Woke up to several inches of wet snow. Going to have a cup of coffee then go out. I could say climate change but 45 yrs ago when we were building this house it snowed in April, about 6 to 8 inches. CO has always had screwy weather.
It’s only a matter of time before someone breaks that egg. Amazing that technicians and engineers will go to such trouble to watch penguins as building these gadgets. I like animals a great deal, but really now.
Shirehome, it sounds like an invigorating morning!
I grew up in Denver, so I know about the twists and turns of the weather there. Of course in the mountains there can be snow in June; July can be snow free, but those t’storms coming over the divide can be filled with hail. And, then late August not unusual to see a few flakes at the higher elevations.
Got it done. The snow turned to slush, then froze and then snow on top. This morning the frozen slush started up melt so it was just slush. Had drifts of over 4 in.
Now, reading about the shooting in Nashville.
Besides all the other outrageous aspects of the Stanford denial of free speech to a Federal Appeals Court judge, here is an explanation of what the leftists were so upset about. Judge Duncan had denied a convicted pedophile pornographer, who claims to be transgender after several years in prison, the ability to expunge the name under which he committed his offenses from the record. Judge Duncan rightly pointed out that this is the name in which all the arrest and court records appeared.
So, the Stanford snowflakes stand with a pedophile pornographer. They’re not claiming his innocence; they’re denouncing “dead-naming.”
“Isolationism, what could possibly go wrong?” – om
Someone on another thread linked to a Claremont article related to the age old battle between “internationalists” and “isolationists” in the Republican party. It requires a subscription, but here is a fascinating article by Michael Anton that is available to read, “How the World almost Ended in 1983”
“In the Cold War’s first half, no Republican tried outflanking the Democrats from the left on foreign policy. Nixon pulled it off against Humphrey over Vietnam. The question was: how far would he take it? The answer turned out to be: farther. Together, Nixon and Kissinger devised and implemented the strategy of “détente,” which, though the rift took a while to show itself, divided the Republican Party almost as badly as the pre-war struggle between Robert Taft “isolationists” and Arthur Vandenberg internationalists. With the victory of the latter, the matter seemed to rest, especially as internationalism came to be seen as a prerequisite for anti-Communism.”
If an accurate portrayal of events, the piece is a reminder how arrogant we have been facing global powers, and why Russia might continue to distrust us today.
But in its discussion of the internal struggle of the Republican party to define a foreign policy, it might be a instructive between what might better be termed the “realist” vs. “globalist” struggle over foreign policy going forward.
A “realist” policy defines interventionism in terms of vital US interests, and a recognition that there are limits to our military, which even technology can’t overcome. Under the guise of fighting communism, we’ve engaged in overt or covert military operations in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Libya, Panama, Nicaragua, Syria, Kuwait and Ukraine. Oh yes, Grenada. I’m sure I’m missing many of the covert operations that we managed to avoid detection.
How many of those conflicts have we won? I know that’s not a fair question, since the aftermath of WWII has left us sensitized to the carnage necessary to pacify an enemy. How many of these efforts have stabilized a region, as opposed to tamping down destabilizing forces?
We started having the conversation in conservative circles as to the wisdom of the US acting as global cop years ago. The opposite to this globalist policy, is not isolationism– as much as opponents would like to characterize it, but something more conservative– first asking questions like what is the cost and what will be the gains; is the objective really achievable; how does it advance/protect our national interests?
Elements to add to the discussion is what exactly are our values we’re projecting?
Free elections? We’re an election or two away from having elections determined by a ruling caste. How much different is that from authoritarian regimes?
Personal freedom? Express views contrary to the ruling party and your life may be ruined. If you act to far outside the accepted limits you might find yourself in jail for 20 years, or even multiple years for parading without a license.
Free markets? What free markets? SVB anyone?
International cronyism? Kleptocracy in authoritarian regimes vs. cronyism of rewarding favored political donors may spread government largesse in a larger circle than to just the oligarchs, but your status in a disfavored class is certainly equal.
The argument that we’re nowhere near parity with authoritarian regimes as corrupt as, say, Russia might be true– right now. If the left retakes control of the three branches, the fourth will fall. Court packing. Statehood for DC and PR will consolidate their power.
Poor picked on Russia of today is not the USSR (Evil Empire) of yesterday. Other than that …..
Realists and isolationists and pragmatists; “Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!”
Turtler may wish to fisk your comment, not my wheelhouse, it is a work day for me.
Kate– You will want to read Heather MacDonald’s new article, over at Quillette this time: “Dismantle DEI Ideology: The disgraceful scenes at Stanford are a flawless embodiment of how diversity doctrine distorts academic life and constrains decision-making.”
I didn’t know until I read the article that McDonald attended Stanford Law herself: As a Stanford law student in the early 1980s, I tutored a classmate in legal writing. Based on her abysmal writing and analytical skills, that classmate did not belong at the Stanford Law School, though she would have done just fine at nearby Santa Clara Law School. Stanford welcomed her, however, with open arms, . . . just as it welcomes and celebrates members of every other group that proclaims itself “marginalized.”
I was born in Detroit, but I’ve lived for over 60 years as an LA area Valley Girl. Snow became an alien concept.
I did a quick subtraction and discovered that 45 years ago in April we drove to Albuquerque and then to Denver for an art show and we might have gotten caught in YOUR snow storm that year! (We couldn’t believe it. It was Spring.)
It’s a small world.
I spent a summer in Santa Fe a million years ago. And in July, some snow fell and accumulated, though it melted by about 8:00 am.
mkent, that’s not my position at all.
But if you are claiming we need to continue a globalist foreign policy in our use of the military, please make the case.
As to Ukraine specifically, this is Europe’s war. While the combined EU GDP is smaller than ours, their debt to GDP is also much smaller than ours, so they can afford to fund Ukraine. Their reluctance to help a fellow European country when faced by what is claimed to be an existential threat of their own, leads me to the conclusion they don’t view it as such.
As to “Russia genociding the Ukraine”, that is not my position. Evidence shows the Donbas and Crimea have legitimate claims to independence, which were ignored beginning from the creation of an independent Ukraine.
I am against the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and support a settlement that returns the border to pre-invasion status. LPR, DPR and Crimea would remain part of Russia.
As to what the US is now exporting as foreign policy– unfettered immigration, abortion and LGBTQ+ are stated goals. We now have our sights on destabilizing Hungary.
The media are making much of the description of the school shooter who took the lives of 6 people (3 children and 3 adults) at a Presbyterian school in Nashville earlier today as a “white woman”: “The 28-year-old woman who unleashed deadly terror at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday is just the fifth female mass shooter in US history, data shows.”
So maybe, just maybe, biological females are off the hook for this latest round of mayhem.
Brain E continues to denigerate European support for Ukraine. Laughable and sad. They know all about imperial Russian history and the Soviet behavior. They don’t have the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans (can’t count the Arctic Ocean or Bering Sea Brain E) to “protect” them.
And contrary to Brain E’s conception of national sovereignty Crimea, Donbas, Luhansk, Zaporhisia, and Kershon were not Russia before 2014. Anything else or any other parts of Europe do you want to give to Russia?
Pragmatic isolationism leads to further conflict. Sad, truly sad.
Back to work.
apparently ‘she’ had a manifesto and a map, all these psychos like levine and brinton, (he perpetuated the mania) and people who should know better like kackling kamala, and shambling and the golem who’s all better now, fanned the flames, special guest star role for david french, since he lives in tennessee and spread the two minute hate,
Most sources seem to think the shooter was a biological female presenting as male. It will take a while to clarify this. Meanwhile, we have a recent transgender shooting up a conservative Christian school. Expect the progressive media to drop this like a hot potato.
“Pragmatic isolationism leads to further conflict. Sad, truly sad.” -om
Examples please, so we can evaluate the claim.
apparently there was a trans week of vengeance being proposed, by the usual mostly nonviolent garbage people. the ones who this regime is all on board, with, so tell me who is the real threat to this country,
History of the last century, especially the first 40 years. Coy, Brian E.
and apparently senate staffers, like rand pauls are open season in the Capitol,
I love penguins. We saw many on our trip to Argentina and Chile.
We had a wondrous experience walking among nesting penguins on Magdalena Island, which is near Punta Arenas, Argentina.
They have a mission in life, and nothing deters them. They mate, they produce young penguins, and they swim for food. And they do a lot of “talking.” Never a dull or quiet moment among the penguins on Magdalena.
We saw Emperor penguins in the Falkland Islands. They do such a delightful impression of Burgess Meredith as the Penguin character in Bat Man. They are very entertaining.
Too bad you have to travel so far to see them in person.
This morning I started a thread, “Harry Potter in French,” at a language learning site. After lunch I received an email from an academic mailing list recommending:
“Translating the Harry Potter Novels into French: Cultural Issues, Linguistic Features and Translation Strategies” by Rebecca Kirkman”
Does Skynet know I’m learning French and pass that information on to its minions?
Kirkman’s paper does explain some things I’ve wondered about while reading Harry Potter in French. Kirkman says translators have moved from a strategy of being faithful to the original to an attempt to come up with cultural equivalents in the target language and culture. Or at least the translator’s notion of such equivalents.
Which I understand and can agree with to a point. However, in Jean-Francois Menard’s translation it often seems arbitrary.
For instance, right off the bat Menard translates J.K. Rowling’s title “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” as “Harry Potter à L’École des Sorciers,” which is literally in English, “Harry Potter at the School of Sorcerers.”
The latter is a good title, but different, and for no good reason I can find, from the original. How is it a better title for a French audience?
By the current translation strategy one might translate “Romeo and Juliet” from Shakespearean English into modern English and wind up with “West Side Story.”
@huxley: Kirkman says translators have moved from a strategy of being faithful to the original to an attempt to come up with cultural equivalents in the target language and culture. Or at least the translator’s notion of such equivalents.
They have always done so. Mark Twain did a word-for-word English translation of a French translation of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and you can see what it looks like when they don’t.
…in the brain of a native speaker of English, “slithy” probably activates such symbols as “slimy”, “slither”, “slippery”, “lithe”, and “sly”, to varying extents. Does “lubricilleux” do the corresponding thing in the brain of a Frenchman? What indeed would be “the corresponding thing”? Would it be to activate symbols which are the ordinary translations of those words? What if there is no word, real or fabricated, which will accomplish that? Or what if a word does exist, but it is very intellectual-sounding and Latinate (“lubricilleux”), rather than earthy and Anglo-Saxon (“slithy”)? Perhaps “huilasse” would be better than “lubricilleux”? Or does the Latin origin of the word “lubricilleux” not make itself felt to a speaker of French in the way that it would if it were an English word (“lubricilious”, perhaps)?
J.K. Rowling’s title “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”
That was not J. K. Rowling’s title. That was the title for American audiences. Her title was “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”. It’s no more defensible than the French one. The Philosopher’s Stone is an alchemical term, and that nuance was stripped out of the American title.
Ive read some english translation of spanish books which were better than the original text some others are not that good
So, the Stanford snowflakes stand with a pedophile pornographer. They’re not claiming his innocence; they’re denouncing “dead-naming.”
==
Our professional-managerial class and their juvenile auxilliary are given to the stupidest and most malicious fads.
==
Criminal records should never be expunged.
Frederick:
I wondered why I kept remembering the first book as “HP and the Philosopher’s Stone”!
I wouldn’t defend that change either.
Translation is inevitably a messy, imperfect business. It’s always a matter of trade-offs. There will never be perfection.
The Twain analogy is interesting, but covers a multitude of sins from high-level translation strategy to low-level words in one language not lining up with similar words in another language, as well as translator whims.
Right now I’m complaining about the last. By what rationale does one change “stone” to “school”?
Or, say, in the early scene where Dumbledore offers a “lemon drop” candy to Prof. McGonagle. In the French he offers McGonagle an “esquimau au citron” — a “lemon popsicle” (or literally an “eskimo with lemon”).
Do they not have lemon-flavored hard candy in France? Also, I had trouble visualizing Dumbledore pulling extra lemon popsicles out of his pocket. Sure, he could magic them into existence, but the text makes no mention of that.
@huxley:By what rationale does one change “stone” to “school”?
I wasn’t in any of the meetings. But the original title (“Philosopher’s Stone”) emphasizes the problem Harry Potter has to solve. The American title (“Sorceror’s Stone”) was probably chosen to emphasize that it’s a book about wizard kids and not philosophy majors*, in other words who is solving the problem. And the French title emphasizes the setting where the problem is solved (the school Hogwarts), which isn’t a bad way to introduce the series as Hogwarts is practically a character in its own right.
*I have heard legends about moms who took their kids to see (or bought them the book) A Boy and His Dog.
If an accurate portrayal of events, the piece is a reminder how arrogant we have been facing global powers, and why Russia might continue to distrust us today.
==
Either you’ve misinterpreted him or his thesis is worthless.
== But in its discussion of the internal struggle of the Republican party to define a foreign policy, it might be a instructive between what might better be termed the “realist” vs. “globalist” struggle over foreign policy going forward.
==
No, it wouldn’t be ‘better termed’ that. ‘Realist’ is already taken as a school within international relations theory. It’s formally a schematic understanding based on historical data. Like other theoretical understandings, exponents tend to be irritated when actors when actors refuse to behave according to script. “Globalist” is a popular term to describe politicians who want to subordinate national governments to sketchy intergovernmental bodies run by people such as themselves and to subjugate national populations by importing a lot of foreigners. One of these is not a counterpoint to the other.
== A “realist” policy defines interventionism in terms of vital US interests, and a recognition that there are limits to our military, which even technology can’t overcome.
==
You see, without the counsel of Andrew Bacevich, we might think there were no limits to the capacity of the military to do anything officials decide to do after lunch.
==
Under the guise of fighting communism, we’ve engaged in overt or covert military operations in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Libya, Panama, Nicaragua, Syria, Kuwait and Ukraine. Oh yes, Grenada. I’m sure I’m missing many of the covert operations that we managed to avoid detection.
==
We’ve been about as ‘covert’ as a steam calliope in 10 of these 11 locations. ‘Communism’ was never at issue in seven of these conflicts (six occurred after the close of the Cold War). There was no ‘guise’ in these of these cases; we were fighting Soviet clients. The last case had two phases, one in which we were undermining Soviet clients and the other fighting Muslim revanchists.
We started having the conversation in conservative circles as to the wisdom of the US acting as global cop years ago.
==
We never acted as ‘global cop’. We’ve had extended military operations in four countries over a period of 76 years. The ratio of military spending to domestic product is right now near the nadir of the period since 1939 and the proportion of American military manpower billeted abroad is as low as it has been at that time.
And the French title emphasizes the setting where the problem is solved (the school Hogwarts), which isn’t a bad way to introduce the series as Hogwarts is practically a character in its own right.
Frederick:
Sure, but here I would say the translator is rewriting, not translating. In which case the translator should move to Hollywood for more honest employment.
I can imagine the rationale for the lemon drops. “Lemon drop” is an English colloquial phrase for a typical English candy. What’s a French lemon sweet with a colloquial name?
Oui! “Esquimau au citron”. How clever I am!
*I have heard legends about moms who took their kids to see (or bought them the book) A Boy and His Dog.
Frederick:
Good old Harlan Ellison. The man who successfully sued James Cameron for an undisclosed sum over “Terminator.”
Evidence shows the Donbas and Crimea have legitimate claims to independence, which were ignored beginning from the creation of an independent Ukraine.
==
A referendum on a declaration of sovereignty was held in 1991. It won a majority in every region of the country at that time, including the Crimea. The last elections for the Crimean legislature ‘ere Russia seized the territory were in 2010; the parties favorable to re-incorporation into Russia (Russian Unity and the Communist Party of the Ukraine) won all of 12% of the vote between them. Neither of these parties won control of any local councils in the Donetsk or the Lukhansk regions in 2010.
Art Deco:
Brain E doesn’t recognize those later elections or the Russian invasion and siezure of Crimea. Inconvenient.
Art Deco, Anton begins with the foreign policy divide in the Republican party, how Nixon pivoted to detente and how Reagan’s policies years later changed, possibly because of the events in 1983 beginning just before the downing of KAL 007, to a malfunction of Russian defense satellite/computers that recorded a multiple launch of US missiles and then the Able Archer/war games and misunderstandings by the Russians as to our motives, based on other events happening near the same time.
His thesis was this was the closest the world came to nuclear war since the 1962 crisis.
“Reagan’s initial toughness was a necessary corrective to Carter’s fecklessness and Nixon’s détente, put the Soviets on their back foot, and forced them back to the table, resetting the stage for a Western victory. Nineteen eighty-three came to be seen as a kind of mirror-image of 1938, teaching the same lesson: appeasement begets war, toughness brings peace—or better yet, victory.
There is no doubt something to this, but even on its own terms, this rendering skips over important elements. The first is that the stakes matter. And the stakes in the Cold War were the very highest: the survival of the free world and maybe even the existence of the whole world. By 1980, it was plausible to fear that freedom and even humanity were losing. It was therefore not unreasonable to believe that calculated risks were warranted.
But you never know where toughness might lead, what it might provoke. When the consequences of toughness could be total destruction, it is rational—moral, even—to be tough only when the stakes are equally enormous. Toughness not in the service of a core interest—or the core of all core interests—is not merely foolish but reckless.
One reason one never knows where toughness might lead is that you can never be sure you really understand your adversary—or that he understands you. In 1983, both sides misunderstood one another. The Americans assumed the Soviets knew that all those flybys, flyovers, fleet maneuvers, dummy warheads, and DEFCON escalations were just drills. The Soviets, for their part, knew no such thing. They really believed that it all might be prelude to a surprise first strike.
Later informed of Moscow’s alarm, Reagan was offended. “I don’t see how they could believe that,” he said, quickly adding, “but it’s something to think about.” It was, eventually, thought about, in hindsight. That 1990 report on Perroots’s restraint observed that “in the years leading up to Able Archer,” national security officials “had received no guidance as to the possible significance of apparent changes in Soviet military and political thinking.””
In my estimation, these events and subsequent fall of the Soviet Union led us to act from a position of power. We had won. Russia had lost. There are experts who think we could have contained the bear without poking it in policy decision after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Brain E doesn’t recognize those later elections or the Russian invasion and siezure of Crimea. Inconvenient.
==
The referenda and elections to which I’m referring occurred in 1991, 2010, and 2012. You’ve had Russophile parties competing since. They haven’t been advocates of merging parts of the Ukraine with Russia nor did the Party of Regions, which was the plurality winner in 2012 and the father of the current generation of Russophile parties. . The Russophile parties saw 60% of their electoral base evaporate after 2014. I don’t think the last year has improved their electoral prospects going forward.
“There are experts that think we could have contained the bear ….”
Why would the bear want to be contained? A bear didn’t get to be the largest country in the world (area) by staying in its own “range” or territory for hundreds of years. Funny that bear always seems to want to be a bigger uncontained bruin. History.
But it is the west’s fault. Poor Russia.
Anton begins with the foreign policy divide in the Republican party, how Nixon pivoted to detente and how Reagan’s policies years later changed, possibly because of the events in 1983 beginning just before the downing of KAL 007, to a malfunction of Russian defense satellite/computers that recorded a multiple launch of US missiles and then the Able Archer/war games and misunderstandings by the Russians as to our motives, based on other events happening near the same time.
==
Conflict in the Republican Party over the direction of foreign policy was at its peak ca. 1975. Neither Gerald Ford nor Henry Kissinger set up shop as critics of the Reagan Administration. The Republicans in Congress objecting to Reagan’s foreign policy were the usual sorts whose general viewpoint was closer to the median of the Democratic caucus than it was to the median of the Republican caucus (e.g Charles Mathias), appended to which were some idiosyncratic characters (Mark Hatfield, Ron Paul, Paul Findlay). The principals in charge of foreign policy during the Reagan years were Alexander Haig, George Schultz, Caspar Weinberger, Frank Carlucci, William J. Casey, William Webster, Richard Allen, Wm. Clark, Robert MacFarlane, John Poindexter, Colin Powell, Eugene Rostow, Edward Rowney, Wm. Brock, Clayton Yuetter, Peter McPherson, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Vernon Walters. Nine of the people on this list held consequential positions in the Nixon Administration.
==
There weren’t any coarse changes in the direction of American foreign policy in 1983 quite the contrary. There were changes in Soviet policy after 1984 to which American administrations responded.
== There are experts who think we could have contained the bear without poking it in policy decision after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
==
This is a nonsense statement. Russia did not invade the Ukraine 30 years after the end of the Cold War because they were ‘poked’.
Art Deco, Re: the Donbass, I’m referring to a 1994 referendum held in the Luhansk and Donetesk oblasts concerning language and federalization of the region which voted overwhelming in favor. True, independence wasn’t on the ballot, but Russia was growing through its own birthing crisis. The link I provided earlier is about that referendum. They also describe the wording of the 1991 referendum on Ukraine independence as being “deceitful.”
…”the vote on the independence of Ukraine on December 1, 1991 became a form of deceit of the people, as the question was raised: “Do you confirm the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine?” The wording itself already contained the answer “yes” – the question was not whether you are FOR independence or against it, but whether there was an act or not. Of course, it was. The people were simply deceived. I’m not saying that if the wording were different, people would have voted against it, but this fact should be kept in mind.”
—————–
“However, in Crimea, the percentage of “yes” votes was only 37% of total voters, and in Sevastopol, it was just 40%. Moreover, it has been argued that many of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who voted for independence believed that they were voting to abolish the Soviet Union, which would be followed by some sort of reunification with a non-Communist Russia.”
In 1992 the Crimean Rada voted to declare its independence, only to rescind the vote the next day.
These are also the regions with the highest ethnic Russian population.
Yanukovych, (Party of Regions), who ran on a platform of better relations with the EU and Russia, was elected overwhelming by Eastern Ukrainians in 2010. No, there was no talk of independence in 2010, and I’ve never indicated that was so.
The events of 2014 were the catalyst that prompted these regions to separate from Ukraine.
Art Deco, I can spend as much time explaining Anton’s article as it would take for you to read it.
I didn’t say Reagan’s policies changed in 1983, but the events of that year later changed Reagan’s policies after he became aware of how close we came to war, according to Anton.
Re: Michael Anton article:
Brian E:
Clearly I have underestimated Michael Anton. Thanks for the pointer. I was struck by this:
__________________________________
It’s easy for conservatives to praise Ronald Reagan for 1983: not only was the apocalypse avoided but the happiest of endings materialized a mere six years later. But disaster easily could have happened—how would Reagan be remembered then?
__________________________________
I was in the Nuclear Freeze back then. I remember how scary 1983 was.
I attended a big demo in San Francisco the week “The Day After,” a movie about a nuclear war. was shown on television. I was marching with my liberal Christian affinity group.
An Asian woman, dressed Mao-style, from the RCP (Revolutionary Communist Party) was running up and down the line of protesters, screaming, “You think your government cares! You think you can stop the war! But it’s like the movie.”
It really could have gone that way.
It really could have but it didn’t. Pigs could fly but they don’t. Old liberals feeling good about how wise they were.
I didn’t say Reagan’s policies changed in 1983, but the events of that year later changed Reagan’s policies after he became aware of how close we came to war, according to Anton.
==
His policies did not change.
These are also the regions with the highest ethnic Russian population.
==
The ethnic Russian population is Donetsk and Lukhansk amounts to 38% of the total, and not all of them favor incorporation into Russia.
== I’m referring to a 1994 referendum held in the Luhansk and Donetesk oblasts concerning language and federalization of the region which voted overwhelming in favor.
==
So what? Ordinary inter-regional differences over policy do not constitute a secessionist movement nor can they justify a foreign invasion.
“However, in Crimea, the percentage of “yes” votes was only 37% of total voters, and in Sevastopol, it was just 40%.
== https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_referendum
== The events of 2014 were the catalyst that prompted these regions to separate from Ukraine.
==
The only separation which occurred was a consequence of raw force.
Reagan wanted a defense shield because he thought MAD was immoral and provocative now the same morons like kerry and biden are hell mell to a war we avoided 40 years ago because they hate Communists no because they want Communism to succeed
So Vlad is anti communist now? Otay, senor.
Who is telling us you will own nothing and be happy and is proceeding to make that possible um
And Vlad is fighting against the Communists but is becomming a vasal to Xi? How does that work?
It really could have but it didn’t. Pigs could fly but they don’t. Old liberals feeling good about how wise they were.
om:
I suggest reading Anton’s piece or other accounts of how close nuclear war was in the early 80s. It was more like birds could fly, but as it happened then, they didn’t.
If there had been a nuclear war then, no one sensible would have been surprised. And I suspect history would evaluate Reagan differently.
I don’t see it as a moment of liberal wisdom, just that liberals weren’t wrong about everything and conservatives aren’t always right. Reagan, as Anton claims and I have read elsewhere, did have a change of heart or thinking then.
I see it as the tragedy of history, that often we are stuck with dangerous situations where there is no clear good choice available, yet we must pick one, roll the dice and hope for the best.
@Brian E
I’ve had a very love-hate relationship with Anton. When he is good he is very good, but when he is off his game (as I find particularly in foreign affairs) he is a damp squib.
An example of some of his lackluster research comes in things like this.
These can take many forms, from false flag events like the Reichstag fire or the January 6 pipe bomb-
Nope, the Reichstag Fire wasn’t a False Flag event. It was an actual arson by a Communist hardliner (Marinius van der Lubbe) meant to try and spark a Communist revolution against the National Socialists after he – being a weirdo, pyromaniac loner who had been turned down by everybody he had pitched this plan to – decided to try and “Do it Live.” And notably the narrative that the Reichstag Fire was a false flag originated with the Stalinists with scant proof and has gotten systematically destroyed since then by actual forensic and architectural investigation.
Now, is it a bit off to focus so much on this tangential point? Maybe, but I think it shows how clumsy Anton can be with his evidence and willing to massage things to make it look like they support his narrative even when they do not.
Someone on another thread linked to a Claremont article related to the age old battle between “internationalists” and “isolationists” in the Republican party. It requires a subscription, but here is a fascinating article by Michael Anton that is available to read, “How the World almost Ended in 1983”
“In the Cold War’s first half, no Republican tried outflanking the Democrats from the left on foreign policy.
This is simply untrue on a massive scale. Indeed, even near the onset Eisenhower periodically outflanked Stevenson and to some degree even Truman on doing so, mustering his star power as the Generalissimo of the Western Allies in Europe during WWII and a career soldier to get away with often strikingly dovish stances, especially in terms of military spending. This tends to get undermined given Eisenhower’s in many ways unhinged nuclear strategy, but that itself underlined how Eisenhower was not given to half-measures (even if they would often be more economical or effective) and how he sought to avoid confrontation with the Soviets.
And I could probably think of a few more cases here.
The big issue is that for the first half of the Cold War, the Democrat mainstream were really not much less Hawkish than the Republicans were. This began to change in the turmoil of the 1960s and especially the 1970s, particularly with the DNC Convention Riots in 1968, but even those were a product of them nominating a relatively conservative Democrat and hawk. This is stuff Anton admits to in his full article, but either does not give proper attention to or outright downplays, such as the Eisenhower Hawk-Dove hybrid policy.
Nixon pulled it off against Humphrey over Vietnam.
Not really. A strategic rapprochement with the PRC was hardly flanking Humphrey to the left.
The question was: how far would he take it? The answer turned out to be: farther. Together, Nixon and Kissinger devised and implemented the strategy of “détente,”
Not really. Detente was much more bipartisan than Anton wishes to admit, as was Kissinger’s role as a “Grand Old Man” prior to Nixon. In particular he tacitly overlooks the JFK and especially LBJ eras, and ignores how Nixon’s shift towards China was a step away from the focus on detente directly with the Soviets.
which, though the rift took a while to show itself, divided the Republican Party almost as badly as the pre-war struggle between Robert Taft “isolationists” and Arthur Vandenberg internationalists. With the victory of the latter, the matter seemed to rest, especially as internationalism came to be seen as a prerequisite for anti-Communism.”
This is probably tertiary, but I have to ask which war are we referring to with “pre-war”? Since Vandenberg was an isolationist prior to WWII, albeit not to the same degree as Taft.
On September 1, 1983, with east-West tensions as high as they had been in more than 20 years, a South Korean civilian airliner, en route from Anchorage to Seoul, drifted into Soviet airspace after the crew inputted incorrect coordinates into their autopilot system. As bad luck would have it, a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane had, hours before, also been aloft in the area surveilling Soviet missile tests at the Kura Range on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Assuming that the big Korean airliner must be another American spy plane, the Soviet Air Defense Forces scrambled three Su-15s and one MiG-23. Visual contact was made, but in the darkness KAL 007’s identity was at first inconclusive. The Su-15 pilot who actually shot the airliner down later claimed he could tell the plane was a Boeing, but that it didn’t matter, since he had clear orders to fire, and it’s easy enough to convert a civilian plane to military use.
Anton is understating the matter to a vast degree. We not only have the pilot’s words that he could tell the airplane was Boeing, but we have audio records from the likes of the pilot at the time giving visual identification of the craft. The Bukovsky Archive has quite a lot of material on it but I am still digging.
In any case, this puts the Soviet case on a much, much worse light. While it IS True that Civilian Airlines can be used for military purposes (and indeed the US – and especially the CIA – had done so before), a positive visual confirmation that the plane type was that of a civilian airliner out in the Far East should have given caution. Especially since KAL was not one of the shell companies of “Air America” but an internationally famous and heavily trafficked international carrier, and there was no pressing time concern like after the first reports of plane impact on 9/11.
The sane and ethical decision would have been to wait for more evidence or to actually buzz the plane in an attempt to drive it off, and I can say this without fear of being an unreasonable Monday Morning Quarterback.
Instead the Soviets opted to shoot it down under the incredibly thin justification that it MIGHT be being used for military or surveillance purposes, and then to Lie about it.
When they finally spoke out, their first explanation was that Soviet fighters had “intercepted” (military aviation-speak for “buzzed without attacking”) an unidentified, blacked-out plane, which had continued on its way, unmolested, they knew not where. The second, which lasted mere minutes, was that the airliner had been mistaken for an enemy military aircraft. Their final claim, to which the Soviets stuck for a decade, was that, yes, they knew it was a commercial airliner, but they also knew it had been engaged in spying.
Washington saw an opportunity and, as current parlance has it, pounced. Here was a great chance to (further) delegitimize the USSR.
A few things.
Firstly: Anton is getting his terminology confused. “Intercepted” can mean any method of interception, from nonviolent encountering to (at least as typical in day to day parlance) shooting it down, eg “Intercepted the enemy plane over ____, Intercepted the Missiles”.
Secondly: In true sleight of hand, Anton is following the old Leftist Media playbook of “Republicans Pounce.” The old saying is that when Republicans do something their doing something is the story, but when Democrats do something it is the Republican Reaction that is the story.
This manages to be even more immoral, stupid, and even evil. Because it’s not doing this with the Republicans or Democrats but with the Goddamn SOVIETS. And in particular it is doing so with them shooting down a civilian airliner that had accidentally strayed into their airspace, killing everybody aboard, and then LYING about it for years on end, ranging from denial that such a shootdown happened to blood libel that the airliner was engaged in spying.
And yet Anton thinks it was the AMERICAN reaction to this rather unprecedented and quite beyond the pale series of actions that was TRYING TO delegitimize the Soviets? The Soviet actions here were delegitimizing.
And this is not because only the Soviets would shoot down a civilian airliner. That is obviously untrue and the US had done so, most infamously with an Iranian airliner. The difference is, the US acknowledged IMMEDIATELY that it was at fault and paid damages (….. to a terrorist dictatorship in a stated war with us). Because while this was never going to look GOOD, the US and other nations could at least get out ahead of the curve by honestly (or at least more or less honestly) explaining what went wrong, what happened, WHY the shoot down occurred, and that they are very very sorry and willing to pay for it.
The Soviets, in true Soviet fashion, insisted that they had done nothing wrong and everybody but them was to blame. Which beyond its ethical, moral, and legal bankruptcy was thoroughly stupid from a realist point of view, because it delegitimized the USSR beyond what the US could do by its rhetoric, it invited sanctions, and it showed the Soviets had not learned from previous mistakes like this (usually where they handled it better).
I could fisk more, and in particular I view Anton as massively misjudging the effects of Reagan’s first term policies, but I think that underlines many of the issues here. Oh yes, and the obligatory “No WMD in Iraq” nonsense nod.
If an accurate portrayal of events,
It’s not. It is at best half-accurate, which also means it is also half-inaccurate.
the piece is a reminder how arrogant we have been facing global powers, and why Russia might continue to distrust us today.
Again, there’s something disgraceful about Anton condemning Reagan’s hugely successful (if controversial) first term policies and in particular going light on the utterly immoral, stupid, and bad Soviet behavior regarding KAL 007 in favor of making an issue over the very reasonable US retaliation for it. It’s also important for me to understate how rare civilian airliner shootdowns OUTSIDE OF Combat Zones is.
It’s also worth noting that the El Al Flight 402 shoot down, happening on the other end of the Cold War by Communist Bulgaria, saw the Communists with less relative blame (for instance the flight diverted much more extremely from its path) and saw the Communists publicly express regret without accusing the victims of spying (though it did accuse them – reasonably enough – of fucking up their navigation and diverging from the planned route, which seems to have been true but hardly a reason to die). So Soviet policy on this matter remained bad and arguably got worse over time.
But in its discussion of the internal struggle of the Republican party to define a foreign policy, it might be a instructive between what might better be termed the “realist” vs. “globalist” struggle over foreign policy going forward.
Art Deco rebutted this conceptualization and false dichotomy better than I can, so I will ignore it. The proper dichotomies would probably be Isolationist v. Interventionist in terms of the outlook of foreign policy , and Nationalist vs. Globalist in terms of where one believes proper authority for the US is. With those two spectrums creating quadrants.
Under the guise of fighting communism, we’ve engaged in overt or covert military operations in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Libya, Panama, Nicaragua, Syria, Kuwait and Ukraine. Oh yes, Grenada. I’m sure I’m missing many of the covert operations that we managed to avoid detection.
How many of those conflicts have we won?
Art Deco pointed out that only some of those were even vaguely against communism. There are also a lot of non-covert operations you missed, such as US support of the Philippine Government against the Communist Huk and Islamists in the Moro Regions. And frankly we’ve won the majority of those conflicts, since most don’t even attract enough commitment or attention to be noted.
Even from your list, we won Grenada, Iraq, Serbia, Libya, Panama, Nicaragua (with the Sandinistas having to rebuild themselves almost from the start to retake power) and Kuwait and have promising results in Ukraine. We also obtained some success in Afghanistan in destroying the AQ bases and networks there and dislocating the Taliban for a generation.
And this is not counting a host of others. The Philippines, Lebanon in 1958 (in contrast to the better known but more disastrous expedition to Lebanon in the 1980s culminating in the Marine Corps Barracks bombing and our pullout), the Greek Civil War, the post-Vietnam Thai Border War, and so forth.
So there are a lot of victories and a few losses you left out because they didn’t attract the same level of attention.
I know that’s not a fair question, since the aftermath of WWII has left us sensitized to the carnage necessary to pacify an enemy. How many of these efforts have stabilized a region, as opposed to tamping down destabilizing forces?
No, that is a fair question. And I’d also add the caveat that many of even the victories in stabilizing a region didn’t do it “for good.” The Sandinistas were gutted by our hybrid war under Reagan but not destroyed, and decades later Ortega returned and now rules over Nicaragua as dictator once again.
We started having the conversation in conservative circles as to the wisdom of the US acting as global cop years ago. The opposite to this globalist policy, is not isolationism– as much as opponents would like to characterize it, but something more conservative– first asking questions like what is the cost and what will be the gains; is the objective really achievable; how does it advance/protect our national interests?
This I agree with, but I also think that is why the proper way to view the foreign policy issue is with the two competing dichotomies rather than the one.
Elements to add to the discussion is what exactly are our values we’re projecting?
Free elections? We’re an election or two away from having elections determined by a ruling caste. How much different is that from authoritarian regimes?
Personal freedom? Express views contrary to the ruling party and your life may be ruined. If you act to far outside the accepted limits you might find yourself in jail for 20 years, or even multiple years for parading without a license.
Free markets? What free markets? SVB anyone?
International cronyism? Kleptocracy in authoritarian regimes vs. cronyism of rewarding favored political donors may spread government largesse in a larger circle than to just the oligarchs, but your status in a disfavored class is certainly equal.
The argument that we’re nowhere near parity with authoritarian regimes as corrupt as, say, Russia might be true– right now. If the left retakes control of the three branches, the fourth will fall. Court packing. Statehood for DC and PR will consolidate their power.
This is true, and I agree. It’s also why I have preferred to focus on waging holding actions abroad for now to buy us time to fix the nightmare we are facing here. I am more jejune about what American Values are now compared to many of the others such as the one admittedly hilarious Kremlin propaganda piece about “Russia if America wins” talking about things like involuntary sex changes, but even I could wince at the kernel of truth in that strawman. We need to fix ourselves first.
And in spite of being one of the blog’s premier anti-Putin “Ukraine Hawks” or the like who is in favor of something like a 90s-Croatia-style buildup of Ukrainian, Georgian, and Romanian and Moldovan war machines in order to forcibly reconquer the occupied areas of their countries. I have also admitted quite bluntly that if given a choice to sell out Ukraine in exchange for getting the US back and purging the domestic left’s corruption and oppression, I would, even if it would shame me. But I do not see how failing to support Ukraine would help on that regards.
mkent, that’s not my position at all.
But if you are claiming we need to continue a globalist foreign policy in our use of the military, please make the case.
Quite understandable, and that is one reason why whatever others may say, I won’t accuse you of being a tool of the Kremlin or the like without more evidence. I hesitated to do so with Bunge in spite of what I think is far more evidence, but eventually that along with the crudeness made me conclude.
As to Ukraine specifically, this is Europe’s war.
It SHOULD be, in a better world, but as it stands the only European nation that explicitly signed on the dotted line to safeguard Ukrainian independence and territorial integrity at Budapest was the UK. There are other, broader commitments from the EU nations in places like the OPSC framework, but we are on the line there too.
Moreover, as cases like Hungary, Turkey, and Germany show, without US leadership (or at least crude pantomimes of it from Biden’s puppetmasters), things tend to either not happen or do so slower.
While the combined EU GDP is smaller than ours, their debt to GDP is also much smaller than ours, so they can afford to fund Ukraine.
And by and large many of them are, especially among a number of first adopters like most of Eastern Europe, the Netherlands, and even Sweden and Finland. I’d still argue they are not doing enough, but they are doing it. The likes of Germany and Hungary loom large both because they do but also because they have been much more vocal in complaining about things, but they are hardly the only Europeans around.
Their reluctance to help a fellow European country when faced by what is claimed to be an existential threat of their own, leads me to the conclusion they don’t view it as such.
Then what would you talk about the Swedes and Dutch (and not just the usual suspects among the former pact states) routinely breaking a lot of taboos to ship equipment over?
As to “Russia genociding the Ukraine”, that is not my position.
Fair, but it absolutely is the policy of the Russian regime, as shown by its diet-lebensborn policy of deporting Ukrainians (especially young ones) to Russia for forced adoption and re-eduction, and also the abundant rhetoric by either the Kremlin directly or trusted henchmen like Kadyrov talking about how no Ukrainian nation exists, or should exist, or how it should be nuked.
Evidence shows the Donbas and Crimea have legitimate claims to independence, which were ignored beginning from the creation of an independent Ukraine.
They had legitimate claims to independence, but they were mooted by democratic vote since majorities even in their own places rejected independence in favor of remaining with Ukraine, and the Russian government at the time opted to disarm Ukraine of nuclear weapons rather than prioritize supporting the separatists for more territory.
The legitimacy of those results and the international agreement cannot be easily thrown away. ESPECIALLY not for illegitimate occupation regimes imposed by a foreign power by nakedly illegitimate and violent fashion after the fact.
Recognizing that Chinese central power had been too great for centuries and was also so during the “Nanjing Decade” of KMT/GMD totalitarianism under Chiang/Jiang and that Chinese regions had a legitimate right to greater autonomy and rights did not mean justifying any given warlord regime. And it certainly didn’t justify utterly artificial puppet dictatorships put up by Stalin or whatever Japanese junta happened to be in power that month.
I am against the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia,
Understandable, and I acknowledge that.
and support a settlement that returns the border to pre-invasion status.
The issue I see is that the invasions started in 2014. 2022 was just the elaboration of it.
LPR, DPR and Crimea would remain part of Russia.
Which is a cogent stance, and one worthy of addressing, though one I reject.
My own stance is much more hawkish and blunt. Of returning the situation to the pre-2014 status quo. Including the forced disestablishment of the current Crimean satrapy and the DNR and LNR, followed by plebicites to determine where the Russo-Ukrainian border in the Donbas is.
However, I must categorically reject the legitimacy of every single one of the “separatist” Russian puppet governments. At their most “legitimate” we have the Crimean Presidium, which betrayed their constitutional oaths to Ukraine and accepted unauthorized, illegal Russian Spetznaz deployments while – and this is the absolute big one – engaging in a campaign of murder, torture, and disappearances against dissidents or suspected dissidents and Ukrainian military personnel, as Reshat Ametov can attest. They deserve to go to the gallows or shooting line, but due to the natures of peace some kind of parachute can be allowed.
While the DPR and LPR, regardless of whatever public support they have (and evidence indicates it is much, MUCH less than they pretend), are basically corrupt warlord states invented out of whole cloth and with heavy influence from international terrorists like Girkin. Now the Taliban mean they are far from the worst entity we’ve negotiated with, but that doesn’t mean they can be trusted or be tenable peace partners.
As to what the US is now exporting as foreign policy– unfettered immigration, abortion and LGBTQ+ are stated goals. We now have our sights on destabilizing Hungary.
Understandable, and that is one reason why I reject Biden and co and condemn that. Especially given the greater threats. And why I place Ukraine as a much less priority than our own.
Examples please, so we can evaluate the claim.
The “Splendid Isolation” of the British Empire and the US around the same time are perhaps the best examples due to some degree of isolation being a consciously chosen policy, and it isn’t surprising they had a similar core problem. The German Empire under the leadership of first Bismarck and Caprvi, and then Wilhelm II. It interpreted limited isolationism (partially correctly, I think) as evidence of weakness and began to push in some odd ways. The exact history is complicated and not nearly as much of a straight story as is often painted (for instance the US and UK faced off with Germany in one of the underheralded crises of world history over Samoa in 1887 only to have a possible world war delayed by a tropical storm, only for crises over Venezuela a few years earlier to see Britain, Germany, and Italy joining arms against a Venezuelan dictatorship championed by the US)., but by the end of the 19th century it had basically turned into a quest by Germany to obtain global power status at the expense of the seemingly-fading British Empire and what the German leadership believed was a divided and decadent but growing America, which I would argue ultimately led to the first Cold War in American history (certainly international foreign history) with the Germans, though in a very onesided fashion.
This eventually but unevenly led to WWI and British and American involvements in it.
We also have a fair few other issues, such as the Mughal Empire’s turn towards internal affairs (or at least disinterest in matters outside of the Subcontinent and conquering the Deccan) helping to pave the way for a devastating Persian invasion of the place that pillaged the capital under Nadr Shah.
There’s also plenty of cases where attempts to enforce isolation strictly leads to conflicts, like with Sakoku era Japan and Late Joseon China, which led to multiple naval expeditions to those countries. Likewise the quest for Soviet Autarky which spared a bunch of conflicts on the frontiers to try and seize “necessary” resources.
And I could go on, but those are some examples that come to mind.
In any case I feel we would all be better served by me writing more in depth to respond to your other points, but I can return to this issue and give more examples before.
Art Deco, Anton begins with the foreign policy divide in the Republican party, how Nixon pivoted to detente and how Reagan’s policies years later changed,
And for various reasons I find he did at best a half-baked one.
possibly because of the events in 1983 beginning just before the downing of KAL 007, to a malfunction of Russian defense satellite/computers that recorded a multiple launch of US missiles and then the Able Archer/war games and misunderstandings by the Russians as to our motives, based on other events happening near the same time.
It also probably had at least as much to do with the growing US superiority and the rise of an at least vocally reformist Soviet GenSec in the form of Gorbachev (who some archival research has shown was no saint, such as justifying the Tiananmen Massacres, but who looked like one in comparison to the next).
I do think Anton goes too far in trying to play Bothsidesism, in particularly understating how grotesque and unjustifiable Soviet actions were in KAL 007, not just in the shoot down but especially in the lying, justifying, and blood libel. Ironic given how the East Bloc and other powers were much better at it.
In particular I think Anton ignores the obvious. That Able Archer became the crisis it did was the Soviets’ fault on two levels.
Firstly: They were projecting their own behavior and thoughts onto us, and assuming we MIGHT launch an invasion of them under cover of an exercise because THEY had considered doing so to us multiple times.
Secondly and even more inexcusably: We KNOW the Soviets and their puppets had spent millions and millions of basically everything (Rubles, Gold, Man Hours) in contracting their global spy network and they had sources deep in NATO. And so they doubtless had contact with their spies who were either telling them they didn’t know what was happening or telling them that this was an exercise and NATO was not planning to attack. Apparently they disregarded both.
I can understand preparation, deterrence, and wariness. Especially since they had some reason to believe something drastic might happen given Reagan’s liberation of Grenada in spite of claiming he would not and the international backlash he got, as well as some degree of the Soviets buying into their own narratives.
But neither can justify the Soviet actions re: Able Archer from either a moral perspective OR a practical one. It points to the psychoses in the Kremlin about paranoia, self-righteousness, and hostility that are squarely its fault. Especially if the Soviets are going to largely ignore the intelligence given from their lavishly funded intel agencies after the “Late Golden Age” of the “Grand Chekist” Andropov.
“Reagan’s initial toughness was a necessary corrective to Carter’s fecklessness and Nixon’s détente, put the Soviets on their back foot, and forced them back to the table, resetting the stage for a Western victory. Nineteen eighty-three came to be seen as a kind of mirror-image of 1938, teaching the same lesson: appeasement begets war, toughness brings peace—or better yet, victory.
There is no doubt something to this, but even on its own terms, this rendering skips over important elements.
Fair, but still.
The first is that the stakes matter. And the stakes in the Cold War were the very highest: the survival of the free world and maybe even the existence of the whole world. By 1980, it was plausible to fear that freedom and even humanity were losing. It was therefore not unreasonable to believe that calculated risks were warranted.
There is no such thing as a world without calculated risks. So the question is which calculated warrants are there.
But you never know where toughness might lead, what it might provoke. When the consequences of toughness could be total destruction, it is rational—moral, even—to be tough only when the stakes are equally enormous. Toughness not in the service of a core interest—or the core of all core interests—is not merely foolish but reckless.
Again, these would be MUCH better directed at the Soviet regimes than against Reagan.
Ultimate blame behind KAL 007 and the Able Archer war scare MUST lie with the Soviets. Both were catalyzed by Soviet bellicosity, aggression, and idiocy, as well as ignoring best practices in the past (including in their own history).
At least in Able Archer this didn’t lead to them doing anything illegal or particularly immoral (since as a nuclear power they had a right to preparation), though it did lead to a catastrophic waste of resources from the unnecessary readiness (and apparently the espionage investments they threw in the toilet ignoring their own spies and sources within the West). But KAL 007 is another matter and showed them actively being worse than their own prior history in the Cold War, and then doubling and quadrupling down on inflammatory, insulting, and dishonest deception and then blood libel that happily destroyed their own legitimacy.
Both crises were about crucial interests to the US, at least as seen. Able Archer was an openly discussed NATO exercise, and NATO had every right to conduct peaceful military exercises on its own territory, as the Soviets well knew. KAL 007 is again more profound, because it touches on the subjects of Innocent Transgress into another nation’s territory, a necessary corollary to Freedom of the Seas. A concept that was at the heart of American Foreign Policy all the way back to the Founders and which could not be abandoned any more than it could be in the Persian Gulf.
Simply put, the US had to take a stand on both, but moreso on KAL 007 because the Soviets didn’t do anything illegal or murderous (just stupid) as a result of Able Archer. They absolutely did to KAL 007 and then engaged in nation-scale fraud and blood libel against their victims. The fact that Anton is downplaying the importance of these and the nature of Soviet responsibility for both the folly and the crime makes me respect him MUCH less as both a person and an analyst. Which when married to his many other issues (such as the claim that Detente came from Nixon and that no Republican had outflanked the Dems to the Left during the First Half of the Cold War) does not help.
One reason one never knows where toughness might lead is that you can never be sure you really understand your adversary—or that he understands you.
You can be reasonably sure, and in any case you can take steps to fact-check and evaluate your own understandings. The Soviets obviously understood this, or else they’d have never invested what they did into their spycraft. Which makes their disregard of it during Able Archer all the more galling.
In 1983, both sides misunderstood one another. The Americans assumed the Soviets knew that all those flybys, flyovers, fleet maneuvers, dummy warheads, and DEFCON escalations were just drills. The Soviets, for their part, knew no such thing. They really believed that it all might be prelude to a surprise first strike.
Because again, the Soviets were reading their own behavior and motives onto us.
Which is some degree of incompetence but also understandable to some degree, especially after Grenada. What ISN’T understandable was their disregard of their own intelligence assets, which should have told them plenty about the nature of Able Archer.
Later informed of Moscow’s alarm, Reagan was offended. “I don’t see how they could believe that,” he said, quickly adding, “but it’s something to think about.” It was, eventually, thought about, in hindsight.
Frankly, Reagan was right to be offended for the reasons I mentioned. It also points to how obsession with self-blame and one’s own responsibility when dealing with pathological actors is often self-defeating. Because sometimes, the core of the problem isn’t you, it’s them. My hatred of the Soviet Union and the entire Communist ideology and its leaders is not enough to prevent me from giving them due credit where it is warranted or admitting where they were wronged, but in this case Able Archer and KAL 007 were ultimately their faults, and nobody else’s responsibility even comes Close to that held by them.
That 1990 report on Perroots’s restraint observed that “in the years leading up to Able Archer,” national security officials “had received no guidance as to the possible significance of apparent changes in Soviet military and political thinking.””
Which is an issue and I do think points to systematic problems with US Spycraft. But that also underlines how impotent and dysfunctional Western Intel was towards the Soviets at the time. It also doesn’t talk as much about the other side of the coin.
And that’s before we get into Petrov’s Case, where Soviet idiocy and bellicosity as well as negligence towards their own equipment SHOULD have triggered a Nuclear World War, and only brave insubordination changed that.
The common denominator of all three things are the pathologies and dysfunctions of the Soviet Leadership and their ruthless, idiotic, and self-righteous approach to the world. All of which can be MANAGED by the US and others (and indeed were) but are ultimately not the US’s fault. The fact that Anton is engaged in what I view as soft-pedalling this fact is in my opinion not just a grave analytic failing of his article but also a moral failing.
In my estimation, these events and subsequent fall of the Soviet Union led us to act from a position of power. We had won. Russia had lost.
And we were CORRECT to act from a position of power, as that was basic geopoltics. Nor could we entirely AVOID doing so, due to the nature of foreign policy and the world, because nature and human relations abhor vacuums. And horrifyingly devastating vacuums had emerged in former Communist space like the Balkans and the Black Sea that demanded attention.
There are experts who think we could have contained the bear without poking it in policy decision after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Again with the rhetoric of “containing the bear without poking it.”
I reject this analysis on two grounds.
Firstly: Admitting that voluntary NATO expansion without allowing a “Russia Veto” is somehow “poking” or “provoking” the bear is not only blinkered, it is also violating a couple key tenets of US Foreign Policy and even fundamental US values such as Self-Determination and national sovereignty. Potent things that even perennial realists and anti-NATO-Expansion advocates like James Baker and HW Bush admitted could not be ignored (and that Gorbachev accepted). Simply put the nations of Central and Eastern Europe had every right to make their voices heard independently of an overweening and often abusive Russia.
The fact that they loudly thundered for entry into NATO should have been unsurprising even in foresight, but is particularly so in hindsight. This was not helped by Kremlin misadventures in Moldova, Georgia, and now Ukraine (by far the largest post-Soviet state outside of Russia and one of the few that did EMBRACE neutrality and non-alignment, only to be rewarded by frustrating trade wars, domestic assassinations, and ultimately invasion and partition from the Kremlin).
Secondly: The fact that the Kremlin thinks it has the right to do so on a level far more so than the most grandiose and far-reaching interpretations of the Monroe Doctrine (even Olney’s Gun from the Venezuela Crisis) points to similar pathologies of aggression, violence, self-righteousness, and lack of accountability that led to KAL 007, the Petrov scare, and the Able Archer scare. It indicates that the Party Grandees that came to dominate the Putin Era have not learned that diplomacy is a two way street and that at least formally most members are equal, that there are rules for Thee but not for Me, and that agreements are but Scraps of Paper that can be thrown out.
Which is why until I see that being cured, I do not think the core problems will change.
The article is worth reading, IMO.
Art Deco, Re: the Donbass, I’m referring to a 1994 referendum held in the Luhansk and Donetesk oblasts concerning language and federalization of the region which voted overwhelming in favor. True, independence wasn’t on the ballot, but Russia was growing through its own birthing crisis. The link I provided earlier is about that referendum. They also describe the wording of the 1991 referendum on Ukraine independence as being “deceitful.”
I read the source separately, and I was laughing at it accusing others of being “deceitful.” And on false grounds.
Firstly: The source makes no reference to the numbers of people that voted in the referendum. Which makes it hard (intentionally so) to gauge the depths of feeling and how widespread the referendum was. This is in sharp contrast to the 1994 Votes in Crimea, which were rigorously documented.
Secondly: The source is a goddamn liar.
After all, the vote on the independence of Ukraine on December 1, 1991 became a form of deceit of the people, as the question was raised: “Do you confirm the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine?” The wording itself already contained the answer “yes” – the question was not whether you are FOR independence or against it, but whether there was an act or not. Of course, it was. The people were simply deceived. I’m not saying that if the wording were different, people would have voted against it, but this fact should be kept in mind.
The “fact” is BS.
I realize the author is probably not a native English speaker, but A: That does not justify such a mistake when choosing to write in the English Language, and B: Even non-native speakers should be able to grasp this fairly easily.
“Do you confirm the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine? The wording itself already contained the answer “yes” – the question was not whether you are FOR independence or against it, but whether there was an act or not. ”
This is incoherent balderdash. There was obviously an Act of Independence (it was compiled and passed in August), but being asked to ” Do you CONFIRM (it)” prompts for whether or not one SUPPORTS it or is AGAINST it, that “the question was (…) whether you are FOR independence or against it.”
Again, this is pretty basic language.
And confirmed by the Ukrainian and Russian language renderings of the Act and the relevant votes.
The fact that the author tried to pull a fast one over any reader naive or uninformed enough to not check them says NOTHING good about their competence, reading comprehension, or honesty. It is more than sufficient reason to disbelieve anything else they write.
Thirdly: The author “conveniently” ignores the fact that most of the bones of contention were defacto accepted in Ukraine, especially regarding regional autonomy and particularly the Russian language. Ukraine was dominated by natively Russophone administrations who typically placed the languages on parity.
That’s why the Kiev regime is so afraid of holding any referendum in Donbass. Instead, false propaganda about “unity and integrity” is pouring in. Although how can a PART be united?
Again, this is laughable as I mentioned. Zelenskyy is on the record at least offering a referendum, albeit on terms that involve the demilitarization of the region by both sides and international observation. And even if you believe the offer was insincere, it doesn’t change the fact that the Russian Government and “Separatists” didn’t bother to call his bluff. It also ignores the continuing of regular elections in the unoccupied areas of the Donbas and Luhansk for the duration of the conflict.
So the “Kyiv Regime” isn’t the one that comes across as fearing a referendum. Unsurprising given how the Kremlin’s actions in Crimea and the Donbas have been reliant on terror, force, and a complete lack of accountability for its proxies.
So simply put, I dismiss this “source” as a rag of dishonest Kremlin propaganda that is trying to lie about very basic things like the wording of the 1991 Ukrainian Referendum, or is so incompetent it doesn’t understand it. The newspaper is moderately interesting, as are the claims about turnout, but given its naked dishonesty and incompetence as well as my ignorance of Cyrillic I cannot trust it.
I might kick it over to a few different friends to evaluate, but in any case I do not put much weight on self-righteous mythmaking by a blog that a minimum is trying to lie about the wording of the 1991 Independence Referendum and is ignoring defacto Ukrainian Government policy during the 1990s, especially on the language issue.
The second source is not outright smear jobs and lying, but I do think it is misleading.
“However, in Crimea, the percentage of “yes” votes was only 37% of total voters, and in Sevastopol, it was just 40%.
Sure, but those commanded majorities of the vote.
Moreover, it has been argued that many of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who voted for independence believed that they were voting to abolish the Soviet Union, which would be followed by some sort of reunification with a non-Communist Russia.”
Even if this were true (and I find it somewhat fanciful) the time to remedy that would have been after the independence of both Ukraine and the Russian Federation. During which time the Russian Federation decided to prioritize regaining Soviet Nukes (among other things) over changing the borders to “return Crimea’ or some such. Which unsurprisingly put a spike in the tire of the outright secessionists. The new Russian Government did not want another nuclear-armed state in former Soviet Space, and even the Hawks probably recognized that like the ongoing conflicts in Transnistria the Crimean secessionists could serve Russian interests better as an undercurrent in Ukrainian politics than as a part of Russia proper, at least for now.
In any case the Crimean Secessionists were essentially abandoned by their natural patron during the time in question and electorally and politically defeated, with their rank and file being pried away by the autonomous status.
These are also the regions with the highest ethnic Russian population.
True but also nowhere near as decisive as you have made before. This was not a fundamentally sectarian conflict like Georgia and Transnistria and Yugoslavia really were. This was a political one, and as I’ve covered before Yanukovych’s crimes and follies, the Kremlin’s actions in the Donbas in particular, and the incompetence and oppressions of its local proxies have done much to erode what support there was.
I do not claim to know a proportion. But I do know that these regions are “secessionist” not because of the will of their people (whether the people as a whole support secession or not) but because of the armed occupation by Russia.
Yanukovych, (Party of Regions), who ran on a platform of better relations with the EU and Russia, was elected overwhelming by Eastern Ukrainians in 2010.
This is true, and we’ve talked about it. Yanukovych and the Regionnaires maintained the broad loyalty of the Donbas through his term, but the repudiation of the EU Association Agreement was a bitter blow to even many pro-Russian elements of the Donbas since they were living in a rust belt and wanted more trade. This and Euromaidan helped trigger schisms in Eastern Ukraine and the Regionnaire Party itself, which steadily alarmed Yanukovych since before (such as in the Kuchma conflicts, the Orange Revolution, etc) you could generally count on your political base (Orange v. Blue areas). So seeing significant (though by no means majority) discontent among “his base” (the people who were supposed to be “his people”) spooked the hell out of Yanukovych and led him to “calculated risks.” Which often backfired and sparked more.
The events of 2014 were the catalyst that prompted these regions to separate from Ukraine.
Primarily because of the military occupation by Russian troops or paramilitaries paid and equipped by them. This is no longer in any kind of serious dispute regarding Crimea as even the Kremlin admits to the dispatch of Spetznaz, but the Donbas has not been so candidly admitted.
Art Deco is correct. Secession happened primarily due to raw force and terror, and I’d argue in many ways (especially the violent attacks on Ukrainian military units) it was counterproductive, since it drove all but the staunchest anti-maidanites and pro-Kremlin members into the hands of the admittedly-weak-and-chaotic Ukrainian government.
This does not mean that there is no pro-Russian sentiment in the Donbas or Crimea independent of the military occupation, far from it. And as a matter of principle I don’t even object IN THEORY to Crimea and/or the Donbas uniting with Russia. But the nakedly illegal and terroristic way in which it was done by the Russian government is in my opinion inexcusable, and why I am one of the Hawks.
The Kremlin needs to learn there are consequences for poking its neighbors.
@huxley
I wondered why I kept remembering the first book as “HP and the Philosopher’s Stone”!
Because that was IIRC the more common title of it, and especially outside of the US. Especially since the “Philosopher’s Stone” is an actual mythical concept that has been around for centuries (thanks Alchemy) and ties in to Nicholas Flamel (who was a historical figure tied in to the book). I guess they just decided alliteration was better.
(And yes I confess I am something of a Harry Potter fan.)
If there had been a nuclear war then, no one sensible would have been surprised. And I suspect history would evaluate Reagan differently.
==
Chuckles.
Reminds me of at history tale by brendan dubois, about the aftermath of the cuban missile crisis which goes awry.
This was the urtext of the day after threads count down to looking glass and other such fare from the 80s
Turtler:
Once again you take apart Brian E’s arguments piece by piece, a loose skein without lock stitches. I need at least 15 minutes to fully appreciate it.
Turtler, I think we should impose a 1,000 word limit per comment.
My apologies to Anton, since the thrust of his piece had nothing to do with Ukraine, and little to do with isolationism/internationalism either.
I assume you didn’t live through the events of the Vietnam war, detente and Reagan’s Star Wars. I would guess you’re about 35. Anton’s article certainly comports to what I remember of the events of the day, though not with the near catastrophes on both sides. And like Huxley my wife and I were glued to the tv for the airing of The Day After.
There is probably no way to accurately gauge the popularity of the Donbass separatist sentiment at the time. The quote I used from the Donbass Insider that they were deceived, but even had the referendum been better worded, the vote might still have been the same isn’t a good way to make a case. I think the coup attempt in Russia in 1992 probably did have an effect.
Despite Art Deco’s data minimizing the separatist’s support, even if the support was say 60-65% in favor of closer ties/re-uniting with Russia, that leaves a large minority against it. I think the numbers do favor the separatist movement in Crimea.
Those short Vice videos do reflect a sentiment that the Maidan revolution was a coup and this was a civil war. And yes, council meetings did look like something right out of the Party playbook. Vice’s segments in Crimea I think are reflective of the situation. The Tatars were told by their community leaders not to participate in the referendum, and though the Ukrainian military garrisoned there weren’t told not to participate, no one did, even though many chose to resign and stay in Crimea when the forces were expelled after the vote.
While the Ukranian military kept their weapons, both sides were careful to not escalate– though the unmarked special forces did display their weapons. One of the Ukrainian commanders indicated they had received no orders from Kyiv on how to handle the situation– which probably was understood to mean there were no reinforcements on the way.
It was a very civil transfer of power.
Since, according to Art Deco, “realist” and “globalist” are already taken for other purposes, I would say I favor an America First foreign policy. The use of the term Isolationist, is meant as a pejorative– implying a disregard/ignoring the situation.
Don’t pick a fight but recognize when your opponent is looking for one. Then realistically assess whether or not the fight is in your best interests.
As to our treatment of Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the best negotiations are when both sides think they won. I would say we were poor negotiators.
I have meant to explain why I took up the Eastern Ukrainian cause, which I will do in another open thread.
@Brian E
Turtler, I think we should impose a 1,000 word limit per comment.
I’d leave that to the boss to decide, and I know there is a limit somewhere. But I’d oppose it. Because that wouldn’t really alter my posts, I’d just have to break them up and post them in parts (like I have had to on occasion here). Which wouldn’t be fun due to the number of word counting. I know FPM implementing a rather minimal one is a major problem.
I assume you didn’t live through the events of the Vietnam war, detente and Reagan’s Star Wars. I would guess you’re about 35.
Pretty close. I won’t claim to have lived through either, though my family did. And certainly there is often a difference between how events are lived versus some of the finer details (for instance, not many people remember WWII starting in 1937 except the Chinese). And I certainly do think you and Art Deco bring up many points, and I’ll be the first to note there’s a lot of truth in Anton’s article. But that makes many of the jarring issues all the worse.
Especially when one of the central thrusts of his article is how we often have a rosy view of nostalgia regarding Reagan’s first term and often forget or downplay the 1983 scares when reality at the time was very different. But I do not think Anton helps his case by forgetting a lot of history (Eisenhower’s shifting from right to left to right again in order to outfox Truman and Stevenson, the Reichstag Fire as an actual crime by a communist pyromaniac terrorist serving as a Nazi justification rather than the myth of a Nazi False Flag framing said terrorist for the arson).
And I particularly think KLA 007 and the Able Archer crises look far worse for the Soviets when put into context. Not many people remember El Al Flight 402 in the way they remember KLA 007. Part of that’s due to the number of deaths (more than four times as many died on 007 as did on 402), but I don’t think it is the main reason, especially coming near the height of the Cold War or at least one of the first ones. A lot of it comes down to the fact that the Communist Bulgarians (though HARDLY models of morality or ethics) did not lie about what happened, did not accuse the commercial airliner of being involved in spying, and were able to show that the flight deviated vastly from its course. They also eventually DID apologize, though that took quite some time. The US had less excuses but it also didn’t make them when it came to to Iran Air 655, but it also made fewer and paid out compensation for the victims.
This is in sharp contrast to the Soviet policy of being trigger happy, then lying about it, then justifying it when caught in the first set of lies. Which turned what could have been an already-avoidable tragedy that would scar relations but which also was fairly simple to paper over even for Eastern Bloc dictatorships into a colossal diplomatic disaster almost entirely of the Soviet Union’s own making as well as an offense to international law.
Maritime and aviation law are arcane subjects even today and to me, and I’m probably moderately more aware of them than most people, but I do think there was no getting around that KLA 007 was absolutely worth sanctioning the USSR over even if it was obviously not worth going to nuclear war over. And I do think the Soviet policy about it and the reactions to it justifiably delegitimized it.
Anton’s article certainly comports to what I remember of the events of the day, though not with the near catastrophes on both sides. And like Huxley my wife and I were glued to the tv for the airing of The Day After.
Understandably indeed. The Day After and Wargames were from before my time but they were still gripping, horrifying stuff to watch. The British equivalent is if anything even harder hitting. Don’t watch “Threads” if you do not have an iron spleen, and even then it’ll get to you.
It’s also why I do view om’s “pigs flying” nonsense to be in monumentally bad taste. While I do find a lot of alarmism and fear to be excessive, that does not mean there isn’t a risk that needs to be managed. And rightfully or wrongly my stances of a generally strong stance (albeit one that draws lines and does not cross them) would help mitigate against it. For instance, the decision was made to not respond to the Soviet weapon prepping but not to cancel Able Archer. We should not poke the bear without provocation or for transient reasons, but we need to stand strong and know our rights, and rarely yield them except in very, Very pressing circumstances.
There is probably no way to accurately gauge the popularity of the Donbass separatist sentiment at the time.
Which itself is telling. The “Separatists” and Russian Special Forces started disappearing, torturing, and killing people even before the formal occupation and secession, starting in Crimea (often portrayed as a “bloodless” occupation, erroneously, because of the maybe 2-3 people killed directly during the military takeover) and spent years engaging in propaganda, not helped by the artillery duels between the Ukrainian Loyalists and the Russian Government with the ensuing destruction. The failure of the separatists to develop much of a mass movement and inability to trigger much partisan activity in the loyalist-held areas of the Donbas I think undermines their claims to be popular (in sharp contrast to Transnistria and the separatist states in Georgia, which for all of their many sins are legitimately popular among their “constituencies” and have a great number of fighters not only prepared to fight and die for the cause, but even to volunteer by the thousands for it).
This along with the what I can only conclude were intentionally opaque circumstances of the “referendums” and a number of others make me conclude that the Kremlin does not want anybody to have a clear indication of public sentiment in the area through the ballot box. Even moreso than the Ukrainian Loyalists (who are hardly saintly or devoid of corruption, and who would have reasons to be suspicious of the people in Kharkhiv and elsewhere in the unoccupied Donbass due to the sectarian divides in culture, language, ethnicity, and political alignment), who have allowed the unoccupied areas of the Donbas to vote with a minimum of martial law in the areas, a result that was sure to turn in significantly “Bluer” parties and candidates.
This I think supports my points that the separatist movement is – while not completely artificial or synthetic – ultimately not that popular and largely dependent on the Kremlin’s propping up and a grab bag of charismatic warlords and their patrons. Which has not helped consolidate the regimes much.
The quote I used from the Donbass Insider that they were deceived, but even had the referendum been better worded, the vote might still have been the same isn’t a good way to make a case.
Relying on a blatantly dishonest propaganda rag like the Donbass Insider at all is not a very good way to make a case. The wording of the referendum was quite clear, and as you can see if you check the question was very much whether the voters approved of the declaration of independence, not whether they acknowledged its existence. Moreover (as the idiot who wrote that article SHOULD know even if they by some miracle don’t) similar referenda were not unknown to Soviet voters and were widely voted on, some going back decades and others happening at the time.
In particular it is worth noting the Transnistria Referendum that began in 1989, and which was widely reported in Ukraine (because strange as it may sound at the time, there was broad sympathy and support for the Transnistrian cause across the Ukrainian public at the time).
I may not have the world’s highest opinion of the intelligence of post-Soviet workers in general and the inhabitants of the Donbas Rust Belt in particular, but I also fully believe they were more than capable of reading a sentence in their native languages and talking with their older family members about the meanings of this. Especially when similar events were both in their history books (albeit often in a much more rigged fashion, like the farcical 1940 referenda rubberstamping the annexation of the Baltic Three) and in the newspaper.
As such, I conclude the Donbass Insider is simply lying about the 1991 Independence Referendum in an attempt to delegitimize it. Lying badly, I might add. As such, I simply disregard that part of its claims.
Ironically a BETTER argument would be that the nature of most of those referenda (being conducted under the Soviet period and largely being heavily rigged) was that the voting public did not understand the sakes and so had atypically high “Yea” turnout due to fear that their voices wouldn’t count, that they would face retaliation for voting no, and so forth.
But that’s not what the idiot at the Donbass Insider claimed. Moreover, I would find it fundamentally unconvincing given how they admit the Donbass Civil Society – even those critical of Ukrainian unitarianism and other issues – were active and within a few years would be trying to get up steam for other referendums.
The bottom line is that I have very little reason to take the Donbass Insider’s word very seriously, and absolutely none at all regarding the 1991 Independence Referendum.
I think the coup attempt in Russia in 1992 probably did have an effect.
On which referendum are we talking?
But the various coup attempts in the period did have an effect, but it was so chaotic and ugly we have to whip out a timeline and ask which one.
Despite Art Deco’s data minimizing the separatist’s support, even if the support was say 60-65% in favor of closer ties/re-uniting with Russia, that leaves a large minority against it. I think the numbers do favor the separatist movement in Crimea.
I am agnostic on the issue but I agree your conclusion is quite believable. I am not sure it is the most probable outcome, but it is a very possible one.
And again why for all of my longwinded ranting and passion on the subject why I do not have much in the way of a fundamental objection to Crimea or the Donbas uniting with Russia in principle, as opposed to the nature of how it was done (which I hold to be nothing short of criminal). Self-determination and respect for that mean agreeing with it even if “my side” loses the vote, and I accept that. In any case, the regions’ economies are so tightly wound that they’ll need cooperation with both Russia and Ukraine and each other to function at peak performance regardless of which flag they fly, and under peaceful circumstances the bonds of blood and history across the border wouldn’t be able to be cut.
In any case, similar conflicts were dealt with diplomatically, as these ones were in the early 1990s and others such as Newfoundland Confederation with Canada and a host of others show. So I do not see how anything that happened in reality (as opposed to what the Kremlin claimed happened, with claims that the world’s dumbest Banderaistas were rampaging through Crimea and demanding Russian troop deployments that for some reason had to be done under false flag and with false pretenses) can justify unilateral Russian deployment of troops to its neighbor’s soil, let alone unilateral partition attempts.
If there actually was a “Nazi”/”Fascist” government in Kyiv persecuting ethnic Russians or Russophones lock, stock, and barrel I would be singing a very different tune and even defending the Russian actions much as I believe our deployment of the USMC to plays like the assorted Bluefields Rebellions was justified. But there isn’t and there wasn’t, and the Kremlin purposefully exploited the post-Yanukovych chaos and flux to invade while there was a weak caretaker cabinet.
Those short Vice videos do reflect a sentiment that the Maidan revolution was a coup and this was a civil war.
At best Maidan was only partially a coup or climaxed with one due to the legislative/Rada motion we have debated about, but before that it was a protest movement.
As for whether it was a civil war, I respond: was the 1937 Japanese Invasion of China a Civil War?
That’s a trick question of course. After all, many of those fighting and killing each other in that conflict were different shades of Chinese, not just the KMT and Communists going for a side thing but also hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers that (for one reason or another) chose to fight under the Japanese. But it’s not what we think of when we think of the conflict or see the term “civil war”, no?
While there was a minority of pro-Maidan sentiment in the Donbas and Crimea (and its presence there was enough to badly spook Yanukovych by giving him the most unpleasant surprise in his political career up to that time save MAYBE the Orange Revolution), it was very much a minority. Pro-Kremlin and Anti-Maidan sentiment was present and strong there and had been organizing for a while, but remarkably little of it took up guns and turned out. The Kremlin certainly recruited many volunteers and organizations from the area as it went to war, but the core seems to have been troops brought in from outside for this specific case, especially given the much more violent nature of the Donbas offensives.
So I argue that what we see is a Russian invasion with a Side of Civil War rather than a Civil War with a side of Russian Invasion
And yes, council meetings did look like something right out of the Party playbook. Vice’s segments in Crimea I think are reflective of the situation. The Tatars were told by their community leaders not to participate in the referendum, and though the Ukrainian military garrisoned there weren’t told not to participate, no one did, even though many chose to resign and stay in Crimea when the forces were expelled after the vote.
Agreed.
While the Ukranian military kept their weapons, both sides were careful to not escalate– though the unmarked special forces did display their weapons. One of the Ukrainian commanders indicated they had received no orders from Kyiv on how to handle the situation– which probably was understood to mean there were no reinforcements on the way.
Indeed, and then the Ukrainian positions were stormed with little resistance, though Russian personnel did kill at least one Ukrainian serviceman during the taking of it (which ironically got the responsible man brought up on charges by the pro-Russian Crimean Prosecutor General’s Office on murder charges, which I think says a lot about how relatively “civilized” and calm the military sides were to each other, though ti seems like the civilians were not so lucky given the number of disappearances and murders.
Though even those are dwarfed by what we can find in the Donbas, where we see atrocity olympics both accused and real by both sides).
It was a very civil transfer of power.
I find that to be a stretch. It occurred far more diplomatically and with sensitivity than what happened after, but I do not think the three+ people killed in the actual clashes and the more killed or disappeared would find it “very civil.” And it definitely presaged the much more violent and deadly fighting that broke out in the Donbas with another set of Little Green Men.
Since, according to Art Deco, “realist” and “globalist” are already taken for other purposes, I would say I favor an America First foreign policy. The use of the term Isolationist, is meant as a pejorative– implying a disregard/ignoring the situation.
Understandable indeed, and on this much we agree. I also favor an America First policy, though we of course often disagree on what that might mean. I also confess I am not an isolationist and if anything have always leaned towards the interventionist wing (probably to an extreme degree by the standards now, given how I will still conditionally defend the Afghan and Iraq Wars and their legacies), but even I recognized due to Obama that the West was exhausted and would need to draw down and regroup. The cultural rot and social conflict at home thanks to Biden and co just makes that more acute.
Don’t pick a fight but recognize when your opponent is looking for one. Then realistically assess whether or not the fight is in your best interests.
Agreed. And of course people of good faith and sincerity can disagree on how to go about that and where best interests are without one being an unhinged war mongerer or a Putin vassal or other rot. And I have tried to recognize that.
As to our treatment of Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the best negotiations are when both sides think they won. I would say we were poor negotiators.
I’d argue we were decently good negotiators, but bad implementers. Shock Therapy was a popular policy at the time (at least among the Russian and other Central/Eastern European Elite) and we were called in to help implement it. Which turned into a fiasco. Likewise we had a decent working relationship with Yeltsin for pretty much his entire career and cultivated similar with other Eastern European countries, and Putin at the start of his career even expressed interest in joining NATO (albeit by basically “jumping the line” and being able to negotiate a separate deal where rules didn’t apply to him), but Yugoslavia and Georgia loomed large. And in particular Clark’s antic at Pristina Airfield came close to triggering a World War III between NATO and a non-Communist Russia (thank GOD he was told to go stuff himself), and also gave the Russians all the reasons they could hope or fear for to be worried about an aggressive NATO.
I have meant to explain why I took up the Eastern Ukrainian cause, which I will do in another open thread.
Fair, and I look forward to it. Though I guess we differ greatly on what “the Eastern Ukrainian cause” is.
But in any case, thank you for the post and I am sorry for my rambling.
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Woke up to several inches of wet snow. Going to have a cup of coffee then go out. I could say climate change but 45 yrs ago when we were building this house it snowed in April, about 6 to 8 inches. CO has always had screwy weather.
It’s only a matter of time before someone breaks that egg. Amazing that technicians and engineers will go to such trouble to watch penguins as building these gadgets. I like animals a great deal, but really now.
Shirehome, it sounds like an invigorating morning!
I grew up in Denver, so I know about the twists and turns of the weather there. Of course in the mountains there can be snow in June; July can be snow free, but those t’storms coming over the divide can be filled with hail. And, then late August not unusual to see a few flakes at the higher elevations.
Got it done. The snow turned to slush, then froze and then snow on top. This morning the frozen slush started up melt so it was just slush. Had drifts of over 4 in.
Now, reading about the shooting in Nashville.
Besides all the other outrageous aspects of the Stanford denial of free speech to a Federal Appeals Court judge, here is an explanation of what the leftists were so upset about. Judge Duncan had denied a convicted pedophile pornographer, who claims to be transgender after several years in prison, the ability to expunge the name under which he committed his offenses from the record. Judge Duncan rightly pointed out that this is the name in which all the arrest and court records appeared.
So, the Stanford snowflakes stand with a pedophile pornographer. They’re not claiming his innocence; they’re denouncing “dead-naming.”
https://stream.org/what-can-we-learn-from-the-stanford-pro-pedophile-riot/
“Isolationism, what could possibly go wrong?” – om
Someone on another thread linked to a Claremont article related to the age old battle between “internationalists” and “isolationists” in the Republican party. It requires a subscription, but here is a fascinating article by Michael Anton that is available to read, “How the World almost Ended in 1983”
“In the Cold War’s first half, no Republican tried outflanking the Democrats from the left on foreign policy. Nixon pulled it off against Humphrey over Vietnam. The question was: how far would he take it? The answer turned out to be: farther. Together, Nixon and Kissinger devised and implemented the strategy of “détente,” which, though the rift took a while to show itself, divided the Republican Party almost as badly as the pre-war struggle between Robert Taft “isolationists” and Arthur Vandenberg internationalists. With the victory of the latter, the matter seemed to rest, especially as internationalism came to be seen as a prerequisite for anti-Communism.”
If an accurate portrayal of events, the piece is a reminder how arrogant we have been facing global powers, and why Russia might continue to distrust us today.
But in its discussion of the internal struggle of the Republican party to define a foreign policy, it might be a instructive between what might better be termed the “realist” vs. “globalist” struggle over foreign policy going forward.
A “realist” policy defines interventionism in terms of vital US interests, and a recognition that there are limits to our military, which even technology can’t overcome. Under the guise of fighting communism, we’ve engaged in overt or covert military operations in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Libya, Panama, Nicaragua, Syria, Kuwait and Ukraine. Oh yes, Grenada. I’m sure I’m missing many of the covert operations that we managed to avoid detection.
How many of those conflicts have we won? I know that’s not a fair question, since the aftermath of WWII has left us sensitized to the carnage necessary to pacify an enemy. How many of these efforts have stabilized a region, as opposed to tamping down destabilizing forces?
We started having the conversation in conservative circles as to the wisdom of the US acting as global cop years ago. The opposite to this globalist policy, is not isolationism– as much as opponents would like to characterize it, but something more conservative– first asking questions like what is the cost and what will be the gains; is the objective really achievable; how does it advance/protect our national interests?
Elements to add to the discussion is what exactly are our values we’re projecting?
Free elections? We’re an election or two away from having elections determined by a ruling caste. How much different is that from authoritarian regimes?
Personal freedom? Express views contrary to the ruling party and your life may be ruined. If you act to far outside the accepted limits you might find yourself in jail for 20 years, or even multiple years for parading without a license.
Free markets? What free markets? SVB anyone?
International cronyism? Kleptocracy in authoritarian regimes vs. cronyism of rewarding favored political donors may spread government largesse in a larger circle than to just the oligarchs, but your status in a disfavored class is certainly equal.
The argument that we’re nowhere near parity with authoritarian regimes as corrupt as, say, Russia might be true– right now. If the left retakes control of the three branches, the fourth will fall. Court packing. Statehood for DC and PR will consolidate their power.
Nuclear Autumn
How the world almost ended in 1983.
by Michael Anton
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/nuclear-autumn/
Poor picked on Russia of today is not the USSR (Evil Empire) of yesterday. Other than that …..
Realists and isolationists and pragmatists; “Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!”
Turtler may wish to fisk your comment, not my wheelhouse, it is a work day for me.
Kate– You will want to read Heather MacDonald’s new article, over at Quillette this time: “Dismantle DEI Ideology: The disgraceful scenes at Stanford are a flawless embodiment of how diversity doctrine distorts academic life and constrains decision-making.”
I didn’t know until I read the article that McDonald attended Stanford Law herself: As a Stanford law student in the early 1980s, I tutored a classmate in legal writing. Based on her abysmal writing and analytical skills, that classmate did not belong at the Stanford Law School, though she would have done just fine at nearby Santa Clara Law School. Stanford welcomed her, however, with open arms, . . . just as it welcomes and celebrates members of every other group that proclaims itself “marginalized.”
It’s a long article but worth taking the time to read it, as it’s a masterful dissection of the mess at Stanford: https://quillette.com/2023/03/26/dismantle-dei-ideology/
OK, what does “aster” have to do with today?
Shorter Brian E.: America is not perfect. Therefore it has no right to try to stop Russia from genociding the Ukraine.
I see the arguments haven’t changed in my absence.
Stanford has a nearly 1:1 ratio between administrators and students. Not worth anyone’s money any more.
Since you like siblings acts, check out Lucy Thomas, former Great Britain’s Got Talent contestant, with her little sister Martha.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWPhcG74j84
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzyi0W2gymA
SHIREHOME, I read your comment and had to laugh.
I was born in Detroit, but I’ve lived for over 60 years as an LA area Valley Girl. Snow became an alien concept.
I did a quick subtraction and discovered that 45 years ago in April we drove to Albuquerque and then to Denver for an art show and we might have gotten caught in YOUR snow storm that year! (We couldn’t believe it. It was Spring.)
It’s a small world.
I spent a summer in Santa Fe a million years ago. And in July, some snow fell and accumulated, though it melted by about 8:00 am.
mkent, that’s not my position at all.
But if you are claiming we need to continue a globalist foreign policy in our use of the military, please make the case.
As to Ukraine specifically, this is Europe’s war. While the combined EU GDP is smaller than ours, their debt to GDP is also much smaller than ours, so they can afford to fund Ukraine. Their reluctance to help a fellow European country when faced by what is claimed to be an existential threat of their own, leads me to the conclusion they don’t view it as such.
As to “Russia genociding the Ukraine”, that is not my position. Evidence shows the Donbas and Crimea have legitimate claims to independence, which were ignored beginning from the creation of an independent Ukraine.
I am against the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and support a settlement that returns the border to pre-invasion status. LPR, DPR and Crimea would remain part of Russia.
As to what the US is now exporting as foreign policy– unfettered immigration, abortion and LGBTQ+ are stated goals. We now have our sights on destabilizing Hungary.
https://www.donbass-insider.com/2020/05/14/the-donbass-referendum-of-1994-on-which-the-whole-world-turned-a-blind-eye/
The media are making much of the description of the school shooter who took the lives of 6 people (3 children and 3 adults) at a Presbyterian school in Nashville earlier today as a “white woman”: “The 28-year-old woman who unleashed deadly terror at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday is just the fifth female mass shooter in US history, data shows.”
https://nypost.com/2023/03/27/nashville-shooter-fifth-female-mass-shooter-in-us-history/
But according to the comments below another Post article, “Audrey” Hale is a transwoman formerly named Aiden:
https://nypost.com/2023/03/27/nashville-school-shooter-idd-as-audrey-hale/
See also Twitter: https://twitter.com/Yiranoi/status/1640442424760885249
So maybe, just maybe, biological females are off the hook for this latest round of mayhem.
Brain E continues to denigerate European support for Ukraine. Laughable and sad. They know all about imperial Russian history and the Soviet behavior. They don’t have the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans (can’t count the Arctic Ocean or Bering Sea Brain E) to “protect” them.
And contrary to Brain E’s conception of national sovereignty Crimea, Donbas, Luhansk, Zaporhisia, and Kershon were not Russia before 2014. Anything else or any other parts of Europe do you want to give to Russia?
Pragmatic isolationism leads to further conflict. Sad, truly sad.
Back to work.
apparently ‘she’ had a manifesto and a map, all these psychos like levine and brinton, (he perpetuated the mania) and people who should know better like kackling kamala, and shambling and the golem who’s all better now, fanned the flames, special guest star role for david french, since he lives in tennessee and spread the two minute hate,
Most sources seem to think the shooter was a biological female presenting as male. It will take a while to clarify this. Meanwhile, we have a recent transgender shooting up a conservative Christian school. Expect the progressive media to drop this like a hot potato.
“Pragmatic isolationism leads to further conflict. Sad, truly sad.” -om
Examples please, so we can evaluate the claim.
apparently there was a trans week of vengeance being proposed, by the usual mostly nonviolent garbage people. the ones who this regime is all on board, with, so tell me who is the real threat to this country,
they really do hate this country with a passion,
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/03/27/joe-biden-opens-comments-nashville-christian-school-shooting-jokes-ice-cream/
History of the last century, especially the first 40 years. Coy, Brian E.
and apparently senate staffers, like rand pauls are open season in the Capitol,
I love penguins. We saw many on our trip to Argentina and Chile.
We had a wondrous experience walking among nesting penguins on Magdalena Island, which is near Punta Arenas, Argentina.
They have a mission in life, and nothing deters them. They mate, they produce young penguins, and they swim for food. And they do a lot of “talking.” Never a dull or quiet moment among the penguins on Magdalena.
We saw Emperor penguins in the Falkland Islands. They do such a delightful impression of Burgess Meredith as the Penguin character in Bat Man. They are very entertaining.
Too bad you have to travel so far to see them in person.
This morning I started a thread, “Harry Potter in French,” at a language learning site. After lunch I received an email from an academic mailing list recommending:
“Translating the Harry Potter Novels into French: Cultural Issues, Linguistic Features and Translation Strategies” by Rebecca Kirkman”
Does Skynet know I’m learning French and pass that information on to its minions?
Kirkman’s paper does explain some things I’ve wondered about while reading Harry Potter in French. Kirkman says translators have moved from a strategy of being faithful to the original to an attempt to come up with cultural equivalents in the target language and culture. Or at least the translator’s notion of such equivalents.
Which I understand and can agree with to a point. However, in Jean-Francois Menard’s translation it often seems arbitrary.
For instance, right off the bat Menard translates J.K. Rowling’s title “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” as “Harry Potter à L’École des Sorciers,” which is literally in English, “Harry Potter at the School of Sorcerers.”
The latter is a good title, but different, and for no good reason I can find, from the original. How is it a better title for a French audience?
By the current translation strategy one might translate “Romeo and Juliet” from Shakespearean English into modern English and wind up with “West Side Story.”
@huxley: Kirkman says translators have moved from a strategy of being faithful to the original to an attempt to come up with cultural equivalents in the target language and culture. Or at least the translator’s notion of such equivalents.
They have always done so. Mark Twain did a word-for-word English translation of a French translation of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and you can see what it looks like when they don’t.
A particularly interesting case is translating Jabberwocky.
…in the brain of a native speaker of English, “slithy” probably activates such symbols as “slimy”, “slither”, “slippery”, “lithe”, and “sly”, to varying extents. Does “lubricilleux” do the corresponding thing in the brain of a Frenchman? What indeed would be “the corresponding thing”? Would it be to activate symbols which are the ordinary translations of those words? What if there is no word, real or fabricated, which will accomplish that? Or what if a word does exist, but it is very intellectual-sounding and Latinate (“lubricilleux”), rather than earthy and Anglo-Saxon (“slithy”)? Perhaps “huilasse” would be better than “lubricilleux”? Or does the Latin origin of the word “lubricilleux” not make itself felt to a speaker of French in the way that it would if it were an English word (“lubricilious”, perhaps)?
J.K. Rowling’s title “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”
That was not J. K. Rowling’s title. That was the title for American audiences. Her title was “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”. It’s no more defensible than the French one. The Philosopher’s Stone is an alchemical term, and that nuance was stripped out of the American title.
Ive read some english translation of spanish books which were better than the original text some others are not that good
So, the Stanford snowflakes stand with a pedophile pornographer. They’re not claiming his innocence; they’re denouncing “dead-naming.”
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Our professional-managerial class and their juvenile auxilliary are given to the stupidest and most malicious fads.
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Criminal records should never be expunged.
Frederick:
I wondered why I kept remembering the first book as “HP and the Philosopher’s Stone”!
I wouldn’t defend that change either.
Translation is inevitably a messy, imperfect business. It’s always a matter of trade-offs. There will never be perfection.
The Twain analogy is interesting, but covers a multitude of sins from high-level translation strategy to low-level words in one language not lining up with similar words in another language, as well as translator whims.
Right now I’m complaining about the last. By what rationale does one change “stone” to “school”?
Or, say, in the early scene where Dumbledore offers a “lemon drop” candy to Prof. McGonagle. In the French he offers McGonagle an “esquimau au citron” — a “lemon popsicle” (or literally an “eskimo with lemon”).
Do they not have lemon-flavored hard candy in France? Also, I had trouble visualizing Dumbledore pulling extra lemon popsicles out of his pocket. Sure, he could magic them into existence, but the text makes no mention of that.
@huxley:By what rationale does one change “stone” to “school”?
I wasn’t in any of the meetings. But the original title (“Philosopher’s Stone”) emphasizes the problem Harry Potter has to solve. The American title (“Sorceror’s Stone”) was probably chosen to emphasize that it’s a book about wizard kids and not philosophy majors*, in other words who is solving the problem. And the French title emphasizes the setting where the problem is solved (the school Hogwarts), which isn’t a bad way to introduce the series as Hogwarts is practically a character in its own right.
*I have heard legends about moms who took their kids to see (or bought them the book) A Boy and His Dog.
If an accurate portrayal of events, the piece is a reminder how arrogant we have been facing global powers, and why Russia might continue to distrust us today.
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Either you’ve misinterpreted him or his thesis is worthless.
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But in its discussion of the internal struggle of the Republican party to define a foreign policy, it might be a instructive between what might better be termed the “realist” vs. “globalist” struggle over foreign policy going forward.
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No, it wouldn’t be ‘better termed’ that. ‘Realist’ is already taken as a school within international relations theory. It’s formally a schematic understanding based on historical data. Like other theoretical understandings, exponents tend to be irritated when actors when actors refuse to behave according to script. “Globalist” is a popular term to describe politicians who want to subordinate national governments to sketchy intergovernmental bodies run by people such as themselves and to subjugate national populations by importing a lot of foreigners. One of these is not a counterpoint to the other.
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A “realist” policy defines interventionism in terms of vital US interests, and a recognition that there are limits to our military, which even technology can’t overcome.
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You see, without the counsel of Andrew Bacevich, we might think there were no limits to the capacity of the military to do anything officials decide to do after lunch.
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Under the guise of fighting communism, we’ve engaged in overt or covert military operations in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Libya, Panama, Nicaragua, Syria, Kuwait and Ukraine. Oh yes, Grenada. I’m sure I’m missing many of the covert operations that we managed to avoid detection.
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We’ve been about as ‘covert’ as a steam calliope in 10 of these 11 locations. ‘Communism’ was never at issue in seven of these conflicts (six occurred after the close of the Cold War). There was no ‘guise’ in these of these cases; we were fighting Soviet clients. The last case had two phases, one in which we were undermining Soviet clients and the other fighting Muslim revanchists.
We started having the conversation in conservative circles as to the wisdom of the US acting as global cop years ago.
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We never acted as ‘global cop’. We’ve had extended military operations in four countries over a period of 76 years. The ratio of military spending to domestic product is right now near the nadir of the period since 1939 and the proportion of American military manpower billeted abroad is as low as it has been at that time.
And the French title emphasizes the setting where the problem is solved (the school Hogwarts), which isn’t a bad way to introduce the series as Hogwarts is practically a character in its own right.
Frederick:
Sure, but here I would say the translator is rewriting, not translating. In which case the translator should move to Hollywood for more honest employment.
I can imagine the rationale for the lemon drops. “Lemon drop” is an English colloquial phrase for a typical English candy. What’s a French lemon sweet with a colloquial name?
Oui! “Esquimau au citron”. How clever I am!
*I have heard legends about moms who took their kids to see (or bought them the book) A Boy and His Dog.
Frederick:
Good old Harlan Ellison. The man who successfully sued James Cameron for an undisclosed sum over “Terminator.”
Evidence shows the Donbas and Crimea have legitimate claims to independence, which were ignored beginning from the creation of an independent Ukraine.
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A referendum on a declaration of sovereignty was held in 1991. It won a majority in every region of the country at that time, including the Crimea. The last elections for the Crimean legislature ‘ere Russia seized the territory were in 2010; the parties favorable to re-incorporation into Russia (Russian Unity and the Communist Party of the Ukraine) won all of 12% of the vote between them. Neither of these parties won control of any local councils in the Donetsk or the Lukhansk regions in 2010.
Art Deco:
Brain E doesn’t recognize those later elections or the Russian invasion and siezure of Crimea. Inconvenient.
Art Deco, Anton begins with the foreign policy divide in the Republican party, how Nixon pivoted to detente and how Reagan’s policies years later changed, possibly because of the events in 1983 beginning just before the downing of KAL 007, to a malfunction of Russian defense satellite/computers that recorded a multiple launch of US missiles and then the Able Archer/war games and misunderstandings by the Russians as to our motives, based on other events happening near the same time.
His thesis was this was the closest the world came to nuclear war since the 1962 crisis.
“Reagan’s initial toughness was a necessary corrective to Carter’s fecklessness and Nixon’s détente, put the Soviets on their back foot, and forced them back to the table, resetting the stage for a Western victory. Nineteen eighty-three came to be seen as a kind of mirror-image of 1938, teaching the same lesson: appeasement begets war, toughness brings peace—or better yet, victory.
There is no doubt something to this, but even on its own terms, this rendering skips over important elements. The first is that the stakes matter. And the stakes in the Cold War were the very highest: the survival of the free world and maybe even the existence of the whole world. By 1980, it was plausible to fear that freedom and even humanity were losing. It was therefore not unreasonable to believe that calculated risks were warranted.
But you never know where toughness might lead, what it might provoke. When the consequences of toughness could be total destruction, it is rational—moral, even—to be tough only when the stakes are equally enormous. Toughness not in the service of a core interest—or the core of all core interests—is not merely foolish but reckless.
One reason one never knows where toughness might lead is that you can never be sure you really understand your adversary—or that he understands you. In 1983, both sides misunderstood one another. The Americans assumed the Soviets knew that all those flybys, flyovers, fleet maneuvers, dummy warheads, and DEFCON escalations were just drills. The Soviets, for their part, knew no such thing. They really believed that it all might be prelude to a surprise first strike.
Later informed of Moscow’s alarm, Reagan was offended. “I don’t see how they could believe that,” he said, quickly adding, “but it’s something to think about.” It was, eventually, thought about, in hindsight. That 1990 report on Perroots’s restraint observed that “in the years leading up to Able Archer,” national security officials “had received no guidance as to the possible significance of apparent changes in Soviet military and political thinking.””
In my estimation, these events and subsequent fall of the Soviet Union led us to act from a position of power. We had won. Russia had lost. There are experts who think we could have contained the bear without poking it in policy decision after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The article is worth reading, IMO.
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/nuclear-autumn/
Brain E doesn’t recognize those later elections or the Russian invasion and siezure of Crimea. Inconvenient.
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The referenda and elections to which I’m referring occurred in 1991, 2010, and 2012. You’ve had Russophile parties competing since. They haven’t been advocates of merging parts of the Ukraine with Russia nor did the Party of Regions, which was the plurality winner in 2012 and the father of the current generation of Russophile parties. . The Russophile parties saw 60% of their electoral base evaporate after 2014. I don’t think the last year has improved their electoral prospects going forward.
“There are experts that think we could have contained the bear ….”
Why would the bear want to be contained? A bear didn’t get to be the largest country in the world (area) by staying in its own “range” or territory for hundreds of years. Funny that bear always seems to want to be a bigger uncontained bruin. History.
But it is the west’s fault. Poor Russia.
Anton begins with the foreign policy divide in the Republican party, how Nixon pivoted to detente and how Reagan’s policies years later changed, possibly because of the events in 1983 beginning just before the downing of KAL 007, to a malfunction of Russian defense satellite/computers that recorded a multiple launch of US missiles and then the Able Archer/war games and misunderstandings by the Russians as to our motives, based on other events happening near the same time.
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Conflict in the Republican Party over the direction of foreign policy was at its peak ca. 1975. Neither Gerald Ford nor Henry Kissinger set up shop as critics of the Reagan Administration. The Republicans in Congress objecting to Reagan’s foreign policy were the usual sorts whose general viewpoint was closer to the median of the Democratic caucus than it was to the median of the Republican caucus (e.g Charles Mathias), appended to which were some idiosyncratic characters (Mark Hatfield, Ron Paul, Paul Findlay). The principals in charge of foreign policy during the Reagan years were Alexander Haig, George Schultz, Caspar Weinberger, Frank Carlucci, William J. Casey, William Webster, Richard Allen, Wm. Clark, Robert MacFarlane, John Poindexter, Colin Powell, Eugene Rostow, Edward Rowney, Wm. Brock, Clayton Yuetter, Peter McPherson, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Vernon Walters. Nine of the people on this list held consequential positions in the Nixon Administration.
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There weren’t any coarse changes in the direction of American foreign policy in 1983 quite the contrary. There were changes in Soviet policy after 1984 to which American administrations responded.
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There are experts who think we could have contained the bear without poking it in policy decision after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
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This is a nonsense statement. Russia did not invade the Ukraine 30 years after the end of the Cold War because they were ‘poked’.
Art Deco, Re: the Donbass, I’m referring to a 1994 referendum held in the Luhansk and Donetesk oblasts concerning language and federalization of the region which voted overwhelming in favor. True, independence wasn’t on the ballot, but Russia was growing through its own birthing crisis. The link I provided earlier is about that referendum. They also describe the wording of the 1991 referendum on Ukraine independence as being “deceitful.”
…”the vote on the independence of Ukraine on December 1, 1991 became a form of deceit of the people, as the question was raised: “Do you confirm the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine?” The wording itself already contained the answer “yes” – the question was not whether you are FOR independence or against it, but whether there was an act or not. Of course, it was. The people were simply deceived. I’m not saying that if the wording were different, people would have voted against it, but this fact should be kept in mind.”
—————–
“However, in Crimea, the percentage of “yes” votes was only 37% of total voters, and in Sevastopol, it was just 40%. Moreover, it has been argued that many of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who voted for independence believed that they were voting to abolish the Soviet Union, which would be followed by some sort of reunification with a non-Communist Russia.”
In 1992 the Crimean Rada voted to declare its independence, only to rescind the vote the next day.
These are also the regions with the highest ethnic Russian population.
Yanukovych, (Party of Regions), who ran on a platform of better relations with the EU and Russia, was elected overwhelming by Eastern Ukrainians in 2010. No, there was no talk of independence in 2010, and I’ve never indicated that was so.
The events of 2014 were the catalyst that prompted these regions to separate from Ukraine.
https://www.donbass-insider.com/2020/05/14/the-donbass-referendum-of-1994-on-which-the-whole-world-turned-a-blind-eye/
https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2014/03/understanding-the-constitutional-situation-in-crimea/
Art Deco, I can spend as much time explaining Anton’s article as it would take for you to read it.
I didn’t say Reagan’s policies changed in 1983, but the events of that year later changed Reagan’s policies after he became aware of how close we came to war, according to Anton.
Re: Michael Anton article:
Brian E:
Clearly I have underestimated Michael Anton. Thanks for the pointer. I was struck by this:
__________________________________
It’s easy for conservatives to praise Ronald Reagan for 1983: not only was the apocalypse avoided but the happiest of endings materialized a mere six years later. But disaster easily could have happened—how would Reagan be remembered then?
__________________________________
I was in the Nuclear Freeze back then. I remember how scary 1983 was.
I attended a big demo in San Francisco the week “The Day After,” a movie about a nuclear war. was shown on television. I was marching with my liberal Christian affinity group.
An Asian woman, dressed Mao-style, from the RCP (Revolutionary Communist Party) was running up and down the line of protesters, screaming, “You think your government cares! You think you can stop the war! But it’s like the movie.”
It really could have gone that way.
It really could have but it didn’t. Pigs could fly but they don’t. Old liberals feeling good about how wise they were.
I didn’t say Reagan’s policies changed in 1983, but the events of that year later changed Reagan’s policies after he became aware of how close we came to war, according to Anton.
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His policies did not change.
These are also the regions with the highest ethnic Russian population.
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The ethnic Russian population is Donetsk and Lukhansk amounts to 38% of the total, and not all of them favor incorporation into Russia.
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I’m referring to a 1994 referendum held in the Luhansk and Donetesk oblasts concerning language and federalization of the region which voted overwhelming in favor.
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So what? Ordinary inter-regional differences over policy do not constitute a secessionist movement nor can they justify a foreign invasion.
“However, in Crimea, the percentage of “yes” votes was only 37% of total voters, and in Sevastopol, it was just 40%.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_referendum
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The events of 2014 were the catalyst that prompted these regions to separate from Ukraine.
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The only separation which occurred was a consequence of raw force.
Reagan wanted a defense shield because he thought MAD was immoral and provocative now the same morons like kerry and biden are hell mell to a war we avoided 40 years ago because they hate Communists no because they want Communism to succeed
So Vlad is anti communist now? Otay, senor.
Who is telling us you will own nothing and be happy and is proceeding to make that possible um
And Vlad is fighting against the Communists but is becomming a vasal to Xi? How does that work?
It really could have but it didn’t. Pigs could fly but they don’t. Old liberals feeling good about how wise they were.
om:
I suggest reading Anton’s piece or other accounts of how close nuclear war was in the early 80s. It was more like birds could fly, but as it happened then, they didn’t.
If there had been a nuclear war then, no one sensible would have been surprised. And I suspect history would evaluate Reagan differently.
I don’t see it as a moment of liberal wisdom, just that liberals weren’t wrong about everything and conservatives aren’t always right. Reagan, as Anton claims and I have read elsewhere, did have a change of heart or thinking then.
I see it as the tragedy of history, that often we are stuck with dangerous situations where there is no clear good choice available, yet we must pick one, roll the dice and hope for the best.
@Brian E
I’ve had a very love-hate relationship with Anton. When he is good he is very good, but when he is off his game (as I find particularly in foreign affairs) he is a damp squib.
An example of some of his lackluster research comes in things like this.
Nope, the Reichstag Fire wasn’t a False Flag event. It was an actual arson by a Communist hardliner (Marinius van der Lubbe) meant to try and spark a Communist revolution against the National Socialists after he – being a weirdo, pyromaniac loner who had been turned down by everybody he had pitched this plan to – decided to try and “Do it Live.” And notably the narrative that the Reichstag Fire was a false flag originated with the Stalinists with scant proof and has gotten systematically destroyed since then by actual forensic and architectural investigation.
Now, is it a bit off to focus so much on this tangential point? Maybe, but I think it shows how clumsy Anton can be with his evidence and willing to massage things to make it look like they support his narrative even when they do not.
This is simply untrue on a massive scale. Indeed, even near the onset Eisenhower periodically outflanked Stevenson and to some degree even Truman on doing so, mustering his star power as the Generalissimo of the Western Allies in Europe during WWII and a career soldier to get away with often strikingly dovish stances, especially in terms of military spending. This tends to get undermined given Eisenhower’s in many ways unhinged nuclear strategy, but that itself underlined how Eisenhower was not given to half-measures (even if they would often be more economical or effective) and how he sought to avoid confrontation with the Soviets.
And I could probably think of a few more cases here.
The big issue is that for the first half of the Cold War, the Democrat mainstream were really not much less Hawkish than the Republicans were. This began to change in the turmoil of the 1960s and especially the 1970s, particularly with the DNC Convention Riots in 1968, but even those were a product of them nominating a relatively conservative Democrat and hawk. This is stuff Anton admits to in his full article, but either does not give proper attention to or outright downplays, such as the Eisenhower Hawk-Dove hybrid policy.
Not really. A strategic rapprochement with the PRC was hardly flanking Humphrey to the left.
Not really. Detente was much more bipartisan than Anton wishes to admit, as was Kissinger’s role as a “Grand Old Man” prior to Nixon. In particular he tacitly overlooks the JFK and especially LBJ eras, and ignores how Nixon’s shift towards China was a step away from the focus on detente directly with the Soviets.
This is probably tertiary, but I have to ask which war are we referring to with “pre-war”? Since Vandenberg was an isolationist prior to WWII, albeit not to the same degree as Taft.
Anton is understating the matter to a vast degree. We not only have the pilot’s words that he could tell the airplane was Boeing, but we have audio records from the likes of the pilot at the time giving visual identification of the craft. The Bukovsky Archive has quite a lot of material on it but I am still digging.
In any case, this puts the Soviet case on a much, much worse light. While it IS True that Civilian Airlines can be used for military purposes (and indeed the US – and especially the CIA – had done so before), a positive visual confirmation that the plane type was that of a civilian airliner out in the Far East should have given caution. Especially since KAL was not one of the shell companies of “Air America” but an internationally famous and heavily trafficked international carrier, and there was no pressing time concern like after the first reports of plane impact on 9/11.
The sane and ethical decision would have been to wait for more evidence or to actually buzz the plane in an attempt to drive it off, and I can say this without fear of being an unreasonable Monday Morning Quarterback.
Instead the Soviets opted to shoot it down under the incredibly thin justification that it MIGHT be being used for military or surveillance purposes, and then to Lie about it.
A few things.
Firstly: Anton is getting his terminology confused. “Intercepted” can mean any method of interception, from nonviolent encountering to (at least as typical in day to day parlance) shooting it down, eg “Intercepted the enemy plane over ____, Intercepted the Missiles”.
Secondly: In true sleight of hand, Anton is following the old Leftist Media playbook of “Republicans Pounce.” The old saying is that when Republicans do something their doing something is the story, but when Democrats do something it is the Republican Reaction that is the story.
This manages to be even more immoral, stupid, and even evil. Because it’s not doing this with the Republicans or Democrats but with the Goddamn SOVIETS. And in particular it is doing so with them shooting down a civilian airliner that had accidentally strayed into their airspace, killing everybody aboard, and then LYING about it for years on end, ranging from denial that such a shootdown happened to blood libel that the airliner was engaged in spying.
And yet Anton thinks it was the AMERICAN reaction to this rather unprecedented and quite beyond the pale series of actions that was TRYING TO delegitimize the Soviets? The Soviet actions here were delegitimizing.
And this is not because only the Soviets would shoot down a civilian airliner. That is obviously untrue and the US had done so, most infamously with an Iranian airliner. The difference is, the US acknowledged IMMEDIATELY that it was at fault and paid damages (….. to a terrorist dictatorship in a stated war with us). Because while this was never going to look GOOD, the US and other nations could at least get out ahead of the curve by honestly (or at least more or less honestly) explaining what went wrong, what happened, WHY the shoot down occurred, and that they are very very sorry and willing to pay for it.
The Soviets, in true Soviet fashion, insisted that they had done nothing wrong and everybody but them was to blame. Which beyond its ethical, moral, and legal bankruptcy was thoroughly stupid from a realist point of view, because it delegitimized the USSR beyond what the US could do by its rhetoric, it invited sanctions, and it showed the Soviets had not learned from previous mistakes like this (usually where they handled it better).
I could fisk more, and in particular I view Anton as massively misjudging the effects of Reagan’s first term policies, but I think that underlines many of the issues here. Oh yes, and the obligatory “No WMD in Iraq” nonsense nod.
It’s not. It is at best half-accurate, which also means it is also half-inaccurate.
Again, there’s something disgraceful about Anton condemning Reagan’s hugely successful (if controversial) first term policies and in particular going light on the utterly immoral, stupid, and bad Soviet behavior regarding KAL 007 in favor of making an issue over the very reasonable US retaliation for it. It’s also important for me to understate how rare civilian airliner shootdowns OUTSIDE OF Combat Zones is.
It’s also worth noting that the El Al Flight 402 shoot down, happening on the other end of the Cold War by Communist Bulgaria, saw the Communists with less relative blame (for instance the flight diverted much more extremely from its path) and saw the Communists publicly express regret without accusing the victims of spying (though it did accuse them – reasonably enough – of fucking up their navigation and diverging from the planned route, which seems to have been true but hardly a reason to die). So Soviet policy on this matter remained bad and arguably got worse over time.
Art Deco rebutted this conceptualization and false dichotomy better than I can, so I will ignore it. The proper dichotomies would probably be Isolationist v. Interventionist in terms of the outlook of foreign policy , and Nationalist vs. Globalist in terms of where one believes proper authority for the US is. With those two spectrums creating quadrants.
Art Deco pointed out that only some of those were even vaguely against communism. There are also a lot of non-covert operations you missed, such as US support of the Philippine Government against the Communist Huk and Islamists in the Moro Regions. And frankly we’ve won the majority of those conflicts, since most don’t even attract enough commitment or attention to be noted.
Even from your list, we won Grenada, Iraq, Serbia, Libya, Panama, Nicaragua (with the Sandinistas having to rebuild themselves almost from the start to retake power) and Kuwait and have promising results in Ukraine. We also obtained some success in Afghanistan in destroying the AQ bases and networks there and dislocating the Taliban for a generation.
And this is not counting a host of others. The Philippines, Lebanon in 1958 (in contrast to the better known but more disastrous expedition to Lebanon in the 1980s culminating in the Marine Corps Barracks bombing and our pullout), the Greek Civil War, the post-Vietnam Thai Border War, and so forth.
So there are a lot of victories and a few losses you left out because they didn’t attract the same level of attention.
No, that is a fair question. And I’d also add the caveat that many of even the victories in stabilizing a region didn’t do it “for good.” The Sandinistas were gutted by our hybrid war under Reagan but not destroyed, and decades later Ortega returned and now rules over Nicaragua as dictator once again.
This I agree with, but I also think that is why the proper way to view the foreign policy issue is with the two competing dichotomies rather than the one.
This is true, and I agree. It’s also why I have preferred to focus on waging holding actions abroad for now to buy us time to fix the nightmare we are facing here. I am more jejune about what American Values are now compared to many of the others such as the one admittedly hilarious Kremlin propaganda piece about “Russia if America wins” talking about things like involuntary sex changes, but even I could wince at the kernel of truth in that strawman. We need to fix ourselves first.
And in spite of being one of the blog’s premier anti-Putin “Ukraine Hawks” or the like who is in favor of something like a 90s-Croatia-style buildup of Ukrainian, Georgian, and Romanian and Moldovan war machines in order to forcibly reconquer the occupied areas of their countries. I have also admitted quite bluntly that if given a choice to sell out Ukraine in exchange for getting the US back and purging the domestic left’s corruption and oppression, I would, even if it would shame me. But I do not see how failing to support Ukraine would help on that regards.
Quite understandable, and that is one reason why whatever others may say, I won’t accuse you of being a tool of the Kremlin or the like without more evidence. I hesitated to do so with Bunge in spite of what I think is far more evidence, but eventually that along with the crudeness made me conclude.
It SHOULD be, in a better world, but as it stands the only European nation that explicitly signed on the dotted line to safeguard Ukrainian independence and territorial integrity at Budapest was the UK. There are other, broader commitments from the EU nations in places like the OPSC framework, but we are on the line there too.
Moreover, as cases like Hungary, Turkey, and Germany show, without US leadership (or at least crude pantomimes of it from Biden’s puppetmasters), things tend to either not happen or do so slower.
And by and large many of them are, especially among a number of first adopters like most of Eastern Europe, the Netherlands, and even Sweden and Finland. I’d still argue they are not doing enough, but they are doing it. The likes of Germany and Hungary loom large both because they do but also because they have been much more vocal in complaining about things, but they are hardly the only Europeans around.
Then what would you talk about the Swedes and Dutch (and not just the usual suspects among the former pact states) routinely breaking a lot of taboos to ship equipment over?
Fair, but it absolutely is the policy of the Russian regime, as shown by its diet-lebensborn policy of deporting Ukrainians (especially young ones) to Russia for forced adoption and re-eduction, and also the abundant rhetoric by either the Kremlin directly or trusted henchmen like Kadyrov talking about how no Ukrainian nation exists, or should exist, or how it should be nuked.
They had legitimate claims to independence, but they were mooted by democratic vote since majorities even in their own places rejected independence in favor of remaining with Ukraine, and the Russian government at the time opted to disarm Ukraine of nuclear weapons rather than prioritize supporting the separatists for more territory.
The legitimacy of those results and the international agreement cannot be easily thrown away. ESPECIALLY not for illegitimate occupation regimes imposed by a foreign power by nakedly illegitimate and violent fashion after the fact.
Recognizing that Chinese central power had been too great for centuries and was also so during the “Nanjing Decade” of KMT/GMD totalitarianism under Chiang/Jiang and that Chinese regions had a legitimate right to greater autonomy and rights did not mean justifying any given warlord regime. And it certainly didn’t justify utterly artificial puppet dictatorships put up by Stalin or whatever Japanese junta happened to be in power that month.
Understandable, and I acknowledge that.
The issue I see is that the invasions started in 2014. 2022 was just the elaboration of it.
Which is a cogent stance, and one worthy of addressing, though one I reject.
My own stance is much more hawkish and blunt. Of returning the situation to the pre-2014 status quo. Including the forced disestablishment of the current Crimean satrapy and the DNR and LNR, followed by plebicites to determine where the Russo-Ukrainian border in the Donbas is.
However, I must categorically reject the legitimacy of every single one of the “separatist” Russian puppet governments. At their most “legitimate” we have the Crimean Presidium, which betrayed their constitutional oaths to Ukraine and accepted unauthorized, illegal Russian Spetznaz deployments while – and this is the absolute big one – engaging in a campaign of murder, torture, and disappearances against dissidents or suspected dissidents and Ukrainian military personnel, as Reshat Ametov can attest. They deserve to go to the gallows or shooting line, but due to the natures of peace some kind of parachute can be allowed.
While the DPR and LPR, regardless of whatever public support they have (and evidence indicates it is much, MUCH less than they pretend), are basically corrupt warlord states invented out of whole cloth and with heavy influence from international terrorists like Girkin. Now the Taliban mean they are far from the worst entity we’ve negotiated with, but that doesn’t mean they can be trusted or be tenable peace partners.
Understandable, and that is one reason why I reject Biden and co and condemn that. Especially given the greater threats. And why I place Ukraine as a much less priority than our own.
The “Splendid Isolation” of the British Empire and the US around the same time are perhaps the best examples due to some degree of isolation being a consciously chosen policy, and it isn’t surprising they had a similar core problem. The German Empire under the leadership of first Bismarck and Caprvi, and then Wilhelm II. It interpreted limited isolationism (partially correctly, I think) as evidence of weakness and began to push in some odd ways. The exact history is complicated and not nearly as much of a straight story as is often painted (for instance the US and UK faced off with Germany in one of the underheralded crises of world history over Samoa in 1887 only to have a possible world war delayed by a tropical storm, only for crises over Venezuela a few years earlier to see Britain, Germany, and Italy joining arms against a Venezuelan dictatorship championed by the US)., but by the end of the 19th century it had basically turned into a quest by Germany to obtain global power status at the expense of the seemingly-fading British Empire and what the German leadership believed was a divided and decadent but growing America, which I would argue ultimately led to the first Cold War in American history (certainly international foreign history) with the Germans, though in a very onesided fashion.
This eventually but unevenly led to WWI and British and American involvements in it.
We also have a fair few other issues, such as the Mughal Empire’s turn towards internal affairs (or at least disinterest in matters outside of the Subcontinent and conquering the Deccan) helping to pave the way for a devastating Persian invasion of the place that pillaged the capital under Nadr Shah.
There’s also plenty of cases where attempts to enforce isolation strictly leads to conflicts, like with Sakoku era Japan and Late Joseon China, which led to multiple naval expeditions to those countries. Likewise the quest for Soviet Autarky which spared a bunch of conflicts on the frontiers to try and seize “necessary” resources.
And I could go on, but those are some examples that come to mind.
In any case I feel we would all be better served by me writing more in depth to respond to your other points, but I can return to this issue and give more examples before.
And for various reasons I find he did at best a half-baked one.
It also probably had at least as much to do with the growing US superiority and the rise of an at least vocally reformist Soviet GenSec in the form of Gorbachev (who some archival research has shown was no saint, such as justifying the Tiananmen Massacres, but who looked like one in comparison to the next).
I do think Anton goes too far in trying to play Bothsidesism, in particularly understating how grotesque and unjustifiable Soviet actions were in KAL 007, not just in the shoot down but especially in the lying, justifying, and blood libel. Ironic given how the East Bloc and other powers were much better at it.
In particular I think Anton ignores the obvious. That Able Archer became the crisis it did was the Soviets’ fault on two levels.
Firstly: They were projecting their own behavior and thoughts onto us, and assuming we MIGHT launch an invasion of them under cover of an exercise because THEY had considered doing so to us multiple times.
Secondly and even more inexcusably: We KNOW the Soviets and their puppets had spent millions and millions of basically everything (Rubles, Gold, Man Hours) in contracting their global spy network and they had sources deep in NATO. And so they doubtless had contact with their spies who were either telling them they didn’t know what was happening or telling them that this was an exercise and NATO was not planning to attack. Apparently they disregarded both.
I can understand preparation, deterrence, and wariness. Especially since they had some reason to believe something drastic might happen given Reagan’s liberation of Grenada in spite of claiming he would not and the international backlash he got, as well as some degree of the Soviets buying into their own narratives.
But neither can justify the Soviet actions re: Able Archer from either a moral perspective OR a practical one. It points to the psychoses in the Kremlin about paranoia, self-righteousness, and hostility that are squarely its fault. Especially if the Soviets are going to largely ignore the intelligence given from their lavishly funded intel agencies after the “Late Golden Age” of the “Grand Chekist” Andropov.
Fair, but still.
There is no such thing as a world without calculated risks. So the question is which calculated warrants are there.
Again, these would be MUCH better directed at the Soviet regimes than against Reagan.
Ultimate blame behind KAL 007 and the Able Archer war scare MUST lie with the Soviets. Both were catalyzed by Soviet bellicosity, aggression, and idiocy, as well as ignoring best practices in the past (including in their own history).
At least in Able Archer this didn’t lead to them doing anything illegal or particularly immoral (since as a nuclear power they had a right to preparation), though it did lead to a catastrophic waste of resources from the unnecessary readiness (and apparently the espionage investments they threw in the toilet ignoring their own spies and sources within the West). But KAL 007 is another matter and showed them actively being worse than their own prior history in the Cold War, and then doubling and quadrupling down on inflammatory, insulting, and dishonest deception and then blood libel that happily destroyed their own legitimacy.
Both crises were about crucial interests to the US, at least as seen. Able Archer was an openly discussed NATO exercise, and NATO had every right to conduct peaceful military exercises on its own territory, as the Soviets well knew. KAL 007 is again more profound, because it touches on the subjects of Innocent Transgress into another nation’s territory, a necessary corollary to Freedom of the Seas. A concept that was at the heart of American Foreign Policy all the way back to the Founders and which could not be abandoned any more than it could be in the Persian Gulf.
Simply put, the US had to take a stand on both, but moreso on KAL 007 because the Soviets didn’t do anything illegal or murderous (just stupid) as a result of Able Archer. They absolutely did to KAL 007 and then engaged in nation-scale fraud and blood libel against their victims. The fact that Anton is downplaying the importance of these and the nature of Soviet responsibility for both the folly and the crime makes me respect him MUCH less as both a person and an analyst. Which when married to his many other issues (such as the claim that Detente came from Nixon and that no Republican had outflanked the Dems to the Left during the First Half of the Cold War) does not help.
You can be reasonably sure, and in any case you can take steps to fact-check and evaluate your own understandings. The Soviets obviously understood this, or else they’d have never invested what they did into their spycraft. Which makes their disregard of it during Able Archer all the more galling.
Because again, the Soviets were reading their own behavior and motives onto us.
Which is some degree of incompetence but also understandable to some degree, especially after Grenada. What ISN’T understandable was their disregard of their own intelligence assets, which should have told them plenty about the nature of Able Archer.
Frankly, Reagan was right to be offended for the reasons I mentioned. It also points to how obsession with self-blame and one’s own responsibility when dealing with pathological actors is often self-defeating. Because sometimes, the core of the problem isn’t you, it’s them. My hatred of the Soviet Union and the entire Communist ideology and its leaders is not enough to prevent me from giving them due credit where it is warranted or admitting where they were wronged, but in this case Able Archer and KAL 007 were ultimately their faults, and nobody else’s responsibility even comes Close to that held by them.
Which is an issue and I do think points to systematic problems with US Spycraft. But that also underlines how impotent and dysfunctional Western Intel was towards the Soviets at the time. It also doesn’t talk as much about the other side of the coin.
And that’s before we get into Petrov’s Case, where Soviet idiocy and bellicosity as well as negligence towards their own equipment SHOULD have triggered a Nuclear World War, and only brave insubordination changed that.
The common denominator of all three things are the pathologies and dysfunctions of the Soviet Leadership and their ruthless, idiotic, and self-righteous approach to the world. All of which can be MANAGED by the US and others (and indeed were) but are ultimately not the US’s fault. The fact that Anton is engaged in what I view as soft-pedalling this fact is in my opinion not just a grave analytic failing of his article but also a moral failing.
And we were CORRECT to act from a position of power, as that was basic geopoltics. Nor could we entirely AVOID doing so, due to the nature of foreign policy and the world, because nature and human relations abhor vacuums. And horrifyingly devastating vacuums had emerged in former Communist space like the Balkans and the Black Sea that demanded attention.
Again with the rhetoric of “containing the bear without poking it.”
I reject this analysis on two grounds.
Firstly: Admitting that voluntary NATO expansion without allowing a “Russia Veto” is somehow “poking” or “provoking” the bear is not only blinkered, it is also violating a couple key tenets of US Foreign Policy and even fundamental US values such as Self-Determination and national sovereignty. Potent things that even perennial realists and anti-NATO-Expansion advocates like James Baker and HW Bush admitted could not be ignored (and that Gorbachev accepted). Simply put the nations of Central and Eastern Europe had every right to make their voices heard independently of an overweening and often abusive Russia.
The fact that they loudly thundered for entry into NATO should have been unsurprising even in foresight, but is particularly so in hindsight. This was not helped by Kremlin misadventures in Moldova, Georgia, and now Ukraine (by far the largest post-Soviet state outside of Russia and one of the few that did EMBRACE neutrality and non-alignment, only to be rewarded by frustrating trade wars, domestic assassinations, and ultimately invasion and partition from the Kremlin).
Secondly: The fact that the Kremlin thinks it has the right to do so on a level far more so than the most grandiose and far-reaching interpretations of the Monroe Doctrine (even Olney’s Gun from the Venezuela Crisis) points to similar pathologies of aggression, violence, self-righteousness, and lack of accountability that led to KAL 007, the Petrov scare, and the Able Archer scare. It indicates that the Party Grandees that came to dominate the Putin Era have not learned that diplomacy is a two way street and that at least formally most members are equal, that there are rules for Thee but not for Me, and that agreements are but Scraps of Paper that can be thrown out.
Which is why until I see that being cured, I do not think the core problems will change.
The article is worth reading, IMO.
I read the source separately, and I was laughing at it accusing others of being “deceitful.” And on false grounds.
Firstly: The source makes no reference to the numbers of people that voted in the referendum. Which makes it hard (intentionally so) to gauge the depths of feeling and how widespread the referendum was. This is in sharp contrast to the 1994 Votes in Crimea, which were rigorously documented.
Secondly: The source is a goddamn liar.
The “fact” is BS.
I realize the author is probably not a native English speaker, but A: That does not justify such a mistake when choosing to write in the English Language, and B: Even non-native speakers should be able to grasp this fairly easily.
“Do you confirm the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine? The wording itself already contained the answer “yes” – the question was not whether you are FOR independence or against it, but whether there was an act or not. ”
This is incoherent balderdash. There was obviously an Act of Independence (it was compiled and passed in August), but being asked to ” Do you CONFIRM (it)” prompts for whether or not one SUPPORTS it or is AGAINST it, that “the question was (…) whether you are FOR independence or against it.”
Again, this is pretty basic language.
And confirmed by the Ukrainian and Russian language renderings of the Act and the relevant votes.
The fact that the author tried to pull a fast one over any reader naive or uninformed enough to not check them says NOTHING good about their competence, reading comprehension, or honesty. It is more than sufficient reason to disbelieve anything else they write.
Thirdly: The author “conveniently” ignores the fact that most of the bones of contention were defacto accepted in Ukraine, especially regarding regional autonomy and particularly the Russian language. Ukraine was dominated by natively Russophone administrations who typically placed the languages on parity.
Again, this is laughable as I mentioned. Zelenskyy is on the record at least offering a referendum, albeit on terms that involve the demilitarization of the region by both sides and international observation. And even if you believe the offer was insincere, it doesn’t change the fact that the Russian Government and “Separatists” didn’t bother to call his bluff. It also ignores the continuing of regular elections in the unoccupied areas of the Donbas and Luhansk for the duration of the conflict.
So the “Kyiv Regime” isn’t the one that comes across as fearing a referendum. Unsurprising given how the Kremlin’s actions in Crimea and the Donbas have been reliant on terror, force, and a complete lack of accountability for its proxies.
So simply put, I dismiss this “source” as a rag of dishonest Kremlin propaganda that is trying to lie about very basic things like the wording of the 1991 Ukrainian Referendum, or is so incompetent it doesn’t understand it. The newspaper is moderately interesting, as are the claims about turnout, but given its naked dishonesty and incompetence as well as my ignorance of Cyrillic I cannot trust it.
I might kick it over to a few different friends to evaluate, but in any case I do not put much weight on self-righteous mythmaking by a blog that a minimum is trying to lie about the wording of the 1991 Independence Referendum and is ignoring defacto Ukrainian Government policy during the 1990s, especially on the language issue.
The second source is not outright smear jobs and lying, but I do think it is misleading.
Sure, but those commanded majorities of the vote.
Even if this were true (and I find it somewhat fanciful) the time to remedy that would have been after the independence of both Ukraine and the Russian Federation. During which time the Russian Federation decided to prioritize regaining Soviet Nukes (among other things) over changing the borders to “return Crimea’ or some such. Which unsurprisingly put a spike in the tire of the outright secessionists. The new Russian Government did not want another nuclear-armed state in former Soviet Space, and even the Hawks probably recognized that like the ongoing conflicts in Transnistria the Crimean secessionists could serve Russian interests better as an undercurrent in Ukrainian politics than as a part of Russia proper, at least for now.
In any case the Crimean Secessionists were essentially abandoned by their natural patron during the time in question and electorally and politically defeated, with their rank and file being pried away by the autonomous status.
True but also nowhere near as decisive as you have made before. This was not a fundamentally sectarian conflict like Georgia and Transnistria and Yugoslavia really were. This was a political one, and as I’ve covered before Yanukovych’s crimes and follies, the Kremlin’s actions in the Donbas in particular, and the incompetence and oppressions of its local proxies have done much to erode what support there was.
I do not claim to know a proportion. But I do know that these regions are “secessionist” not because of the will of their people (whether the people as a whole support secession or not) but because of the armed occupation by Russia.
This is true, and we’ve talked about it. Yanukovych and the Regionnaires maintained the broad loyalty of the Donbas through his term, but the repudiation of the EU Association Agreement was a bitter blow to even many pro-Russian elements of the Donbas since they were living in a rust belt and wanted more trade. This and Euromaidan helped trigger schisms in Eastern Ukraine and the Regionnaire Party itself, which steadily alarmed Yanukovych since before (such as in the Kuchma conflicts, the Orange Revolution, etc) you could generally count on your political base (Orange v. Blue areas). So seeing significant (though by no means majority) discontent among “his base” (the people who were supposed to be “his people”) spooked the hell out of Yanukovych and led him to “calculated risks.” Which often backfired and sparked more.
Primarily because of the military occupation by Russian troops or paramilitaries paid and equipped by them. This is no longer in any kind of serious dispute regarding Crimea as even the Kremlin admits to the dispatch of Spetznaz, but the Donbas has not been so candidly admitted.
Art Deco is correct. Secession happened primarily due to raw force and terror, and I’d argue in many ways (especially the violent attacks on Ukrainian military units) it was counterproductive, since it drove all but the staunchest anti-maidanites and pro-Kremlin members into the hands of the admittedly-weak-and-chaotic Ukrainian government.
This does not mean that there is no pro-Russian sentiment in the Donbas or Crimea independent of the military occupation, far from it. And as a matter of principle I don’t even object IN THEORY to Crimea and/or the Donbas uniting with Russia. But the nakedly illegal and terroristic way in which it was done by the Russian government is in my opinion inexcusable, and why I am one of the Hawks.
The Kremlin needs to learn there are consequences for poking its neighbors.
@huxley
Because that was IIRC the more common title of it, and especially outside of the US. Especially since the “Philosopher’s Stone” is an actual mythical concept that has been around for centuries (thanks Alchemy) and ties in to Nicholas Flamel (who was a historical figure tied in to the book). I guess they just decided alliteration was better.
(And yes I confess I am something of a Harry Potter fan.)
If there had been a nuclear war then, no one sensible would have been surprised. And I suspect history would evaluate Reagan differently.
==
Chuckles.
Reminds me of at history tale by brendan dubois, about the aftermath of the cuban missile crisis which goes awry.
This was the urtext of the day after threads count down to looking glass and other such fare from the 80s
Turtler:
Once again you take apart Brian E’s arguments piece by piece, a loose skein without lock stitches. I need at least 15 minutes to fully appreciate it.
Turtler, I think we should impose a 1,000 word limit per comment.
My apologies to Anton, since the thrust of his piece had nothing to do with Ukraine, and little to do with isolationism/internationalism either.
I assume you didn’t live through the events of the Vietnam war, detente and Reagan’s Star Wars. I would guess you’re about 35. Anton’s article certainly comports to what I remember of the events of the day, though not with the near catastrophes on both sides. And like Huxley my wife and I were glued to the tv for the airing of The Day After.
There is probably no way to accurately gauge the popularity of the Donbass separatist sentiment at the time. The quote I used from the Donbass Insider that they were deceived, but even had the referendum been better worded, the vote might still have been the same isn’t a good way to make a case. I think the coup attempt in Russia in 1992 probably did have an effect.
Despite Art Deco’s data minimizing the separatist’s support, even if the support was say 60-65% in favor of closer ties/re-uniting with Russia, that leaves a large minority against it. I think the numbers do favor the separatist movement in Crimea.
Those short Vice videos do reflect a sentiment that the Maidan revolution was a coup and this was a civil war. And yes, council meetings did look like something right out of the Party playbook. Vice’s segments in Crimea I think are reflective of the situation. The Tatars were told by their community leaders not to participate in the referendum, and though the Ukrainian military garrisoned there weren’t told not to participate, no one did, even though many chose to resign and stay in Crimea when the forces were expelled after the vote.
While the Ukranian military kept their weapons, both sides were careful to not escalate– though the unmarked special forces did display their weapons. One of the Ukrainian commanders indicated they had received no orders from Kyiv on how to handle the situation– which probably was understood to mean there were no reinforcements on the way.
It was a very civil transfer of power.
Since, according to Art Deco, “realist” and “globalist” are already taken for other purposes, I would say I favor an America First foreign policy. The use of the term Isolationist, is meant as a pejorative– implying a disregard/ignoring the situation.
Don’t pick a fight but recognize when your opponent is looking for one. Then realistically assess whether or not the fight is in your best interests.
As to our treatment of Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the best negotiations are when both sides think they won. I would say we were poor negotiators.
I have meant to explain why I took up the Eastern Ukrainian cause, which I will do in another open thread.
@Brian E
I’d leave that to the boss to decide, and I know there is a limit somewhere. But I’d oppose it. Because that wouldn’t really alter my posts, I’d just have to break them up and post them in parts (like I have had to on occasion here). Which wouldn’t be fun due to the number of word counting. I know FPM implementing a rather minimal one is a major problem.
Pretty close. I won’t claim to have lived through either, though my family did. And certainly there is often a difference between how events are lived versus some of the finer details (for instance, not many people remember WWII starting in 1937 except the Chinese). And I certainly do think you and Art Deco bring up many points, and I’ll be the first to note there’s a lot of truth in Anton’s article. But that makes many of the jarring issues all the worse.
Especially when one of the central thrusts of his article is how we often have a rosy view of nostalgia regarding Reagan’s first term and often forget or downplay the 1983 scares when reality at the time was very different. But I do not think Anton helps his case by forgetting a lot of history (Eisenhower’s shifting from right to left to right again in order to outfox Truman and Stevenson, the Reichstag Fire as an actual crime by a communist pyromaniac terrorist serving as a Nazi justification rather than the myth of a Nazi False Flag framing said terrorist for the arson).
And I particularly think KLA 007 and the Able Archer crises look far worse for the Soviets when put into context. Not many people remember El Al Flight 402 in the way they remember KLA 007. Part of that’s due to the number of deaths (more than four times as many died on 007 as did on 402), but I don’t think it is the main reason, especially coming near the height of the Cold War or at least one of the first ones. A lot of it comes down to the fact that the Communist Bulgarians (though HARDLY models of morality or ethics) did not lie about what happened, did not accuse the commercial airliner of being involved in spying, and were able to show that the flight deviated vastly from its course. They also eventually DID apologize, though that took quite some time. The US had less excuses but it also didn’t make them when it came to to Iran Air 655, but it also made fewer and paid out compensation for the victims.
This is in sharp contrast to the Soviet policy of being trigger happy, then lying about it, then justifying it when caught in the first set of lies. Which turned what could have been an already-avoidable tragedy that would scar relations but which also was fairly simple to paper over even for Eastern Bloc dictatorships into a colossal diplomatic disaster almost entirely of the Soviet Union’s own making as well as an offense to international law.
Maritime and aviation law are arcane subjects even today and to me, and I’m probably moderately more aware of them than most people, but I do think there was no getting around that KLA 007 was absolutely worth sanctioning the USSR over even if it was obviously not worth going to nuclear war over. And I do think the Soviet policy about it and the reactions to it justifiably delegitimized it.
Understandably indeed. The Day After and Wargames were from before my time but they were still gripping, horrifying stuff to watch. The British equivalent is if anything even harder hitting. Don’t watch “Threads” if you do not have an iron spleen, and even then it’ll get to you.
It’s also why I do view om’s “pigs flying” nonsense to be in monumentally bad taste. While I do find a lot of alarmism and fear to be excessive, that does not mean there isn’t a risk that needs to be managed. And rightfully or wrongly my stances of a generally strong stance (albeit one that draws lines and does not cross them) would help mitigate against it. For instance, the decision was made to not respond to the Soviet weapon prepping but not to cancel Able Archer. We should not poke the bear without provocation or for transient reasons, but we need to stand strong and know our rights, and rarely yield them except in very, Very pressing circumstances.
Which itself is telling. The “Separatists” and Russian Special Forces started disappearing, torturing, and killing people even before the formal occupation and secession, starting in Crimea (often portrayed as a “bloodless” occupation, erroneously, because of the maybe 2-3 people killed directly during the military takeover) and spent years engaging in propaganda, not helped by the artillery duels between the Ukrainian Loyalists and the Russian Government with the ensuing destruction. The failure of the separatists to develop much of a mass movement and inability to trigger much partisan activity in the loyalist-held areas of the Donbas I think undermines their claims to be popular (in sharp contrast to Transnistria and the separatist states in Georgia, which for all of their many sins are legitimately popular among their “constituencies” and have a great number of fighters not only prepared to fight and die for the cause, but even to volunteer by the thousands for it).
This along with the what I can only conclude were intentionally opaque circumstances of the “referendums” and a number of others make me conclude that the Kremlin does not want anybody to have a clear indication of public sentiment in the area through the ballot box. Even moreso than the Ukrainian Loyalists (who are hardly saintly or devoid of corruption, and who would have reasons to be suspicious of the people in Kharkhiv and elsewhere in the unoccupied Donbass due to the sectarian divides in culture, language, ethnicity, and political alignment), who have allowed the unoccupied areas of the Donbas to vote with a minimum of martial law in the areas, a result that was sure to turn in significantly “Bluer” parties and candidates.
This I think supports my points that the separatist movement is – while not completely artificial or synthetic – ultimately not that popular and largely dependent on the Kremlin’s propping up and a grab bag of charismatic warlords and their patrons. Which has not helped consolidate the regimes much.
Relying on a blatantly dishonest propaganda rag like the Donbass Insider at all is not a very good way to make a case. The wording of the referendum was quite clear, and as you can see if you check the question was very much whether the voters approved of the declaration of independence, not whether they acknowledged its existence. Moreover (as the idiot who wrote that article SHOULD know even if they by some miracle don’t) similar referenda were not unknown to Soviet voters and were widely voted on, some going back decades and others happening at the time.
In particular it is worth noting the Transnistria Referendum that began in 1989, and which was widely reported in Ukraine (because strange as it may sound at the time, there was broad sympathy and support for the Transnistrian cause across the Ukrainian public at the time).
I may not have the world’s highest opinion of the intelligence of post-Soviet workers in general and the inhabitants of the Donbas Rust Belt in particular, but I also fully believe they were more than capable of reading a sentence in their native languages and talking with their older family members about the meanings of this. Especially when similar events were both in their history books (albeit often in a much more rigged fashion, like the farcical 1940 referenda rubberstamping the annexation of the Baltic Three) and in the newspaper.
As such, I conclude the Donbass Insider is simply lying about the 1991 Independence Referendum in an attempt to delegitimize it. Lying badly, I might add. As such, I simply disregard that part of its claims.
Ironically a BETTER argument would be that the nature of most of those referenda (being conducted under the Soviet period and largely being heavily rigged) was that the voting public did not understand the sakes and so had atypically high “Yea” turnout due to fear that their voices wouldn’t count, that they would face retaliation for voting no, and so forth.
But that’s not what the idiot at the Donbass Insider claimed. Moreover, I would find it fundamentally unconvincing given how they admit the Donbass Civil Society – even those critical of Ukrainian unitarianism and other issues – were active and within a few years would be trying to get up steam for other referendums.
The bottom line is that I have very little reason to take the Donbass Insider’s word very seriously, and absolutely none at all regarding the 1991 Independence Referendum.
On which referendum are we talking?
But the various coup attempts in the period did have an effect, but it was so chaotic and ugly we have to whip out a timeline and ask which one.
I am agnostic on the issue but I agree your conclusion is quite believable. I am not sure it is the most probable outcome, but it is a very possible one.
And again why for all of my longwinded ranting and passion on the subject why I do not have much in the way of a fundamental objection to Crimea or the Donbas uniting with Russia in principle, as opposed to the nature of how it was done (which I hold to be nothing short of criminal). Self-determination and respect for that mean agreeing with it even if “my side” loses the vote, and I accept that. In any case, the regions’ economies are so tightly wound that they’ll need cooperation with both Russia and Ukraine and each other to function at peak performance regardless of which flag they fly, and under peaceful circumstances the bonds of blood and history across the border wouldn’t be able to be cut.
In any case, similar conflicts were dealt with diplomatically, as these ones were in the early 1990s and others such as Newfoundland Confederation with Canada and a host of others show. So I do not see how anything that happened in reality (as opposed to what the Kremlin claimed happened, with claims that the world’s dumbest Banderaistas were rampaging through Crimea and demanding Russian troop deployments that for some reason had to be done under false flag and with false pretenses) can justify unilateral Russian deployment of troops to its neighbor’s soil, let alone unilateral partition attempts.
If there actually was a “Nazi”/”Fascist” government in Kyiv persecuting ethnic Russians or Russophones lock, stock, and barrel I would be singing a very different tune and even defending the Russian actions much as I believe our deployment of the USMC to plays like the assorted Bluefields Rebellions was justified. But there isn’t and there wasn’t, and the Kremlin purposefully exploited the post-Yanukovych chaos and flux to invade while there was a weak caretaker cabinet.
At best Maidan was only partially a coup or climaxed with one due to the legislative/Rada motion we have debated about, but before that it was a protest movement.
As for whether it was a civil war, I respond: was the 1937 Japanese Invasion of China a Civil War?
That’s a trick question of course. After all, many of those fighting and killing each other in that conflict were different shades of Chinese, not just the KMT and Communists going for a side thing but also hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers that (for one reason or another) chose to fight under the Japanese. But it’s not what we think of when we think of the conflict or see the term “civil war”, no?
While there was a minority of pro-Maidan sentiment in the Donbas and Crimea (and its presence there was enough to badly spook Yanukovych by giving him the most unpleasant surprise in his political career up to that time save MAYBE the Orange Revolution), it was very much a minority. Pro-Kremlin and Anti-Maidan sentiment was present and strong there and had been organizing for a while, but remarkably little of it took up guns and turned out. The Kremlin certainly recruited many volunteers and organizations from the area as it went to war, but the core seems to have been troops brought in from outside for this specific case, especially given the much more violent nature of the Donbas offensives.
So I argue that what we see is a Russian invasion with a Side of Civil War rather than a Civil War with a side of Russian Invasion
Agreed.
Indeed, and then the Ukrainian positions were stormed with little resistance, though Russian personnel did kill at least one Ukrainian serviceman during the taking of it (which ironically got the responsible man brought up on charges by the pro-Russian Crimean Prosecutor General’s Office on murder charges, which I think says a lot about how relatively “civilized” and calm the military sides were to each other, though ti seems like the civilians were not so lucky given the number of disappearances and murders.
Though even those are dwarfed by what we can find in the Donbas, where we see atrocity olympics both accused and real by both sides).
I find that to be a stretch. It occurred far more diplomatically and with sensitivity than what happened after, but I do not think the three+ people killed in the actual clashes and the more killed or disappeared would find it “very civil.” And it definitely presaged the much more violent and deadly fighting that broke out in the Donbas with another set of Little Green Men.
Understandable indeed, and on this much we agree. I also favor an America First policy, though we of course often disagree on what that might mean. I also confess I am not an isolationist and if anything have always leaned towards the interventionist wing (probably to an extreme degree by the standards now, given how I will still conditionally defend the Afghan and Iraq Wars and their legacies), but even I recognized due to Obama that the West was exhausted and would need to draw down and regroup. The cultural rot and social conflict at home thanks to Biden and co just makes that more acute.
Agreed. And of course people of good faith and sincerity can disagree on how to go about that and where best interests are without one being an unhinged war mongerer or a Putin vassal or other rot. And I have tried to recognize that.
I’d argue we were decently good negotiators, but bad implementers. Shock Therapy was a popular policy at the time (at least among the Russian and other Central/Eastern European Elite) and we were called in to help implement it. Which turned into a fiasco. Likewise we had a decent working relationship with Yeltsin for pretty much his entire career and cultivated similar with other Eastern European countries, and Putin at the start of his career even expressed interest in joining NATO (albeit by basically “jumping the line” and being able to negotiate a separate deal where rules didn’t apply to him), but Yugoslavia and Georgia loomed large. And in particular Clark’s antic at Pristina Airfield came close to triggering a World War III between NATO and a non-Communist Russia (thank GOD he was told to go stuff himself), and also gave the Russians all the reasons they could hope or fear for to be worried about an aggressive NATO.
Fair, and I look forward to it. Though I guess we differ greatly on what “the Eastern Ukrainian cause” is.
But in any case, thank you for the post and I am sorry for my rambling.