We're On the Brink

The Probem is, Brink of What?

If you have the feeling that that the two main conflicts are dragging on and on and on, join the club. In the case of the Ukrainian war Peter Hitchens is so aggravated that last week he said he he thought the European leaders were working to keep it going. He’s a brilliant guy, and I definitely understand both his frustration and his argument.

That’s the sort of statement that’s usually the preface to disagreement, so let me frame the situation from a different perspective. It’s not a question of disagreements, it’s the difficulty we all have of grasping that the days are long gone when Europe, mostly France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, really were the political, economic, and military leaders of the world.

So what happened recently in Geneva with the peace negotiations was simply unthinkable. Not only were the Europeans not even invited, but afterwards they weren’t even briefed. And shortly afterwards, Putin accused them of trying to sabotage the peace talks. So as I’ve long suspected, someone in the Kremlin keeps up with the British newspapers.

And at the same time Putin made yet another Euro-threat: he could beat the Europeans any day of the week (a figure of speech).

He may well believe that, because, as I said at the start of the war, all the top experts assumed the Russians would conquer Ukraine quickly and easily. And even today, over four years later, we still have people making the same argument. In many cases, the same people. The cynic who observed that the only thing we learn from history is that no one learns from history, had a point.

So it’s not that I disagree with Peter Hitchens. On the contrary, if the Europeans could, they probably would, if for no other reason than they need the looming threat of war to help them hang on to power as does Beijing. They’re clearly aggravated that they’re being excluded, and they may even believe their claims, given all the other fantasies they actually believe in.

It’s easy to see why. The traditional parties in all three that have dominated their elections are now distinctly in the minority, and the ones with the single largest voting block are fiercely opposed: Reform (UK), AfD (Germany), and National Front (France) The ruling party in the UK, Labour, is now at around ten percent, and the PM is down there as well. Pretty much the same as in France and Germany.

As the political situation, so the economic. It’s just difficult for them to realize things have changed.

The other complication is that if you really believe that if you can control what people are told, you think you can control them. In that regard, the fate of the Ceausescus should have been a wake-up call. But it wasn’t. Another very human trait: to ignore anything that suggests we’re wrong. And Putin, who’s after all a European, is behaving the same way. There’s an old Russian joke that speaks to that.

As the Russian said when he saw his first giraffe. It can’t be because it mustn’t be.

And to an extent the European idea of a looming Russian attack only supports Moscow’s fantasies that they’re a great military and economic power. So in a sense Mr. Hitchens is correct. And yeah, it’s frustrating.

A Reminder

I’ve talked about this in a previous post, and in detail, but as time passes, I’m increasingly inclined to believe the two basic keys to understanding a great deal of the current reign of error are simple. First, no matter how sophisticated and knowledgeable they sound, Marxist economists, and those for whom some variant of that system represents an economic and sociopolitical reality, simply don’t understand numbers. They’re innumerate.

Second, over the last three quarters of a century, post-graduate education has become so compartmentalized that major connections that cross disciplines are missed. For example, currently we have one set of specialists pointing out that the European economy is in horrible shape and getting worse (and China’s as well), another group explaining why the EEU is not a workable model, and a third pointing out its military problems. But when someone in any one of those groups turns to a different subject, he knows less than a casual reader, either falls back on some outdated or erroneous idea, or simply ignores anything outside of his narrow focus.

As a result we have military historians who don’t understand either the impact of science and technology on warfare, or the relationship between economic development and military capability. So, practically speaking, while the insights into one narrow aspect of the matter are probably correct (the collapsing Russian and Chinese economies), they tend to assume that this has no particular relevance to their military capabilities—and vice versa. Not considering how all of these factors are related, they end up with models that are completely wrong.

The Russian Example

So although all of data that describe the Russian economy are negative, the Russian leadership can’t understand them. In fact, a recent analysis put it perfectly: Russia is right on the edge of a complete collapse; the question is when will they realize it?

The first part is definitely the case, but I don’t think it will happen, because they simply can’t grasp it, any more than the leadership of the governing body of the Soviet Union could in 1989-90.

Where I part company with Mr. Hitchens—possibly—is that in my view first, the leaders of the EEU are pretty much in the same boat as Moscow, just not as far along the road to collapse; second, they’re totally inept; and third, in their obsession with remaining in power, they’re making their situation worse.

Basically, the conflict will only end when the Russian people decide they’ve had enough, either revolt or, more likely, just quit. Barring some out of the blue development, and assuming the Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy supplies and distribution continue, given the failure of Russian military operations, I think we’re talking two or three months.

Probable Objectives and Very Real Problems

It looks like Moscow is engaged in a desperate struggle to capture all of the Donbass (Donetsk and Luhansk), and the Ukrainians, who’ve already taken back about half of the 2022 conquest, are aiming to eradicate Russian assets in the Crimea, with an eye to forcing Moscow to choose.

But instead of wasting manpower, they’re using drones and missiles, and in the process, establishing that Russia can’t defend Crimea.

But Moscow’s current problem is the increasing difficulty of replacing their over one million irretrievable losses, while Ukrainian losses in this category are a little over 110 thousand, so currently Ukraine’s military is around 900 thousand.

Although Russia’s population is technically four times Ukraine’s, it’s nowhere near nine or ten times that. And there’s a problem that the supposed experts relying on gross population figures don’t understand: the urban/rural imbalance, which is exacerbated by the urbanized areas being more heavily weighted to “Russians.”

So Moscow has been replacing its losses from the rural areas, trying to keep the city dwellers happy, but after this much time—and this many casualties, they’re hitting rock bottom on their manpower pool.

So the Ukrainians think they’re winning, and as the Russians increasingly see that—which they are—that may well push them over the edge. It’s also possible that Washington is maneuvering the Europeans to get serious about Russia, which would definitely have an effect.

The Middle East: Dead Men Walking

It’s not surprising that Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah are still determined to destroy Israel. So they’ll keep on, and the two most important developments still haven’t registered on them: that as far as the United States is concerned, the IDF can destroy them, and that Iran’s former allies in Syria and Iraq are not going to support them in their struggle, any more than the other Arab states.

They’re curiously like the Europeans, the only difference is the time period, The Europeans still think they’re in 1900 (or maybe 1960), and the Shia still think they’re back there in September of 2023. The difference, once again, comes down to numbers. In the case of Iran’s proxies, there are so few of them left, relative to the Russians, that the IDF really can eliminate them, and if they continue their behavior, they not only will, but they’re doing it.

So Hamas and Hezbollah keep on trying to destroy Israel, despite the fact that since the peace agreement, the IDF has launched about 670 air strikes destroying their efforts. killing their surviving leaders, and eliminating their combatants.

The China Syndrome

As you’re probably aware, for more decades that I can count, Beijing has been asserting their intention to incorporate Taiwan into the mainland. Just like they’ve been bullying all and sundry about their control over their supposed coastal waters, ignoring every aspect of international law that they dislike, have been busily trying to expand their influence everywhere in the world, and at the same time create a powerful military.

That has led to somewhat the same impression of Russia that prevailed in the Cold War, and as I observed above, still prevails in some circles. While I certainly agree that it’s better to err on the side of caution when evaluating potential enemies (or competitors) than dismissing them. I’ve been troubled for a long time by the fact that I never hear anyone much bring up China’s three major weaknesses. They’re not difficult to grasp.

The first of these is that unlike Russia and the United States, China simply doesn’t possess the resources in energy and agriculture to be self-supporting.

The second is that that although there was a period fairly recently when Beijing was trying to move its economy away from the Marxist model, the current leader has to a great extent reversed course on that. So in the last couple of years, the Chinese economy is having serious problems. Or, more likely, their economic innumeracy is now catching up with them. I don’t think anyone really knows how bad the situation is, but there’s general agreement among the specialists in this area that it’s not only getting worse, but Beijing is having great difficulties in dealing with it.

Now in the third area, China as major military power, I would argue that the same misapprehension exists as we saw for decades with Moscow; that is, a gross over-evaluation of Moscow’s power. And that even though at this point in the Ukrainian War, regardless of the outcome, I really don’t understand how that mistake can be ignored. But it definitely seems like it is.

So the compartmentalized experts are in my view completely wrong about China. That is, the military and geopolitical people don’t grasp how bad the economy is, and the economists don’t realize the numerous military deficiencies.

If you’re interested in more details (other than what I’ve said before), I recommend Paul Warburg’s analyses of the problem. He’s one of the very few independent analysts who has drawn a parallel with the clearly wrong evaluation of the Russian military, arguing that we’re seeing the same thing with China.

I agree—and he has lots of sub points in his arguments.

I bring this up because of Beijing’s recent display of anger when Tokyo said that they regarded the status of Taiwan as an important part of Japan’s national security. Japan is a sensitive issue with Beijing, not least because by 1940, the Japanese had occupied enormous areas of China, and in 1941 overran much of Southeast Asia. And Japan’s behavior, both in China and Korea (and elsewhere), was abominable.

Given the serious economic and social problems China is experiencing, whipping up anti-Japanese sentiment makes sense. But as far as military action against either Japan or Taiwan, I doubt it’s in the cards. One important reason being that the CCP needs its military to keep it in power

Cuba and the Narco States

Back in the distant past, well! Around 1971, I encountered a fascinating book: The Unheavenly City, whose author, Edward Banfield, wrote a thoughtful and detailed analysis of what he argued was the great liberal contradiction between what he called the Enlightenment values that had created prosperity and the liberalls increasing rejection of those same values. Professor Banfield was basically talking about this concept called the “city,” but his argument went way beyond that. Basically, he took a deep split in western thought that I was quite familiar with from my work in the literary and historical period in question and applied it to the political situation that I was up to my eyeballs in, as an actual university administrator during the chaos of 1968-71.

People are always talking about books that “influenced” them, but Unheavenly City was for me like Parkinson’s Law: works that explained behaviors I found otherwise baffling in their lack of logic.

I have some reservations about his notion of the “Enlightenment,” but I thought his analysis was spot on, and in the intervening decades his analysis has only became more and more prescient. I bring Banfield up because the book has been recently reprinted, was the subject of a very informative article, in which the writer, Titus Techera, summarized the argument perfectly:

At the peak of liberal domination of American life, Banfield’s book noted that liberalism had reached a core contradiction.

Definitely, and the current problem we’re having is the direct result of two of those core contradictions. On the one side, the repeated refusal to deal with the spread of Communism in Cuba, which was simply another part of the widespread failure to deal with it with globally, and on the other the refusal to admit that drug addiction is a serious problem.

I’m well aware that in both cases there were sporadic attempts to the contrary, but those were undercut by a determined opposition. Any medical researcher who tried to point out the harmful effects of marijuana was viciously attacked, hooted down, just as anyone who pointed out the equally real threat of Leninist violence was denigrated as an “anti-communist,” or worse.

From its inception, the communist regime in Cuba attempted to export violence into Central and South America, just as Lenin had done in Central Europe. And, to be blunt, they were much more successful at it than Lenin was, largely because of Washington’s neglect and indifference, both fueled by what Banfield delineated as core contradictions.

The economic power of the drug cartels only not makes them formidable adversaries, but it allows them to corrupt and/or intimidate the governments of the nations in and around the Caribbean.

But basically, they have the same weaknesses as Iran’s Shia proxies only more so, since Cuba isn’t really comparable to Iran, and the power of the Cartels is totally dependent on supplying drugs to the United States and, to a much lesser extent, to Europe. But Iran is at this point is almost in as bad a shape economically as Cuba.

So Washington’s interdiction campaign is having roughly the same result –eliminating their chief power—as the American led interdiction of aid to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi by shutting down the Iranian aid going through Iraq and Syria (and eliminating the Iranian threat).

The Cartels have another weakness—the lack of a unifying ideology. To be blunt, their survival, thus far, is basically owing to the fundamental contradictions Banfield explained.

Having said that, I’ll go one step further. Insofar as this analogy works, Mexico is like Lebanon. The reason I say that is Beirut has been given a deadline to disarm and defang Hezbollah, which has basically taken over the country, just as the Cartels have largely taken over Mexico.

How that will play out is difficult to say, but there’s an intriguing observation in the case of Mexico. Recent polling indicates a surprisingly large percentage of Mexicans who would support American strikes against the Cartels.

Way too many complications and unknowns to come to any conclusions, but as is the case with Russia and Middle East, I think the time frame is down to two or three months. One way or another.