Shot in the Dark

Paper Tigers

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

Richard Fernandez writes an uncomfortable column about Ukraine, and the United States.

Joe Doakes

As with pretty much everything Fernandez has ever written, it’s worth a read; in this case, a pull quote:

In a counterfactual world where the Russian president agreed with this site and continued to feint, where NATO was still in awe of the supposedly unstoppable Russian army and Putin still hitting Biden up for nickels and dimes to keep him from unleashing it, the Kremlin might still be the capital of a great power. But it would be no more substantial than a fleet-in-being that is nine-tenths shadow and one part solid is; a thing powerful only in narrative. For in truth, Russia fell a long time ago with its crashing demography; its uncompetitive, oligarch-ridden industries; its incompetent autocratic leadership. Ukraine was a mirror into which Putin dared look when a man of his mien ought not. But whether he looked or not he was ugly just the same.

If there’s any lesson in this for Washington, it must be to ask: how much of America’s power is a myth, like Russia’s? Dare we collapse the wave function? If too much is spin, then put it not to the test, but keep on bluffing until the reality is restored. You can’t live in the narrative forever.

I’m going to suggest you read the whole thing anyway.

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Mitch Berg

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13 responses to “Paper Tigers”

  1. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Since puppet Pedo Joe got installed and installed woke Milley and token Austin as top military leadership, I would agree that the U.S. just might be turning into a paper tiger. With the affects of the WuFlu jabs on our military personnel coming to light and the drastic increase in active duty suicides, one has to wonder. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/22/military-suicides-increase-despite-combat-decline-alarming-pentagon/8030828002/?gnt-cfr=1

    I know. This article is from late 2021, but according to a couple of my friends that are very well connected to military brass, it is worse this year.

  2. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    This morning the NY Times daily bulletin (written by David Leonhardt) was all about the “Putin wing of the Republican party.”
    I don’t know ANY pro-Putin Republicans (Blade is no longer a voting Republican, I think).
    It’s as though Leonhardt lives in an alternate universe where Trump was pro-Putin.
    In fact Trump laid heavy sanctions on Putin, had warned the Germans against relying on Russian LNG, and had begun to supply the Ukrainians with weapons where Obama/Biden had not.
    Russian aggression in the region has so far been confined to periods when Biden has been in the driver seat. The Russian annexation of Crimea was in 2014, when Biden held the Obama administration’s Ukraine portfolio.

  3. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Sun Tsu, who wrote The Art of War, admonishes: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

    David Leonhardt, echoing Progressives, NeverTrumpers and GOP, Inc., thinks knowing my enemy puts me in the Putin wing of the party. No, it puts me in a position to think clearly about the conflict, about our interests, about Russia’s motivation and objectives. It gives me the power to reject propaganda and stereotype in favor of genuine US national interest.

    But I suppose Sun Tsu is out of favor, nowadays, same as Milton Friedman who linked monetary policy to inflation, and Nettie Stevens, who discovered that chromosomes determine whether a child is a boy or girl (she was allowed to say that, she was an actual biologist). I wonder which intellectual giants are guiding the Lesko Brandon administration?

  4. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    According to Western intelligence reports, the Russians had around 40 BTGs (Battalion tactical Groups) in the North (Kyiv and Chernihiv) out of the 120 BTGs committed to this operation. 120BTGs committed to the invasion represented around 75% of all BTGs in the Russian military.

    That said it’s unclear how many of these BTGs would remain in a state where they can participate in military operations… some of the VDV regiments have taken huge casualty numbers (the 331st VDV regiment lost its commander as well as 2 out of 3 of its BTG commanders for example), and pictures of charred Russian vehicles speak volume in terms of hardware losses. Some BTGs would have to be merged, but many will just be retired from the war altogether.

    A US official also said there were currently over 40 BTGs fighting in Donbas… with the rest (close to 40) in the South (likely Mariupol, Kherson and Southern front). Considering the fighting in and around Mariupol, not many of the Russian BTGs taking part will be able to be redirected quickly to the fight in Donbas after that siege is over either…

    I am starting to think even if the Russians did make progress, they would eventually be pushed back as they don’t have the man power for the attrition they are suffering.

    Peace in Ukraine will be elusive until one side makes a military breakthrough. This will not be a short war, tragic as that is for Ukrainians, and stressful as that is for the rest of us. The crux of the matter is without Donbas — Putin has absolutely nothing to show for all this effort. Putin has destroyed Russia’s relations with the world for generations to come. Maybe that was his intention — a new hermit kingdom.

  5. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    its uncompetitive, oligarch-ridden industries;

    Could not be further from the truth! An egregious exaggeration! Russia dismembered EU fertilizer industry because EU producers could not compete with Russian imports. Russia owns US rubber market because US manufacturers are not competitive. Are there industries that are not competitive in Russia? You bet. But that was not a good point for Mr. Fernandez to make in light of Russia owning EU energy production. If anything, burdened with regulation and taxation, US is much less competitive than everyone (there is a generalization for Mr. Fernandez) thinks. Which is actually the point of the article.

  6. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    More to JPA’s point, the US is far more of a paper tiger than folks would like to believe. Witness Iraq and Afghanistan. Immediately after 9/11, there was great unity on the need to attack the perps and their collaborators. Not even 3 years later, internal politics hamstrung the wars and in the end led both to humiliating, bumbling results. In other words, politics in the US no longer ends at the border by any means, and the structure of American politics weakens the US’s ability to wage any actions in its own interests.

  7. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Worth noting is that the industries where Russia is doing well, fertilizer and synthetic rubber, both have oil and natural gas as their basic ingredients. I’m guessing they do well at other areas linked to resource extraction like forest products and the like.

    But that noted, economies based on resource extraction tend to have trouble during the ebbs and flows of those commodities. And that’s exactly what we see in Russia, IMO.

  8. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    @ nerdbert ^ Americans, for all our flaws, and we have many flaws, transformed Japan and Germany. Two countries utterly destroyed (not a building standing in Germany, nukes dropped on the heads of Japan) were transformed into outstanding liberal democracies. To quote Singapore founder Lee Kwan Yew: “Future historians will be amazed. No other power in history would have done such thing”.

    We failed in Iraq and Afghanistan because these societies are tribal. Saddam was a murderous thug but the idea the alternative was democracy was wrong. War is a series of multiple little conflicts all bound together. And in Afghanistan America found a country where the binary win: the loose nature of our understanding of conflict was undermined by an asymmetric warfare with an enemy itself riven with tribal and religious loyalties, factionalism, warlords and legacy. A toxic mix which does not blend well with the imposition of ‘norms’.

    The Taliban, with a borrowed phrase of the Viet Cong (the irony is not lost on me) used to rejoice in saying to us: “you have the watches, we have the time.” So it has come to pass.

    What was remarkable in Afghanistan is how few American soldiers were able to catalyze that military operation for so long. The endemic corruption inside Afghanistan and around it eroded the mission.

  9. Bill C Avatar
    Bill C

    If there’s any lesson in this for Washington, it must be to ask: how much of America’s power is a myth, like Russia’s? Dare we collapse the wave function? If too much is spin, then put it not to the test, but keep on bluffing until the reality is restored. You can’t live in the narrative forever.

    Much as BH429 stated above. We have the equipment and technology to maintain our super power status (along with the military industrial complex necessary to continue that status….which is a whole other topic for discussion). We have the “boots on the ground” manpower and mindset to maintain that status. What we no longer have is the military-managerial, political, and societal will. If Putin went batshit crazy and decided he wanted East Germany back and attached Germany, even with our bases there, I do not foresee the necessary retaliation coming from this country, especially under any democrat or RINO president. If Biden were president during this hypothetical, it would be Afghanistan all over again from every US installation in the entire country. Trump or DeSantis? Yeah, they’d destroy Putin’s paper tiger military. And probably without nukes.

  10. Bill C Avatar
    Bill C

    *attacked

  11. Blade Nzimande Avatar
    Blade Nzimande

    I don’t know ANY pro-Putin Republicans (Blade is no longer a voting Republican, I think).

    I was gonna respond, but JD covered it pretty well at 9:37 am.

    I understand the weak, degenerate Western forces Ukraine has hitched it’s wagon to, and I understand Russian history.

    I’m not affected by propaganda. I dgaf what “Patriots” wish to assign my motives to. I’m pro-Blade & family.

  12. Blade Nzimande Avatar
    Blade Nzimande

    And, MP; yeah I’m done with the Uniparty.

  13. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    I was gonna respond, but JD covered it pretty well at 9:37 am

    That goes double for me. I can’t recall anything JD has written about the Current Thing that I disagree with.

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