theoryofdoom在2022-04-25~2022-05-01的言论

2022-04-30 作者: theoryofdoom

原文 #Reddit 的其它文章

242: Communication, in view of Reddit’s new “Block” Features, submitted on 2022-04-26 08:30:59+08:00.
243: Elon Musk and Twitter Reach Deal for Sale, submitted on 2022-04-26 09:39:16+08:00.
244: What if the Ukraine victory scenario falters?, submitted on 2022-04-27 10:14:29+08:00.
245: The US is out of the Covid-19 pandemic phase, Fauci says, submitted on 2022-04-27 22:47:39+08:00.
246: Unofficial Daily Update for 2022-04-27. 3434 New Cases., submitted on 2022-04-28 02:05:19+08:00.
247: What’s Putin’s Next Move? Look to Syria, submitted on 2022-04-28 10:53:14+08:00.
248: Scientific Integrity: HHS Agencies Need to Develop Procedures and Train Staff on Reporting and Addressing Political Interference, submitted on 2022-04-28 19:36:25+08:00.
249: COVID by the Numbers: Illinois Reports More Than 3,000 New Cases Amid ‘Deceleration’ in Pandemic, submitted on 2022-04-28 22:40:05+08:00.
250: Unofficial Daily Update for 2022-04-29. 5955 New Cases., submitted on 2022-04-30 02:00:16+08:00.
251: My cat slithering his way to the treat, submitted on 2022-04-30 22:36:02+08:00.

242: Communication, in view of Reddit’s new “Block” Features, submitted on 2022-04-26 08:30:59+08:00.

—– 242.1 —–2022-04-26 11:41:52+08:00:

There are significant inconsistencies. I can only attribute these to Reddit’s internal flaws.

But the point remains the same: If a user blocks a mod, they do so at their own risk.

—– 242.2 —–2022-04-26 12:02:09+08:00:

I appreciate the test run. I’ve since distinguished it.

243: Elon Musk and Twitter Reach Deal for Sale, submitted on 2022-04-26 09:39:16+08:00.

—– 243.1 —–2022-04-26 09:39:38+08:00:

No Paywall: https://archive.ph/DeO15

244: What if the Ukraine victory scenario falters?, submitted on 2022-04-27 10:14:29+08:00.

—– 244.1 —–2022-04-27 10:42:05+08:00:

Submission Statement:

According to the conventional wisdom inside the beltway, Ukraine is beating Russia and victory is within reach. Or is it? This op-ed is a reality check. As Putin’s desperation increases, so does his unpredictability — meaning that nothing is absolutely off the table. Putin’s current war crimes may be egregious, but future crimes against humanity could be even more so. Consider Putin’s record. In 1999, Putin leveled Grozny. If Chechnya is Putin’s model for Ukraine, the destruction has barely begun. After the next four weeks to summer months of sustained combat, what remains of Ukraine will be unrecognizable.

Further, Washington’s calls for Putin’s removal (or worse) accomplish nothing helpful. Where Washington is unwilling to act in Ukraine’s defense beyond waiting eagerly to finance the post-war reconstruction, the Biden administration might at least have the decency to avoid unnecessary escalation. This war’s outcome was already existential. If Putin has no off-ramp other than death or being thrown from power, he has no incentive to negotiate peace, much less accept it on any terms but his own.

—– 244.2 —–2022-04-27 10:47:56+08:00:

For further discussion on managing escalation in Ukraine, see this Atlantic Council report:

Climbing the ladder: How the West can manage escalation in Ukraine and beyond

—– 244.3 —–2022-04-27 13:13:41+08:00:

There is no military victory for UA that is worth the cost they are paying.

I agree the costs are already unacceptably high. But the final bill isn’t in yet. How much worse it will be remains to be seen.

—– 244.4 —–2022-04-27 13:36:49+08:00:

Taking your article’s unsupported claims at face value, mere intelligence sharing in the face of such widespread and egregious war crimes is of no more value, than directions to a far away oasis are to a man already dying of thirst.

But a rational observer cannot take those claims at face value. Even if some intelligence may have been shared, that is to say nothing of whether the intelligence actually shared was actionable in any way, or whether the effect was consequential. The article you linked assumed as much, but merely cites “officials” of varying types and capacities around 21 times throughout. Nothing corroborating is found to support. For example, sequential satellite photos that are dated and time-stamped might have been proof, but your article contains nothing of the sort whatsoever.

I mean that’s a level of perceived provocation that I wouldn’t have expected pre-war. What are we expecting Washington to do?

Not repeating history would be a good first start. While the analogy to Grozny in 1999 is compelling, the better comparison in my view is to Yugoslavia’s breakup, and specifically Bill Clinton’s inexplicable refusal to do what was necessary to end the ethnic cleansing, the concentration camps and the massacres of hundreds of thousands of civilians, until 1995; or his subsequent failure to timely intervene in Rwanda.

Biden has even less of an excuse than Bill Clinton. Now, American security interests are directly implicated by the outcome of Ukraine; but were less so for Clinton in the 1990s. In any case, history repeats itself unnecessarily. Avoiding that would be minimally adequate.

—– 244.5 —–2022-04-28 08:42:17+08:00:

I agree with your red line analysis, particularly your consideration of how well that strategy played out in Syria. As you rightly note, Assad blatantly ignored Obama’s red line on chemical weapons, because he knew understood the costs of enforcement would be unacceptably high for Washington. To save face, Obama struck a “deal” with Lavrov to “remove” Syria’s chemical weapon stockpile. The rest is history. Once again we are reminded that expecting what you’re unwilling to enforce is a fool’s errand.

I agree nuclear weapons were off the table in Rwanda. It is less clear whether the risk that Putin uses nuclear weapons is any greater than a similar event in the former Yugoslavia. Further, the scale of atrocities in that series of events approximates a death toll at least on par with a hypothetical nuclear event: at least 140,000 people killed and 4 million displaced. For perspective, somewhere between 70,000 to 135,000 people died in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 people died in Nagasaki.

—– 244.6 —–2022-04-28 08:45:30+08:00:

I disagree. Putin has been very, very careful not to step two centimeters into NATO territory for fear of crossing the Article 5 red line. I think it’s a mistake to convince yourself that’s not responding rationally.

This is 100% correct. There is a tendency among some to jump to the conclusion that the leader of a foreign country is “irrational” when they aren’t acting in the ways some in American foreign policy circles think they should be. And that tendency is wrong. Every risk Putin has taken is calculated, measured and deliberate.

245: The US is out of the Covid-19 pandemic phase, Fauci says, submitted on 2022-04-27 22:47:39+08:00.

—– 245.1 —–2022-04-28 11:53:48+08:00:

It turns out that “full blown pandemic” is not a pandemic phase, according to the relevant literature.

246: Unofficial Daily Update for 2022-04-27. 3434 New Cases., submitted on 2022-04-28 02:05:19+08:00.

—– 246.1 —–2022-04-28 08:51:56+08:00:

How the hell are you being downvoted?

For a large cohort of folks, COVID will never be over. The world has moved on and left them behind in the process. Only by downvoting can they exercise agency over their new normal.

—– 246.2 —–2022-04-28 08:55:10+08:00:

How can we say that hospitalizations are staying flat when they’re up 25% in the 7 day average?

By understanding data in context, of course.

247: What’s Putin’s Next Move? Look to Syria, submitted on 2022-04-28 10:53:14+08:00.

—– 247.1 —–2022-04-28 11:44:58+08:00:

No Paywall: https://archive.ph/mKDWk

—– 247.2 —–2022-04-28 11:45:12+08:00:

Submission Statement: In the months before December 2021, Putin massed the Russian army on Ukraine’s border. As I explained early that month, Putin’s iterative escalation strategy was an information gathering exercise — to clarify the stakes and strategic considerations involved. Then, Putin’s outstanding question was whether he could take Ukraine without a NATO/American-led military response. Once it was clear that sanctions and some limited military aid inflowing to Ukraine was ceiling of his external risk, invasion following exactly as anticipated under those conditions.

The Russian army’s actual performance fell short. But no plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy. Ukraine’s guerrilla resistance largely exceeded expectations primarily due to strategy: using scarce resources to maximal impact by targeting the Russian army’s most significant vulnerability (logistics/supply-chain) in the most devastating way possible (blowing up fuel trucks).

Critically, this is not the end. We are only entering the next chapter under the same conditions which led to Putin’s invasion in the first instance:

For years, the international community’s response to Russian aggression was meek, at best. The path to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been paved in large part by our own inaction.

In the big picture, Ukraine is a theater in a much broader conflict, where it may be little more than the opening salvo. Putin knows that Washington will lose momentum, focus and the initiative — just like in Syria. Unlike Washington, Putin is playing the long-game — just like he has in Syria. Misguided optimism as to how this war ends should be guarded against at all costs.

—– 247.3 —–2022-04-28 13:34:51+08:00:

Ukraine is not the authoritarian backwater of Syria.

Your analysis misses the point. The focus is on Washington’s actions, not similarities or dissimilarities between each of Syria and Ukraine. The remainder of your claims want for evidentiary support.

—– 247.4 —–2022-04-28 14:03:24+08:00:

After 2 months of Russian blunders and a severely underperforming military performance . . .

Folks should consider how underperformance is measured. What exactly was the standard according to which Russia’s military could be expected to perform? Putin over-estimated the Russian military’s capability to prosecute a large-scale ground war in Ukraine.

No impartial observer could have reasonably reached the same conclusion. Vladimir Putin’s army is comprised of of ill-equipped, undertrained and undisciplined conscripts:

We’ve seen Russian soldiers—short of weapons and morale—refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft

To the extent Russia is falling short of expectations, the expectations were irrationally high.

Another aspect of this is how popular assessments of Russia’s military capabilities are formed. Media are biased in favor of sensationalism. A headline to the effect of “conscript army of underfed Russian teenagers fails to take neighboring Ukraine” hardly carries the impact sought among readers. There’s a tendency to exaggerate, and seems that exaggeration has induced many into overestimating what might have been.

—– 247.5 —–2022-04-28 14:21:27+08:00:

The window of opportunity to change course has probably closed. Biden hasn’t made precisely the same mistakes Obama made in Syria — yet — but the strategic failings parallel. As the author argues:

[W]e must be acutely wary of Russian intentions and not repeat mistakes made in Syria.

Doing so would involve expecting that Putin will probably increase troop volumes, potentially use Wagner mercenaries, and in no circumstances will he back down only because of economic sanctions of any kind. Putin will also likely precipitate conflict in theaters, like Transnistria, to distract and generate new uncertainty.

Washington must also come to terms with the fact that Russia’s most recent invasion fell in the context of prior impunity, from Putin’s invading Georgia in 2008 to numerous other unanswered provocations, to date.

Accordingly, Washington’s present focus ought to be on re-establishing global norms. That will require deliberate, measured assertive action to hold bad actors accountable in ways they will recognize as deterrents (“speak softly but carry a big stick”).

Further, Washington must disabuse itself of the delusion that sanctions are going to force Putin out of power. They will not. The DC beltway-type prevailing wisdom on Putin’s popularity is a delusion. And it is not as if this is even a context where speaking out against the state in Russia is an activity people even feel safe doing.

—– 247.6 —–2022-04-28 19:21:24+08:00:

This was, among others, Obama’s main mistake in Syria: Obama drew a red line he knew he would never enforce. Then Putin called his bluff.

—– 247.7 —–2022-04-28 19:25:06+08:00:

You’re exactly right about the sanction’s failings. But the problem remains that the United States simply does not have the power to sanction Russia into compliance with its foreign policy objectives.