• 78: Geopolitical significance of holding Ukraine ?, submitted on 2022-02-14 21:53:33+08:00.
• 79: What’s the maximum amount of economic sanctions that NATO can realistically enforce and sustain against Russia?, submitted on 2022-02-15 10:32:46+08:00.
• 80: [Meta] Mods please don’t lock ongoing threads without a comment explaining why.., submitted on 2022-02-16 02:35:41+08:00.
• 81: Did Japan have any foreign volunteers in their armed forces during ww2 and if they did how did they perform, submitted on 2022-02-16 03:02:48+08:00.
• 82: Have overseas missions been beneficial or detrimental to the armed forces of smaller/medium sized nations?, submitted on 2022-02-16 09:55:53+08:00.
• 83: Why did Brazil fail economically, but China, Korea and Japan succeeded?, submitted on 2022-02-16 21:29:47+08:00.
• 84: How did the French approach counter-insurgency in the Sahel as compared to Americans in Afghanistan? What were the doctrinal, material, and geographical factors that impacted these choices?, submitted on 2022-02-17 02:46:37+08:00.

78: Geopolitical significance of holding Ukraine ?, submitted on 2022-02-14 21:53:33+08:00.

—– 78.1 —–2022-02-16 10:04:34+08:00:

Critical mass. We can look at pipelines, maps, and mountains until we get old but we’ll still miss the main reason. As Zbignew Brzezinski said, “Russia without Ukraine is not an empire. Russia with Ukraine is an empire”. A very important concept in politics as a whole is “critical mass”, the level of power you need to play in a big league and be functionally independent. Russia, with an economy smaller than Italy’s, is not in the same league as the US and China now and desperately wants to be. Putin is tired of playing second fiddle in the anti-NATO bloc, tired of playing third fiddle in world politics, and is very aware his position is only going to worsen if Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, etc. continue to move towards the West.

The solution is to form the Eurasian Union as quickly as possible. Belarus and Kazakhstan have been taken care of through interventions that have reduced their Presidents to puppets. Ukraine must be taken by force, but is the “crown jewel” of the Russian Empire with its most valuable farmland, greatest population outside Russia proper, and greatest industrial base. Moreover the capacity of Ukrainians to form an effective insurgency is greatly overestimated by the media on account of wishful thinking. Ukraine simply means “borderland”, and is a relatively new concept that only consolidated in the 20th and 21st centuries - prior to that Ukrainians called themselves “Malarossiyans” or “Little Russians”, a parallel to Belarus in the North. Policed, centralized societies as a rule are not good at insurgency due to a lack of local power brokers to challenge a new government. Virtually every strong insurgency that has emerged in the past century from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Yemen was based on local tribes and strongman regimes - “societies within societies” - that predated foreign occupation. Foreigners, unlike domestic rulers, simply overestimated how much power they had once they took over the capital. The regimes before occupation spent decades convincing the international community that they were actual governments, so foreign occupiers were under the delusion they could actually govern, in the process making war upon a largely “unconquered” periphery. Ukraine attempted to revolt against Russia twice - after WW1 and WW2 - and both times failed miserably.

If Putin can conquer Ukraine, he becomes unassailable domestically and increases his nation’s power by a third internationally. He halts the “march of Orangism” which is the main threat to his government, and those of the other post-Soviet oligarchies that follow him. He achieves all his goals in one fell swoop and etches his name into the annals of Russian history as a great leader. This, not pipelines, borders, and military camps “closer to NATO” is what he’s really after.

79: What’s the maximum amount of economic sanctions that NATO can realistically enforce and sustain against Russia?, submitted on 2022-02-15 10:32:46+08:00.

—– 79.1 —–2022-02-16 10:09:29+08:00:

Very little. The Russian economy after the last round of sanctions is essentially driven by four vehicles: trade with China, commodity exports, energy exports, and exports of armaments and nuclear reactors. Only the middle two businesses are done with the West, and Western Europe lacks the political resolve to cut them off. Cutting Russia off from SWIFT will not work either: through the development of the Mir payment system, it has already made preparations. Moreover, this would be handing China a golden political opportunity to unite “its half” of the world under an alternative payment system, probably headquartered in a “neutral” friendly country like Malaysia. Finally, even if the West succeeds in ruining the Russian economy, China will just bail it out. The Russian economy is so small at this point that even an annual bailout of 3% of GDP (enough to restore 6% or more of annual growth) would barely make a dent on Chinese finances. Putin knows that China will do this because he’s creating a distraction that benefits them, and the threat of a two front war in Ukraine and the Pacific is one of the main deterrents that keeps the US tied to the One China Policy. Based on Putin’s frequent visits to Beijing, the public declarations he and Xi have made, and his increasingly confident behavior, I have no doubt he has already obtained guarantees that China will pay him upwards of 40 billion if the West does real damage.

The Biden administration is undoubtedly aware of all of this, but has no choice because it lacks the money or political will to go to war with Russia and is just using sanctions as a hand wave to deflect political criticism and give the appearance of action.

80: [Meta] Mods please don’t lock ongoing threads without a comment explaining why.., submitted on 2022-02-16 02:35:41+08:00.

—– 80.1 —–2022-02-16 09:48:17+08:00:

Maybe the solution is just to not lock threads for being answered before? That implies the discussion is over just because people already talked about it. That’s basically the opposite of the historian’s mindset which is that there’s always new viewpoints and revisions.

81: Did Japan have any foreign volunteers in their armed forces during ww2 and if they did how did they perform, submitted on 2022-02-16 03:02:48+08:00.

—– 81.1 —–2022-02-16 22:40:46+08:00:

Something important to mention here is that the British Indian Army was not a representative sample of the Indian population. It was made up largely of privileged “martial races” whose identity was shaped by war and service. This is the reason for the huge disconnect between their attitude to the INA and that of the public, which was outraged by the postwar INA trials.

—– 81.2 —–2022-02-17 01:06:38+08:00:

Right. The British Indian Army had no real love for the British, and there was massive unrest after the war. The recruits were only proud of their status as members of a “martial race” and would not break their oath and defect while they served. In a POW camp, the situation was reversed. To be proper warriors, they needed to fight, not be prisoners. Since most surrendered on orders of their British officers, they did not see captivity as their fault, but rather that of their leadership. Fighting for Japan was a way to get back in the field. It helped, of course, that most Indians did want independence by 1941 and Japan’s ideology - at least nominally - was more agreeable to the captives than Britain’s.

82: Have overseas missions been beneficial or detrimental to the armed forces of smaller/medium sized nations?, submitted on 2022-02-16 09:55:53+08:00.

—– 82.1 —–2022-02-17 05:52:18+08:00:

Is coffee beneficial or detrimental to terminal cancer patients? The forces you mention are already skeletons. Decades of budget cuts and dependence have left them incapable of defending themselves. Their only purpose now is to serve as auxiliaries for NATO in the event of a war, where the American army would be central. The impact of GWOT on NATO minor armies is debatable. On the one hand, it sucked up procurement funds. On the other, some units like Polish GROM got very good from close cooperation with American special forces. Either way, the benefit or loss is too small to make any difference in the event that these countries faced a real security threat: the purpose of these deployment was not to actually bolster defensive capabilities but to pull 1 pound of weight for the US and stay in its good graces. As far as these countries are concerned, defeat is still mission accomplished.

83: Why did Brazil fail economically, but China, Korea and Japan succeeded?, submitted on 2022-02-16 21:29:47+08:00.

—– 83.1 —–2022-02-17 01:00:32+08:00:

A failure to climb the value chain. Here is a map of countries by economic complexity - the diversity of skills, knowledge, and productive capabilities in a country. From the full list, Japan is #1, South Korea #4, China #16, and Brazil #53, behind famously commodity-dependent Russia. Brazil’s top exports are agricultural and raw materials, while China’s top exports are all manufactured goods. Contra popular belief, the bulk of these now adays are not labor intensive consumer products, but capital intensive and complex products: the top 5 are mechanical & industrial products, machinery & transport equipment, high tech products, automatic data processing equipment, and cell phones.

It should be noted as well that countries like Japan, South Korea, and China are the exception, where Brazil is the norm. Countless other promising economies like Turkey, Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Thailand, and even India have been trapped in boom and bust cycles.

Understanding this requires an understanding of the different economic strategies employed. Until 1931, the economic reputation of Japan was the same as that of Brazil today: the country of the future… and always would be. It was fueled by exports of labor intensive industrial products, silk, and rayon. The barriers to entry in this business were low and a few large companies controlled the international distribution chain, just as a few large trading firms control the exports of Brazilian agricultural and mineral products today. The result was low profits and frequent market crashes whenever the international market worsened.

From 1931 to 1954, Japanese bureaucrats tested and perfected a strategy to climb the value chain and shift to more capital intensive industries with higher barriers to entry. It involved 1) limiting competition in low-barrier industries to increase the rate of profit, 2) channeling profits from low-barrier industries into “strategic sectors”: the next rung on the value chain (i,e. textiles to steel, steel to machinery, machinery to consumer appliances, consumer appliances to automobiles), and 3) restricting foreign competition in strategic sectors until they could outcompete foreigners. This strategy was imitated by South Korea and later China.

It of course had downsides. For one, restricting competition in a low-barrier industry is tantamount to imposing a consumption tax on the public: they bear the burden of higher prices. Restricting imports also increases prices until local strategic sectors can mature. Finally, in the short-term, this policy defies comparative advantage: strategic sectors begin very inefficient. It only succeeded because, over time, the “experience curve” (brief summary of the concept here) changes comparative advantages over time.

Understanding its advantages is less straightforward. As mentioned, industries up the value chain have higher barriers to entry, so they tend to also have higher margins, but not always. More importantly, compensation is better. Economic growth is highly counter-intuitive. Most people will interpret “6% growth” as “the average person in country X is getting 6% richer a year”. In practice, it’s more like 6% of the people have seen their incomes increase greatly this year, while most people’s real incomes have barely changed. Assume you live in a town with a textile mill where most workers are being paid $15 an hour. A windshield glass factory opens next door and offers $30 and a sizable share of the town’s incomes have doubled. The impression often given by economists is that the face of economic growth is that textile mill getting more and more efficient, when in practice it’s that glass factory opening and doubling local wages.

That glass factory starts with a far higher input cost than its competitors due to being on the left hand of the experience curve, but over time equalizes with them. In that time, it either requires huge amounts of capital to stay afloat, unnatural advantages like government subsidies, free land, or tax benefits, or both. Japan, South Korea, and China had their attention on building the glass factories and giving them that capital and those unnatural advantages: uncompetitive trade policies, free land harborside, infrastructural development meant to lower transportation costs specifically around a few industrial parks, hostile labor policy, and tax incentives (including tax deductions on buying their products) all but guaranteed those industries would be in the black from day 1, even if their methods were very inefficient. Then, when they became more efficient, they became dominant in export markets for a while, both because they still had most of these advantages (though would lose “strategic sector” privileges shortly after this point), and because wages hadn’t caught up with the rest of the world.

As wages rose and certain industries stopped becoming profit leaders, they would then become the new “textile industry” and see competition limited and profits redirected to fund a new class of “strategic sectors”. The state in Japan, China, and South Korea managed a never-ending cannibalism of industries to fund increasingly capital-intensive ones.

The growth model in boom and bust dependent “failed miracle economies” was very different. In Turkey and Brazil, just to give two examples, growth was typically driven by FDI. That FDI took advantage of relatively low wages, and, in some areas, relatively high levels of skill and education to create export-oriented businesses. Those businesses would then turn a profit for a while, but the influx of foreign capital into the country increased the value of the currency, and thereby decreased competitive of exports. Eventually, black balance sheets would go red and foreign investors would flee. These economies crashed into low wages and cheap currency again and once again became attractive to investors, so this cycle started over. All the while there were only very limited attempts to “collect” profits of industries further down the value chain and establish higher value chain industries: the only real initiative to do this were the establishment of a few public sector firms (on a much smaller order of magnitude than what was happening in East Asia) and periods of increased investment in education.

The difference between the rare miracle economies and the mass of disappointments came down to political incentives. Too often this is oversimplified to “dictatorships focus on the long term while democracies focus on the short term”: this ignores the fact that most of the world’s poor countries are dictatorships. Rather, we have to adopt a nuanced understanding of Northeast Asian governments during the boom years. They were not democracies where leaders are accountable to the public (even Japan is essentially a one party state), nor were they “traditional” autocracies where the leader is accountable to no one. Rather, for thousands of years, Confucian rulers have been accountable to the palace. The expectation has always been that the top leader is the public face of the regime but allows his ministers to govern autonomously, controlling only who gets promoted and fired. Whenever a leader - even an absolute monarch - lacks virtue or ability, there is a long tradition of his ministers either removing him or turning him into a puppet (we’ve seen this even in modern years with Jiang Zemin). The result in all the Asian miracle economies was an “economic general staff” that ran the country with 10 and 20 year timetables in mind, and that was relatively insulated from politics.

—– 83.2 —–2022-02-17 08:29:49+08:00:

MITI and the Japanese Boom is the shortest overview of the value climbing strategy but it’s still pretty long.

—– 83.3 —–2022-02-17 22:09:07+08:00:

Good question and no - for a long time China’s growth was also FDI fueled. The government simply applied the same model there - they gave foreign firms competitive advantages if their investments were strategic, shut out other investments, and wrote laws to ensure the money those firms made would stay in China and be invested in the next rung of strategic sectors.

EU countries are in a tough spot because they’re forbidden from enacting laws like those. Eurozone countries have the advantage of being immune to currency crises (unless the entire Eurozone crashes and burns) but peg maintaining countries still have that problem, and use their foreign currency reserves to maintain the peg. The advantages your country has are that investment by other EU countries is easier to conduct and many young people probably moved to Western Europe where they send remittances home - that brings a measure of economic stability.

84: How did the French approach counter-insurgency in the Sahel as compared to Americans in Afghanistan? What were the doctrinal, material, and geographical factors that impacted these choices?, submitted on 2022-02-17 02:46:37+08:00.

—– 84.1 —–2022-02-17 05:16:47+08:00:

Good question. France conducted, in its own words, “maneuver warfare on the wire” deploying fast moving units to strike at key points and providing air support for local allies. While the deployment was smaller, it should be noted that so was the enemy deployment - Malian insurgents are an order of magnitude less powerful than the Taliban. Many would say the flat terrain helped France, but mountains are actually bad for insurgents and only good for static, fixed defenders. Insurgencies survive on sanctuary and mobility, running away when they are weak. Far easier to run and harass in open ground.

Key to the French approach was maximizing mobility so they could outrun their enemies. Many corners were cut and logistics were an afterthought. The deployment was heavy on light vehicles and had only a marginal advantage in protection and firepower compared to its technical-bound enemies. At one point a company’s boots had melted in the sun and they were traveling in the hot desert barefoot. They accepted these deficiencies because they understood the critical task in COIN was pursuit.

It’s key to note that this was also not their first rodeo. French intervention in the Sahel had a long history. Their most famous prior intervention was in Chad, where they helped local technical-bound militias first eject the pro-Libyan GUNT, and then evict the Libyans. The combination of light, fast moving motorized troops and air support was decisive. Where possible, light forces exploited gaps. Where there weren’t any, French aircraft created them.

The French in all interventions operated through local proxies and were not overly concerned with how those proxies chose to manage their subordinates. The vast majority of Francafrique is ruled by strongmen. France in Mali was not concerned with imposing democracy or bolstering central authority. It allowed stretches of the country to be governed by warlords and even the de facto mayor of the capital (aka the President) to at many points be a dictator, including now. It even made an accord with the Tuareg separatists to array them against the Islamists.

Finally we should note that Mali has been a success from the standpoint of being an economy of force mission, but not as a total victory. A third of the country’s landmass (though a far lesser share of its population) is still run by Tuareg separatists and to a lesser extent Islamists. The French mission in Mali resembles its colonial wars a century ago, and I mean that in the least politically charged manner: colonizers acknowledged that destroying local strongmen was impossible, they could only be managed. Very small armies would keep control over key points and beat back major rebellions while the periphery was allowed to govern itself as long as it didn’t compromise metropolitan interests.

The American approach was the polar opposite. The Taliban crumbled quickly in 2001 because they attempted to impose central authority on a largely unconquered countryside and the Americans needed only kick open the door to trigger a mass uprising. America subsequently adopted the losing strategy and imposed courts, law, and order on a populace that saw those things as foreign concepts. It dismissed local warlords and got involved in parochial politics through arbitrary laws. As a result, it essentially resurrected the Taliban, but the zombie Taliban was very different from the first movement. This walking cadaver was headless, and was simply a Franken-movement of tribes, villages, and neighborhoods that had been screwed over by the rapid changes of the early 2000s and was united only by a desire to expel the Americans.

ISAF command responded to this uprising with utmost delusion, denying field reports from junior officers at COPs and inviting an array of experts to consult. They came up with all kinds of theories which ranged from donate crayons and they will love you to “the Afghan state has totally failed to provide security”. ISAF became a military force, police force, civil engineering company, and salvation army all in one, and all its roles undermined each other. Whenever goodwill was built through an expensively constructed school, it was quickly undermined by soldiers mocking the locals and thinking they didn’t understand swear words in English. Countless patrols were ordered for little reason other than to be a show of force. The soldiers on these patrols wanted to save their own lives, so they would destroy property and animals, or even run over people in their desire to keep moving.

A greater disaster was unfolding in Kabul, where a clique of around 10,000 Afghans in the luxury neighborhood of Qasaba controlled the aid flow. They used it to enrich themselves, and to muscle the country’s many local strongmen out of positions of authority. They would deploy the ANA to rough up any group that tried to resist. If the ANA was ineffective and the group was successful, that hardly mattered: the Americans would be called into destroy this “Anti-Afghan Force”. This process was masterminded by Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad, who is often charged for losing Afghanistan in the Taliban negotiations. His actual criminal record is far more extensive: he was effectively the American “viceroy” in Kabul in the 2000s and was responsible for triggering the mass uprising with his rapid purge and megalomaniacal desire to consolidate all military power in the hands of Karzai and himself.

What were the differences?

1. France had a long history of intervention and colonial war.
2. It was less romantic about its values and didn’t try to universalize them.
3. Its eyes were open and its vision was 20/20: it had extensive contacts in the Sahel. We’re not just talking about intelligence assets, but an alumni network of African officers out of the Ecole Militaire who could tell the French exactly what was going on, how the enemy fought, and what should be done about it.
4. There was none of the intrinsically American demand for total victory. France was alright accepting a cheaply procured, mutilated victory. America wanted an expensive total victory and instead got an expensive total defeat.
5. French generals were altogether more practical people. They realized the military problem was a speed problem - outrun the insurgents - and solved that problem. They did not waste time marveling at this or that new “COIN breakthrough” and left non-military details to the civilians at home and in the host country.

The easiest way to understand any of these wars is to realize that state formation is a long process, and most states in the world are only half-formed. It involves a leader using a combination of coercion, assassination, warfare, bribery, and conspiracy to muscle central and local competitors out of the picture and acquire a monopoly on violence. It’s an extremely complicated sport, and total victory often takes decades. Divide and conquer is the key to doing this “organically”: the leader will remove one opponent at a time to avoid making war upon his entire country. American triumphalism and resources in the early 2000s all but guaranteed that it would try to “speedrun” state formation, and in the process made war upon everyone. France, in contrast, understood it was weaker and far more modest goals.

—– 84.2 —–2022-02-17 22:11:36+08:00:

Of course they were invited.

After the coup, France only suspended advisors and military cooperation for a month.

—– 84.3 —–2022-02-17 23:17:23+08:00:

I never said that. Nor did I say the French were uninvited.