Are we sleepwalking into World War III?
ft.com
ft.com
Gideon Rachman is the FT’s chief foreign affairs commentator. His new book ‘War is Interested in You’ is published by Bodley Head on October 22I mean it seems like they were until someone just decided to give them huge infusion of money, remove all sanctions passed against them and throw them a huge lifeline. Oh and can't forget "remove sanctions for oligarchs".
This piece is one of several I've noticed lately in the British press [1, 2], preparing the country for a broader war.
I'm deeply fucking concerned, to be frank. I'm also upset that no major political actor seems to be putting their hand up and suggesting this might be a terrible idea.
Winter is coming.
[1] https://news.sky.com/story/army-chief-says-politicians-to-st...
The comparison with WW1 is instructive in that regard. Then, the view that conflict with Germany was inevitable was surprisingly widespread - particularly in the wake of Agadir, though it had been steadily building over a couple of decades. It's just that the nature and scope of the conflict that caught them by surprise - a land war rather than being primarily naval.
Vast amounts of money had been poured into building up the navy (always controversial - Gladstone's final premiership was ended by his opposition to a 'vortex of militarism', and Lloyd George and Churchill made similar arguments 15 years later) but those very expensive warships spent most of the conflict at anchor. Most of the pre-war spending was essentially wasted.
If we were to double our defence spending today, we might well end up pissing it up the wall on the same old mix of Trident, aircraft carriers, helicopters, unworkable AFVs, and the most limited carrier variant of F35 when the actual threats are cyberattacks, disinformation, and a variety of hybrid attacks.
What is surprising about that? The Northcliffe propaganda press and writers such as H.G. Wells had been nurturing the idea of the inevitability of war with Germany for years, so, unless they really sucked at propaganda, at least some "positive effect" would be the expected outcome.
« It's just that the nature and scope of the conflict that caught them by surprise - a land war »
Maybe, in some respect. But they had factored in the armies of France and Russia, hadn't they (in 1904 and 1907 already), so they were certainly expecting some land war scenarios.
The reason they didn't tell their people they were willing to sacrifice them on the order of a couple hundred thousands may have had to do with the lack of popular support for such an honorable prospect.
Belgium is a buffer state that has a port. Ukraine is a breadbasket with lots of soviet era industry and critical accesses to the Black Sea.
Belgium was a speedbump for the Germans, just a way to get to the French and block off the British. Ukraine is the actual goal.
Both were about an outsider trying to rewrite the terms of system from which they felt excluded. WW1 was loosely states with an empire vs. those without.
Both have involved massive miscalculations on all parts as to how quickly and easily this will be over. Russia thought Ukraine would fold, NATO thought Russia would.
We need to be realistic here. This is bad and could get substantially worse.
Jeffrey Sachs has been shouting about this from the rooftops from day one, but the "Western Bloc" has been ignoring him at their own peril. It is almost as if they want to force a WWIII, nevermind the suffering of the Ukrainians!
There are plenty of Youtube videos of his speeches, a couple;
Jeffrey Sachs: Understanding the Ukraine conflict (minidoc) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiK6DijNLGE
Jeffrey Sachs Warns Europe About Its Dark Future - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqkyulCBcpY
PS: Also see my other comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50148581
leaked assessments from the beginning of the war showed that the CIA thought Ukraine would fall in < 1 year and would lead to an insurgency that would last a decade and bankrupt Russia while still having oodles of warcrimes.
warcrimes are still there but instead the AFU is causing serious infrastructure damage to to the Russians.
China isnt that stupid. Russia is hopeless in Ukraine, theres no way they would dare try China or even Europe. America is only capable of winning against Venezuela.
Its a joke the Houthis who dont have an air force, navy or army today are laughing at the USA and all Western forces.
The USA is unable to attack by land or sea the Houthis because it is not capable to provide significant extra support to the Arabian peninsula. The real strength of the USA in the past was not their equipment but their ability to have support bases very close by. Today the only close base to the Gulf is Diego Garcia which is thousands of KM away.
We are seeing a new Dreadnought era, all current weapons systems are basically useless. Drones are the new equalizer.
Control. They’re profiting and in power. The Houthis don’t govern with popular consent. Warlords’ politics revolve around access to weapons and the normalization of violence.
This strikes me as unfalsifiable and irrelevant.
> in their own eyes they are winning
Geostrategically and domestically—from a power projection perspective—they are.
Thats a win for them.
And that's before you even get into the question of how it affects the US/Iran conflict.
Such wording is of course an allusion to Australian author Christopher Clark's 2012 book The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. The book is very detailed, but still a big lie in the overall narrative, meant to gloss over the fact that a clique in the British establishment had spent at least ten years organizing and preparing this war; yes, with their indispensable associates in France and Russia, but masterminded in London, as explained by Scottish authors Docherty and Macgregor in Hidden History.
There are, inevitably, a wide range of views on the origins of WW1 - Wikipedia actually has a really good overview at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_causes_o...
I'd encourage anyone interested to first read more than one of the works listed in order to better appreciate the various arguments - perhaps Max Hastings' Catastrophe 1914 as a very readable restatement of the mainstream position to contrast with Clark's Sleepwalkers - before approaching fringe material like Hidden History.
That's not at all a fair assessment of their work. They aren't trained historians, okay, but that's not unusual for authors of history books; it can even be a plus (unencumbered by institutional constraints and the need for ideological compliance). Docherty and Macgregor also provide lots of detailed concrete evidence, following the prosopographic tradition of Carroll Quigley. The topic of the book is the machinations of a "secret elite" (whose members are well-known high-ranking public figures), so yes, this is akin to a conspiracy. But it is neither a rant nor a theory.
FYI, the account that you are replying to has promoted a range of conspiracy theories - 1) Pro Russia, 2) antisemitic (of course), and 3) Were Dinosaurs real? (yes, really!)
You'll have to show the dead flagged comments in order top see them, if you need to.
Xi isn't doing anything ostentatious like sending his navy to the Persian gulf or overtly dropping weapons supplies in the Middle East. After all they are going for the economic win- something that always eluded the USSR.
Let Trump hang himself and the Chinese make it out like the good guys. After all the most important thing nations want is not human rights it's stability.
That’s… problematic
Unless of course they elect anti-immigration populists and ruin their appeal. Then they're doomed to shrink.
if no people, then why have an economy?
Sure, you might be switching governments often (and that's a feature, not a bug) at times, but things change slowly.
Which is what you need in a mature rich democracy.
The last thing you want is to elect hard to boot and control individuals like in presidential and semi presidential republics.
Fundamentally China isn't Russia or USA which both have a proclivity to become entangled in foreign problems. For the US (I'm american) the civil side has four strategic risks:
- weak to no show congress which has ceded war making to the executive branch
- civilian leadership who think bomb it and declare success which is naive
- the inability to stop being suckered in by our own hurbris when others say but we can't get it done without US involvement
- an economy post WWII built on cheap oil, which has tentacles into the mideast
Meanwhile after having pissed away 50 years of culture wars particularly since newt gingrich and the tea party, the US fiscal situation is deplorable.
Most maddening? We did this to ourselves. Blaming immigrants isn't the flex people think it is
I think its reasonable to say as a world power, America today cannot be compared to America of WW2 or the British Empire during the 19th century. YT is full of videos making fun of Saudi Arabia being unable to defeat the Houthis, but lets not forget America which has a military budget nearly 20x larger than the Saudis also cant defeat the Houthis.
America as a super power should be able to steamroll Iran and Houthis, but it cant do much to either. Ospreys which were built because of the Iran hostage situation of the 80s, today cannot fly more than 15minutes from a base.
I think its possible to say the USA was never actually that powerful, they just looked it, similar to the USSR, and when tested they both are while deadly and destructive not actually able to convincely win. Big difference between Hollywood and reality.
A ground invasion is a very risky process, the land force has all the advantages, just ask the British and ANZACS about Gallipoli.
First of all they cannot perform any sort of amphib operation, because any landing forces coming via water would be destroyed by drones. That leaves air as the second option. They could parachute troops in, but they would be effectively alone, as there is no way to supply them by ground. THe osprey the one machine that was built for this situation is currently grounded because of mechanical issues with its motor system.
A few months back we saw the rescue operation of that downed fighter in Iran. It cost America several planes - i think hercs to hercs and choppers that were destroyed to save those few airmen. There is no way America can afford to lose even one herc or chopper to feed and supply thousands of ground forces.
No ground attack of any size will ever happen, you can bet on that.
he is absolutely doing bold, belligerent moves towards Taiwan
> Let Trump hang himself and the Chinese make it out like the good guys. After all the most important thing nations want is not human rights it's stability.
literally 50-cent army posts
All the above participants use "Reflexive Control" against each other to Manipulate and Propagandize in furtherance of their goals - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexive_control
The current example is how Ukraine was manipulated into being the sacrificial lamb in order to draw Russia into invading it thus expending its resources while USA/Europe/UK don't suffer as much.
One way to understand this is via Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes by Jacques Ellul - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda:_The_Formation_of_M...
The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. It is no longer to change adherence to a doctrine, but to make the individual cling irrationally to a process of action.
Propaganda employs encirclement on the individual by trying to surround man by all possible routes, in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or his needs through his conscious and his unconscious, and by assailing him in both his private and his public life.
Propaganda is concerned with timeliness since an individual is only moved to action if he is pushed towards a timely one by propaganda..."Operational words" are used to penetrate an individual's indifference...Incidentally, there are also the undecided, people whose opinions are vague, who form the majority of citizens within the collective. These citizens are the most susceptible to control of public opinion that is dictated by propaganda.
Political Propaganda involves techniques of influence employed by a government, a party, an administration, or a pressure group with the intention of changing the behavior of the public...The methods of political propaganda are calculated in a precise manner and its main criterion is to disseminate an ideology for the very purpose of making various political acts acceptable to the people.
Sociological propaganda aims to increase conformity with the environment that is of a collective nature by developing compliance with or defense of the established order through long term penetration and progressive adaptation by using all social currents. The propaganda element is the way of life with which the individual is permeated and then the individual begins to express it in film, writing, or art without realizing it...This propaganda reinforces the individual's way of life and represents this way of life as best. Sociological propaganda creates an indisputable criterion for the individual to make judgments of good and evil according to the order of the individual's way of life.
Information is indistinguishable from propaganda in that information is an essential element of propaganda because for propaganda to succeed it must have reference to political or economic reality. Propaganda grafts itself onto an already existing reality through "informed opinion".
Citizens are aware that political decisions affect everybody and governments cannot govern without the support, presence, pressure, or knowledge of the people. Yet the people are incapable of making long term policy so opinion must be created to follow the government because the government cannot be led by opinion. All of this describes the "Mass-Government" relationship characterized by people demanding what has already been decided, in order to appear as though the government is actually caring about what the people need.
The propagandist cannot be constrained by the ideology of his State but must operate in service of the state and be able to manipulate the ideology as if it were an object. The ideology merely provides the content for the propagandist to build off since he is limited to what already is present within the group, nation, or society. The fundamental ideologies are nationalism, socialism, communism, and democracy.
Since democracy depends on public opinion, it is clear that propaganda must be involved...However, as discussed in early chapters Ellul described the masses are incapable of making long-term foreign policy and the government needs to make these decisions in a timely manner. This is where propaganda comes into play and projects an artificial reality to the masses to satisfy their need to participate in government while the decisions are really made behind the scenes. .. Democratic regimes develop propaganda in line with its myths and prejudices. Propaganda stresses the superiority of a democratic society while intensifying the prejudices between democratic and oppressive.
> As a journalist ... It was at the three-day Munich Security Conference that ended on February 20 2022
Ah yes, nothing was happening in the world in previous 30 years and some countries absolutely didn't insist on being involved in the military conflicts on the other side of the globe. Nothing happened and it was kumbyaya everywhere. And no civilian casulties, of course.