The EU thread

[Sheilbh]

Yeah good point there Zoupa. I agree with Sheilbh as well.

What is frustrating is that the challenge from Russia and the abandonment by Daddy America, at this stage, could be leveraged into a rallying cry of more European unity. Maybe it will happen. I just don't see any movement toward that.

I agree with Zoups again. Although again on those suggestions they require some form of united command (a la NATO) and political willingness to actually do that - and to take a risk for someone else. I think this is the point I've made before I don't think there is, yet, a common, shared European view of the risk. So, for example, will the Romanians be willing to push Russia in order to help deter Russia in the Baltics? Maybe, but perhaps not. I think aside from the equipment that practical "leadership" of the Western alliance in the Cold War was a big positive of the US.

I think your last point is why I am more pessimistic on this. Because I think there's a bit of hand-waving away the political constraints and challenges at an EU level.

What your saying is basically the Delors/van Middelaar theory of the EU advancing through crisis or that series of coups. Faced with very difficult challenges at various points in the post-war, European integration was away to overleap those problems. That's a reading of the process of building the EU that I basically agree with. It's not slow gradual building of layers but imaginative leaps forward in response to moments of crisis like Korea and Suez, the oil shock, the end of the Cold War.

My worry on that front is that I think that process has, in effect, stalled. Whether it was the Eurozone crisis, the migration crisis, covid and post-covid (and I had very high hopes for Next Gen project), the invasion of Ukraine and now Trump II - the EU has not advanced through crisis. Whatever drove that mechanism seems to have broken. It has taken some measures and maybe just enough to keep the show on the road but not much more. But I think the problems are accumulating, the EU is already operating at the very outer reaches of what the treaties can do - but I still don't see the sign of the next advance through crisis. I see, at best, stasis. And I'm not fully sure why.

I'd add that to Zoups point I think Macron is the only European leader who has had an analysis and a solution - and I think did see this as a problem with further integration as a solution. He pushed it in his first term and I think in many ways the failure of that project is the tragedy of Macron (and, possibly, Europe). I don't always agree with him and I think he can be impish in how he expresses it, but I think he's Europe's Cassandra in recent years.

[The Minsky Moment]

Edit: Very long winded but basically if power isn't just a spreadsheet of economy and population etc but an ability to leverage the capacities you have, isn't the pain threshold a really key part of that? If it's high you can do more with less, if it's low you need to build up more.

I don't rate that "leverage" component so highly. 

Russia had a formidable army on paper in 2022, but that entire force is basically gone now.  Most of the equipment wrecked, much of the manpower either dead, wounded, or degraded; the strategy failed, the tactics and organization scrapped and reworked, the leadership that survived mostly canned or turned over.  That's not unusual for a long duration war like this one; it devolves to a test of endurance.

Russia's willingness to tolerate losses led them into a war that another European nation could never have done, but it isn't helping them get out of it. They've managed to seize some strategic depth around the Crimea and little else.  Lording it over the smoldering ruins of Bakhmut etc. isn't going to reverse Russia's strategic and civilizational decline.  Their regime structure gives them the power to choose, but the choices left are acknowledging that their goals far exceed their reach, or continuing to reinforce strategic failure.  That kind of autonomy is not so attractive.

I get your point sheilbh and it's not a major difference but I feel the need to push back hard on the reflexive assumption that dominates administration thinking in the US that Russia is a great power akin to the Czars in 1815 or the USSR c. 1960.  They just aren't.  They are more on the level of Spain with a rusty nuclear arsenal and bunch a demoralized conscripts operating fleets of drones cobbled together from Chinese parts.

[Josquius]

I do agree with the point that Russia is a superpower when it comes to crime and internet shitbaggery.
It helps them greatly that what they want, destabilising things and providing aid to populists, is very much the easier task then stabilising and moderating.
They're also quite the power when it comes to national insanity. As Minsky says the numbers they're taken are far above what anyone in the west would ever consider tolerating- I'm curious though how modern China would deal with such losses.

[Sheilbh]

I get your point sheilbh and it's not a major difference but I feel the need to push back hard on the reflexive assumption that dominates administration thinking in the US that Russia is a great power akin to the Czars in 1815 or the USSR c. 1960.  They just aren't.  They are more on the level of Spain with a rusty nuclear arsenal and bunch a demoralized conscripts operating fleets of drones cobbled together from Chinese parts.

I think that's fair and we are possibly boh responding to our own political contexts. You have Trump and are pushing back against that.

In Europe, I saw Kaja Kallas yesterday:

Kaja Kallas
@kajakallas
We need to build up European military capabilities swiftly.

Strengthening European defence and supporting Ukraine are not separate tracks.
They are mutually reinforcing priorities.

Today's call with defence colleagues from France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK underscored our shared determination to move forward on both.

Calls are good. But I think we are significantly beyond the point where they are sufficient for the security risks we face in this continent, if we need the capacity to face them ourselves. See also European defence manufacturers complaining that they've had lots of warm words but very few orders. This is a holding pattern we have been in for a few years now and I think there is complacency exactly on the "gas station with nukes" line which I don't think we can afford.

I'll probably stop banging on about it when I see shovels in the ground for new factories and munitions rolling out.

It is why I would caveat that none of my criticism of Europe in general applies to, for example, Poland who are absolutely doing all of this. I also think there are good signs from Germany but we're not there yet.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I'm curious though how modern China would deal with such losses.

might not register, it's not even a 1000th of their population

[Crazy_Ivan80]

I also think there are good signs from Germany but we're not there yet.

according to the Germany watching in the flemish version of 'the financial times' we should start to see results next year in germany. But he also admits he's an optimist.
So there we are.