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A Commentary on the Passing Scene by Robert Paul Wolff rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
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- Robert Paul Wolff
- As I observed in one of my books, in politics I am an anarchist, in religion I am an atheist, and in economics I am a Marxist. I am also, rather more importantly, a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a violist.
130 comments:
Of course, let us not forget the Lady Fortuna when we speak of war. It is Niccolo Machiavelli who said that war & politics can easily be swayed by the forces of chance. Things can go south really fast in war. Soldiers call such a phenomenon Murphy's Law, and generals call it friction. Here is more on friction by Clausewitz:
On War. Book 1, Ch. 7.
"As long as we have no personal knowledge of war, we cannot conceive where those difficulties lie of which so much is said, and what that genius, and those extraordinary mental powers required in a general have really to do. All appears so simple, all the requisite branches of knowledge appear so plain, all the combinations so unimportant, that, in comparison with them, the easiest problem in higher mathematics impresses us with a certain scientific dignity. But if we have seen war, all becomes intelligible; and still, after all, it is extremely difficult to describe what it is which brings about this change, to specify this invisible and completely efficient Factor.
Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction, which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen war. Suppose now a traveller, who, towards evening, expects to accomplish the two stages at the end of his day's journey, four or five leagues, with post horses, on the high road—it is nothing. He arrives now at the last station but one, finds no horses, or very bad ones; then a hilly country, bad roads; it is a dark night, and he is glad when, after a great deal of trouble, he reaches the next station, and finds there some miserable accommodation. So in war, through the influence of an infinity of petty circumstances, which cannot properly be described on paper, things disappoint us, and we fall short of the mark. A powerful iron will overcomes this friction, it crushes the obstacles, but certainly the machine along with them. We shall often meet with this result. Like an obelisk, towards which the principal streets of a place converge, the strong will of a proud spirit, stands prominent and commanding, in the middle of the art of war.
Friction is the only conception which, in a general way, corresponds to that which distinguishes real war from war on paper. The military machine, the army and all belonging to it, is in fact simple; and appears, on this account, easy to manage. But let us reflect that no part of it is in one piece, that it is composed entirely of individuals, each of which keeps up its own friction in all directions. Theoretically all sounds very well; the commander of a battalion is responsible for the execution of the order given; and as the battalion by its discipline is glued together into one piece, and the chief must be a man of acknowledged zeal, the beam turns on an iron pin with little friction. But it is not so in reality, and all that is exaggerated and false in such a conception manifests itself at once in war. The battalion always remains composed of a number of men, of whom, if chance so wills, the most insignificant is able to occasion delay, and even irregularity. The danger which war brings with it, the bodily exertions which it requires, augment this evil so much, that they may be regarded as the greatest causes of it.
This enormous friction, which is not concentrated, as in mechanics, at a few points, is therefore everywhere brought into contact with chance, and thus facts take place upon which it was impossible to calculate, their chief origin being chance, As an instance of one such chance, take the weather. Here, the fog prevents the enemy from being discovered in time, a battery from firing at the right moment, a report from reaching the general; there, the rain prevents a battalion from arriving, another from reaching in right time, because, instead of three, it had to march perhaps eight hours; the cavalry from charging effectively because it is stuck fast in heavy ground."
On a separate note, I learned tonight that the young woman who appeared on America’s Got Talent several months ago as Ladybird and sang the poignant song “I’m Okay” passed away this last weekend from cancer. At the end of her performance, she stated something which stunned the audience and the judges, and myself. I am paraphrasing: “You can’t wait until you no longer have troubles in your life to decide to be happy.”
My error.
She performed under the name Nightbird, and the name of her song was “It’s Okay.”
You can watch her performance at the link below. She was amazingly poised and strong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZJvBfoHDk0
Worth a look; a progressive position not seen in the corporate media:
What Is the Difference Between Kosovo & Donbass? – Consortium News
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/23/what-is-the-difference-between-kosovo-donbass/
To clarify if tone down the rhetoric: 'psychotic' is part of psychiatric conditions.
Such as schizophrenia and bipolar and even depression. How it presents is different in each malady.
The psychologist of my acquaintance clarified: Putin is a sociopath, paranoid and narcissistic.
Being extremely paranoid and narcissistic can disturb your grip on reality (see Trump as an example) even if it doesn't present disorganized thinking- which Putin and Trump both have on some level.
This psychologist grouped Putin along with Chavez and Trump and Xi.
Paranoia and narcissism can disturb a sense of reality and are in a concrete sense 'psychotic'
Not all psychotics sleep on the subway and beg for change and lash out.
Putin's psychosis is much more dangerous than the classically 'psychotic' of mental illness, in part because he is together enough to do paranoid and narcissistic things
Let me add to my previous comment by explaining the new role of OSINT (short for open source intelligence, refers to the aggregation of freely available data online and around the world and framing it through intelligence analysis). The best example of this kind of source is a man who goes by the label The Intel Crab on Twitter and who calls himself an OSINT aggregator. Here is the link to his twitter account:
https://twitter.com/IntelCrab
He is one example of many, and it is always very difficult to sort out his motives and background. He will not precisely identify himself. He specializes in retweeting interesting intelligence leaks and world news, analysis, and is professional.
"Open source everything" and the method of open source intelligence (gathering and analyzing free and existing data rather than spying on secret or classified data in order to understand the world) is a kind of parallel "spook" industry which is best explained by the former CIA intelligence officer Robert David Steele. Here is a video clip of Steele explaining the general method of open source everything:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11erDmTt9F8&ab_channel=EricWeld
Steele, like Lee Wheelbarger, is a private consultant and extremely opinionated mercenary networker with his own web site and private news letter to which you may subscribe for a fee (I would not subscribe, the man preaches "open source everything" which means give away all data with no pay walls or copyright). Open source everything is also the general method of Aaron Swartz and other "hacktavists" in the cyber-counter-culture. I have not looked to see what Steele is saying about the Ukraine situation on his web site. Steele has been part of disinformation networks associated with Trump in the past according to my observation.
My view is that by observing the thinking of a wide range of cunning aggregators of leaks, data or other useful information (the OSINT networks online), a philosopher can come up with some approximation of what is happening in real time in conflict zones such as Ukraine in February 2022 for example. The purposeful mixture of disinformation into the online information networks creates a kind of vertigo effect beyond the sheer "torrent" of constant data, and no political truthfulness seems possible under such uncontrolled circumstances.
For Lee Wheelbarger's YouTube channels, note that he has two modes: a) live mode where he does his analysis in front of an audience and takes some questions, curses and kicks trolls out of his way; b) sleep mode where Lee sets up 8 Ukraine web cams and another screen of video clips or news stations (Lee is off duty). Don't watch his channel in sleep mode as it will appear to be a dud. Live, he is entertaining and unscripted so he will speak his mind without reserve.
There is also a short video clip from the TV series Modern Marvels on Lee Wheelbarger on YouTube which explains how he invent a universal handcuff pick device and weapon technologies associated with thermal imaging or night vision equipment. That video clip claims he lives in Virginia retreat but I am not sure how old it is. Due to the fact that Lee claims to have worked for the Ukraine government as a military contractor and that he has a network of mercenaries and friends who have been hired to fight Russia sending him information online which he shares with public or his private network.
Update on Robert David Steele, now deceased since August 2021, can be found in this news story:
https://www.thewrap.com/robert-david-steele-covid/
Apparently, open source everything (Steele's mantra) is not a good method to protect yourself from coronavirus infection. The disinformation specialist believed in his own disinformation and died for it, incredible story but some truth to be drawn from it. Don't lose your life by misinforming the world until you cut the intellectual ground from under yourself and make yourself rootless. Letting a huge torrent of disinformation into your thinking space can overwhelm any reasonable human being and turn them into a monster.
The author of the article referenced by Jerry Fresia, Vladimir Golstein, is the chair of the Dept., of Slavic Studies at Brown University. According to Prof. Golstein, Serbians have undeservedly received a bad rap at the hands of American diplomats. Although I concede that I lack the academic expertise of Prof. Golstein, I have a vague memory of a Serbian leader named Slobodan Milosevic who fomented Serbian nationalism and engaged in wholesale atrocities against the Muslim population in Srebrenica. He proceeded to foment a conflict against the Albanian population of Kosovo, initiating discriminatory policies against them, e.g., dismissing Albanian teachers and detaining and arresting Albanians. Prof. Golstein sees some sort of correlation between these events and the current events in Ukraine, and Putin’s declaration of the independence of the provinces of Dombass and Donetsk, a correlation that escapes me.
I'm not generally a big fan of Thomas Friedman, but this piece I think is good. The highlight is a quotation from a then-94-year-old George Kennan about why NATO expansion was a mistake:
here
LFC,
Nina Kruscheva, who was an assistant to Kennan, commented on that toward the end of her interview on Democracy Now yesterday.
Jerry Fresia, Another Anonymous (also LFC & David Palmeter),
Excellent speech by Michael Parenti, discussing American empire and, specifically, the propaganda war surrounding the Bosnian-Serbian conflict (which he launches into at 19 minutes in). He touches on many of the issues that are relevant to understanding how we keep getting into crises like what we're currently involved in with Russia and Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ6QpjPTaG8
(I do not think it would be helpful to get into a debate over Serbian genocide denialism here.)
The interesting thing about the Friedman NYT op-ed is that this is a very "establishment," very mainstream journalist saying: yes, Putin is doing bad things, but the U.S. has to be faulted for its misguided policies in the 1990s (and NATO generally). This is not Chomsky or Parenti or another left-wing critic of U.S. foreign policy. This is Tom Friedman, pro-neoliberal, who occupies a completely different place on the political and journalistic spectrum.
I've long thought NATO should have declared mission accomplished when the Cold War ended, dissolved, and then a new European 'security architecture' should have been created. Or if that was too difficult, a way shd have been found, beyond the largely forgotten Partnership for Peace, to make clear that it wasn't going to take necessarily an adversarial posture vis-a-vis Russia. Some other way shd have been found to reassure the E European countries other than NATO expansion.
"Some other way shd have been found to reassure the E European countries other than NATO expansion."
"Other" involving things that don't go "bang!" ???
The Kennan quote strikes me as inapt.
"To be sure, post-Cold War Russia evolving into a liberal system — the way post-World War II Germany and Japan did — was hardly a sure thing. Indeed, given Russia’s scant experience with democracy, it was a long shot."
Both nations were defeated, flattened, and occupied. Germany didn't "evolve" into a liberal system so much as a liberal tradition reasserted itself. There was a program of denazification that involved exclusion, imprisonment, and execution. Japan had the MacArthur Shogunate.
Russia had the misfortune to have to reform during the peak of the neo-liberal dispensation. Given pre-Revolution experience and certain aspects of the NEP, the Oligarchs were probably inevitable - the chances of a free economy under a liberal democracy were slim to none. Russia never had a chance once the Oligarchs (and Putin) hoovered up much of the wealth. The former buffer states were merely being realistic in actively seeking NATO membership.
1) Sorry about the repetition of "other" in that sentence. When posting on phone, stylistic elegance goes out the window.
2) On the substance: we're in the realm of counterfactual history again. NATO expansion was settled on in the late 9Os, before it was entirely clear which direction Russia was going to go in. So I don't think NATO expansion as a policy choice can be defended by saying that Putin or someone like him was surely going to come to power, because that, I think, was not obvious. And part of, as you put it, the neoliberal dispensation involved certain Western economists more or less telling Russia how to open up its economy, and I doubt that their advice was helpful in the long run (maybe not even in the short run).
3) NATO was founded in 1949 mostly to counter the USSR (the Warsaw Pact, I believe, was formed several years after NATO - would have to double check). So there would have been some logic in thinking that, after the USSR dissolved, NATO had served its purpose and a new organization was needed. I did not follow the debates at the time closely, but I'm sure all this was debated in policy and academic circles. Those in favor of NATO expansion won, obviously. Whether that was a good outcome seems to me very much open to question. But we can agree to disagree about this.
P.s. open up its economy in the sense of liberalize -- the rise of the oligarchs prob had something to do w the speed and drastic nature of the transition. But it's also possible that if NATO hadn't expanded, the oligarchs wouldn't have been able as easily to hide behind nationalistic appeals and rhetoric, as Putin is now doing.
I suspect most Americans have not been following this drama, and in the absence of a direct attack on the United States, are not going to have much patience with rising gas prices and worsening inflation more generally. If I had to lay a wager, the public's anger over those concerns will be the limiting factor for what the Biden admin can do, if the admin refuses to back down and try to find some sort of accommodation with the Russians.
LFC: "This is not Chomsky or Parenti or another left-wing critic of U.S. foreign policy. This is Tom Friedman, pro-neoliberal, who occupies a completely different place on the political and journalistic spectrum."
... and whose late father-in-law was a billionaire ...
Not being a realist in the IR sense of the term, though finding that school making a bit more sense than the mainstream alternative (just as I found Morgenthau more sensible back in the Vietnam era, though then I was much more taken with Robert Scheer's analysis and thought Maurice Zeitlen's critique of Morgenthau very plausible), and since Mearsheimer (who was Walt's co-author on the Israel lobby) was mentioned, this may be of interest to some:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/23/united-states-europe-war-russia-ukraine-sleepwalking/
In addition, those who have any knowledge of the grotesqueries of "humanitarian intervetnionism," aka "humanitarian war," will know what to make of this:
https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/geopolitics/2022/02/how-the-donbas-region-became-a-grotesque-theatre-of-war
james wilson,
Nice article from Walt in Foreign Policy.
I disagree on two points. Yes, Biden announced withdrawal of troops (and civilian personnel) from Ukraine itself, but as I noted last week, he has been sending more troops to Poland (and other neighboring countries right outside Ukraine). Also, Russia wasn't just concerned about NATO continuing to expand eastward, potentially even into Ukraine. They have seen those US military actions within Ukraine and the US' supplies of armaments to Ukraine as a threat, even with Ukraine not formally being part of Ukraine. These have been all the more alarming for the Russians given the US' withdrawal from various arms agreements.
But I especially liked this passage, which basically says a lot of what I was getting at yesterday:
"The widespread inability to empathize with the Russian perspective on this crisis is puzzling too. As international affairs researcher Matthew Waldman noted in 2014, “strategic empathy” isn’t about agreeing with an adversary’s position. It is about understanding it so you can fashion an appropriate response....
I’m less puzzled—but still disturbed—by the ease with which the Blob has fallen back on all the familiar tropes in the foreign-policy establishment’s playbook of greatest hits. Read the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Atlantic Council’s website, and yes, even Foreign Policy, in recent weeks and you’ll get a steady diet of hawkish posturing, with only occasional dissenting views on offer. Putin alone is said to be the source of the problem, neatly demonized along with dictators Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Bashar al-Assad, every member of Iran’s political elite, Xi Jinping, and anyone else we’ve ever been seriously at odds with. Although Washington has been on good terms with any number of bellicose but mostly pro-American despots, the West insists on viewing this crisis not as a complicated clash of interests between nuclear-armed states but as a morality play between good and evil. As usual, society is told that what is at stake is not Ukraine’s geopolitical alignment but the entire direction of human history. And right on cue: Here comes the well-worn Munich analogy, as if Putin was a genocidal maniac whose real aim was to conquer all of Europe the same way Hitler tried to do."
LFC, perhaps you (or someone else) can enlighten people like me — who weren’t cognizant of politics in the 90s — as to what was the rationale for NATO offered then? And what in your opinion was the *real* rationale, if it differed from the offered one? Was NATO expansion after 1989 meant merely to send a message to Russia (still the region’s sole nuclear power): Get in line behind the neoliberal order, or else?
Also, what might this hypothetical ‘security architecture’ that succeeded NATO have looked like? I am eager to hear an answer to this. But I have to say that I am very cynical about people like Putin. Although I acknowledge that he is not Hitler, I do doubt that any gentler (one might say “appeasing”) stance on the part of the West would have stopped his expansionist ambitions. Putin wants to reestablish the Soviet sphere of influence, and whether the US was sending weapons to Ukraine or not is immaterial. As I said in my comment on the last post, I don’t believe for a minute that the US or NATO or Ukraine would ever precipitate military conflict with Russia. That is simply not in the cards for the next foreseeable one hundred years. Russia is not Iraq in 2003 (they have nukes, for one thing). Nor do I think *Putin* thinks a US or NATO attack on his Russia would ever be a real possibility. Simply, he is an authoritarian leader of a former super power, and he would rather his close neighbors become client states than that they become EU democracies. And if he has to resort to military action to make that happen, then so be it.
Now if a case can be made that US and NATO actions in the 90s greased the path for the rise of a leader like Putin, that would be a different story. In that case, I would join in on the condemnations of the US and NATO. But once a leader like Putin does come to power, I am, as I said, inclined to believe the worst about him.
I do realize where this leaves me: namely, staking the position that if Hungary, Poland, etc, had not joined NATO, then it’s very likely *they* would now be the ones being menaced by Putin’s Russia. This may be “establishment” thinking but I have yet to read any analysis that would disabuse me of it.
... there is a factum brutum in the whole affair, which is deliberately overlooked, but which determines the complete background of the whole crisis, and this factum brutum is 6255.
6255 operational nuclear warheads in Russia. Somehow, in parallel with the alleged "victory of the West" over the communist Soviet Union and the alleged "end of history," the nuclear threat has completely faded into the background.
Now there are four poker players sitting at a table, Russia, USA, China and Europe, and they are looking at their cards and each of them has a Strait flash in his hand. And each knows that the other has a Strait Flash. The rule of atomic poker now has a special feature, if one player goes "all in" with his cards, they all lose everything. At this point the psychology of the whole game changes. Now it is a matter of preventing anyone from getting the idea of going "all in" or getting into the predicament of thinking they have to go "all in".
It is a mistake to think that the nuclear threat does not play a dominant role because it cuts itself out of the strategic equation. Putin made that clear over the weekend when he allegedly tested the "viability" of his nuclear weapons. In doing so, he made it quite clear: remember, you are not allowed to defeat me!
There is no question that one player is sitting at the table watching closely what moves Putin makes and how the other players react. Xi (and the 5000 of the Chinese Communist Party) are watching, analyzing, and I bet they just feel they are learning infinitely more for the concrete enforcement of their own interests. They know at some point it will be their turn to play their cards. If Biden is smart, he also knows that China knows that. Trump is definitely too stupid to realize that.
Former (Obama admin) US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul on MSNBC late last night: Putin is "unhinged," and "his conception of the world is not based in reality. Or, if it is, he is just lying about it."
Perhaps I was wrong when I insisted that Putin is not psychotic, and that no responsible administrator or journalist should claim that he is. This morning I watched an interview with Nina Krushcheva, Nikita Krushchev’s great grand-daughter and a professor of Russian literature and history at the New School in New York. She referred to Putin as a “madman.” She apologized for having underestimated the threat he posed to Ukraine. She had earlier opined that he would be satisfied with just occupying Donetsk and Luhansk and would stop there. She stated that she found his actions this morning incomprehensible, and that both Ukraine and Russia are going to pay a heavy price in casualties.
I am wondering if any of you know of evidence of systematic persecution of ethnic Russians living in Ukraine. Some American commentators have claimed this. I know that there are some fascist ultra right-wing Russophobe gangs that have done damage. I am also aware about the controversy regarding the language laws. I guess I am asking for sources. Thank you.
@ Ed Barreras
I've noted your questions, and while I don't have the answers (capital T, capital A), I have a couple of thoughts - but they will have to wait until somewhat later today.
I'm surprised that McFaul called Putin "unhinged." There may be a tendency to think that a person, an "actor" in the antiseptic language of pol sci and IR, who in some ways seems more at home in the geopolitical and normative world of 1910, say, than 2022 must be crazy, irrational, psychotic, mad, unhinged. But I don't think that follows.
Correction: should read "than that of 2022..."
Yikes, I just re-read that atrocious first sentence! What I should have said was: …how did people in the 90s rationalize the continued existence of NATO? If I can’t have an effect on the world, I should at least strive for pleasing phrases.
Not all autocratic tyrants are unhinged: for example, Saddam Hussein and Xi were not psychotic and I'm not sure Putin was always psychotic.
Just as there are many ways to be, there are many ways to be psychotic.
Narcissism and paranoia can make for loss of contact with reality.
Take Trump who is a wimp, but shares in Putin's narcissism and paranoia- Trump actually believes he won the election- that is psychotic and Putin actually believes he is the savior of Russia and that the world is against him and he creates a reality that reinforces his psychoses
I'm afraid that if backed up against a wall or given resistance he might go 'ballistic' literally.
I take people not literally, but seriously.
He is behaving and talking like a madman and not just in the moral sense, that goes without saying
Marco, This doesn't really begin to answer your question, but maybe it serves as a pointer to an answer?
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10005188/1/Janmaat2007TheEthnic307.pdf
You know, Howard, basically all you have been doing here is making assertions. But let's say someone were to agree with you that Putin is "psychotic," a word that I believe you are not using in conformity with everyday or medical/clinical usage. But let's say someone were to agree with you. So what? What follows? Is he going to invade a NATO country? Is he going to use nuclear weapons? Should NATO or the U.S. mount a clandestine operation to assassinate him? Or what?
Trump insisted he won the 2020 election. According to your warped usage of the word of the word "psychotic," that makes Trump psychotic. Trump also encouraged or fomented the Jan. 6 insurrection. But did he refuse to vacate the White House and have to be dragged out by force? No. Did he mobilize his own private army and launch an armed assault on Biden's inauguration? No. Did Trump go on TV and make an address to the nation saying that the U.S. could not survive as an entity unless he, Trump, served not only a second term but also a third and fourth term, in violation of the Constitution? No. He didn't do any of that. So is he only halfway psychotic, or psychotic lite?
Just repeating over and over that someone is psychotic is not really helpful.
I am making a judgment. You are naive LFC. I am using it in a DSM correct way.
There are public figures and psychological professionals who concur with me
You have a dilettante's view of the world and of human psychology.
In most cases it is sufficient to be successful but it is interfering with your assessment of Putin.
What it means is that he is not a rational actor and might act even more recklessly than a sane dictator would
For someone in his position and circumstances that's not good.
You are not a psychologist and you just have a layman's view of it.
All your response proves is that you are naive.
You are merely disagreeing with me- your opinion in this matter means less than you imagine.
Try to give me an argument more than disbelief and we can talk
Forgive me for being harsh but you're being dismissive and aren't even entertaining the possibility I think out of ignorance
Let me add LFC for people who lack direct experience with insanity it is hard to imagine,
Let me just say that people close to me were mentally ill and that I learned about it in school.
The way Putin is behaving is psychotic- by which I mean delusional and paranoid.
Trump is insane too in that way
I don't hold it against you that you never had to encounter it directly, that's what you're naive about.
Again, there are mental health professional I know and talked to who concur and the idea is gaining traction in the media.
I'm sorry for using harsh language with you and maybe I'm overdoing it and being repetitive, but he is acting in a psychotic, let's say insane way. Not the way the layman who just knows a few things superficially thinks is insane, but insane
Can't we just specify that all humans are a bit insane each in their own particular ways and get back to dealing with the consequences of that unfortunate reality?
There is a political component to all these judgments about one's political opponents being
"mentally ill".
In the Soviet Union dissidents were locked up in psychiatric hospitals because they were judged to be "mentally ill". Until not so long ago gays were considered to be "mentally ill" in the U.S. and in all Western societies. I recall that during the 1964 presidential election a liberal national magazine interviewed numerous liberal psychiatrists who judged that Goldwater, the ultra-conservative Republic candidate, was "mentally ill".
So given that there is a long history of seeing those who disagree with us politically as being "mentally ill", one has a tendency to be a bit skeptical when the enemy du jour, Putin, is judged to be "mentally ill".
Maybe he is, but after the scandal of Goldwater being judged "mentally ill" by people who had never talked to him, many prominent psychiatrists and psychologists told us that in order to make a accurate clinical judgement of someone, one needs to listen to them, to ask them certain questions, to understand their background, their culture and their language (how do people who don't understand Russian decide that Putin's discourse is "deranged"?), etc. That seems wise to me.
Marco,
Although I have no written sources to offer you, I saw an interview with a Russian reporter this morning, from Russia, who was asked about Putin’s claim that Ukranians have been systematically killing Russian speaking Ukranians. She responded that she was not aware of any evidence indicating that this had or was occurring, and Putin offered no evidence that it had or was occurring.
On a separate note, I have noticed that some commenters place their commas and other punctuation marks within commas (myself, LFC); while others place them outside (s. wallerstein).
Is this merely a stylistic choice, or are there valid grammatical reasons to prefer one over the other?
Yes, an incomprehensible question.
Should have read "within quotation marks."
I think it depends on how the quotation marks are used.
For example, if I write "I don't believe that Putin is deranged.", then the period goes within the quotation marks because they are part of the sentence quoted and the comma goes outside because it applies to the conditional which begins with "if".
That's how I remember the rules, but my memory is bit rusty. However, when I taught English composition to future Chilean English teachers, the unofficial student nickname for me was "Mr. Punctuation", which says something about what I emphasized in class.
By the way, the rules may have changed in recent years.
my error
I meant to write "then the period goes within the quotation marks because it.."(not they).
I recently read that over the pandemic anyone actually meeting with Putin had to isolate for two weeks. Perhaps that's paranoia or maybe the precautions one would take for an important person who is immunocompromised. Dude doesn't look well. Possibly we have an aging ill autocrat with all sorts of physical and mental problems. "Psychotic" seems way too specific. "Unhinged" would cover a range of possibilities and, given his actions, perfectly reasonable.
LFC, listing a number of actions that Trump didn't do because he wasn't, for reasons, unable to do is sort of pointless. Given his abilities and resources he did what he could to stay in power. It was clear well before the election that he was planning some sort of coup. This was closer then you appear to think and should be considered, relative to the Right in general, as practice.
s.w., I believe the Goldwater article was published in Fact which was a minor publication, more sensationalist then "liberal". Goldwater sued Ginzburg and won and the APA did its Goldwater rule as a result. Goldwater later came to consider the drift of Movement Conservatism as loony. Goldwater struck me as a typical Western libertarian. Wrong but hardly mentally ill. As I've already pointed out there is abundant evidence that many powerful folks just aren't wired right.
(Peter Thiel is a teck-bro libertarian billionaire who considers freedom and democracy incompatible. He has an interesting essay in a Cato publication (google if interested). He supported Trump and spoke at the 2016 Rep convention. This year he's spreading millions around to various candidates including ~10M to faux hillbilly J. D. Vance. He's also a vampire and a Bond villain (google).)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Jo-djilvo
To James Wilson,
Thank you for the reference. A quote from it is: "The analysis has also shown that the newest generation of (school) textbooks present more balanced accounts of inter-ethnic relations than the first series of textbooks." I have not investigated nearly enough as I wished but it seems that there is no strong evidence to support the idea that ethnic Russians are being persecuted let alone suffering a genocide.
I just find it puzzling that people "we" don't like, people who are "our" political opponents so often suffer from "mental illness", while "our" friends never do: no liberal has ever doubted the sanity of Obama or Biden or Bernie Sanders or AOL. People like "us" are not "mentally ill".
Since I would suspect that "mental illness" is more or less equally distributed among different political groups, I tend to believe that the label of "mental illness" is used to disqualify people whose ideas and political behavior we don't agree with.
What's even more weird is that in the real world when you can get to know liberals or progressives, they're as fucked up as everybody else.
Ajamu Baraka makes a good point:
"The immoral white supremacy & Eurocentrism of the West is on full display with Ukraine. 6 million Congolese dead in DRC, U.S. starts a war in Ethiopia, supports violent coups, destroys cities & nations in Middle-East & drones civilians - but its only war in Europe that counts?"
AA and s wallerstein
There is no single correct answer to the punctuation question. It's a matter of style. In the case of a sentence ending with a quote, e.g., So and so said Putin is "psychotic" one school notes, as I think s.w does, that putting the period after the quote ("psychotic".)is logical because the word "psychotic" is simply a quote within your complete sentence.
The counter argument is not logical, but is based on aesthetic grounds: it looks better the other way. I believe this was part of the AP Style Book used by newspapers across the country and they soon established their style as the "correct" style.
In recent years, Brits, and those who follow their written English language stylistic preferences, tend to place the comma or period after the quotation mark. The standard style in American publishing OTOH has been to place the comma or period before the quotation mark. (One exception to the latter is in writing discussing computer code, where the placement of the quotation mark can make a very significant difference in what is being communicated.)
I haven't checked in years, but at one point this was a subject of endless--and pointless--debate among Wikipedia editors.
Jerry Fresia,
I generally agree with Ajamu Baraka on a great many matters, including a lot of his assessment of the Ukraine situation, but in that quote he is leaving out the issue of nuclear weapons aimed at the US. Nuclear weapons capable of striking the US aren't an active issue in Africa or the Middle East in quite the same way.
@ Ed Barreras
Even though I haven't had a chance to answer your questions properly yet, and might not for a while, I have been thinking about them. There's an old idea that might be referred to in shorthand as a benign sphere of influence. It seems to me that might have provided one route to a new security arrangement in Europe after the Cold War, though the route wasn't taken. Roughly and briefly, NATO could have agreed not to expand eastward in return for the understanding that Russia would not invade or subjugate the E European countries (incl Baltics) or seek to determine the character of their domestic politics. They would be in Russia's sphere of influence, but it would be a benign one. (If you feel like buying or otherwise getting your hands on the book, look at Bull's _The Anarchical Society_, the section on spheres of influence in chap. 9. He doesn't use the word "benign," but the discussion is relevant. The book is several decades old but it's a classic. Very lucid and accessible.)
LFC, Thanks, I’ll see if I can get a hold of that chapter in Bull’s book. I’d be interested to hear about how ‘benign spheres of influence’ might look in practice, and whether it could have tamped down the prospect of the current catastrophe. (Also, how does the Taiwan Relations Act conform to that model?) As for Putin, to me it seems fairly clear that after Yanukovych’s ouster in 2014 he was always going to find a way to claw Ukraine back into his orbit, and since Russia is weak politically and economically, war is the only option. I doubt he would have been appeased by a mere guarantee that Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO, since he has now made clear he doesn’t regard Ukraine as a real country and would like to restore the glory of imperial Russia. I imagine that today people in the Baltic states are thankful for having entered into a military alliance with the West (in the form of NATO, though it could just as easily been called something else) despite those alliances being condemned by critics on the Left (such as Chomsky) as outrageous provocations.
Jerry Fresia,
Does Ajamu Baraka really believe that the war in Iraq “didn’t count”?
Perhaps someone will be interested in what the British Communist Party has to say about all this:
https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/russias-assault-ukraine-catastrophe-could-lead-nuclear-war-peace-movement-more-important
Howard @12:49 p.m.
I don't know much about you, and you don't know much about me. It's definitely true that I'm not a psychologist (or a psychiatrist), so perhaps I should have refrained from opining on the particular question of Putin's mental state.
However, I find it interesting to be accused of having a "dilettante's view of the world...." Going beyond the dictionary definition, the word "dilettante" arguably carries a pejorative implication of not really taking anything seriously. But putting that implication aside and just looking at the dictionary definition ("a person who follows an art or science only for amusement and in a superficial way; dabbler"), I don't think it is very apt.
What "art or science" are you accusing me of following superficially? If it's psychology, I don't really follow it at all, so that can't be right.
To be honest, I don't really follow my own field much anymore. And my own field is or has been in the past, perhaps understandably or justifiably, insecure, for lack of a better word, about its status as a discipline. But the mere fact that I can refer to something as my field (without lying) is enough in itself to refute your accusation (or characterization).
I am sorry, but I cannot allow the quotation of Ajamu Baraka quoted by David Fresia to go without a response.
The quotation is:
"The immoral white supremacy & Eurocentrism of the West is on full display with Ukraine. 6 million Congolese dead in DRC, U.S. starts a war in Ethiopia, supports violent coups, destroys cities & nations in Middle-East & drones civilians - but its only war in Europe that counts?"
The clear implication is that what conflicts the United States and its European allies decide to get involved in is indicative of their racist attitude toward Africans, as demonstrated by the different response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The assertion is so simplistic and superficial that it is a sad commentary on the status of what passes for contemporary analysis of race relations. The conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a civil war being fought between Africans. Mr. Baraka does not explain what role the U.S. or its European allies are playing in that conflict, but it escapes me how a civil war between Africans can be symptomatic of “immoral white supremacy.” The conflict in Ukraine, by contrast, involves the invasion of a sovereign nation, which is predominantly Caucasian, by a separate nation, which is also predominantly Caucasian. How an invasion involving one Caucasian nation against another Caucasian nation, and the response and involvement of the United States and its allies regarding the invasion, when contrasted to the lack of involvement in the civil war in the DRC, can be emblematic of “immoral white supremacy” likewise escapes me.
The conflict in Ethiopia between the central government of Ethiopia against the rebels in the Tigray region is also a civil war between different African populations. I have no idea what Mr. Baraka means by claiming that the United States started that civil war. In fact, President Biden has discontinued trade privileges with Ethiopia and the central government has been provided military equipment by the United Arab Emirates. Yet Mr. Barka blames the racist United States and its European allies. That aside, again, comparing a civil war involving Africans to an invasion involving two Caucasian nations as evidence of “immoral white supremacy” is, to be frank, utterly fatuous. And the fact that such a quotation would be regarded as insightful, rather than anything other than anti-White propaganda, I find rather disappointing, from an analytical standpoint.
Likewise specious is Mr. Baraka’s closing catch-all sally referring to violent coups in the Middle East, as compared to the response to the invasion of Ukraine, without any specification of what Mr. Baraka is talking about. It is apparent that from Mr. Baraka’s perspective, anything the United States and its European allies do, because they are predominantly Caucasian, demonstrates “immoral white supremacy” – regardless of the facts.
Another,
I don't believe this is a just a United States problem.
The three Chilean channels of cable news have been transmitting non-stop news about the Russian invasion of the Ukraine for two days now, with due concern and empathy for the civilian victims. I follow the news fairly closely, but I can't recall when I saw anything on those three channels about the wars in Ethiopia and the DRC. They may mention that there are wars going on there in their general coverage of Africa.
We all tend to empathize with "people like us". That has been pointed out by Yale psychologist Paul Bloom in his book, Against Empathy, where he says we should give priority to our sense of justice and rational compassion over empathy, which, while valuable, tends to distort our perceptions in favor of certain categories, especially in favor of people whom we identify with, in this case, members of the white race, if we are white, as those who run CNN-Chile are. They might be considered "hispanics" in the U.S., that is, not-white, but they certainly see themselves as "white".
AA
I think there's a national security interest that we have in Europe and the Ukraine that we do not have in the Congo. That said, I agree that we tend to empathize with "people like us." The best recent example of that, I think, is the decision to intervene militarily in the Balkans but not in Rwanda.
s. wallerstein and David,
I am sorry, but this issue has nothing to do with empathy or the lack thereof. I have seen numerous reports on American news stations deploring the horrible internecine warfare in the DRC and Ethiopia. They, like the atrocities in Rwanda, involve civil wars among different tribal groups within African countries. The conflict in the Balkans, and the current conflict in Ukraine, are not civil wars. They are wars between different countries. The fact that the countries are predominantly Caucasian has nothing to do with why the United States and the European allies got involved in the Balkan and Ukraine crisis, but not in the civil wars in DRC, Ethiopia or Rwanda. Many commenters on this blog have criticized the U.S. for having gotten involved in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was a civil war between different Vietnamese factions. We were supposed to learn our lesson not to get involved in civil wars within nations, but now the U.S. is criticized for not doing so in DRC, Ethiopia and Rwanda, while getting involved in the Ukrainian conflict, which is not a civil war.
Ajama Baraka is an anti-White racist, and he spews misinformation and propaganda in order to promote a narrative that the United States is always engaged in acts of “immoral white supremacy.”
Post Script:
Remember the debacle of United States intervention in the civil war in Somalia in 1993? American armed forces were slaughtered in Mogadishu, and Clinton was roundly criticized for his adventurist foreign policy. Did Ajamu Baraka claim that the U.S. involvement in Somalia was another example of “immoral white supremacism”?
Is there any wonder, then, when the inter-tribal atrocities began in Rwanda in 1994 that the Clinton administration and its European allies were reluctant to get involved?
“When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.” 1 Corinthians 13:11
When I was an undergraduate at Rutgers during the 1960s, when the riots occurred in Newark, Detroit and Watts, I sided wholeheartedly with the African-Americans who were venting their anger at white supremacism and the oppression inflicted on them by our society. I wrote an editorial in the college newspaper articulating the frustration of African Americans. I do not regret that empathy, and it continues in my heart still. But as I grew up and saw more of the world, I rejected the naïve perspective of my youth that all Whites are evil and bigoted, and that all Blacks are good and fair-minded. Neither is true. But I have found that many White liberals still cling to this bifurcated childish view of the world, and endorse such misguided and racist statements such as those expressed by Ajamu Baraka.
AA
You're wrong about the Balkans: it had many features of a civil war. And both the Balkans and Rwanda presented issues of massacre, genocide, and humanitarian intervention. David Palmeter is completely right about the inconsistency of getting involved in the Balkans and not Rwanda, and how that was perceived. The then secretary general of the UN, Boutrous Boutrous-Ghali, said this, iirc.
I've never heard of Ajamu Baraka (though I've heard of LeRoi Baraka) and frankly I don't care what he says about anything. But the idea that the Balkans wasn't a civil war whereas Rwanda was, and that's the key reason for the decisions, doesn't pass the laugh test. The fact is, as David Palmeter also said, that some regions have more importance, or are thought to have more importance, for U.S. 'national security's than others.
Correction: 'national security'
LFC,
I disagree again, your eminence. “Having features of a civil war” and being a civil war are two entirely different things. The conflict in the Balkans involved Serbs, Croats and Muslims who lived in different nations. The fact that this was largely a conflict between different ethnic groups did not make it a civil war as a civil war is defined: “A war between citizens of the same country.” The Oxford English Dictionary. The ethnic groups which participated in the Balkan conflict were from different countries, and it therefore was not a civil war, which distinguished it from the conflicts in DRC, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia and Vietnam. U.S. involvement in the two latter civil wars had disastrous consequences for the U.S.
The U.S. did however get involved in Haiti in 1994. So I don't think race and empathy are the key drivers here; rather it's more a matter of some regions being seen as more important for one reason or another (Haiti cd be seen as within US sphere of influence; issues of refugees and migration etc etc).
These matters are all debatable. Just giving my perspective.
AA -- Counselor, those separate countries in the Balkans derived from the dissolution of a single country, Yugoslavia.
Anyway intervention in the Balkans was presented in part as a humanitarian intervention. Rwanda also fell in that category. So you are missing a crucial point of similarity in your zeal to rebut Baraka's tweet or whatever the hell it was.
And there's no need for snark (your eminence) esp since you present your opinions as if they are infallible.
Correction: LeRoi Jones a/k/a Amiri Baraka.
LFC,
And there is no need for your pejorative and condescending remarks, referring to my opinion as “laughable.” As President Truman said, “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.” As I stated in a comment on a prior post, you are very smug, and present your views as if they are infallible. I suspect that s. wallerstein’s homage to you that if he became President (of the U.S., I assume), he would want to choose you to be his Secretary of State has gone to your head.
And you and Unknown are not correct. The Balkan war began after Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence on June 25, 1991. So they were no longer part of Yugoslavia when the Balkan war began, and, therefore, it was not, by definition, a civil war.
I do think -- not infallibly, it's just my opinion -- that Bosnia/Balkans and Rwanda both presented issues of humanitarian intervention. One scholar has suggested that the U.S. acted in Somalia partly bc Boutros-Ghali was criticizing powerful countries for being more concerned about humanitarian disasters and atrocities in Europe than in Africa. As to why the US didn't intervene in Rwanda, there were probably a bunch of reasons, but it does contrast w what was done in the Balkans.
If Ajamu Baraka or someone else wants to criticize the US for Eurocentrism etc in a tweet, I think I'd just let it go. The current intellectual climate is such that these sorts of remarks are going to be made, and sometimes they may contain some truth, even if you don't like the the rhetoric ("immoral white supremacy") that surrounds them. But everyone has to follow his/her/their own inclinations, I suppose.
Apologies: the "Unknown" poster at 10:30 was me. It was sent from my phone while waiting in a physician's office--a place a frequent more and more these days.
AA,
You have contributed much to the discourse on this blog, but your posts are greatly diminished for me because of your frequent resort to ad hominem. It turns me off.
Correction: 10:22, not 10:30.
I do not know if Ajama Baraka made the comment in a tweet. It was quoted above by Jerry Fresia, and he did not disclose the source.
Ajamu Baraka ran as Vice President on the Green Party ticket in the 2016 U.S. election. He is regarded as a prominent spokesperson in the African-American community. He criticized Barack Obama, calling him an Uncle Tom, for condemning the riots in Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting of Michael Brown. He also criticized Cornel West for supporting Bernie Sanders. Because of his prominence I was irked by the quote which Jerry Fresia provided. In my book he is a Black racist and a provocateur.
To one who shall be nameless, I just hope your indefatigable, rather unpleasant critic doesn't find you on that other site and start pursuing you there too. Best wishes
Another,
Since I'm giving LFC a good job, Secretary of State, I thought I might offer you one too.
Either I name you to the Supreme Court or as head of the FBI. You can choose which you prefer.
David,
When someone characterizes my opinion as laughable, then I believe sarcastic pushback is appropriate. And I hardly think that the use of the words "your eminence" constitutes an ad hominem remark.
s. wallerstein,
Thank you. Supreme Court, for sure. And I promise to do everything in my power to reverse Citizens United and D.C. v. Heller, and re-reverse Roe v. Wade.
Great!!! You're on!!!
Do I have to go to Chile for the swearing in ceremony?
Dinner's on me.
The idea is that I become president of the United States.
I'm going to beat Trump in 2024. Instead of Make America Great Again, Make America Sane Again. That's my campaign slogan.
AA
Consider following Michele Obama's policy: when they go low, we go high.
So, how about all the fear porn over Trump possibly having his finger on the button and starting ww3? How about needing to elect democrats to save the world from war and insanity?
Just wondering what the latest justification is for the never ending fake narrative.
s. w. You are ignoring the structural constraints that would come to bear upon you should you become President. You're also ignoring that unless you have to hand a party I don't know about you'd have to deal with a Congress more eager than not to limit your powers and your time in office, even should you include some rather disreputable sorts in your Cabinet. Besides these same disreputable sorts, some of whom you've already named, would be more than likely to knife you in the back.
But isn't your urge to become President part of the problem. Hasn't the fetishization of the Presidency and the ignoring of non-presidential politics in America been part of the process leading to the parlous state of the Democratic Party?
Anonymous,
Thank you for your concern about my well-being. Maybe I can find a top-level position for you too.
David,
I believe that Michelle Obama had something more serious in mind in terms of going low than using sarcasm. Moreover, as much as I loved her speech at the Democratic National Convention, I have questioned the wisdom of always going high when your adversaries continually go low - like surrounding polling places with violent crowds in 2020 when the chads were being counted, resulting in the election of George W.; and Swift Boating a candidate who served honorably in Vietnam, when your candidate did not even show up for National Guard duty; and changing voter qualification laws to disenfranchise African-American and Latino voters.
The Babi Yar ravine, where 33,771 Jews were slaughtered and buried by the Nazis in 1941, is located in Kyiv. Ukraine is now being courageously led by a Ukranian Jew, the descendant of Holocaust victims, who, with his family, along with thousands of his fellow Ukranians, could face execution by the fascist Russian forces which are about to invade and occupy Kyev.
AA
Don't you think the question civil tones while commenting on a blog is somewhat different from the examples you give--chad counting, swift boating and the like?
David,
The use of sarcasm on a blog is not uncivil. And invoking Michelle Obama's exhortation to go high when your political adversaries go low, where the stakes are significantly higher than those involved in commenting on a blog, is rather inapt when discussing the protocols of a blog. Let it go.
AA
"The use of sarcasm in blog is not uncivil."
What's your source of authority for that statement of alleged fact?
AA
After posting the above,I ruminated a bit more and decided to look it up, which I should have done before asking for your authority. Anyway, here's mine, from the NSOED:
"Sarcasm: A bitter or wounding expression or remark, a taunt."
Clearly some of us are unaware of all internet traditions. How about we have an ethics panel?
BTW, I see that Russia just threatened Finland should it seek to join NATO. The problem with all the non-NATO post USSR "solutions" is that they assume Russia can ever be a good faith actor. MAD is mad but it seems it's all we got. Anyway, according to all the prepper sites, I live in a fairly safe area as well as being H2O independent. .
aaall: "Anyway, according to all the prepper sites, I live in a fairly safe area as well as being H2O independent."
roflmao
Another Anonymous: "The Balkan war began after Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence on June 25, 1991. So they were no longer part of Yugoslavia when the Balkan war began, and, therefore, it was not, by definition, a civil war."
Ironic.
I just watched the first 14 minutes approximately of the Mearsheimer video Eric linked in the other thread. I've bookmarked it and will try to watch the rest at some pt. (Mearsheimer is not someone I agree w on everything he ever says, but he's a very clear speaker and worth listening to.)
aaall: in my fallible opinion (disclaimer included for AA mostly), the non-NATO solutions don't necessarily assume Russia is "a good-faith actor." What they do assume is that a great power, whether it's a good-faith actor or not, is going to be very pissed off when a military alliance in which another great power plays a key role goes right up to its borders. So from this (fallible) perspective, what the US and NATO shd have done is look for ways to guarantee some measure of independence for the countries in Russia's neighborhood w/o running NATO right up to its borders. As Mearsheimer pts out, the US doesn't allow distant great powers to get involved in military alliances right in its backyard (the Caribbean, really the whole western hemisphere), yet it expects the Russians to accept that same thing. Putin is a nasty, corrupt, right-wing, revanchist, etc. autocrat, but I'm not sure *any* Russian leader cd have accepted NATO running right up to its borders. Realism doesn't explain everything, but sometimes it explains some things, and this seems to be one of these times. The US can't wave a magic wand and turn the whole world into democracies tomorrow. That's not going to happen. So the question shd have been: How can it reach some sort of arrangement that allows fledgling democracies to flourish in the shadow of a big autocracy without provoking that autocracy to attack them? And turning every single country on Russia's borders into a NATO member wd not have worked, because Russia wd just not have allowed that to happen. You don't encircle a great power -- whether it's a corrupt, kleptocratic, autocratic, bad-faith actor or a good-faith liberal democracy -- w an opposing military alliance and expect that power to do nothing. As Mearsheimer says, that is realpolitik 101. Realism doesn't explain everything, sometimes it's wrong, but this seems to be one time when it does explain quite a bit. (And it doesn't matter that NATO proclaims it's a purely defensive alliance, and so forth.) Sure, this all sucks, but sometimes the world sucks, and what you have to do is figure out what you want to do without making everything worse. And on that score, the U.S. and NATO did not do well.
This story has escaped the major news outlets, but it is shocking.
Eight years ago Curtis Reeves, a 71-year old retired police captain, got into an altercation with another patron, Chad Olson, at a movie theatre in Florida. Olson, who was in the theater with his wife, was using his phone during the movie preveiws to text their babysitter to check up on how their baby was doing. Reeves, who was sitting behind them, chastised Olson to turn off is phone, which was being used during the movie previews. An altercation erupted, and Reeves shot Olson to death, also wounding his wife.
Reeves was charged with second-degree murder. His defense? That he had a reasonable fear for his life and acted in self-defense. Astoundingly, the jury bought the defense and acquitted Reeves on Friday. Sickening.
Post-script:
You may be wondering about the race of the victim and his murderer.
They were both White.
@LFC
The so called Nato East expansion and the alleged "encirclement" of Russia is a fairy tale after all. The only direct border between NATO countries and Russia is with Norway, Estonia and Latvia. Only if you add the enclave around Kaliningrad, Poland and Lithuania are added. Sweden is neutral, as is Finland. Between Russia and Turkey lie Azerbaijan and Georgia. Apart from the very understandable membership of the Baltic states in NATO, this is all that leads to the alleged "encirclement" of Russia according to Putin's narrative. There was defacto no military threat potential in these countries. That has changed only slightly, mainly because Russian military aircraft have violated the airspace of these states every day for years.
Realism means recognizing that there is no military threat to Russia. Not in the west, not in the south, not in the east of the country. Realism means recognizing that rational Russian analysts must come to exactly the same conclusion. There is neither the asset, nor any conceivable scenario in which a threat of force is directed against Russia from Europe. The fact that the focus of U.S. foreign policy in the last two decades has turned away from Europe and toward the Pacific should not have escaped these rationally thinking analysts in Russia. I recall the leaked "F*** the EU" of an American diplomat during the Maidan in Kiev, leaked by Russian hackers.
Realism means recognizing that Putin's narrative deliberately overrides the rational insights of his own analytics in order to place a narrative that better suits his own power interests. I do not want to deny here that it is possible to believe in one's own lies from a certain point on, if one repeats them often enough. It may be that he is psychotic and controls his environment so manically that none of the possible rational agents I claim here has the courage to direct a last sunbeam of reality into his head. But that also means that we don't have to believe it.
LFC,
In the link below, the narrator says that British humor is famous for using a lot of sarcasm. If it is used a lot in a culture, I hardly think it can be characterized as uncivil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9PGSmO0SIE
In the video below, the narrator states that sarcasm is a very important thing in English. Again, how can something which is “very important” be uncivil?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHq__pQ82ZI
I have been using sarcasm, and have been the target of sarcasm, since I was a teenager. When I was the target, I never took offense; never had my feelings hurt; neve resorted to pugilism. I just laughed it off. It was very common among my circle of friends. So why would it be uncivil to express sarcasm on a blog read by supposedly mature adults?
In a recent interview, Putin referred to President Zelensky as “my beauty,” presumably making fun of Zelensky’s rather boyish features. I suspect Zelensky did not coil over in emotional trauma.
Perhaps you should try to grow a thicker skin, snowflake.
I have an anecdote about the use of sarcasm which actually involves an interaction with Prof. Wolff when he was a visiting professor at Rutgers in 1968. (He may not remember the interaction, because it likely was not memorable to him, but it was memorable to me.)
Actually, the interaction involved the exchange of sarcastic remarks. It was the Spring of 1968, during the Democratic primaries and after, I believe, President Johnson had announced that he was not going to run again. Prof. Wolff arrived in class (the course was on Kant’s Ethics) and he was wearing a button on his lapel that read “McCarthy.” I, in my best sarcastic tone, asked him if he was supporting Joseph McCarthy for President. Prof, Wolff looked at me, and in his best sarcastic tone, retorted, “He jests at scars who never felt a wound.” Outdone by Prof. Wolff’s sarcastic retort, I shrank into my seat. (Prof. Wolff did not hold my churlishness against me when he gave me my final grade.)
I submit that if sarcasm has a place in a college classroom, it is neither inappropriate no uncivil to engage in sarcasm on a blog devoted to philosophy and other serious subjects.
Another,
I believe that I was exposed to sarcasm as much as you while growing up, as my father was the most sarcastic person I've ever met. Thus, I am quite accustomed to sarcasm although my feelings toward it are ambivalent.
However, since for the time being at least, it seems that a small regular group of us are carrying on a conversation about the horrid situation we are witnessing in Ukraine and one member of that group, LFC, is made uncomfortable by your use of sarcasm, why not stop using it in the interests of furthering an atmosphere of openness and dialogue?
A.K.
I was in the middle of writing a v. long reply to you and I hit the wrong button on my phone and erased it all. Perhaps just as well.
I'll boil it down to a few somewhat disconnected points. These are not meant to sound like infallible pronouncements but since I erased all the nuances I'll just go with the short version.
1) Perceptions of threat, even if only tenuously connected to reality, have to be taken into account. 2) Unfairly and sometimes tragically, countries living in the shadow of a great power, esp perhaps a stagnating and autocratic one, have limits on their freedom just by virtue of where they're located (look at the history of U.S.-Cuba relations, e.g.). 3) With a few exceptions, American politicians, esp Presidents when they speak to the nation, pretend that all good things cohere into a neat tidy unity and that norms like sovereignty, human rights, non-intervention, self-determination, etc. are never in conflict. It would be refreshing to hear a speech in which a President went beyond slogans. This is only indirectly connected to the current situation but it occurred to me anyway. 4) I feel increasingly uncomfortable to be pontificating on these matters, incl some that I'm not going into here, when people's apartments and houses are being shelled and they're having to take shelter in subway stations, etc. etc. etc.
AA
I'm not uncomfortable w sarcasm and I have quite a thick skin. That's really all I have to say on this. So just comport yourself as you think best. (As you say, we are all, at least ostensibly, mature adults.)
s. wallerstein,
I am taking the dire situation in Ukraine quite seriously, and my use of satire has been intended to underscore what I regard as superficial and inaccurate assessments of Russia’s intentions and motives. You may recall that several weeks ago I was the first to raise questions about Russia’s plans and intentions regarding Ukraine. Several commenters brushed aside these concerns, commenting that Russia was bluffing and had no intention of invading Ukraine, and if it did, that it was no more than a power struggle between the U.S. and Russia over competing spheres of influence. Well, the claim that Russia was bluffing has proved false, and now everyone is calling upon the U.S. to impose sanctions on Russia that are as severe as possible.
I don't recall what all commenters said, but I never said that "Russia had no intention of invading Ukraine." I said I thought the chances of an invasion were low, which is a completely different statement.
P.s. and despite the U.S. State Dept spokesman Ned Price asserting on the NewsHour the other night that US govt agencies had been warning about the situation for months and releasing intelligence all along, it was only quite recently that Biden and others began speaking about this w a tone of real urgency, istm. It further seems to me that Ned Price, whom I know nothing about beyond his occasional public statements that I have heard, could benefit from a bit more humility than his appearance on the NewsHour the other night, which came right up to the brink of crowing "we told you so," displayed.
I was one of those who believed that it was all bluff or that at worst Putin would invade Donbas. I also believed that Biden might agree not to extend NATO to the Ukraine in order to avoid a war.
In a sense, Putin, far from the genius Trump believes him to be, fell into Biden's trap. Russia is going to end up very economically isolated and poor, and Ukraine seems to be resisting the invasion and may turn out to be another Afghanistan for Russia.
I say "Biden's trap" because what Biden wants is to isolate Russia, to keep it weak and for the U.S. to dominate Europe.
Now we're seeing the operation of the most successful and powerful propaganda machine in history, that of the U.S. media and it is very difficult to resist the temptation to see Putin as the "new Hitler" or a "deranged autocrat out to conquer Europe". He may be that, but experience teaches me to take a deep breath and not to jump to the hasty conclusions that the media wants me to jump to.
I find LFC's analyses to be very helpful in that respect.
Comparisons to Hitler may be overwrought, but Putin did just launch a full-scale invasion of a sovereign neighbor without provocation or anything in the way of an imminent threat. Surely “deranged autocrat” is a fitting description. Also, the idea that Biden “set a trap” would only be apropos if Biden had somehow baited Putin into amassing troops at the Ukraine border. He didn’t, of course. The tragic reality seems to be that Putin was only ever going to accept Ukraine as a client state, even at the cost of bloodshed. One can acknowledge this without also automatically accepting America as a shining city on a hill.
Prof. Wolff,
The March issue of the Washtenaw Jewish News has a lengthy obituary in honor of Todd Gitlin. You can read it on p. 16 of the following link. The tribute indicates that, like many Jews on the left, he had a problematic relationship with Israel, on the one hand condemning the BDS movement, while endorsing a boycott of merchandise produced in the West Bank settlements.
https://washtenawjewishnews.org/PDFs/WJN-03-22-web.pdf
Putin starts to amass his troops as bluff. Biden (that is, a group of very smart and cunning people who run U.S. foreign policy) realize that if they call Putin's bluff instead of agreeing not to expand NATO, like a damn fool he's going to invade all of Ukraine and that the Ukraines might put up more resistance than Putin's macho ego is prepared for and thus, get him into a long and costly war with lots of Russian casualties, which means his popularity goes to hell besides the fact that the invasion will give them a pretext for slapping sanctions on Russia which will send the Russian economy back to the stone age without the U.S. having to fire a shot or lose a single G.I..
s. wallerstein,
Mr. Thomas threatens to steal Mr. Smith’s wallet if Mr. Smith accepts the offer of his friend, Mr. Stevens, to lend him money, a loan which Mr. Thomas orders Mr. Smith not to accept. Mr. Stevens calls Mr. Thomas’s bluff by not stating to Mr. Thomas that he will not lend Mr. Smith the money. Mr. Thomas, nonetheless, steals Mr. Smith’s wallet, and Mr. Smith has Mr. Thomas arrested for theft. How shrewd and cunning of Mr. Stevens to have called Mr. Thomas’s bluff and thereby entrapping him into stealing Mr. Smith’s wallet, without having to have paid a cent.
(I know, sarcasm is uncivil and inappropriate on a blog read by mature adults, but sometimes it is a valid mechanism to make a point.)
Calling someone’s bluff doesn’t mean you’ve set a trap for them. The two metaphors convey different things. Furthermore, how could Biden or anyone have known that Putin would launch a full scale attack as opposed to a limited one?
I have a hard time seeing how this war hasn’t been a forgone conclusion for months. Putin made up his mind. He knew the US would never budge on his demands, and if by some miracle they did agree to some of his terms, he would have come up with some other pretext in short order. Believe him when he openly proclaims that he considers Ukraine his.
Lol @ thinking these Biden people actually have some grandmaster plan that is now playing out. They couldn’t even evacuate from Afghanistan without a humanitarian disaster.
LFC: "It would be refreshing to hear a speech in which a President went beyond slogans. This is only indirectly connected to the current situation but it occurred to me anyway."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kakFDUeoJKM
s. wallerstein: "Now we're seeing the operation of the most successful and powerful propaganda machine in history, that of the U.S. media....
experience teaches me to take a deep breath and not to jump to the hasty conclusions that the media wants me to jump to"
Some of the few words of wisdom I have seen on this platform of late.
I almost never watch MSNBC nowadays, but watched Maddow's broadcast the other day. It's as if the script she was reading off the teleprompter had been written by the White House.
In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.
— Oscar Wilde
"...slapping sanctions on Russia which will send the Russian economy back to the stone age without the U.S. having to fire a shot or lose a single G.I.."
I believe the kleptocratic state created by Putin and his oligarch cronies had already accomplished that awhile back.
Eric,
They get better and better at it all the time. For example, Putin calling the Ukrainian leaders "nazis and drug addicts" got stuck in the 1980's. That doesn't sell these days, at least not in the West and I suspect less and less in Russia.
I read The Guardian, which resisted the Bush era war on terror propaganda line from a certain rational distance, but is now made in Silicon Valley or wherever they dig up the algorhythms and narratives to manipulate us.
The "correct" discourse, the liberal consensus, becomes totalizing and of course one does not want to be accused of agreeing with Trump or Tucker Carlson about anything at all.
I see that Kazakhstan has re-calibrated. Be a shame if NATO wound up going all the way to Mongolia.
LFC, I don't consider a kleptocratic failing state to be a "great power" merely because it has a few nukes. Had Iraq had some nukes we never would have invaded. NATO posed no threat to Russia. This is all in Putin's head.
We had a Soviet satellite 90 miles off Florida for decades. When the USSR got frisky we objected and because no one really wanted a nuclear war they pulled back and we took missiles out of Turkey. When we applied that doctrine in Vietnam and Central America it didn't turn out well. We are still dealing with the blow back from those adventures.
NATO is apparently a necessary liability. Putin is half right when he holds that the fall of the Soviet Union was a tragedy. After Stalin the leadership should have realized that Marxism-Leninism isn't happening and perhaps Scandinavia was a better model.
I see that Belarus is ending neutrality and allowing Russian troops and nukes to be stationed there. But there could have been an agreement with Russia that would have held absent a NATO/NATO-like trip wire? Sure!
"They couldn’t even evacuate from Afghanistan without a humanitarian disaster.
Nothing like conventional wisdom. That cake was baked when Trump and Pompeo negotiated a surrender in 2020 (actually when we got involved but...). I'm surprised he went as well as it did.
Here's Glenn Greenwald on the invasion, especially good about the climate of media manipulation and tribal pressure to conform to a consensus. I haven't time today to listen to the entire video since I have guests, but I will tomorrow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnHo6JXxcQM
aaall
Will respond later, when computer is on, and after that I am bowing out of this whole discussion.
As Leiter recently pointed out GG seems to have gone off the rails. I listened to parts of it but what I heard didn't impress me. When one takes Gabbard and Carlson seriously... Putin has even lost Orban who probably finds Russian Nukes on his border a problem.
The most interesting part was the comment section. Managing that many sock puppets has to be a chore.
One of the problems with the obsolete "sphere of influence" notion is that it never worked out well in the 19th and 20th centuries. Closes out of town today.
aaall wrote:
I don't consider a kleptocratic failing state to be a "great power" merely because it has a few nukes. ... NATO posed no threat to Russia. This is all in Putin's head.
We had a Soviet satellite 90 miles off Florida for decades. When the USSR got frisky we objected and because no one really wanted a nuclear war they pulled back and we took missiles out of Turkey. When we applied that doctrine in Vietnam and Central America it didn't turn out well. We are still dealing with the blow back from those adventures.
1. Under the Monroe Doctrine (and its corollary or corollaries) the U.S. made clear it wasn't going to tolerate certain kinds of foreign "meddling" in the hemisphere. From at least the late 19th century until FDR's "good neighbor" policy (1933), the U.S. w/r/t Central America and the Caribbean engaged "in habitual and uninhibited military intervention in the internal affairs and external relations of the local states, including prolonged military occupation" and paid only lip-service to notions of sovereignty. (H. Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 214)
2. On definition of a great power: there are different ways to define it. For brevity and simplicity, it may be easiest to go with a definition that focuses solely on material capabilities. For that kind of definition, see Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, p.5. He thinks China, Russia, and the U.S. count as great powers for the period 1991 to 2000 (the book orig. came out in 2001), and from what I gather he thinks this is still the case.
3. "NATO posed no threat to Russia. This is all in Putin's head."
That is at least 50 percent of what the word "threat" means in the context of intl politics. It means to a large extent something X feels threatened by, whether there is a truly "objective" basis for that feeling or not. It has to have some roots in an assessment of capabilities (i.e. relative mil. power), but the proclamation of defensive aims will not nec. suffice to alleviate the perception of threat. I tend to think this is less about perception of threat, though, than it is about other things.
4. Spheres of influence: not entirely sure what I think. Writing in 1977, Bull maintained, whether convincingly I'm not sure, that "spheres of influence, interest or responsibility" could contribute (and sometimes do contribute) to "international order" as he defined it. Debatable, I suppose, and the book has its flaws -- what book doesn't? Still, it's worth reading.
We're likely not going to convince each other of much of anything, aaall, since that almost never happens in these discussions. And I think I'll probably bow out now.
I haven’t really paid attention to Greenwald since his apologias for the January 6th insurrection. I remember reading the article he wrote immediately after that incident and marveling at how nearly every sentence (literally) was incoherent. Greenwald loves to proclaim that those who oppose him simply can’t handle the bold truths he tells. But really people despise him because his rhetoric is so slimy and dishonest that one begins to suspect unsavory motivations. I have no idea what those motivations might be, nor do I are to find out. (aaall, I believe Leiter called him an “unbearable narcissist” or something to the effect, which is apt.)
The simple fact is that this is a war crime on Putin’s part (as much as was the Iraq invasion). Shame on anyone who would rationalize or somehow deflect blame from depraved person responsible.
And I do take issue with this constant invocation of claims of “manipulation” and “pressures to conform to official doctrine,” etc. I have been a person of the Left my entire adult life and a reader of dissident opinion. I can reach my own conclusions, thank you. And my conclusion is that in this current climate, it is the Greenwald fanboys who are being manipulated into adopting positions that are diametrically opposed to Leftist values.
Just a point on the NATO meme: NATO has thirty members - think herding cats. It can only operate in a defensive mode. The notion that say e.g. Italy, Canada, and Norway would agree to an unprovoked action deep in the Eurasian land mass seems remote.
Prof. Wolff, speaking of cats would you share a pic of yours as you did with your other cat? Glad your wife is on the mend.
aaall,
I don’t believe that threats to the Russian Federation from NATO are “in Putin’s head” because I don’t believe that he actually takes the prospect of aggression against Russia seriously, for reasons you mentioned. (Even the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO has, realistically, been off the table for a long time now — which Putin surely realizes as well.) Let’s not forget that NATO has been at Russia’s borders for 18 years now, and in Eastern Europe for 23. I doubt that in that time Putin has ever gone to bed fearing NATO bombs would fall on him.
The actual explanation for Putin’s behavior is likely the simple one: he considers Ukraine and Georgia the red lines for his sphere of influence, and will fight to keep them. Simple as that. Indeed he has publicly justified this position proclaiming that the US would act the same in a similar situation. That may be true (but as you mention, the example of Cuba is perhaps an interesting counterexample), though in simple moral terms, this kind of whataboutism in no way justifies Putin’s current war of aggression.
Moving from the realm of morals to realpolitik, I am inclined to say that the US should have looked for an off ramp that would have taken the Ukraine-in-NATO prospect off the table officially. The US publicly stated that they were willing to negotiate arms control, and a day or two prior to the invasion Biden stated that he would agree to a summit with Putin conditioned on no further incursions into Ukraine (however, the details surrounding this potential summit are a bit murky at the moment). In addition to that, they perhaps could have compelled Ukraine to offer to take NATO membership off the table in exchange for a non-aggression guarantee from Putin. It sounds as if Macron was broaching these ideas with Putin, though by all reports Macron has come to believe that Putin has been acting in bad faith the whole time. Go figure.
@ He Man
this is a war crime on Putin’s part.... Shame on anyone who would rationalize or somehow deflect blame from depraved person responsible.
The invasion is clearly, obviously a violation of international law. Mearsheimer probably should have said that at the outset of his talk (which I've still only watched the first 14 minutes of). He might have thought it's too obvious to say, but he should have said it anyway.
Efforts -- however tentative and/or flawed and/or partial -- to explain something are not attempts to excuse or "deflect blame" for it unless they're somehow presented that way. (Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner does not apply here.)
In Glenn Greenwald's case, I don't know what he's saying and I'm not esp. eager to find out. But I'd be upset if anything I've written here is taken to be an excuse or a suggestion that the invasion is justified. Clearly it isn't. That conclusion should not stop one, however, from looking at the sorts of issues that have come up in this thread, including the question of how the invasion might have been avoided.
@LFC
I have been following this conversation and no, I was not talking about you. As you rightly say, this was a clear violation fo international law on Putin’s part, and my comments are aimed at all the attempts I see to downplay that fact — to suggest that somehow all the justified anti-Putin sentiment bubbling up now is being “manufactured” by the corporate media. The intent of this, of course, is to lay blame at the US’s doorstep, but in this case it was not the US that launched an unprovoked war against its neighbor (which is not to say that the US didn’t act unwisely). Ironically, these Putin apologists are the same people who did, or would have, loudly and unqualifiedly condemned the US’s incursion into Iraq in ‘03.
I haven’t looked at the Greenwald clip, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he started with some throat-clearing comments condemning Putin before going on to issue what is essentially an apologia for his actions. It’s sort of his M.O. as witnessed by how he discusses January 6th and right wing politics in the US generally.
"In addition to that, they perhaps could have compelled Ukraine to offer to take NATO membership off the table in exchange for a non-aggression guarantee from Putin."
I don't believe that NATO membership was on the table in the sense that it was being actively considered. However, it should now be clear that anything short of an Article Five umbrella for any nation bordering Russia offers no security.
In retrospect it seems obvious that Ukraine should have had ample stores of arms capable of killing ships, tanks, and aircraft supplied years ago. Europe was rather feckless in becoming dependent on Russian gas. Ditto every ones financial sector.
I see Roman Abramovich is in the news. Years ago I used to monitor (as a hobby, of course) the private flights in and out of LAX. (Had the police check me out a couple of times.) Most of the planes were executive charter types (Gulfstreams, etc.. One day there was a 767-300 that dwarfed the other planes. Checked out the registration and it was Abramovich's. I guess it's good to be an oligarch.
LFC, GG's take isn't worth the time but I don't think anyone thought you were justifying the invasion.
I listened to the entire Glenn Greenwald episode.
He probably should have taken his own advice and waited a month before opining on the subject. Greenwald points out that given our emotional responses to an act of agression, our empathy, our compássion, our righteous indignation, we often do not analyze the situation as rationally as we will in a month or a year.
I don't like all of the company that he keeps or all Greenwald's friends, but finally, one of his chief sources for his position is none other than Barack Obama, who was very cautious about NATO expansion and explained why.
As to whether Greenwald has "gone off his rails", we're not trains, we're apes and apes don't always move in straight lines along a pre-set track. I sense that Greenwald strives to liberate his thought from certain liberal dogmas, to think outside the liberal box and I'm not sure that he does it as wisely as he could or rather as one could. Liberation is a long, hard process, and not at all binary. Greenwald's still worth listening to, for me at least.
One thing which is being overlooked in this conversation is the Budapest Memorandum on Assurances of Sovereignty, which was signed in 1994 by Ukraine, Russia, U.S., and UK. At the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union, which resulted in Ukraine’s independence, Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world. In the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine agreed to surrender its nuclear stockpile in exchange for the assurances of sovereignty signed by Russia. By invading Ukraine, Russia has both violated international law and breached the Budapest Memorandum. In recent interviews, President Zelensky and his advisers have regretted surrendering their nuclear weapons, which would have been a deterrent against Russian invasion.
Might is Right and any notion of “international law” contrary to that is a mythology.
When I lived in Grand Forks many years ago and could drive past the air base with the nuclear bombers lined up, there was some ironic talk about how North Dakota was one of the largest nuclear weapon powers in the world. But had the US split up, it is doubtful that ND would have had the necessary wherewithal to do much with all their weaponry.
I just mention that because I've read somewhere something similar about Ukraine's nuclear weapons: that independent Ukraine lacked some of what's necessary to deploy nuclear weapons. Perhaps someone else knows something about this? In other words, its possessions of the things may not have meant that they'd have been able to use them to deter Russia or anyone else.
Anonymous,
I am also a bit confused by this issue. While Ukraine had physical possession of the nuclear missiles, Russia retained control over the control codes to launch the missiles. Apparently, however, by signing the Budapest Accord, Ukarine was surrendering something of value regarding possession of the missilese. Wheat that was, exactly, I do not know.
Another Anonymous,
AlanRMacLeod is a good follow on Twitter.
Remind me, what were you saying about racists?
https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod/status/1497974245737050120
Eric,
There are racists in every country. I am not responsible for what some Ukranian racists say, and they don't speak for U.S. government officails.
Another Anonymous,
Keep reading the thread past the first tweet. It's not just clips of a Ukrainian.
And check this one out while you're there.
https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod/status/1497964367027085313
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