Ukraine and Escalation, Poland vs. EU Crescendo, Private Equity as "Billionaire Factory", The Ellis Island Cohort and Edward Banfield, Sluttery and Regret
Hit the like button and use the share button to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you (be nice!), and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already done so.
Next entry in the HIV/AIDS series should be up tomorrow or Monday.
When they get to «building coalitions» they may find out there is a non-zero number of people in Eastern Europe who view «strong Poland» with more suspicion than any «German-Russian plans». These people might of course be wrong in the long run (just as they were wrong in 1930ies) but still, they exist.
Long before the war started Putin made it clear that he was prepared to hand over the Donbass in the context of the Minsk Agreements. However, he made it also clear that he would not accept a violent conquest of the Donbass by the Ukrainian army and he made it clear that if he felt forced to interfere he wouldn't restrict himself to the Donbass. The invasion on 24 February happened because Putin believed an attack on the Donbass was days away.
So there is no reason to speak of expanded Russian goals. We just don't know what Putin's goals were when he started the war.
Excellent substack. One point of confusion, however, re Ukraine: how exactly is the US any kind of winner? They may not be as big a loser as the EU, but winner? Big winner? The entire provocation by the US has blown up spectacularly in their faces in almost every way save, perhaps, propaganda to their own sheeples at home.
Re Banfield and the differences between the white ethnics had less to do with abstractions about time-orientation or 'culture' than it did with pre-American communal experience.
The Jewish immigrants did not end up in publicly funded welfare-facilities because they had their own welfare system: the landsmannschaften...mutual aid societies established specifically for each micro-community, organised by place of origin. In New York and Chicago there would have been a mutual-aid society for just about every province, city, town or village across Central or Eastern Europe. These drew on long experience with communal self-sufficiency.
Largely agree with your take on the Ukraine conflict, except that I don't see the US as the Big Winner. Rather, I think that is China, which is increasingly enveloping Russia as the junior partner in a formidable bloc that could genuinely challenge US hegemony in a way that nothing else has done in the post WW2 period. Russia provides all of the needs that China lacks, especially strategic commodities.
Meanwhile, the idea of an Indo-Pacific alliance to contain China is collapsing, as you noted.
India is now Russia’s largest oil client.
South Korea said no thanks to an anti-Chinese tech bloc.
So that leaves is with tiny Australia and Japan, hated by everyone in the region because of WW2.
Saudi Arabia, having humiliated Biden, is going to welcome Xi in a few days.
The Germans and French are soon going to beg Russia for gas and China for trade deals.
As David Goldman pointed out, China’s imports to the U.S. have doubled under Trump and Biden.
I am a hawk by temperament but i think we are outgunned on all fronts.
The Ukraine thing has shaken me up (and I’m a realist!) Instead of adopting sanctions with us and NATO against Russia, every other region and country in the world moved closer to Russia (and China) including India which was supposed to be our ally against China. Screw you, America.
I may end up as a Fortress North America continentalist and partial protectionist. Create our own sphere of influence and levy tariffs and local content requirements to charge companies (including US multinationals) for access to our market. If they want to sell it here they need to make it here and hire American workers and American suppliers.
As for the military, we downsize the Army and Navy and focus on missiles, robot subs and drones, and Special Forces and use the savings to invest in American manufacturing.
I think historians will say that the era of American dominance ended with Biden’s bugout from Afghanistan (which was necessary but humiliating) followed by the humiliation over Ukraine when the whole world outside of Europe sided with Russia against U.S.
Niccolo, I must disagree with your assessment of "Big Winner: USA." The sanctions have been a complete disaster and defeat already, with the EU facing a "dark winter" and the Ruble rising. You concede the Truth when you describe the tensions within the EU and the US ambassador's talk of "regime change" in Poland. The Empire is also unable to keep the "global south" in line, who are increasingly abandoning the dollar as a reserve currency.
The military disaster is not yet self-evident, though soon to become so. Ukraine had a better trained and larger army than any in NATO. NATO has now stripped itself of reserve equipment, which has become the fodder for Russia's training exercise in Ukraine. Russia is expending ordnance at a rate 10 times that of Ukraine. The West has stripped itself of the industrial capacity to keep up with that rate.
Yet the West's incompetent elites can think of no better way to handle the impending defeat than to distract attention from Ukraine to Taiwan, likely to become another military defeat. The Empire is done. Stick a fork in it. What Poland really should do is make its peace with Russia, turning it into an ally, but I'm sure neither of us will hold our breath.
Time orientation makes sense. Asians(particularly South Asians) are very good at this game. Which probably results in the very favorable treatment by and eventual incorporation into the liberal establishment(mostly northern old stock American and Jews for now, but Indian Americans definetely punching far above the weight).
Boston is an interesting case where naked intra-white racial hatred became part of the political scene. James Michael Curley was an Irishman who was elected mayor four times, including once from federal prison. A research paper co-written by Andrei Shliefer (a Harvard economist who helped loot Russia) contains the passage:
"Still, Curley’s unending rhetorical war on the Anglo-Saxons, his histrionic ethnic baiting, may have been the hallmark of his mayoralty. Curley accused the English of having a temperament inclined toward ‘political chicanery and hypocricy,' and railed against 'the inhumane numb-skulduggery of the Yankee overlords.' 'The day of the Puritan has passed, the Anglo-Saxon is a joke, a newer and better America is here,' he said, and 'the New England of the Puritans and the Boston of rum, codfish and slaves are as dead as Julius Caeser' (O’Connor, 1995:188). Instead, he favored a Boston filled with 'a virile, intelligent, God-fearing, patriotic people like the Irish.' Such rhetoric should perhaps be viewed not only as evidence of intent to favor one’s own community, but also as a form of redistribution, given its likely impact on both Irish and English voters."
Niccolo, one factor you did not consider in your calculus was finance. The US is pouring weapons into the Ukraine via a Lend Lease arrangement: the costs accrue as debt. The Ukrainians, however, have lost the Donbass (where all the industry and coal is) and they are fast losing the Pontic steppe and the adjacent regions of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov (which is where the natural gas is). Unless the Ukrainians can retake these areas they will be left without the means to repay their debts.
The US has successfully used debt as an instrument of statecraft since WW1, when the US used loans to the belligerents as a means of displacing the UK as the world's banker. My guess is that Washington will try somehow to find a way to get the EU to assume the bulk of the financial liabilities (thereby further encumbering the euro).
Aug 20, 2022·edited Aug 20, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
If Russia refuses to let go of that occupied territory, which is the most likely outcome, I'm unsure people understand what that means for the planet.
In short, the last 150 years are erased. Borders are back on the table. Secession will be a normal political goal like all others. Colonialism and imperialism will no longer be things of the past, and covert neolib/con expansion and resource acquiring will die, replaced by good ol' fashioned open armed conflict. Europe will be REQUIRED to create new military alliances and to arm itself, and it will arm itself with nukes for sure. The whole borderlands areas will be submerged in near constant civilizational warfare, the Balkans, East Europe, Central Asia, the shores of Japan and China, the Pakistan/China/India territories, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, large parts of Africa, all will be in near constant turmoil as the Great 3 will swoop in to fight for territory and influence, at best with proxies, at worst directly.
There is no "return to normal" is Russia if proving that colonialism works just fine in 2022, even against USA's wishes. Once the (admittedly) myth of the sacredness of borders (so we can have peace, and create economic prosperity) is deboonked, the whole edifice of "order" will collapse and we will be back to killing each other.
Think this VERY well before celebrating, because if you thought the pandemic was bad, and that this war affects your wallet negatively, I assure you that you have seen NOTHING yet. America might manage to keep the peace longer due to its 2 oceans isolating it rather well, but it won't last forever, and it won't survive isolated from Europe.
I see no reason to believe Russia is in any way likely to be desperate enough to deploy Nukes. This isn't like America in the Pacific, facing an amphibious assault on an island nation of fanatics.
The conflict, if anything, has put into clear display how weak NATO has become. They've openly admitted they've spent the last eight years preparing Ukraine, using the Minsk accords simply to buy time, with Ukraine having by far the largest armed forces this side of Turkey.
I hear from people like Scott Ritter that most of the MANPADs sent over were defective, either time expired warheads or battery packs, recently all the F35s and UKs Typhoons were grounded due to faulty ejector seats. The West sold out it's "industrial warfare" capabilities to the likes of China and they are facing an enormous ammunition crisis, on top of Europe's equally huge energy crisis.
What is interesting are the attacks in Crimea. While it'll achieve nothing but further infuriating Russia, the mechanism is interesting. Hitting airstrips far beyond the front lines smacks of SAS, and I can't think of any way Ukraine would be hiring these places themselves.
In line with Banfield you really should read “Hard America, Soft America.” by Michael Barone. *
There’s 2 themes;
1) we have softer and dumber children than Europe but harder and smarter adults as our education system is infantilizing but our real adult work world harsh.
2) and to Banfields point- the Irish, Italians and Jews yesterday are the Blacks, Hispanics and Asians of today.
I’m Irish and won’t cancel you for pointing out what an awful train wreck we were in the 19th century. The real question is how did we find our way out?
*Who by the way has an encyclopedic knowledge of American politics down to the county level, indeed he’s the chief editor of The Almanac of American Politics.
The reason Democrats were able to pass that Inflation Reduction Act was because they got Senator Sinema to vote for it.
And the reason they got her to vote for it is because the carried interest loophole was allowed to remain.....Democrats wanted it ending.
Carried interest allows equity people, managers and other big cheeses, to be taxed at a rate of 22% percent, instead of the top W2 rate of almost 40%. So now you see a big reason so many people get into private equity.....not just the fees, but almost half the tax rate for huge paychecks.
BTW, the upshot from the Sinema's insistence is that more regular upper and middle income people will be taxed and audited.
So, exactly who promised what to Senator Sinema? I bet the contributions were miniscule, maybe in the hundreds of thousands, whereas the private equity industry will reap billions in return.
Regarding the comment on the Irish and their social condition, there was a reason they were called Paddy wagons.
Also, the inflation of the 70’s that caused the death of the saving and loans was due to the Vietnam war.
And isn’t it interesting that the LOL inflation reduction act, which brings us 80,000 new IRS agents and will make everyone but those that control Blackrock and Appolo poorer, once again does not tax Carried Interest.
Hit the like button and use the share button to share this across social media. Leave a comment if the mood strikes you (be nice!), and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already done so.
Next entry in the HIV/AIDS series should be up tomorrow or Monday.
When they get to «building coalitions» they may find out there is a non-zero number of people in Eastern Europe who view «strong Poland» with more suspicion than any «German-Russian plans». These people might of course be wrong in the long run (just as they were wrong in 1930ies) but still, they exist.
Long before the war started Putin made it clear that he was prepared to hand over the Donbass in the context of the Minsk Agreements. However, he made it also clear that he would not accept a violent conquest of the Donbass by the Ukrainian army and he made it clear that if he felt forced to interfere he wouldn't restrict himself to the Donbass. The invasion on 24 February happened because Putin believed an attack on the Donbass was days away.
So there is no reason to speak of expanded Russian goals. We just don't know what Putin's goals were when he started the war.
Excellent substack. One point of confusion, however, re Ukraine: how exactly is the US any kind of winner? They may not be as big a loser as the EU, but winner? Big winner? The entire provocation by the US has blown up spectacularly in their faces in almost every way save, perhaps, propaganda to their own sheeples at home.
Re Banfield and the differences between the white ethnics had less to do with abstractions about time-orientation or 'culture' than it did with pre-American communal experience.
The Jewish immigrants did not end up in publicly funded welfare-facilities because they had their own welfare system: the landsmannschaften...mutual aid societies established specifically for each micro-community, organised by place of origin. In New York and Chicago there would have been a mutual-aid society for just about every province, city, town or village across Central or Eastern Europe. These drew on long experience with communal self-sufficiency.
Largely agree with your take on the Ukraine conflict, except that I don't see the US as the Big Winner. Rather, I think that is China, which is increasingly enveloping Russia as the junior partner in a formidable bloc that could genuinely challenge US hegemony in a way that nothing else has done in the post WW2 period. Russia provides all of the needs that China lacks, especially strategic commodities.
Meanwhile, the idea of an Indo-Pacific alliance to contain China is collapsing, as you noted.
India is now Russia’s largest oil client.
South Korea said no thanks to an anti-Chinese tech bloc.
So that leaves is with tiny Australia and Japan, hated by everyone in the region because of WW2.
Saudi Arabia, having humiliated Biden, is going to welcome Xi in a few days.
The Germans and French are soon going to beg Russia for gas and China for trade deals.
As David Goldman pointed out, China’s imports to the U.S. have doubled under Trump and Biden.
I am a hawk by temperament but i think we are outgunned on all fronts.
The Ukraine thing has shaken me up (and I’m a realist!) Instead of adopting sanctions with us and NATO against Russia, every other region and country in the world moved closer to Russia (and China) including India which was supposed to be our ally against China. Screw you, America.
I may end up as a Fortress North America continentalist and partial protectionist. Create our own sphere of influence and levy tariffs and local content requirements to charge companies (including US multinationals) for access to our market. If they want to sell it here they need to make it here and hire American workers and American suppliers.
As for the military, we downsize the Army and Navy and focus on missiles, robot subs and drones, and Special Forces and use the savings to invest in American manufacturing.
I think historians will say that the era of American dominance ended with Biden’s bugout from Afghanistan (which was necessary but humiliating) followed by the humiliation over Ukraine when the whole world outside of Europe sided with Russia against U.S.
Niccolo, I must disagree with your assessment of "Big Winner: USA." The sanctions have been a complete disaster and defeat already, with the EU facing a "dark winter" and the Ruble rising. You concede the Truth when you describe the tensions within the EU and the US ambassador's talk of "regime change" in Poland. The Empire is also unable to keep the "global south" in line, who are increasingly abandoning the dollar as a reserve currency.
The military disaster is not yet self-evident, though soon to become so. Ukraine had a better trained and larger army than any in NATO. NATO has now stripped itself of reserve equipment, which has become the fodder for Russia's training exercise in Ukraine. Russia is expending ordnance at a rate 10 times that of Ukraine. The West has stripped itself of the industrial capacity to keep up with that rate.
Yet the West's incompetent elites can think of no better way to handle the impending defeat than to distract attention from Ukraine to Taiwan, likely to become another military defeat. The Empire is done. Stick a fork in it. What Poland really should do is make its peace with Russia, turning it into an ally, but I'm sure neither of us will hold our breath.
Time orientation makes sense. Asians(particularly South Asians) are very good at this game. Which probably results in the very favorable treatment by and eventual incorporation into the liberal establishment(mostly northern old stock American and Jews for now, but Indian Americans definetely punching far above the weight).
Boston is an interesting case where naked intra-white racial hatred became part of the political scene. James Michael Curley was an Irishman who was elected mayor four times, including once from federal prison. A research paper co-written by Andrei Shliefer (a Harvard economist who helped loot Russia) contains the passage:
"Still, Curley’s unending rhetorical war on the Anglo-Saxons, his histrionic ethnic baiting, may have been the hallmark of his mayoralty. Curley accused the English of having a temperament inclined toward ‘political chicanery and hypocricy,' and railed against 'the inhumane numb-skulduggery of the Yankee overlords.' 'The day of the Puritan has passed, the Anglo-Saxon is a joke, a newer and better America is here,' he said, and 'the New England of the Puritans and the Boston of rum, codfish and slaves are as dead as Julius Caeser' (O’Connor, 1995:188). Instead, he favored a Boston filled with 'a virile, intelligent, God-fearing, patriotic people like the Irish.' Such rhetoric should perhaps be viewed not only as evidence of intent to favor one’s own community, but also as a form of redistribution, given its likely impact on both Irish and English voters."
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/curley_effect.pdf
Niccolo, one factor you did not consider in your calculus was finance. The US is pouring weapons into the Ukraine via a Lend Lease arrangement: the costs accrue as debt. The Ukrainians, however, have lost the Donbass (where all the industry and coal is) and they are fast losing the Pontic steppe and the adjacent regions of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov (which is where the natural gas is). Unless the Ukrainians can retake these areas they will be left without the means to repay their debts.
The US has successfully used debt as an instrument of statecraft since WW1, when the US used loans to the belligerents as a means of displacing the UK as the world's banker. My guess is that Washington will try somehow to find a way to get the EU to assume the bulk of the financial liabilities (thereby further encumbering the euro).
If Russia refuses to let go of that occupied territory, which is the most likely outcome, I'm unsure people understand what that means for the planet.
In short, the last 150 years are erased. Borders are back on the table. Secession will be a normal political goal like all others. Colonialism and imperialism will no longer be things of the past, and covert neolib/con expansion and resource acquiring will die, replaced by good ol' fashioned open armed conflict. Europe will be REQUIRED to create new military alliances and to arm itself, and it will arm itself with nukes for sure. The whole borderlands areas will be submerged in near constant civilizational warfare, the Balkans, East Europe, Central Asia, the shores of Japan and China, the Pakistan/China/India territories, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, large parts of Africa, all will be in near constant turmoil as the Great 3 will swoop in to fight for territory and influence, at best with proxies, at worst directly.
There is no "return to normal" is Russia if proving that colonialism works just fine in 2022, even against USA's wishes. Once the (admittedly) myth of the sacredness of borders (so we can have peace, and create economic prosperity) is deboonked, the whole edifice of "order" will collapse and we will be back to killing each other.
Think this VERY well before celebrating, because if you thought the pandemic was bad, and that this war affects your wallet negatively, I assure you that you have seen NOTHING yet. America might manage to keep the peace longer due to its 2 oceans isolating it rather well, but it won't last forever, and it won't survive isolated from Europe.
I see no reason to believe Russia is in any way likely to be desperate enough to deploy Nukes. This isn't like America in the Pacific, facing an amphibious assault on an island nation of fanatics.
The conflict, if anything, has put into clear display how weak NATO has become. They've openly admitted they've spent the last eight years preparing Ukraine, using the Minsk accords simply to buy time, with Ukraine having by far the largest armed forces this side of Turkey.
I hear from people like Scott Ritter that most of the MANPADs sent over were defective, either time expired warheads or battery packs, recently all the F35s and UKs Typhoons were grounded due to faulty ejector seats. The West sold out it's "industrial warfare" capabilities to the likes of China and they are facing an enormous ammunition crisis, on top of Europe's equally huge energy crisis.
What is interesting are the attacks in Crimea. While it'll achieve nothing but further infuriating Russia, the mechanism is interesting. Hitting airstrips far beyond the front lines smacks of SAS, and I can't think of any way Ukraine would be hiring these places themselves.
In line with Banfield you really should read “Hard America, Soft America.” by Michael Barone. *
There’s 2 themes;
1) we have softer and dumber children than Europe but harder and smarter adults as our education system is infantilizing but our real adult work world harsh.
2) and to Banfields point- the Irish, Italians and Jews yesterday are the Blacks, Hispanics and Asians of today.
I’m Irish and won’t cancel you for pointing out what an awful train wreck we were in the 19th century. The real question is how did we find our way out?
*Who by the way has an encyclopedic knowledge of American politics down to the county level, indeed he’s the chief editor of The Almanac of American Politics.
https://www.thealmanacofamericanpolitics.com/
The reason Democrats were able to pass that Inflation Reduction Act was because they got Senator Sinema to vote for it.
And the reason they got her to vote for it is because the carried interest loophole was allowed to remain.....Democrats wanted it ending.
Carried interest allows equity people, managers and other big cheeses, to be taxed at a rate of 22% percent, instead of the top W2 rate of almost 40%. So now you see a big reason so many people get into private equity.....not just the fees, but almost half the tax rate for huge paychecks.
BTW, the upshot from the Sinema's insistence is that more regular upper and middle income people will be taxed and audited.
So, exactly who promised what to Senator Sinema? I bet the contributions were miniscule, maybe in the hundreds of thousands, whereas the private equity industry will reap billions in return.
Regarding the comment on the Irish and their social condition, there was a reason they were called Paddy wagons.
Also, the inflation of the 70’s that caused the death of the saving and loans was due to the Vietnam war.
And isn’t it interesting that the LOL inflation reduction act, which brings us 80,000 new IRS agents and will make everyone but those that control Blackrock and Appolo poorer, once again does not tax Carried Interest.