Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Sep 21 14 tweets 3 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Why fund Ukraine?

1. This world consists of states

2. That are war machines optimised for war purposes

3. Allowing the war machines optimised for war purposes to make territorial conquests and get away with this, makes the world unsafe

The unsafe world will cost you more 🧵
4. Many in the US take their current material prosperity as granted

5. It is not

6. Unprecedented in the world history, it became possible only in the unprecedentedly safe world

7. When the world becomes less safe, you will have to say goodbye to the current prosperity
8. The unprecedented safety of this world is based upon it being dominated by a single war machine (US)

9. That has severely limited the incentives for other war machines to fight each other

10. The US made it very difficult for a war machine to annex a new territory

11. Effectively impossible to legalise such an annexation

12. And straight out impossible to cash out from it
13. When you want to abolish a norm (heavy penalty for annexation + impossibility to legalise it), you must first explain why it had been introduced in the first place

14. It was introduced to decrease a payout from the military victory

15. And, therefore, to prevent wars
16. I cannot annex a territory -> What is the point in a military victory then? -> Well, there is not much point in it -> Perhaps, I won't be starting a war in the first place

Reduced payout from a military victory, that is why wars in the modern world are so rare
17. Allowing to legalise territorial annexations, you increase the payout for the military victory (& penalty for defeat)

18. With the costs/benefits ratio changing so drastically, there will be more incentive to start the war in the first place

19. There will be way more wars
20. While more frequent wars will result in more frequent disruptions of supply chains, thus making everyone poorer, there is another factor at play

21. The US is a war machine

22. Which is primarily threatened by other war machines of roughly comparable size and capacities
23. It is highly improbable that guerillas in the mountains can pose a serious danger to the US

24. But the large war machines optimised for the war purposes can

25. Consequently, it is the large states such as Russia or China that the primary threat to the US can come from
26. Russia seizing control of Ukraine will increase its capacities

27. Make it more aggressive

28. All of this will make it more of a threat in the future
29. What is worse, Russian success in Ukraine will embolden China to pursue a more aggressive policy in Asia

30. While having a demoralising effect on the US allies in the region

31. Ukraine is a very rare example of the US funding an army that is actually willing to fight
32. Taking the US side only to be left one on one with China is a suboptimal choice for any state/non state actor in Asia

33. Consequently, it will make more sense to (lowkey) take the side of China from the very beginning

34. Sabotaging defense preparations may count as *33*
35. Ukrainian defeat will show that a smaller country has zero chance for successful resistance

36. They will take you anyway. You can only choose between the easy way and the hard way

37. Surrendering preventively 😎 way better than getting steamrolled 💀 in a hopeless fight
38. Abandonment of Ukraine will encourage the surrender-preventively mood in Asia

39. Should Ukrainians turn out to be the idiots, so will any current or potential US allies in the Pacific

40. Preventive (if lowkey) surrender will look as the only rational choice for many
41. If certain players in Asia are minimising defense preparations, perhaps they have a reason to believe they can choose only between an easy and a hard way -> they prefer it easy

42. Abandonment and destruction of Ukraine will prove them right

The end

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More from @kamilkazani

Sep 21
Even if we have the blueprints, executing their design may be difficult to impossible. What we lack is the:

1. Material culture
2. Knowledge ecosystem

these blueprints had been created within

They are essentially relics of a lost (alien and incomprehensible) civilisation
Image
This applies to the seemingly mundane stuff. For example, even though Russian tanks are based on the Soviet blueprints, Russian tank barrels are of lower quality & durability than Soviet ones. Design may be the same, but details of the original production processes are lost
The nearly absolute reliance of the Russian war machine on the imported metal-cutting machines should be considered in the light of the qualified manual labour pool having shrunk and degraded
Read 5 tweets
Sep 20
On the chokepoints of the military production, I strongly recommend reading this. It gives a sufficiently good first introduction into the problem

No military industrial complex in the world can execute the mechanical design of weaponry other than based on the CNC technology*
Therefore, supply chain for the quality CNC equipment (including both mechanical and electronic components) being controlled by the US allies is of major and under appreciated strategic significance
* Exceptions exist of course, but they are less common and significant than one could presume. As a general rule, every or almost every economy has to deal with the constantly shrinking pool of the qualified manual labour -> alternatives gradually become impossible to execute
Read 4 tweets
Sep 18
I think that a military conflict between China and the US is highly probable. I also think that China will lose it. While the US hard power (& the quality of strategic thinking) may have substantially deteriorated since 1991, China:

1. Is much weaker
2. Won't catch up
China is overall much more backward in terms of technology & manufacturing than almost anyone in the US foreign policy establishment is ready to admit. Beijing knows it, DC doesn't

Which, again, shows how much did the American strategic thinking deteriorate since 1991
PS I believe that the end of the Cold War had a corrupting effect on the US strategists. With the real and credible threat gone, too many started exaggerating (or making up?) BS threats. Consequently, the skills and competences for dealing with a real threat have atrophied
Read 4 tweets
Sep 3
1. Time exists

2. Things change with time

3. In 2014, Russia could reasonably expect a fairly high level of acceptance

4. Which was not the case in 2022

5. This invasion was planned based upon the picture of how it *used* to be

6. Which became completely outdated by 2022
7. As time exists, you should not presume that the opportunities you have now will last forever

8. They probably won’t

9. In 2014-2015, Russia had a high chance to launch a successful full scale invasion

10. But it did not

11. I think this was due to the crash in oil prices Image
12. By the time Russia decided to invade (I have a reason to believe it was 2019) things changed

13. The popular sentiments changed

14. On the Ukrainian held territory, you could hardly find *young* supporters of Russia

15. The Russian fanbase had been reduced to the elderly Image
Read 8 tweets
Aug 24
François Guizot defined feudalism as perhaps the only form of tyranny that will be never accepted by the ruled. The theocratic despotism, the monarchic despotism can be genuinely loved and voluntarily accepted by their subjects. In contrast, the feudal despotism is always hated
Image
What makes the difference is that a monarch/theocrat does NOT act on his own behalf. To the contrary, he represents something larger, superior to himself. It may be God. It may be an idea. Anyway, he is only a representative of something bigger, making his rule more acceptable Image
Consider Stalin. He does NOT act on his own behalf. He is merely a representative of something bigger. It's not all about Stalin. It's not all focused on Stalin. There is a divine, super-human institution of which Stalin is only a temporary executive

That's how he borrows power Image
Read 11 tweets
Aug 23
Prigozhin was a junior member of the St Petersburg gang. A vassal of Putin's vassal. Still, a rightful member of the gang that constitutes the core of the ruling elite. Consequently, his death will make an impression of the regime killing its previously untouchable core members
If the regime has indeed killed one of its core members, then the St Petersburg gang is probably not as united as it seemed to be. The death of Prigozhin reflects the depth of divisions in the narrow circle of upper elite.

This is the impression it makes on the outsiders
Even worse, this raises a question of how secure the other members of the gang should feel. In particular, how much of their previous untouchability will remain
Read 7 tweets

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