The issue is basically that, for about half a century if not more, the West has assumed that its wars will fall into two categories:
a) small wars which don't burn through very much materiel (or indeed people) and can therefore be kept going for very long periods without significant changes from peacetime production and force generation
b) huge wars which will run for a few days before victory, mutual exhaustion or nuclear release, and therefore have to be conducted with existing materiel stockpiles and forces because there isn't enough time for any changes to have any effect.
Ukraine is category c).
The irony is of course that this was a Western view. Russia/USSR always took the view that it might have to mobilise large sectors of its economy for war production during a prolonged high-intensity conflict. The USSR held huge stockpiles of raw materials for this reason, and post-Soviet Russia held regular economic mobilisation readiness exercises.
Or rather they claimed to, but they were, it is now clear, pretending.
Holy shit, Dark Brandon's in Kyiv!
Heebie is too good for this grubby world.
The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn old lint into linen; the old men shall betake themselves to the public squares in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic.
This has been a known issue for quite some time. I really wish Biden had invoked the DPA for ordnance production months ago and I have no idea why he's not doing it now.
It's hard to do the necessary thing when it provides jobs for people in Ohio, instead of encouraging them to get out and start a life somewhere reasonable.
1. 'It'll be over quickly' and 'We'll be greeted as liberators' have been very common delusions for maybe all of time. Maybe they've bourn out in Malvinas, Grenada, and Kuwait. I suspect many American still cannot see why neither Afghanistan nor Iraq followed suit. Brits too, maybe? The first delusion might have been met in Ukraine if we'd still had Trump, but the second was never in the cards for Russia. Is there anything at all appealing about a Russian conquest? Why should Ukrainians prefer a future connected to Moscow and St. Petersburg, rather than Berlin, Paris, Barcelona?
I guess the war ends when Russian elites convince Putin (at the barrel of a gun?) that too many Russian soldiers have been killed, and that the benefit of possession of Ukrainian ground isn't worth more. Is there any way to get here other than by killing a bunch of Russian soldiers?
The odds aren't zero that there would still be an independent Ukraine if Trump had won in 2020, but I'm fairly certain the cost for Ukraine (in blood and lost territory) would have been much higher.
borne out obviously. I'm not saying that Matt Damon couldn't have won the war in Grenada single handedly, or with Clint Eastwood, just that he didn't.
The correct name is "the Falklands", Charley. That's the name the inhabitants use. "Malvinas" is what the right wing dictatorship that invaded and occupied them called them. We don't use it unless we want to make it clear that we wish the right wing dictatorship had won.
6:preach.
12: Not to dispute the overall point, but AIUI "Malvinas" is the name used by Argentinians in general, right-wing dictatorial or no.
MEanwhile: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/10/1155761686/russia-is-draining-a-massive-ukrainian-reservoir-endangering-a-nuclear-plant
13: as I said, "We don't use it unless we want to make it clear that we wish the right wing dictatorship had won."
Recently watched The Staircase (Michael Peterson murder case in Durham) and was somewhat surprised when a person peripherally involved in the saga had died in the Grenada invasion. Seems to have been one of 19 US fatalities.(For comparison 38 US troops were killed in the Mayaguez incident in 1975.)
14: I remember my mom's friend from Argentina telling us she was taught in school that those islands were part of Argentina.
We were taught they were part of France.
17: Francophilia was out of control in Nebraska back then
They used to make artillery shells in Nebraska. My aunt worked there for a while.
Apparently, it produced 40% of the navy's munitions, which might not be "artillery." Anyway, they closed it and built a community college.
My aunt might have been at the Cornhusker Munitions plant, which was not navy. I didn't realize there were two that close.
Ajay sometimes takes his affection for the empire a little far, but in this case he's right. The Falklands residents didn't displace any previous population, and there's just no legitimate claim here on the Argentinian side, just nationalism of the bad kind.
"Anyway, they closed it and built a community college."
They took all the tanks and put 'em in a tank museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
No, no, no
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?
They closed the Arsenal of Democracy and put up a non selective educational institution
16: A friend of mine at the time of the invasion became, many years later and only for a few weeks, the Finance Minister of Chile, the first member of the socialist party to hold that position since the 1973 coup. So far as I can tell, his politics did not change materially between the time I knew him and when he led the finance ministry. He made no bones about his sympathies being with Argentina (then ruled by a right wing dictatorship) and against the UK (then ruled by a right wing -- um, how to characterize Margaret Thatcher?).
16: A friend of mine at the time of the invasion became, many years later and only for a few weeks, the Finance Minister of Chile, the first member of the socialist party to hold that position since the 1973 coup. So far as I can tell, his politics did not change materially between the time I knew him and when he led the finance ministry. He made no bones about his sympathies being with Argentina (then ruled by a right wing dictatorship) and against the UK (then ruled by a right wing -- um, how to characterize Margaret Thatcher?).
16: A friend of mine at the time of the invasion became, many years later and only for a few weeks, the Finance Minister of Chile, the first member of the socialist party to hold that position since the 1973 coup. So far as I can tell, his politics did not change materially between the time I knew him and when he led the finance ministry. He made no bones about his sympathies being with Argentina (then ruled by a right wing dictatorship) and against the UK (then ruled by a right wing -- um, how to characterize Margaret Thatcher?).
1 submission for each month in office!
1 submission for each month in office!
um, how to characterize Margaret Thatcher?).
"Unwilling to have thousands of political opponents thrown alive from airplanes"?
The Argentinian junta is too parallel to what I see in domestic politics in the U.S. now for me to try to appreciate them as anticolonial or whatever.
31: A key question in both cases: Which side will the CIA come down on?
The US government was famously on both sides simultaneously during the Falklands War, or rather bits of the US government were on one side and other bits of the US government were on the other side.
27: presumably he was anti Pinochet and therefore anti Thatcher because she was pro Pinochet, and therefore pro Galtieri because he was anti Thatcher?
27: "prime minister" is good? I mean the kind of people who might conceivably claim she was never actually elected usually go for arguing that she was, and therefore the problem is the rotten nature of the public.
12 I guess I knew I'd draw a reaction! Anyway, British armed forces were greeted as liberators, or saviors.
My favorite examples of the liberators fallacy come from the American war of independence. Specifically the New Yorker Skene, who misled the government to disastrous consequences. Also, the South.
Related, this FT piece is really good and has the killer quote:
"People who don't trust anyone start trusting a very small number of people who lie to them."
https://www.ft.com/content/80002564-33e8-48fb-b734-44810afb7a49
Also related, for those who might ypothetiacally be procrastinating on the Plokhy, Tim Snyder's Ukraine class is online.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_
I should read his books. I'm having trouble reading fiction, but less with nonfiction.