good Q & i will come to this, but it's easier for rich americans to create a new organisation to deal with this problem than non-rich - tho the non-rich will ideally then be able to join and drive it!
of course there's lots of different things that cd be done, but focus is key...
If you want a fantastic and credible source of news for the current conflict try a guy called 'Michael Kofman'. He's a Ukrainian born US analyst who specialises in the Russian military, and was calling the conflict months ago.
He has a twitter, and has also done a recent podcast on waronthewocks (another great site), and Disinformation Wars, plus he's done some youtube presentations / interviews in the last few days.
He has a very interesting analysis. He thinks the war will go on for maybe another 2 to 3 weeks then they'll be a pause/ cessation while Russia rearms itself and remanouvers.
Twitter can be made more useful & significantly more user friendly than just Tweetdeck. Use an aggregator like Mailbrew to summarise a list at regular intervals and email it to you.
I work in markets so I have 8 monitors running and even then Tweetdeck is hard work because of it's design for immediacy and constant viewing. Using an aggregator tips the balance of power back towards the user, removes the addictive/immediacy element of it, thus allowing greater quality of thought / more headspace. Because determining at what interval you want a summary (six times a day, or once a week etc) it comes on your terms, not Twitter's.
There is irony in the way that much of the mainstream media has been describing Putin as "unhinged," "mad" or "lunatic," while at the same time expecting him to act as they would expect to act ("they" being Western liberal intellectuals).
My reading of the situation is that Putin is far from mad and that his actions can be considered entirely rational in the context of what he hopes to achieve (namely, an expanded Russia and a neutral Ukraine, as well as leverage over the weak West on other issues through having shown willingness to use force).
None of this takes away the risk of accidental escalation and the potential catastrophic consequences thereof, but right now I'm more worried about this being initiated from "our" side than from Putin's.
The people calling for a no fly zone are some of the most dangerous and deranged people in the world at the moment.
You seem to subscribe (to some extent at least) to the Mearsheimer ‘realist’ view of the world in relation to UKR/RUS that this is all a result of NATO expansion. But if that is the case why was Putin’s stated justification for the invasion that UKR isn’t a real country, ‘denazification’, Russians and Ukrainians are one people etc – rather than talking about ‘legitimate security concerns’, that might at least have got a somewhat favourable hearing? I don’t doubt West has erred along the way in all this but feels like some of the 'realist' school are letting Putin off the hook pretty easily for what is basically an aggressive, nationalistic (thought not 'irrational') invasion that has no real justification. I'd also argue that telling Ukrainians to just accept their fate as a buffer underestimates the extent to which determined local actors (e.g. Vietnam) can affect situations and be live players/agents not just be forced to bend to great powers. Interested in your thoughts...
As others have observed elsewhere, Putin's view of Russia appears to hark back more to the Tsarist era than the Soviet. For long periods of Russia's history Ukraine was part of greater Russia and Putin seems to want to restore the idea of 'Russian greatness.'
To that extent, Western overtures to Ukraine about joining NATO and/or the EU probably felt like an insult as much as a strategic threat.
I have recently been re-reading Sholokhov's 'Quiet Flows the Don,' which tells the story (as a novel) of the Don Cossacks from before the First World War to the Russian revolution and civil war. One of the elements that comes across strongly from the novel is that the Cossacks see themselves as both separate from and part of Russia. This is probably true for many ethnic groups in the world's largest country: even in the 18th and 19th centuries Russia had a far-from homogeneous population.
It is probably true that Putin expected at least some support from within Ukraine for his invasion, and those hopes appear not to have been realised. It's hard to tell because of the unreliability of the reporting, but it seems there has been very little support outside of the ethnic Russian regions of Crimea and the Donbas.
Was Mearsheimer right? Possibly, but I suspect Putin would have had his eye on absorbing Ukraine even if NATO/EU membership was not being mooted.
I dont have a good sense of the truth on the ground re degree of support/opposition from people living in UKR. I dont trust what I see on TV or our newspapers on the subject as they are blatantly campaigning.
It does seem Russia underestimated the extent to which UKR had purged pro-Russian elements in the army and intel services, and therefore were overconfident about the speed of UKR collapse. The main reason I think this is that intelligent Russian nationalists who are supportive of the war are saying this themselves, and admitting they got this wrong.
It's of course possible that Putin wd have invaded UKR anyway. It wd have been harder for him, and caused him more trouble internally, if he had agreed to a netural UKR then invaded anyway, so I still think this would been a better strategy for the west to have pursued years ago -- much safer overall, much less chance of war, but if war came then on more favourable terms...
Ill post tomorrow on this but in nutshell... Im not signed up to Mearsheimer but it's a historical fact that many of the old Cold Warriors, e.g Richard Pipes, said in 90s that expanding NATO to east especially UKR = 'historic error', as it was put in the group letter.
Many think that it has been foolish to encourage the idea of UKR joining NATO.
absolutely...i am seriously concerned at the inability of frontal cortexes to be able to juggle/entertain more than 1 item at a time.Is it something in the water?food?
Media is homogeneous to the point of monotone. Dissenting opinion is like shining a light into the eyes of a pit pony. People cannot handle it. Watch political interviews from the 60s and 70s, or Channel 4's "After Dark" where half a dozen people would discuss contentious issues in a calm and dignified manner. There is no widely available model for reasoned debate, good faith discussion or long-form treatment of complex problems any more. Only soundbytes, pointing and shrieking. Joe Rogan's success is likely down to his deliberate rejection of this model.
Start long term planning now. I hope and pray it never happens but am beyond disappointed with our politicians. Personally I am in semi-countryside but looking to convince my family to move further out.
Glad you're off Twitter, but suggest deleting your account entirely. Social media is the prime cause of cognitive rot. Stick to Tolstoy and advanced mathematics if you want to stay smart and train yourself to focus on hard tasks. We need many more people who don't use SM in positions of power. On the other hand, very interested to hear your opinion on Zelensky - is he a "live player" as you like to put it?
he's clearly decent at political campaigning and manipulating western hacks but there's a lot more to governing than that.
he seems to me to have been seriously deluded about the west coming to save him. he told his people this invasion wouldnt happen. and his inflexibility was a huge diplomatic error. a skilled live player would have sucked Putin into complex talks while trying to figure out what America would really do. instead he basically just told putin to fuck off.
but of course it depends on one's goal. he seems to have thought 'better an invasion and many dead than any serious concessions'.
doesnt seem to me like a good approach for the UKR people.
Are there good sources on this? All I have seen suggests he is trying to negotiate some serious internal tensions and potential chaos, where US role is obscure but potentially disasterous (leading up to this, for sure, but also now?). His likelihood of getting killed by his own "neo-nazi" security guards (who work for his former TV producer oligarch, apparently) may still be higher than getting killed by Putin's thugs. Or do you have information that contradicts this assessment, or adds to it in some way?
I don't know if i agree that he thought the west was going to save him. at least, you are right that he was seriously deluded if he did and i don't like to draw a conclusion that someone seemingly smart is that seriously deluded (just like the idea that Putin is mad is also a non-starter). You really don't have to be very clever to see that nato will never put any boots in the ground (or air) in Ukraine.
Given his goal (and the goal of basically all Ukrainians I've met for as long as I can remember) is to get Ukraine as far out from under Russian influence as possible as quickly as possible, I wonder what he could/should have done?
Possible the smart thing would be give Putin Donbas and Crimea in exchange for freedom to join e.g. the EU, but you can't trust Putin to do what he says he's going to, so any negotiation is a tad pointless. Maybe the reason for allowing the war to happen is to give Russia a bloody nose and increase his leverage a tiny bit in negotiations. Risky strategy, but maybe there isn't a lot of choice: the alternative is Putin just takes it all anyway bit by bit.
Agree that sucking Putin into very long complex talks would have been a smart move though...
We all owe our current existence to one guy - a Russian submarine commander called Arkhipov. Here's a tribute to him I wrote twenty years ago. And re the last line - yes! He IS dead (1998), though I didn't check it at time I wrote the piece below.
“As a matter of fact, we never had much trouble with government regulations and so called “red tape”, probably because whenever we encountered potential difficulties, we did not resort to letter-writing through channels. Instead, a competent officer was always sent immediately to the trouble spot with orders and authority to resolve the problem.”
Correct me if I’m wrong but I think this also translates to responsibility with authority. I think the apex of this power however was in groves insistence on MHP attaining AAA priority, which meant he could delegate authority with responsibility.
Does our govt have a priority system similar to this? I.e cost of living crisis from our shithsow sanctions - we need energy - kwarteng get an SMR built in every quartet of the UK within 2 years. Ok bang there’s a AAA priority do what you need to do.
Going off a previous list of yours I’m going to read Thucydides History of Pelopennisian next, as an aspiring PM would you prioritise anything else? Cheerio
we were trying but this is a v v hard problem cos it goes to the heart of ministerial accountability/civil service impartiality - deep constitutional issues and legal issues.
we began discussions including e.g how Perm Secs shd be managed.
Agree that's an important passage and yes it it key for understanding how to get stuff done.
No we have no such priority system.
The closest we have come recently was when Vallance and I persuaded Boris to create the vaccine taskforce and give KB extreme authority over hiring, plus explicit statement from the PM to ignore anybody saying to her 'but procurement law' and that he wd take responsibility.
This only happened because of the extreme circumstances in April when the govt machine had visibly collapsed and Boris himself had nearly died and the DHSC was on fire, with everything a shitshow.
Vallance & I & a few others such as Lee Cain cd argue - look at DHSC, every day we're in hours of nightmare meetings about it, we cannot possibly throw this hugely complex multibillion dollar business at it.
And because of this, crucially, the Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill did not object, he supported Vallance and me instead of supporting those officials who opposed the VTF.
Glad to hear you are coming off Twitter, not enough people on there take you seriously and they don’t deserve to hear your thoughts and opinions. Good luck with your new projects and I look forward to hearing about them, and reading your snippets here.
What do you think is a viable pathway to peace, or at least the end of war from here? And if you were in Government what steps would you be taking from here?
yes. didn't seem the best bet for UK but we shd be constantly scanning all such technologies for opportunities. we shd be pushing nuclear and direct air carbon capture. high-friction whitehall will get nowhere fast with this no10 though. they can announce budgets, give speeches, babble 'strategy'. but little will happen because *the government does not control the government*
Is using a plasma drill bit such as this being made here https://www.gadrilling.com/ a pipe dream ? I think current geothermal reports are for up to 5km, more areas of the country might become exploitable, If it works and can keep the costs down. I think the recent government report mentioned enhanced geothermal but not deep geothermal.
The nonchalance of American and British and other leaders and pundits about Russia's nuclear weapons, and the prospects of a catastrophic use of those weapons, is the most horrible thing about this episode. And the danger is only increasing. What if Putin really is, or is in part, an ideological fanatic influenced by, inter alia, Ivan Ilyin? He caused Ilyin's corpse to be brought back to Russia, so there is some influence there. At some level I knew this, but discounted it. I shoe-horned Putin into categories I understood, which is precisely the fallacy of looking for your keys under the streetlight because the light is brighter there. I DID NOT believe Putin would invade. I did not believe that he would look at the risks and costs and pull the trigger. I was wrong. That means my model of how Putin thinks, and even what he actually is, was wrong. Most people who offer opinions for a living are in the same boat, everyone was wrong about Putin, his thinking, his decision-making. We don't understand his decision making process. This is very troubling. Late Soviet leaders were cynics. They no longer believed in revolutionary Marxist-Leninism. They had no faith, so they would not blow up the world, they would just get what they could from the collapse of the USSR. But Putin may not be a cynic. What does Putin believe? Does he believe the Russian people have a unique historical destiny? What if that destiny is thwarted? Is annihilation better than submission, in his mind? Has anyone even started to analyze this possibility? People are floating along as if everything will be as it has always been, and this war will fit into their existing world, not lead to a flaming destruction of that world. The psychology seems very Summer of 1914. Not good. If you are religious. pray for peace.
1) Putin is a nationalist who puts his nation first. He cannot be bought or intimidated, as he proved when he took on the oligarchs who plundered Russia in the chaos after the fall of communism. The people who were drummed out of Russia by him have waged a war of misinformation for twenty years, so virtually everything you know about him is wildly wrong.
2) The Saker accurately predicted the invasion and offers Russo-centric commentary if you want a window into their worldview.
"If forced, Russia will take on any country, including any NATO member country, which will assist the Ukrainians militarily. If forced, Russia will even fight all of NATO and the USA together and, if forced, she will use all her weapons, including nuclear ones. And if that means that the entire planet is nuked then, as Putin said, “we have no need for a planet without Russia”. All this is to say that Russia is not bluffing, Putin will not back down and that there is no price which Russia would not be willing to pay to prevail in this existential war."
I'd like to see the context for that quote from Putin.
The invasion is offensive, too. Even more so. The point is to understand these people. Query whether the source is representative of Russian views. No way to find out, really.
Agree that that is the key question for me, that you never really get any access to. I mean, you meet Russians and they very rarely seem to be as rabid as the guy who wrote the article posted above, but then who knows which of the two is more representative of the population. Interesting interview with a journalist on Polish television tonight who's lived their for 20+ years saying, one of the reasons its so hard to pin down Russian opinion is that there really isn't any such thing - it's a huuuuge country, and parts of it are almost not Russian at all, plus the general city vs country thing that happens everywhere.
I know all about it. I've met hundreds of Ukrainians, not one of them is a nazi or knows any nazis. Collectively they elected a jewish president and have a thriving jewish population. They are no more nazi than any other state in Central or Eastern Europe, which is to say: more than you would find in the West but maybe not as much more as you would think. It's an offensively absurd fabrication.
... which is to say that I have first hand experience of the country and its people which I will take more seriously than things written by either side in this conflict.
I reckon ideological fanatic - check out Dugin's “The Foundations of Geopolitics”: Izborsky Club, "Zaftra" newspaper/Prohkanov - probably links with "Z" symbol ... and Nikolai Fyodorov for Russian Cosmism...evolved recently to Kandybaism...
Agreed, that seems likely. Which means he is neither a cynic nor a materialist. Yet the decision makers dealing with him show no evidence of any awareness of this dimension of his character.
it's worrying... i have no knowledge whatsoever of what goes on behind the scenes... but there must be some philosophers and/or psychologists somewhere looking at this stuff! Messiah Complexes are nothing new.... slightly concerning, relatively harmless and occasionally amusing when considering David Icke/David Shyler types.... but needs to be considered seriously when evident in superpower leadership!
I think it's sensible to look at Putin's own words seriously. He has explained repeatedly his ideas re Russian history. West has ignored and largely shifted from naive trust in him (20 yrs ago) to insults. There has never been a phase of taking seriously, figuring out goals, negotiating.
UKR is existential for Putin. Our leaders ignored this, though they were warned by likes of Richard Pipes 25 yrs ago
good Q & i will come to this, but it's easier for rich americans to create a new organisation to deal with this problem than non-rich - tho the non-rich will ideally then be able to join and drive it!
of course there's lots of different things that cd be done, but focus is key...
:)
If you want a fantastic and credible source of news for the current conflict try a guy called 'Michael Kofman'. He's a Ukrainian born US analyst who specialises in the Russian military, and was calling the conflict months ago.
He has a twitter, and has also done a recent podcast on waronthewocks (another great site), and Disinformation Wars, plus he's done some youtube presentations / interviews in the last few days.
He has a very interesting analysis. He thinks the war will go on for maybe another 2 to 3 weeks then they'll be a pause/ cessation while Russia rearms itself and remanouvers.
ive been following him, agree useful
He took part in Modern War Institute virtual panel this week. His usefulness seems to be relative.
Did you ever read Carroll Quigley? I found him useful in an absolute sense. Am I wrong?
Pleased you'll still be writing somewhere. Yours is the only voice I actually WANT to hear. Thanks.
Twitter can be made more useful & significantly more user friendly than just Tweetdeck. Use an aggregator like Mailbrew to summarise a list at regular intervals and email it to you.
I work in markets so I have 8 monitors running and even then Tweetdeck is hard work because of it's design for immediacy and constant viewing. Using an aggregator tips the balance of power back towards the user, removes the addictive/immediacy element of it, thus allowing greater quality of thought / more headspace. Because determining at what interval you want a summary (six times a day, or once a week etc) it comes on your terms, not Twitter's.
interesting never heard of Mailbrew thx
There is irony in the way that much of the mainstream media has been describing Putin as "unhinged," "mad" or "lunatic," while at the same time expecting him to act as they would expect to act ("they" being Western liberal intellectuals).
My reading of the situation is that Putin is far from mad and that his actions can be considered entirely rational in the context of what he hopes to achieve (namely, an expanded Russia and a neutral Ukraine, as well as leverage over the weak West on other issues through having shown willingness to use force).
None of this takes away the risk of accidental escalation and the potential catastrophic consequences thereof, but right now I'm more worried about this being initiated from "our" side than from Putin's.
The people calling for a no fly zone are some of the most dangerous and deranged people in the world at the moment.
lots of those saying 'mad' spent 2000-2004 saying 'he's a reformer, russia will join the EU and €'.
agreed - im more worried about us doing dumb stuff than I am about putin deliberately starting a nuclear war
You seem to subscribe (to some extent at least) to the Mearsheimer ‘realist’ view of the world in relation to UKR/RUS that this is all a result of NATO expansion. But if that is the case why was Putin’s stated justification for the invasion that UKR isn’t a real country, ‘denazification’, Russians and Ukrainians are one people etc – rather than talking about ‘legitimate security concerns’, that might at least have got a somewhat favourable hearing? I don’t doubt West has erred along the way in all this but feels like some of the 'realist' school are letting Putin off the hook pretty easily for what is basically an aggressive, nationalistic (thought not 'irrational') invasion that has no real justification. I'd also argue that telling Ukrainians to just accept their fate as a buffer underestimates the extent to which determined local actors (e.g. Vietnam) can affect situations and be live players/agents not just be forced to bend to great powers. Interested in your thoughts...
As others have observed elsewhere, Putin's view of Russia appears to hark back more to the Tsarist era than the Soviet. For long periods of Russia's history Ukraine was part of greater Russia and Putin seems to want to restore the idea of 'Russian greatness.'
To that extent, Western overtures to Ukraine about joining NATO and/or the EU probably felt like an insult as much as a strategic threat.
I have recently been re-reading Sholokhov's 'Quiet Flows the Don,' which tells the story (as a novel) of the Don Cossacks from before the First World War to the Russian revolution and civil war. One of the elements that comes across strongly from the novel is that the Cossacks see themselves as both separate from and part of Russia. This is probably true for many ethnic groups in the world's largest country: even in the 18th and 19th centuries Russia had a far-from homogeneous population.
It is probably true that Putin expected at least some support from within Ukraine for his invasion, and those hopes appear not to have been realised. It's hard to tell because of the unreliability of the reporting, but it seems there has been very little support outside of the ethnic Russian regions of Crimea and the Donbas.
Was Mearsheimer right? Possibly, but I suspect Putin would have had his eye on absorbing Ukraine even if NATO/EU membership was not being mooted.
I dont have a good sense of the truth on the ground re degree of support/opposition from people living in UKR. I dont trust what I see on TV or our newspapers on the subject as they are blatantly campaigning.
It does seem Russia underestimated the extent to which UKR had purged pro-Russian elements in the army and intel services, and therefore were overconfident about the speed of UKR collapse. The main reason I think this is that intelligent Russian nationalists who are supportive of the war are saying this themselves, and admitting they got this wrong.
It's of course possible that Putin wd have invaded UKR anyway. It wd have been harder for him, and caused him more trouble internally, if he had agreed to a netural UKR then invaded anyway, so I still think this would been a better strategy for the west to have pursued years ago -- much safer overall, much less chance of war, but if war came then on more favourable terms...
Ill post tomorrow on this but in nutshell... Im not signed up to Mearsheimer but it's a historical fact that many of the old Cold Warriors, e.g Richard Pipes, said in 90s that expanding NATO to east especially UKR = 'historic error', as it was put in the group letter.
Many think that it has been foolish to encourage the idea of UKR joining NATO.
I think this too.
One can think -
a/ Putin is mafia, his government is mafia government,
and
b/ His invasion is appalling, sympathy for the civilians caught in the war
and
c/ Western policy for 25 years has contributed to causing the war
Though of course the media likes only stories fit for young children - they are the evil ones, we are the good ones...
absolutely...i am seriously concerned at the inability of frontal cortexes to be able to juggle/entertain more than 1 item at a time.Is it something in the water?food?
Media is homogeneous to the point of monotone. Dissenting opinion is like shining a light into the eyes of a pit pony. People cannot handle it. Watch political interviews from the 60s and 70s, or Channel 4's "After Dark" where half a dozen people would discuss contentious issues in a calm and dignified manner. There is no widely available model for reasoned debate, good faith discussion or long-form treatment of complex problems any more. Only soundbytes, pointing and shrieking. Joe Rogan's success is likely down to his deliberate rejection of this model.
Do you think people should consider getting out of big cities or the country altogether?
I think the chances of us seeing use of nuclear weapons are much higher than is believed in media/parliament, both in 2022 and over the next 50 years.
Such decisions inevitably vary hugely family by family as you have to calculate all sorts of things.
Personally I think it's much nicer living deep in the countryside anyway so for me it is all gain and no disruption!
How quick should we worry about this escalating, e.g. is only moving out if no fly zone declared sensible?
Start long term planning now. I hope and pray it never happens but am beyond disappointed with our politicians. Personally I am in semi-countryside but looking to convince my family to move further out.
agree, though need to be careful with prevailing winds etc to decide what part of the countryside is best.
So west of Bristol, west Wales and northwest Scotland. Currently 3 miles from central Manchester. Hmm...
this might help in your decision making: https://cnduk.org/resources/nuclear-britain-map/
Appreciated Dominic, I don’t do Twitter.
Glad you're off Twitter, but suggest deleting your account entirely. Social media is the prime cause of cognitive rot. Stick to Tolstoy and advanced mathematics if you want to stay smart and train yourself to focus on hard tasks. We need many more people who don't use SM in positions of power. On the other hand, very interested to hear your opinion on Zelensky - is he a "live player" as you like to put it?
Also interested in opinion on Zelenskyy.
he's clearly decent at political campaigning and manipulating western hacks but there's a lot more to governing than that.
he seems to me to have been seriously deluded about the west coming to save him. he told his people this invasion wouldnt happen. and his inflexibility was a huge diplomatic error. a skilled live player would have sucked Putin into complex talks while trying to figure out what America would really do. instead he basically just told putin to fuck off.
but of course it depends on one's goal. he seems to have thought 'better an invasion and many dead than any serious concessions'.
doesnt seem to me like a good approach for the UKR people.
Are there good sources on this? All I have seen suggests he is trying to negotiate some serious internal tensions and potential chaos, where US role is obscure but potentially disasterous (leading up to this, for sure, but also now?). His likelihood of getting killed by his own "neo-nazi" security guards (who work for his former TV producer oligarch, apparently) may still be higher than getting killed by Putin's thugs. Or do you have information that contradicts this assessment, or adds to it in some way?
I don't know if i agree that he thought the west was going to save him. at least, you are right that he was seriously deluded if he did and i don't like to draw a conclusion that someone seemingly smart is that seriously deluded (just like the idea that Putin is mad is also a non-starter). You really don't have to be very clever to see that nato will never put any boots in the ground (or air) in Ukraine.
Given his goal (and the goal of basically all Ukrainians I've met for as long as I can remember) is to get Ukraine as far out from under Russian influence as possible as quickly as possible, I wonder what he could/should have done?
Possible the smart thing would be give Putin Donbas and Crimea in exchange for freedom to join e.g. the EU, but you can't trust Putin to do what he says he's going to, so any negotiation is a tad pointless. Maybe the reason for allowing the war to happen is to give Russia a bloody nose and increase his leverage a tiny bit in negotiations. Risky strategy, but maybe there isn't a lot of choice: the alternative is Putin just takes it all anyway bit by bit.
Agree that sucking Putin into very long complex talks would have been a smart move though...
We all owe our current existence to one guy - a Russian submarine commander called Arkhipov. Here's a tribute to him I wrote twenty years ago. And re the last line - yes! He IS dead (1998), though I didn't check it at time I wrote the piece below.
Practice: October 1962
I remember
ducking into our coal shed
with my mother (dead)
and my father and my little sister -
oh, and the baby -
to practise.
Kruschev (dead) and Kennedy (dead)
started it.
And pesky Castro.
He said that Kruschev could put
missiles on his damned island
pointing into Kennedy's backyard.
Backyard!
That's where our coal shed was,
where we practised
under the car tarpaulin.
I wonder what Arkhipov remembers.
Yesterday's paper said he was an officer
in a Russki sub, the one that nearly sank
a Yankee ship with a nuclear-tipped torpedo -
nuclear-tipped would you believe!
It's hard making a cup of tea
under a tarpaulin over a pile of coal.
It gets easier after a bit of practice.
The baby didn't like it though.
The paper said that Kruschev had said
that if three officers agreed,
they could fire their torpedo
at the Yankee ship depth-charging them.
Two said, "Okay!"
but Arkhipov said "Comrades -
keep your fingers OFF THAT BUTTON!"
My sister thought practising was fun.
There was a row, the paper said,
and a fisty fight but Arkhipov said,
"OVER MY DEAD BODY!" and by then
Kennedy and Kruschev had sorted it out.
She was disappointed when nothing
happened after all that practice and
the tarpaulin went back on the car.
I wonder if Arkhipov is (dead).
16 October 2002
true he was a hero that shd be much more widely known.
i referred to him in the blog above
Indeed you did; causing me to take the liberty of shoehorning in my piece (written on the 40th anniversary of our hair's-breadth escape).
I’ve just finished Now it Can be Told,
Particular, lesson I find extremely useful
“As a matter of fact, we never had much trouble with government regulations and so called “red tape”, probably because whenever we encountered potential difficulties, we did not resort to letter-writing through channels. Instead, a competent officer was always sent immediately to the trouble spot with orders and authority to resolve the problem.”
Correct me if I’m wrong but I think this also translates to responsibility with authority. I think the apex of this power however was in groves insistence on MHP attaining AAA priority, which meant he could delegate authority with responsibility.
Does our govt have a priority system similar to this? I.e cost of living crisis from our shithsow sanctions - we need energy - kwarteng get an SMR built in every quartet of the UK within 2 years. Ok bang there’s a AAA priority do what you need to do.
Going off a previous list of yours I’m going to read Thucydides History of Pelopennisian next, as an aspiring PM would you prioritise anything else? Cheerio
**if not, why not? And would you see this as a fail of VL team not introducing such a system?**
we were trying but this is a v v hard problem cos it goes to the heart of ministerial accountability/civil service impartiality - deep constitutional issues and legal issues.
we began discussions including e.g how Perm Secs shd be managed.
but all ditched when VL left
Well done in your efforts and thanks for your time.
Agree that's an important passage and yes it it key for understanding how to get stuff done.
No we have no such priority system.
The closest we have come recently was when Vallance and I persuaded Boris to create the vaccine taskforce and give KB extreme authority over hiring, plus explicit statement from the PM to ignore anybody saying to her 'but procurement law' and that he wd take responsibility.
This only happened because of the extreme circumstances in April when the govt machine had visibly collapsed and Boris himself had nearly died and the DHSC was on fire, with everything a shitshow.
Vallance & I & a few others such as Lee Cain cd argue - look at DHSC, every day we're in hours of nightmare meetings about it, we cannot possibly throw this hugely complex multibillion dollar business at it.
And because of this, crucially, the Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill did not object, he supported Vallance and me instead of supporting those officials who opposed the VTF.
Thanks for your time.
Glad to hear you are coming off Twitter, not enough people on there take you seriously and they don’t deserve to hear your thoughts and opinions. Good luck with your new projects and I look forward to hearing about them, and reading your snippets here.
Thank you Mr Cummings for your insights, much appreciated
What do you think is a viable pathway to peace, or at least the end of war from here? And if you were in Government what steps would you be taking from here?
When you were in no 10 did you ever look at geothermal? Seems like an area we should be at least exploring/ chucking a bit of government cash at?
yes. didn't seem the best bet for UK but we shd be constantly scanning all such technologies for opportunities. we shd be pushing nuclear and direct air carbon capture. high-friction whitehall will get nowhere fast with this no10 though. they can announce budgets, give speeches, babble 'strategy'. but little will happen because *the government does not control the government*
Is using a plasma drill bit such as this being made here https://www.gadrilling.com/ a pipe dream ? I think current geothermal reports are for up to 5km, more areas of the country might become exploitable, If it works and can keep the costs down. I think the recent government report mentioned enhanced geothermal but not deep geothermal.
I also came across a presentation at ICE discussing deep borehole, taking advantage of technology and innovation for nuclear waste disposal here: https://www.ice.org.uk/eventarchive/deep-borehole-disposal-of-nuclear-waste-london.
The nonchalance of American and British and other leaders and pundits about Russia's nuclear weapons, and the prospects of a catastrophic use of those weapons, is the most horrible thing about this episode. And the danger is only increasing. What if Putin really is, or is in part, an ideological fanatic influenced by, inter alia, Ivan Ilyin? He caused Ilyin's corpse to be brought back to Russia, so there is some influence there. At some level I knew this, but discounted it. I shoe-horned Putin into categories I understood, which is precisely the fallacy of looking for your keys under the streetlight because the light is brighter there. I DID NOT believe Putin would invade. I did not believe that he would look at the risks and costs and pull the trigger. I was wrong. That means my model of how Putin thinks, and even what he actually is, was wrong. Most people who offer opinions for a living are in the same boat, everyone was wrong about Putin, his thinking, his decision-making. We don't understand his decision making process. This is very troubling. Late Soviet leaders were cynics. They no longer believed in revolutionary Marxist-Leninism. They had no faith, so they would not blow up the world, they would just get what they could from the collapse of the USSR. But Putin may not be a cynic. What does Putin believe? Does he believe the Russian people have a unique historical destiny? What if that destiny is thwarted? Is annihilation better than submission, in his mind? Has anyone even started to analyze this possibility? People are floating along as if everything will be as it has always been, and this war will fit into their existing world, not lead to a flaming destruction of that world. The psychology seems very Summer of 1914. Not good. If you are religious. pray for peace.
1) Putin is a nationalist who puts his nation first. He cannot be bought or intimidated, as he proved when he took on the oligarchs who plundered Russia in the chaos after the fall of communism. The people who were drummed out of Russia by him have waged a war of misinformation for twenty years, so virtually everything you know about him is wildly wrong.
2) The Saker accurately predicted the invasion and offers Russo-centric commentary if you want a window into their worldview.
https://thesaker.is/
Key passage from the link you provided:
"If forced, Russia will take on any country, including any NATO member country, which will assist the Ukrainians militarily. If forced, Russia will even fight all of NATO and the USA together and, if forced, she will use all her weapons, including nuclear ones. And if that means that the entire planet is nuked then, as Putin said, “we have no need for a planet without Russia”. All this is to say that Russia is not bluffing, Putin will not back down and that there is no price which Russia would not be willing to pay to prevail in this existential war."
I'd like to see the context for that quote from Putin.
https://topsecretumbra.substack.com/p/putins-religious-war-against-ukraine
This is also enlightening about Putin's thinking.
My god I hope that isn't the general Russian world view. "Ukronazis"? Has he ever met a Ukrainian? It's offensive twaddle.
The invasion is offensive, too. Even more so. The point is to understand these people. Query whether the source is representative of Russian views. No way to find out, really.
Agree that that is the key question for me, that you never really get any access to. I mean, you meet Russians and they very rarely seem to be as rabid as the guy who wrote the article posted above, but then who knows which of the two is more representative of the population. Interesting interview with a journalist on Polish television tonight who's lived their for 20+ years saying, one of the reasons its so hard to pin down Russian opinion is that there really isn't any such thing - it's a huuuuge country, and parts of it are almost not Russian at all, plus the general city vs country thing that happens everywhere.
the metropolitan elite contrasts starkly with the people of the steppes
Nazism in the Ukraine is a much bigger deal than you think.
https://mronline.org/2022/03/05/understanding-ukrainian-nazism/
I know all about it. I've met hundreds of Ukrainians, not one of them is a nazi or knows any nazis. Collectively they elected a jewish president and have a thriving jewish population. They are no more nazi than any other state in Central or Eastern Europe, which is to say: more than you would find in the West but maybe not as much more as you would think. It's an offensively absurd fabrication.
Your points are covered in the first paragraph of the article I linked to. The rest of the article is worth your time, too.
I really don't need to, thanks - I've probably read it already!
... which is to say that I have first hand experience of the country and its people which I will take more seriously than things written by either side in this conflict.
I reckon ideological fanatic - check out Dugin's “The Foundations of Geopolitics”: Izborsky Club, "Zaftra" newspaper/Prohkanov - probably links with "Z" symbol ... and Nikolai Fyodorov for Russian Cosmism...evolved recently to Kandybaism...
Agreed, that seems likely. Which means he is neither a cynic nor a materialist. Yet the decision makers dealing with him show no evidence of any awareness of this dimension of his character.
it's worrying... i have no knowledge whatsoever of what goes on behind the scenes... but there must be some philosophers and/or psychologists somewhere looking at this stuff! Messiah Complexes are nothing new.... slightly concerning, relatively harmless and occasionally amusing when considering David Icke/David Shyler types.... but needs to be considered seriously when evident in superpower leadership!
I think it's sensible to look at Putin's own words seriously. He has explained repeatedly his ideas re Russian history. West has ignored and largely shifted from naive trust in him (20 yrs ago) to insults. There has never been a phase of taking seriously, figuring out goals, negotiating.
UKR is existential for Putin. Our leaders ignored this, though they were warned by likes of Richard Pipes 25 yrs ago
"We don't do God"