceived needs at the time. It isn’t the precursor to World War Three…it is just Russia wanting the Donbas. Do we let her have it? Try to stop it? These are empirical questions to be answered on a case by case basis. Subsidiary questions are: if we let her have it, what price do we extract from Russia? If we try to stop it: to what extent? That is, how far are we really willing to go to keep Russia out? Rational arguments can be made both ways on this – and it is in the rational argument where we’ll eventually arrive at the best solution. Shouting its Hitler II and you’re a Putin stooge if you don’t drop a hundred billion into arguably the most corrupt nation in Europe is…bad. Unwise. In fact, it is so bad and so unwise that only a complete moron or a con artist would go that route.

As I’ve endlessly yammered on about lately, it is time to rejoin the real world. Paraphrasing Bismarck, if I am convinced that well-reasoned national policy requires it, I’ll see American soldiers fire on Russians or Iranians or Chinese without batting an eye. If we are pressed to it, then war to the knife. But I also believe that cool headed diplomacy backed up by force-in-being will resolve most foreign crisis. Do keep in mind that if Germany and France had between them a military force of, say, 600,000 ready to go in 2022 then a joint declaration by them that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would be casus belli then almost certainly there would have been no Russian invasion. But, also, it doesn’t mean that Russia would get nothing…because if the Russian demand is that Ukraine turn over the Donbas to Russia or Russia will invade, then it is time for the Great Powers to get together at the table and see if a solution short of war could be found. In the real world, diplomacy is backed by force. In the fantasy world, it is backed by a Clinton Administration memo which means nothing. A powerful EU confronting a powerful Russia probably means Putin gets half a loaf. Maybe a quarter of a loaf. But he doesn’t get nothing. And war is avoided because everyone is well armed and ready to use it to make sure that Russia doesn’t try for the whole loaf.

And do keep in mind that the Russo-Ukraine crisis can become a World War if things are managed badly. Much like WWI growing out of a fracas in the Balkans. Nobody really willed that war into existence but a whole string of dumb decisions came together to make it happen. It might well be a dumb decision for us to go to the mat to stop Russia because that might draw in other powers who don’t want Russia humiliated and soon we might find the lights going out all around the world. Much better, as noted, to have armed diplomacy to come to a reasonable solution before things get out of hand.

And now to a last point on this: NATO was a huge mistake. Never should have entered into it. The theory was that Soviet Communism could only be deterred by collective security…and that does have some basis in fact if the USSR was militarily aggressive. But it wasn’t. Certainly not right after WWII and for a couple decades afterwards. Russia had been wrecked by the war. Sure, Stalin and his successors would have fought if they thought it necessary…but they weren’t about to go launching into WWIII any time soon. They couldn’t (people forget that without massive Anglo-American material aid, the USSR would have been compelled to peace in 1943, if not sooner). All NATO did was allow the Europeans to skimp on their own defense. All through the Cold War the NATO allies failed to really live up to their commitments. Sure, their armies in the 1980’s were massively larger than now…but not as large as they were supposed to be. All of them sought cuts in defense spending to use on social programs…all of them coasted along on the back of American military power. Absent NATO, the British would have had to retain a very powerful Navy (powerful enough to secure Britain’s trade unaided) while the French would have had to retain a very powerful Army (powerful enough to stop any theoretical Russian invasion at the Rhine). And our part of defending the West could have been a mere diplomatic note stating that the operation of a hostile naval force around the UK or the invasion of France by a hostile power would trigger American intervention. The Europeans would still have been backed up by us…but not dependent on us. And Europe would have been strong enough to force a diplomatic resolution to the Russo-Ukraine crisis.

Foreign Affairs

Mark Noonan10 Comments

Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz (and known by all in his time simply as “Kaunitz”) was effectively chancellor of the Austrian Empire (within the framework of the very reduced Holy Roman Empire) from 1753 to 1792. I have mentioned him before mostly because he’s one of the most fascinating figures in history, though little known these days. But in his time he very much strode the world as a colossus … everyone listening to him, wondering what he’d do next, that sort of thing. He served a total of four Hapsburg Emperors but he’s most famed for his service to Maria Theresa. It is something he did there that I want to bring up.

A lot of nonsense is being written about foreign affairs since the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting. Lots of people are considering it a disaster and that it’ll encourage Russia and China and we’re really screwed now unless we somehow get Ukraine to victory over Russia. But among the hand-wringing dramatics a couple voices have whispered: “you know, we need Russia as an ally against China”. These voices are ridiculed – yet more accusations of being a Putin stooge and so forth because, as these people say, Russia and China are friends and the only way to deal with them is to show them we’re tough…by backing Ukraine to the hilt!

It is like nobody can read a map or has even cursory knowledge of history.

To be sure, Russia and China are friendly today – China providing lots of help to Russia against Ukraine. While the war goes on, Russia will be careful to keep China happy. The quid pro quo everyone expects here is that since China supports Russia against Ukraine (which Putin states is a renegade province of Russia), Russia will support China against Taiwan (which China considers to also be a renegade province). And that does make sense. But there’s one fly in the ointment: China doesn’t need Russian help against Taiwan. Not even in the UN where China holds the same veto power as Russia. Sure, Putin issuing a diplomatic note supporting China’s annexation of Taiwan will be nice for China at the time, but it will also be quite meaningless…the merest gesture.

One does have to actually think about things and in the Russo-Chinese case given that Russia needs China right now but China needs Russia not at all, try to figure out why China is being so helpful. It becomes blazingly obvious with just the least bit of thought: a conflict between Russia and the West means there’s a conflict between Russia and the West and that suits China right down to the ground. The western world concentrating its military and diplomatic efforts over the Donbas is a West not paying attention as China builds a blue water Navy and deeply economically penetrates Africa and South America. It is a no brainer for China to help Russia – just as its a no-brainer for Russia to accept Chinese help. But because their interests coincide today doesn’t mean they always will.

And that brings us back to Kaunitz. He was made first minister by Maria Theresa because she thought him the man to cobble together an alliance which would undo the result of the War of the Austrian Succession. This had occurred just after her father had died when Prussia had invaded Austria’s province of Silesia. Entirely without justification – a mere power grab by the Prussian king who felt his army the stronger and himself the superior to any woman on a throne. In the event, after 8 years of war, Prussia did manage to keep her stolen goods in the form of Silesia, but Maria Theresa had proved herself a woman of courage and good sense, more than a match for the Prussian king. And she hadn’t given up on getting back what was stolen…but she needed a man of brilliance and tact to rework the European balance of power in her favor. That man was Kaunitz.

Part of the problem Austria had in the previous war was that Prussia was allied with France, which was Austria’s ancient enemy (French and Austrian rulers had engaged in wars for centuries). As long as Prussia could count on the large French army attacking Austria from the west and south then things would go well for Prussia. Kaunitz had the skill and he carried out Maria Theresa’s instructions – France was detached from alliance with Prussia and entered alliance with Austria (it actually was in France’s best long-term interests to curb Prussian ambition…as was proved in 1870). Getting Russia to join the Franco-Austrian alliance just made it even more powerful. This diplomatic tour de force has been called “The Reversal of Alliances” and it was an earthquake in diplomatic affairs. And it almost worked – when the war between Prussia and Austria resumed the combination overwhelmed Prussia with sheer weight of numbers…until the very untimely death of the Russian Empress at the time pulled Russia out of the war. But that is neither here nor there for our purposes today: what we’re doing is pointing out that alliances aren’t permanent. That you don’t conduct your foreign affairs based on sentimental attachments but on the cold, hard facts of your situation. The problem for the USA is that since the fall of the Berlin Wall, sentiment has governed our actions. It is time for facts to come to the fore.

The biggest fact we have right now is that China is far and away the biggest foreign challenge we face. Our foreign policy should be geared primarily towards curbing Chinese ambitions. If you take a look at the map of the world and all the strategic points on it, there will be one rather glaring absence: Ukraine. It has no strategic importance in global affairs. It is a geographic irrelevancy. To Russia it is important. Poland, too. But if you don’t border Ukraine then Ukraine doesn’t matter. Whoever holds it will not harm your own strategic position. Not for nothing have the Dardanelles just south of Ukraine been fought over for centuries while Ukraine has slumbered in obscurity for almost all its history. The former is a crucial strategic point…the latter is just a bit of flat land really good for farming. There is no upside for the USA in fussing over Ukraine – it does not help us contain China.

Another glance at that map and you’ll notice that China and Russia share a huge land border in Siberia – which is 5.1 million square miles with 37 million people living on it. Do that bit of math: that is 7.25 people per square mile. China, just south of Siberia, has a density of 381 per square mile. Siberia has vast reserves of gold, silver, lead, tin, zinc, oil, diamonds, nickel, natural gas…like some of the largest reserves in the world for these materials. Oh, and huge chunk of Siberia was under Chinese rule until the late 19th century.

Do you see what I’m getting at? Russia has this gigantic territory – larger by itself than the USA or China – which is largely unpopulated, stupendously rich in natural resources and part of which used to be Chinese…which sits south of the border with 1.2 billion people, limited natural resources and a crucial need for cheap and easy economic growth to keep their people from questioning Communist party rule. In other words, while Russia and China have a community of interests today, it doesn’t mean they always will. And, truth be told, the only way Russia can be certain of holding Siberia is in alliance with the USA. There are, then, fertile grounds of a new reversal of alliances…detaching Russia from the Chinese connection and adding her to a consortium of nations (USA, India, Vietnam, Korea, Japan) united to keep China under control.

But how can we ally with Putin?!?!? You Putin stooge!!!! Yeah, whatever. We allied with Stalin against Hitler so allying with the far less unsavory Putin against China is within the realm of possibility. And this alliance with Russia remains valid even if Putin – or any Russian leader – tries to cobble together the entirely of the Czarist Empire. It would not alter America’s strategic position. It would gravely alter Europe’s, of course, but that is an European problem…and so far only Poland and Italy are acting like Russia is a problem by vastly increasing their defense spending. But no matter how it goes over there, it isn’t an American problem.

But we can’t let aggression stand! Sure, whatever – that boat sailed in 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea and we accepted stalemate. The two World Wars were very much fought on the ground that you can’t shoot your way into power. The Allied victory in both wars placed that ideal as an absolute in global affairs. Heck, we even hung and imprisoned Nazis on the charge of plotting aggressive warfare. But at the very first challenge to the principle in Korea, we and the rest of the West folded like a cheap suit. We actually had Nazis sitting in jail for aggressive war at the time we decided that North Korea’s aggressive war was something we’d just have to live with. Don’t blame me that the main point of the world wars was wasted…that while the great good of stopping Nazism occurred, all other fruits of the victory were thrown away within a decade of the end of the war. That was done by others, not by me. And I won’t adhere to a standard rejected before I was born. Whether or not I’ll try to stop aggression is entirely dependent on whether or not that aggression negatively impacts the United States. And, sorry, but a Russian invasion of Ukraine doesn’t qualify.

I don’t advocate for a pullout from NATO out of petulance but simply because I can’t see the slightest need for it. A Russian invasion of Ukraine doesn’t matter to me. Those whom it does matter are quite powerful enough to build an army to repel a Russian invasion. I also know that in the primary challenge my nation faces – China – the Europeans are far more likely to back China than the USA. There is little community of interest between the USA and the EU…and as Europe is arresting people for social media posts, I can’t see how a stand for Europe is a stand for liberty…sure, a German prison is much nicer than a Russian prison, but both are holding people who said things offensive to the government. This is very alien to the American experience – it makes Europe no longer America’s cousin, but a very strange, malevolent place that Americans better not travel to any longer, lest we run afoul of their Orwellian speech laws.

As in so many things, it is time to enter the real world. The real world is that the USA has maybe one or two friends in the world (Israel and Japan? Maybe a couple others). Everyone else wants us dead or at least to play us for their own ends. We might have a sentimental attachment to France because of Normandy but we must start to understand that the French government will piss on our graves over there if they felt it was in France’s best interests to do so. Nobody else in the world acts on sentiment, and we must stop it.

The Russo-Ukraine War

Mark Noonan9 Comments

The War of the Spanish Succession lasted from 1701 to 1714. It was, in a sense, the first world war in that it involved fights in Europe, Asia and the Americas as a coalition led by Great Britain fought to curb the ambition of France under Louis XIV. In the much-smaller population of the time, it still carried off via war and disease about 2 million people.

Thing is, the war actually ended in August of 1704. That was when an Anglo-Dutch force captured Gibraltar and secured British control over the Mediterranean Sea. After that, it was just a lot of fighting with no major strategic shifts until a peace of exhaustion was secured in 1714…with Britain retaining control of the one prize of the war: Gibraltar (still under British rule to this day).

It is often like that: wars going on after the issue has been decided. This is invariably because the side that lost doesn’t want to admit it and so keep smashing their skull against the stronger, victorious side.

World War Two? It ended in June of 1942 with the Japanese defeat at Midway. It is understandable once you realize that the only path to Axis victory was keeping the American military out of Europe. For all FDR’s commitment to the “Europe first” strategy, he wouldn’t have been able to carry it out if Midway had been lost, Hawaii conquered and the west coast under attack from Japanese carrier battle groups. Without full commitment by the USA to Europe, the Anglo-Russian alliance would have been insufficient to overcome Germany (side note: if we had been defeated at Midway that wouldn’t 100% mean we lost the war – we could build ships faster than the Japanese and so we might have retrieved the situation…but for Japan, and thus for the Axis, Midway was do or die; Japan lacked the resources to replace the equipment and men lost when 4 fleet carriers went down during that battle). Midway won, FDR could keep his promise…and an American army landed in North Africa just five months after Midway. In a sane world, Germany and Japan would have sued for peace no later than January of 1943.

So, too, other wars. The Civil War was over when Vicksburg surrendered in 1863. World War One was over for Germany when they lost the Battle of the Marne in 1914…doubly over when their gamble at Verdun in 1916 was drowned in blood. So, why bring this up? Because the issue in Ukraine is not who is right or wrong, braver, more noble…the issue is this: is this war already over?

In my view, it is. Ended before it even started. After Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 and clearly indicated that he considered Ukraine to be Russian, it was time for Ukraine to pursue one of two courses of action:

  1. Appeasement of Russia.
  2. Building a military force so potent that it could immediately respond to Russian aggression in an absolutely devastating manner.

Ukraine pursued neither of these options. They lived on in a sort of dream world where a corrupt and incompetent Ruling Class passed out bribes to foreign influencers and hoped that the mere thought that Ukraine would become part of NATO would deter Russian aggression. This obviously was a very bad idea – it is clear now that building up a military force was the best option as the war has revealed Russia’s astonishing military incompetence. This really shouldn’t have surprised us…we should have figured that 70 years of Communist rule had pretty much wiped out all decent and courageous elements in Russia and the dregs of Stalin’s GULAG weren’t going to be very good (side note: they weren’t very good in WWII, either: Russia’s victory was gifted to them by Hitler’s incompetence…and even then the Russians lost a couple million more than necessary simply because the Russian leadership used blood rather than thought to get at the Germans).

But all of that is past. Can’t change it. But what we also can’t change is the battle lines. For example:

And then:

Notice that the lines have not moved in any significant way in two years. Nobody really knows how many have died in the war as both sides lie quite egregiously about it. Best estimates are about 2 million total casualties and this would indicate given normal killed to wounded ratio that about 700,000 are dead and 1.3 million wounded, some significant number of those wounded permanently crippled. All credit to the Ukrainian military for at least stopping the Russians from taking over the whole country…but there’s no further point in fighting. It is just going to get more people killed and likely not change anything…with the understanding that if this becomes a genuine war of attrition, Russia will win due to superior numbers and eventually conquer the whole country. It is highly unlikely that Putin wants to draft enough Russians to do that…so, once again, back to nothing ever changing.

Peace now based on current lines of control is the best option. And I’m talking full peace. No ceasefire: an actual treaty between Russia and Ukraine ratified by both sides which cedes Russian-controlled territory to Russia but also commits Russia to no further territorial claims against Ukraine. Such a thing won’t actually stop Russia but it puts to bed Putin’s theory that Ukraine is Russian and should be part of Russia. It would be an admission by a Russian government that it really doesn’t have title to Ukraine. And then Ukraine can start to build that first-rate army they should have built after the 2015 ceasefire. Of course, I don’t know if Ukraine has any better military material in their population than Russia does – they, too, are the dregs of Stalin’s GULAG. But they can at least try – and very likely a force even a little bit better than Russia’s will whack the Russians pillar to post if it comes to it. The idea here is for Ukraine to have a force in being – instantly ready to go – which can both defeat an oncoming Russian invasion and rapidly move the conflict onto Russian territory…so when the battle lines stabilize it is Ukraine holding the whip hand. This is just Weaker Country Strategy 101, guys. I’m not suggesting something new. It is how the IDF trounced the combined forces of the Arab world in four different wars.

I’m naturally bringing this up because of the meeting today between Trump and Zelenskyy. Yes, a lot of NeoCons are very upset about it. I’m not. Zelenskyy has been playing a role and getting the aid and its all been quite useless…and then he had the idiotic idea of campaigning for Harris in Pennsylvania. This will go down as one of the most bone-headed moves in diplomatic history…the foreigner seeking aid always strokes both sides of the political divide. The Israelis know to keep lines open to both Republicans and Democrats and never overtly engage in partisan American politics. When the life or death of your country is at stake, you swallow your pride and do what’s best for your country…not what’s best for a partisan photo-op. So, today Trump and Vance raked Zelenskyy over the coals. Fully deserved and the best way to get to a peace deal…the Ukrainians had to learn that they’re not talking their butts out of this one…more aid may be forthcoming, but peace is the objective here, not another four years of war.

And this is yet another example of us getting back into the real world. The pretend world is Slava Ukraini! with the brave and heroic Zelenskyy in his fatigues fighting the Russians in the trenches. The real world is that Zelenskyy is an entertainer promoted way above his pay grade, his fatigues are a costume and the trenches are running red with blood. Maybe the Ukrainians really do want to fight on – we don’t know as Zelenskyy cancelled the elections so there’s no way to assess Ukrainian opinion on the matter. But whatever on that – it is their country and their blood. If they want to keep fighting then God bless…do your best. But without our money and weapons. I don’t want to risk a hot war with Russia in the center of Europe over the Donbas…not when we’re $37 trillion in debt, our armed forces are very weak, our manufacturing capacity anemic and China is building a blue water navy.