1/Some short-term and long-term thoughts on Russia.
Short term: Russia's military strategy and capability now appears clearly to rest on having a weak foe that will not fight. Operations capability is one of heavy artillery and aerial bombardment that intimidates and breaks any
2/ will to resist. Then when the opponent is scattered and resigned to defeat, Russian armor and infantry can rush in and secure undefended territory. That's the plan. When facing a foe capable of and willing to fight back, this doesn't work. Russian armor and infantry lack
May 7, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
1)A fundamental error of the modern world was to assume that because modern capitalism and liberalism came into the world at roughly the same time they were twins, like Castor and Pollux; and after the Cold War it was assumed that just as Pollux shared his immortality with Castor
2) so triumphant capitalism would share its eternal victory with liberalism. This was badly wrong. Capitalism and liberalism are family, but more like Cronus and Zeus. Capitalism is old, having been around for millennia, but was always subordinate to the honor-based rule of
May 7, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The answer is quite simple (and I love Russian art, literature and science too). Russia's rulers always want their nation to be a major power. But to compete with more advanced nations, they would have to fully empower their entire population.And Russia's rulers have always 1/
been too afraid of their own population, in this vast diverse country, to do so. So their only way to compete with more advanced nations is to hyper-militarize. But that reliance on force breeds paranoia and insecurity regarding the forces of other nations; hence the recurrent 2/
Apr 14, 2022 • 18 tweets • 3 min read
1) Some updated notes on the Russo-Ukrainian war. Russian plans still appear wholly unrealistic. Their plan to extend control of all of Luhanks and Donestk cannot be accomplished by moving west from rebel-held areas. Ukraine has had 8 yrs to fortify defensive lines along the
2) January conflict frontier. So the Russian plan is to a) pin down Ukr army in the far east by putting pressure on this frontier line, meanwhile b) moving forces south from Izyum to Dniepro and c) moving forces north from Kherson to Dniepro. This will encircle the main Ukraine
Mar 3, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
1) Russia's MASSIVE military aid to North Vietnam in the 60s to fight the US provides ample precedent for NATO to provide lethal arms to Ukraine to fight Russia. By the late 1960s more than three-quarters of the military and technical equipment received by North Vietnam was
2) coming from Moscow ... including radar systems, anti-aircraft artillery, surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). “Without this materiel, Vietnamese air defence would have been hardly feasible,” he says.
Russia military supplies completely transformed the nature of the war.
Mar 3, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
1) How do you stymie a Russian invasion force without firing a shot? Russians, apparently expecting no resistance, sent multiple tank & motorized infantry columns to surround Kyiv from different directions. However, Ukrainians blew up bridges in strategic places forcing Russian
2) columns to divert around them. The result was to funnel all Russian forces into the same narrow road, creating a massive traffic jam! Result: that "40 mile" column of Russian forces is NOT an assault force advancing with "military" precision. It is instead a mess of
Feb 28, 2022 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
1) It is too early to say that Russia has lost the war, but it has certainly lost the narrative. Russia's story was that Ukraine was not a real country, an artificial construct torn from the unity of Russia/Ukraine, and that Ukrainians and Russians in Ukraine were being held
2) like hostages against their will by a Nazi/fascist criminal regime. In that narrative, once Russian troops entered Ukraine, they would be enthusiastically welcomed (or at least passively appreciated) and the Ukrainian people would desert or turn against their criminal ...
Jan 29, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1) Putin seems to have decided it is essential to Russian security that Ukraine never join NATO. He sees two ways to ensure this: NATO's written agreement never to expand and to withdraw its forces from existing border states; or having a loyal puppet regime in Kyiv. As the first
2) will not happen, Putin is left with figuring out the cheapest way to get the second. In the name of "ensuring regional peace and security" against "war provocateurs" he will take whatever seems to be the least military action to overthow the existing Ukraine government and
Jan 17, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1) The danger and tragedy is that people have been told by Trump, McCarthy, Cruz and others in responsible positions that there is reason to doubt the validity of the election; then whipped up by social media promising Trump will eventually be declared the winner...
2) When, after all that, Biden is being inaugurated, many will go nuts: the cognitive discord is just too great and they will be convinced that Biden must be stopped. Yes, the fault lies with crazy conspiracy peddlers; but they were given support and legitimacy by the officials.
Jan 13, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
1) When I said last summer that my model of political stability, as tested by @Peter_Turchin, predicted severe political violence in the US in the coming year, Iike rev/civil war, I couldn't get any mainstream mag to publish it until NOEMA did in Sept. noemamag.com/welcome-to-the…2) Part of the objection was that people could not envisage what rev or civil war would look like in the US. I said that while the index of political stability suggested risk unlike any seen since the Civil War, it wouldn't look like 1860. More likely were mass protests that ...
Dec 12, 2020 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
1) @McFaul US today must coexist in a world with other large, historically and currently important nations that have very different ideas and practices of ordering their economy and society -- mainly China, Russia, Iran.
2) Conditions are very different than in the Cold War with USSR: Russian and Chinese economies far more linked to Europe and US than was the USSR, much more equal competition in Latin America, Africa, south Asia
Nov 9, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1) The good news for those of us who were worried about violence after this election if it was close is that in determining who won it is NOT close. Biden won many more states than he needs to win the EC, and his margins in those states are all 10,000 votes or more. So no ...
2) challenge to any one state will change the outcome, and no states had knife edge margins of 5,000 or less. While it is true that 100,000 votes changing in key states could change the outcome, no conceivable legal challenge could change that many votes in that many places....
Nov 8, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Thoughts on the election voting: Don't hate me for this Twitter, just reporting facts. Was it a close election? Two approaches. 1) Overall, it's a BIG victory for Biden. Probably over 300 EC votes, popular margin of over 5 million votes when all are counted, and 3% of pop vote...
2) Moreover, Biden held all key Blue states & flipped 2 unexpected red states: AZ & GA. Historically that's a major win! But a completely different picture arises if you look closely at the votes. So (2): It's often pointed out that in 2016 Trump won 3 key states WI, MI, PA...
Jun 7, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
1) For those wondering what theories of revolution say on protestors vs. force: when protestors can be isolated as a small group out for themselves, use of force is accepted and makes gov appear strong. When protestors are seen as representing a wide swathe of society, and as ..
having reasonable goals, use of force provokes more protest and weakens gov, making it less legitimate. Trump clearly tried to do the first, labeling the protestors as ANTIFA & terrorists. But for most, that failed; more and more people saw protestors as ...
Jan 30, 2019 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
1)Amazing to see billionaires try to say that allowing huge inequality is "capitalism," while returning to US tax rates under Eisenhower and Nixon is "socialism." Utter nonsense! But dangerous because it is textbook example of "selfish elites."
2) What matters is not the level of taxation, but how US spends its revenues. In the 1950s, we created world-class airports, interstate freeways, and mass transit. All that is now aging and creaking, both embarrassing and a drag on the US economy.
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