Languish.org

Let the people speak.

I'm asking if your country should ride to Ukraine's rescue.

No. Obviouly not. Ukraine isn't a NATO member and I think there's a lot of risk because I think winning matters more to Russia than the UK/West (obviously not Ukraine) so they may escalate with other actual NATO members on their borders (and who could say that'd be wrong) and they're a nuclear power.

We should however give Ukraine all the support we can to enable them to defend themselves - weapons, training, whatever other support we can. We should help Ukraine as much as possible, but not to the extent of mutual defence.

Edit: And we should make clear we're not interested in doing deals with Russia about Ukraine, if Ukrainian leaders aren't in the room. We are supporting a sovereign state.

If Russia promises to keep it conventional, then definitely in favor.

I'm in favour of Iran level sanctions + massive support for Ukraine and - if they lose, massive support for any insurgents rather than war.

I'm not opposed to war to the degree I was opposed to the wars in Iraq, but I don't think it's the right move.

I am in favor of doing what the Soviets did to support North Korea in the Korean War, not so much what the Chinese did to support North Korea in the Korean War.

We should just give them tons of those attack drones and just blow all of Russia's shit up. Make it as expensive as possible.

What Sheilbh says I guess. No thanks to ww3 though don't sell out Ukraine and by all means push the line of neutrality hard.
I very much doubt Russias invasion of Ukraine will be official anyway.

Non-belligerent status seems reasonable for a small country. Send lots of aid to Ukraine.

As a proud Ukrainian-Canadian... Canada should not "go to war" with Russia.  Even as a part of NATO we have little ability to project force to the region.

Full on economic blockade of Russia sounds just fine to me though.  Which I suppose could be seen as an act of war by the Russians, but no less so than Russia forcibly invading (again) a foreign country.

If Canada did go to war with Russia however, I would reluctantly but proudly volunteer.

Quote from: Jacob on December 19, 2021, 11:40:13 PM
I'm in favour of Iran level sanctions + massive support for Ukraine and - if they lose, massive support for any insurgents rather than war.

I'm not opposed to war to the degree I was opposed to the wars in Iraq, but I don't think it's the right move.

ditto

The word of the west is already worth jack shit. China is winning the international game, we can't let Russia get away with anymore shit.

I've voted for war.

No, but I would be in favor of 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan style covert weapons funneling and such, and obviously basically a severing of all U.S. economic ties with Russia, akin to Cold War footing. I'm honestly not sure we shouldn't already be on a cold war trade footing with Russia and China, to be frank (there would not be a simple or fast way to get there with China.)

I don't think the Soviets are going to invade Afghanistan again.

Quote from: Razgovory on December 20, 2021, 07:14:45 PM
I don't think the Soviets are going to invade Afghanistan again.

Looks like your brain damage is flaring up again.

Why does the funneling need to be covert?

Quote from: Eddie Teach on December 20, 2021, 07:36:31 PM
Why does the funneling need to be covert?

So the Ukrainians don't complain to us when we import a bunch of Afghanis to operate all the weapons we will be supplying.

There seems to be some kind of assumption that we could send help. I would imagine an invasion to be over in a matter of days with a demoralized under-equipped Ukrainian army folding almost immediately.

After that there might be some protests, but full blown rebellion Afghanistan style is highly unlikely in my mind. And with that the wests ability to send aid is borderline zero.

Quote from: Threviel on December 21, 2021, 01:28:10 AM
There seems to be some kind of assumption that we could send help. I would imagine an invasion to be over in a matter of days with a demoralized under-equipped Ukrainian army folding almost immediately.

After that there might be some protests, but full blown rebellion Afghanistan style is highly unlikely in my mind. And with that the wests ability to send aid is borderline zero.

Do you have any insight into the capabilities of the Ukrainian armed forces as a foundation for what you imagine? I myself do not, but I'm definitely curious to learn more.

I have no detailed knowledge on the topic but have read articles that state that the Ukranian armed forces are much improved eg https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/battle-hardened-better-funded-ukraines-army-knocks-natos-door-2021-04-14/

They are still out-classed by the Russian forces but, if the article is correct, things may not be easy for Putin.

I'm assuming that patriotism is a thing in Ukraine; without that defeat is certain as we saw in Afghanistan.

Quote from: Threviel on December 21, 2021, 01:28:10 AM
There seems to be some kind of assumption that we could send help. I would imagine an invasion to be over in a matter of days with a demoralized under-equipped Ukrainian army folding almost immediately.

After that there might be some protests, but full blown rebellion Afghanistan style is highly unlikely in my mind. And with that the wests ability to send aid is borderline zero.

Maybe. From my understanding Russia's been surprised by the level of resistance they've had from Ukraine in the Donbass. Since the 2014-5 Ukraine's been fighting a low-level conflict against Russia, they have more tech and advanced weapopns (especially drones I believe) and believe they're better motivated. Plus it wouldn't be a surprise. You know the last war was and it happened in the context of a domestic revolution in Ukraine and the Sochi Winter Olympics which everyone would probably have thought was not a time for the host to attack a neighbour.

But you could be right - I thought the Luke Harding video for the Guardian was very good:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2021/dec/16/on-the-ukraine-frontline-only-the-dead-arent-afraid-video

The Ukrainian Defence Minister has said that in an emergency they would open the armouries to the public and there's been polling that a pretty hefty majority of Ukrainian men are willing to resist an invasion with arms. Anecdotally I've heard from a Russia correspondent who's been to Ukraine in recent years that people seem pretty defiant to him and also that in the last 8 years you can hear a shift everywhere, even Kyiv or Odessa, in people speaking Ukrainian. I don't speak either but I've been to Ukraine - part holiday but also visiting a Ukrainian friend who lives there - and I am, as I mentioned, always really struck by the makeshift memorials to people who've died in the conflict. From speaking with him before this (and he's an English and German speaking expat Ukrainian who moved back after the war) it doesn't necessarily sound like a demoralised place.

I think there possibly was something to the accidental country line in the past - but if there's one thing that's capable of creating a nation, I think it's probably an invasion by your big next door neighbour.

From what I've heard the big question is not whether Ukraine put up a fight but would it be smart for them to do so - Russias main aim in invading being to bring the Ukrainian army's main fighting force to battle and crush them.
Sounds sort of like the situation with the German navy in ww1 really. As long as they exist despite being out matched they are enough to be a concern. The primary aim is thus to bring them to a decisive battle.

Quote from: Jacob on December 21, 2021, 02:19:55 AM
Do you have any insight into the capabilities of the Ukrainian armed forces as a foundation for what you imagine? I myself do not, but I'm definitely curious to learn more.

No, just a general feel and a comparison with how it went last time. The Russians are ruthless and competent, if they invade they will do so on good intel and I expect the Ukraine to fold quickly. If they don't invade it's probably that they feel that it won't be quick and easy.

See that's honestly where I disagree--I don't believe the Russians are that competent. Their actual military performance has been abysmal for decades, as has their officer corps, their military readiness etc. Part of Putin's mastery I think is creating that perception of competence, and that's even how he maintained a lot of his popularity--I knew Russians who defended Putin for years because they would contrast him with Yeltsin--a bumbling drunk who would literally stagger drunk off of the Presidential plane and things of that nature. But most of Russia's military commitments in Putin's tenure, in fact all of them, have been asymmetric conflicts where the sheer size of Russia versus its very small enemies was the most important factor.

Looking at what we know about Russian casualty numbers in several of their recent conflicts, I just don't see competence there, if anything I see very poor performance for an army that is purportedly supposed to be designed for direct conflict with the West.

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 21, 2021, 09:43:15 AM
See that's honestly where I disagree--I don't believe the Russians are that competent. Their actual military performance has been abysmal for decades, as has their officer corps, their military readiness etc. Part of Putin's mastery I think is creating that perception of competence, and that's even how he maintained a lot of his popularity--I knew Russians who defended Putin for years because they would contrast him with Yeltsin--a bumbling drunk who would literally stagger drunk off of the Presidential plane and things of that nature. But most of Russia's military commitments in Putin's tenure, in fact all of them, have been asymmetric conflicts where the sheer size of Russia versus its very small enemies was the most important factor.

Looking at what we know about Russian casualty numbers in several of their recent conflicts, I just don't see competence there, if anything I see very poor performance for an army that is purportedly supposed to be designed for direct conflict with the West.

The historic case for sure. But since Georgia the word is they've improved a lot

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 21, 2021, 09:43:15 AM
See that's honestly where I disagree--I don't believe the Russians are that competent. Their actual military performance has been abysmal for decades, as has their officer corps, their military readiness etc. Part of Putin's mastery I think is creating that perception of competence, and that's even how he maintained a lot of his popularity--I knew Russians who defended Putin for years because they would contrast him with Yeltsin--a bumbling drunk who would literally stagger drunk off of the Presidential plane and things of that nature. But most of Russia's military commitments in Putin's tenure, in fact all of them, have been asymmetric conflicts where the sheer size of Russia versus its very small enemies was the most important factor.

Looking at what we know about Russian casualty numbers in several of their recent conflicts, I just don't see competence there, if anything I see very poor performance for an army that is purportedly supposed to be designed for direct conflict with the West.

I was more thinking competent in the intelligence gathering part.

Their army is not up to western standards that's true, but they only have to be better than Ukraine's.

I'd support aircraft support and maybe some heavy weapons gifts.

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 21, 2021, 09:43:15 AM
See that's honestly where I disagree--I don't believe the Russians are that competent. Their actual military performance has been abysmal for decades, as has their officer corps, their military readiness etc. Part of Putin's mastery I think is creating that perception of competence, and that's even how he maintained a lot of his popularity--I knew Russians who defended Putin for years because they would contrast him with Yeltsin--a bumbling drunk who would literally stagger drunk off of the Presidential plane and things of that nature. But most of Russia's military commitments in Putin's tenure, in fact all of them, have been asymmetric conflicts where the sheer size of Russia versus its very small enemies was the most important factor.

Looking at what we know about Russian casualty numbers in several of their recent conflicts, I just don't see competence there, if anything I see very poor performance for an army that is purportedly supposed to be designed for direct conflict with the West.

Indeed. And this should not come as a surprise to us!

I've never really understood this about the liberal West.

We think the liberal, democratic order is a good thing not just because it's right, but because it actually works.

Autocratic mafia style, grifter buddy is no way to run a country. There is no fucking way that a few decades of Putin running Russia as a giant mafia scheme to funnel resources to himself and his buddies is going to result in anything but a disaster of a military, along with most of everything else not directly associated with extracting wealth to funnel to his friends and family.

You can have a large military under that system, but you sure as hell are not going to end up with a competent one, unless there is some other factor at play. And with Russia, there is not. It's not like there is some history there of an a-political, professional military that the best and brightest all want to be part of. Quite the opposite.

And every single example I've seen of the Russian military trying to do much of fucking anything looks like nearly a farce.

They have some so-so kit, and a bunch of poorly trained guys with a lot of guns. I think they are banking on everyone backing down.

Now, this should not make anyone feel all warm and fuzzy if it is true. Because a lot of times, douchbags like Putin either start to believe their own propaganda, or become so invested in it that they have to act *as if* they believe their own propaganda, which then gets them into serious trouble when they do something stupid like invade some other country because they've been bleating about it for so long they end up feeling like they don't have a choice.

And when shit goes sideways, they don't generally say "Ooops! So sorry about THAT miscalculation! I guess we better go home now....". No, they look for an out. They double down. They commit even more. And Russia has an "out". They have nukes. And Putin doesn't give a shit about his "legacy" or how he will be seen by history. That is an incredibly dangerous combination.

Quote from: chipwich on December 21, 2021, 10:17:22 AM
I'd support aircraft support and maybe some heavy weapons gifts.

So not Air Support?

Quote from: Berkut on December 21, 2021, 10:58:24 AM

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 21, 2021, 09:43:15 AM
See that's honestly where I disagree--I don't believe the Russians are that competent. Their actual military performance has been abysmal for decades, as has their officer corps, their military readiness etc. Part of Putin's mastery I think is creating that perception of competence, and that's even how he maintained a lot of his popularity--I knew Russians who defended Putin for years because they would contrast him with Yeltsin--a bumbling drunk who would literally stagger drunk off of the Presidential plane and things of that nature. But most of Russia's military commitments in Putin's tenure, in fact all of them, have been asymmetric conflicts where the sheer size of Russia versus its very small enemies was the most important factor.

Looking at what we know about Russian casualty numbers in several of their recent conflicts, I just don't see competence there, if anything I see very poor performance for an army that is purportedly supposed to be designed for direct conflict with the West.

Indeed. And this should not come as a surprise to us!

I've never really understood this about the liberal West.

We think the liberal, democratic order is a good thing not just because it's right, but because it actually works.

Autocratic mafia style, grifter buddy is no way to run a country. There is no fucking way that a few decades of Putin running Russia as a giant mafia scheme to funnel resources to himself and his buddies is going to result in anything but a disaster of a military, along with most of everything else not directly associated with extracting wealth to funnel to his friends and family.

You can have a large military under that system, but you sure as hell are not going to end up with a competent one, unless there is some other factor at play. And with Russia, there is not. It's not like there is some history there of an a-political, professional military that the best and brightest all want to be part of. Quite the opposite.

And every single example I've seen of the Russian military trying to do much of fucking anything looks like nearly a farce.

They have some so-so kit, and a bunch of poorly trained guys with a lot of guns. I think they are banking on everyone backing down.

Now, this should not make anyone feel all warm and fuzzy if it is true. Because a lot of times, douchbags like Putin either start to believe their own propaganda, or become so invested in it that they have to act *as if* they believe their own propaganda, which then gets them into serious trouble when they do something stupid like invade some other country because they've been bleating about it for so long they end up feeling like they don't have a choice.

And when shit goes sideways, they don't generally say "Ooops! So sorry about THAT miscalculation! I guess we better go home now....". No, they look for an out. They double down. They commit even more. And Russia has an "out". They have nukes. And Putin doesn't give a shit about his "legacy" or how he will be seen by history. That is an incredibly dangerous combination.

Good points here and one important one I think the West increasingly doesn't talk about enough--free societies are actually generally better governed than unfree ones. For the simple reason that extreme incompetence in managing a free society typically results in people losing power and their jobs. Unfree societies have always suffered from cronyism, nepotism, and other issues. Unfree societies benefit when the person in charge is highly competent, but since succession and inferior posts are usually given out on the basis of loyalty (either familial or otherwise), over time it becomes very difficult for unfree societies to maintain any kind of good governance.

I think a lot of times people confuse the growing spread of illiberalism with proof that such systems of government work better; they may work better at seizing power in troubled democracies, but they don't tend to produce better performing countries especially in the long term. Many of the problems Turkey for example is having right now can be directly tied to the simple fact that they have a President who is not accountable to anyone, who has put cronies in important positions (including important offices managing the economy), and things are being done very poorly. I don't think Russia has been managed that well at any point in Putin's tenure, but Putin has enjoyed a lot of petro dollars which have typically been able to mask the worst problems.

Several gulf states do the same, and they benefit from even more petro dollars per capita. As brutal and ruthless as he is, Saudi Arabia's MBS I think recognizes weaknesses in their system and is trying to find a way to modernize and professionalize the country without ceding power (that is not a thing we've seen many autocracies succeed at, but many have tried.)

The PRC is often pointed to as the big counterpoint, but I think there is a lot to consider there. For one, both the USSR and the PRC in theory were not designed as sole unitary dictatorships, while they were / are unfree societies, both had a model of Communist Party control where some organs and factions in the State could remove or sideline a leader who was doing a bad job. This is an important safeguard, and is probably one way an unfree society can try to reign in some of the worst consequences of unaccountable leadership. The problem is in an unfree society it is very difficult to sustainably maintain the organs of the state that can check a bad leader. You saw this in the USSR--Stalin pushed aside the men he shared power with an attained absolute rule, and also there was a negative cost to that; Khruschev ushered in an era of more organizational control over the leader, Breznev however worked to consolidate power and by the mid-1970s was back to a Stalinist level of control. There was more institutional / party control again after Breznev died.

The PRC kind of exemplifies this dynamic. Mao had no institutional limits to his power, and you had wild swings of good and bad from his reign. Deng had as much institutional power as Mao, but luckily for the PRC he was much more of an incrementalist and cared about good governance--his two immediate successors saw a 20 year spawn of time in which the paramount leader was responsible to other parts of the government and arguably was well managed. Xi is a return to more of a Maoist model, with no real limits to his power you're going to get the good / bad of Xi with little to stop either. That gets back to the core problem with such systems--an unaccountable leader who isn't a Frederick the Great style benign absolutist, can fuck the country up really bad and there's nothing that can be done to fix it.

Quote from: mongers on December 21, 2021, 10:58:26 AM

Quote from: chipwich on December 21, 2021, 10:17:22 AM
I'd support aircraft support and maybe some heavy weapons gifts.

So not Air Support?

Is that a cover band?

Agreed, Otto. It is going to be very interesting to see what happens in Russia post-Putin, whenever that is. I don't get the impression that they have a particularly robust structure for power transition.

In China - from what I can see, Xi is more on the incompetent side than the competent one. The question is how competent his coterie of cronies and the elements of the party apparatus he chooses to empower are. But I've not been overly impressed with Xi's actions so far.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 19, 2021, 11:17:00 PM
Let the people speak.

I'm asking if your country should ride to Ukraine's rescue.

favor.

I'm all for preserving Ukraine's independance.  But I won't be the one on the front lines, so it's easier for me.

Quote from: Sheilbh on December 19, 2021, 11:20:55 PM
No. Obviouly not. Ukraine isn't a NATO member and I think there's a lot of risk because I think winning matters more to Russia than the UK/West (obviously not Ukraine) so they may escalate with other actual NATO members on their borders (and who could say that'd be wrong) and they're a nuclear power.

We should however give Ukraine all the support we can to enable them to defend themselves - weapons, training, whatever other support we can. We should help Ukraine as much as possible, but not to the extent of mutual defence.

Edit: And we should make clear we're not interested in doing deals with Russia about Ukraine, if Ukrainian leaders aren't in the room. We are supporting a sovereign state.

I feel like this is utopia.  Putin will advance as far as he can go without being stopped, and the longer we delay the correction, the harder it will be.

Ukraine will be remembered as the next Tchecoslovaquia.  Faced with war with Russia, and possibly even China, occidental countries will capitulate and agree to partition Ukraine to preserve peace.

Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2021, 12:25:09 PM
As a proud Ukrainian-Canadian... Canada should not "go to war" with Russia.  Even as a part of NATO we have little ability to project force to the region.

we have troops in Ukraine and the Baltics, trying to train their armies, help with their communications, etc.

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 21, 2021, 09:43:15 AM

Looking at what we know about Russian casualty numbers in several of their recent conflicts, I just don't see competence there, if anything I see very poor performance for an army that is purportedly supposed to be designed for direct conflict with the West.

WWII casualties against Germany were much superior for the Russians.  Granted, they got lots of help from the Allies, but still, it shows that an underequipped, undertrained army can still overwhelm a superior force be sheer numbers.

No, we need to keep our commitments to our NATO allies like the Baltics, but full war over the Ukraine is too much.

Is South Korea in NATO? :huh:

Quote from: Eddie Teach on December 21, 2021, 11:12:09 PM
Is South Korea in NATO? :huh:

Is North Korea Russia?

There are separate long standing alliances with regards to South Korea and Japan.

I have said it before when we discussed NATO here, but I feel that Russian conventional capabilities are overstated. In the last two decades, Russia fought a war in its own province of Chechnya, supported separatists in two small parts of Georgia, annexed the mainly Russian Crimea and supported Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine. That's all operations in "friendly" areas just beyond their border. Not massive wars of conquest against foreign nations.  They have not really demonstrated much capability or competence in these wars.

Their special forces in Syria, mercenary companies like Wagner, their hackers, their political disinformation campaigns both overtly in Russia Today and more hidden in social media and their vast array of useful idiots admiring Putin in the West are their real assets with which they can cause damage to the West. So they are fairly skilled at this irregular warfare. Which also has less obvious costs than an outright invasion of Ukraine would have.

They have concentrated 150 to 200k men near Ukraine now. Enough to invade, but probably not enough to hold a territory with 40 million hostile inhabitants supported by outside powers.

I think I'd disagree slightly on the liberal democratic systems work. I think there tends to be a bit of "real commmunim has never been tried" about this where we exclude failures in liberal democratic states by applying quite a selective and narrow definition of what a liberal democracy looks like. There's also frankly thousands of years of anti-democratic discourse that still influences modern thinking and economic measures.

For example there's a very strong liberal tradition that what matters is clear, predictable rules, the rule of law, constitutions, protection of property rights and protection of (elite) minority rights because by definition capitalism produces economic inequality and you need to protect the (billionaire) sheep from the whims of the mob which is what democracy represents. That's a huge strain of the classical liberal tradition and a huge part of western thought. The challenge to liberal democracy working isn't necessarily Putin or Xi, but Singapore, the developmentalist states in Asia - Taiwan, South Korea - arguably early post-war Germany, or even apartheid South Africa which is the famous example of a country with the rule of law and a state that ticks off all those other criteria but was absolutely not a democracy. Basically the institutions of a liberal state matter far more - in this argument - than democracy which isn't essential or helpful.

The other side of that is because capitalism produces inequality it will lead to reactions against that inequality and democracy is a way of managing that in a less risky, revolultionary way by providing a mechanism for change and addressing those issues.

It's a bit like democratic peace theory where I think the interesting is what's excluded to reach the conclusion and from my understanding what causes and best promotes economic development is hugely contested with hundreds of studies and no clear conclusion, much as I'd like it to be the case, that liberal democracy is the key.

And I'm not sure we can dismiss China, Russia - or Turkey, or Hungary. In the illiberal democracy world a huge part of Erdogan or Orban's success is that they have materially improved the lives of many people. There may be cronyism but that isn't necessarily an issue if you have a growing economy/pie and you're just divvying up a little bit of the extra for you and your friends - I think it' probably more of an issue in a shrinking economy or during a recession. If we look at the current economic crisis in Turkey that hasn't been provoked by any of the democratic backsliding of the last decade, it wasn't caused by cronyism - neither of those have been major concerns for international investors. It was caused by Erdogan making comments that implied a risk to the independence of the central bank - which is definitely in category 1, that what matters for investors is an independent central bank not liberal democracy (I'd add, incidentally, that when Brown allowed central bank independence in the UK in 1997 the resistance was from the Labour left who viewed it as contrary to a democratic socialist party to not have monetary policy controlled democratically by political institutions). Although in Turkey the latest polling is that AKP might lose.

This also true in Russia - the economy has increased, unemployment and poverty are massively down, purchasing power is up vastly on the 90s. That's based on hydrocarbons for sure and to an extent arguably Putin was lucky but I think that is the basis of support for him and if there weren't those material successes for normal Russians I don't think he'd still be in office. I think it's more challenging now because the economy is stalling and if it starts shrinking then Putin and his cronies can't share the proceeds of growth with the Russian people in the same way they have.

Especially with China I don't think it's possible to overstate the legitimacy the Chinese system acquires because of the type of life someone entering the workforce in 1980, or even 1990 had then compared to now when they are looking to retire. I'd also add that my understanding is that China viewed covid as a huge test of legitimacy which they feel actually went very well. There wasn't resistance to huge restrictions and compared to Europe or North America, China has been incredibly successful in repressing covid which is something Chinese people have noticed and this follows their comparison of the Chinese economy with the European or US economy in responding and recovering from the financial crisis. Again there may be issues as Chinese growth slows, or if it was in a recession and around transitions of power - but I'm not convinced we can just write off their success.

That's not to say those systems are better - and clearly they're not for many (especially minorities or "out" groups), but I think there's been a lot of hubristic self-congratulation on the obvious virtues of liberal democracy in the last thirty years. I think we could do with a bit of thinking on if our system works (my own take is we are too institutionalist/formalist/proceduralist and not democratic enough - and I think that drives a lot of domestic issues but I also worry if we are capable of responding to change or crisis or emergency etc) and why the bits that don't, don't. Especially if we do still see liberal democracy as a universal model, because it isn't clear to me that it's self-evident to other countries and peoples that it's better than the alternatives which are developing and a lot more sophisticated and responsive than the old Communist bloc or military junta model of the cold war.

But what are these more responsive non democratic modern regimes? China maybe but with the 1984 level of control of public space and flow of information how could you possibly judge it objectively? For decades a significant portion of Westerners thought the Soviet Union was the new effective way of life while in fact it was dysfunctional right from the beginning. And the modern neo-feudalistic states of Russia Turkey and Hungary are clearly less efficient in response to anything than Western democracies.

Quote from: Tamas on December 22, 2021, 07:54:08 AM
But what are these more responsive non democratic modern regimes? China maybe but with the 1984 level of control of public space and flow of information how could you possibly judge it objectively? For decades a significant portion of Westerners thought the Soviet Union was the new effective way of life while in fact it was dysfunctional right from the beginning. And the modern neo-feudalistic states of Russia Turkey and Hungary are clearly less efficient in response to anything than Western democracies.

My point isn't that they're more responsive and efficent than Western democracies - but looking at the financial crisis and recovery from it and looking at covid I think there is case for that in relation to China - but that the alternatives to liberal democracies are more sophisticated and responsive than the old 20th century model. And too much of our criticism and analysis focuses on those systems. We're fighting the last war.

And I think there's goal-post moving here as I say - we've shifted from liberal democracies to Western democracies which is different. And I'm not sure how many of the lessons of Western democracy can apply to the rest of the world (start as one of the richer countries in the world, generally speaking already have stable institutions and established borders etc). My point is those states - China, Turkey, Russia, Hungary - don't exist because of propaganda they exist because of material success. A few decades of Putin running Russia has not resulted in a disaster for the average Russian and I think that's part of the challenge we need to understand.

They aren't viewed as disasters because they are incremental improvements in prior governments but are dramatically short of potential.

Russia and China would need to increase per capita GDP almost 50% to hit the dizzying heights of Poland, but that isn't seen as disastrous because the soviets and Mr. Mao set a really low bar.

Chinese growth has been pretty phenomenal though.

I think you miss the mark largely by just being wrong about facts on the ground, Sheilbh. The core issue is unaccountable leadership does not have the same pressure to respond when things go wrong. That does not guarantee that over short windows of time (which is really all you are talking about here, and already conceded when I brought up the point), any government can do well. But when one system produces inferior results over the long term, the costs of that compound over time. I actually specifically never used the term "liberal Democracy" in my post, and for a reason, to me it's more about systems with accountability. Strictly defining a state as a liberal democracy bogs down in minutiae which isn't helpful, but it is fairly obvious historically and in the present which states have leadership that are regularly accountable for fuck ups. Note I also posited there are ways for truly unfree societies to foster an element of accountability for top leadership, albeit the structures of that are harder to maintain over long periods of time because individuals' leaders can use the levers of their unfree society to curtail limits to their power.

The under-performance of societies with unaccountable leadership from the 18th to early 20th century was not something that happened in a few years, but steadily grew over time, so that by the early 20th century several former great powers were in literal "sick man" status. Part of the reason this happened is they were competing with societies that had more accountable leadership, which previously they were not since almost no societies had meaningfully accountable leadership prior to this time frame.

Also for Turkey specifically Erdogan literally has a son in law in an important finance position, or did, and the Turkish central bank is not remotely independent any longer. Suggesting that cronyism isn't involved or that said bank's failures aren't directly tied to Erdogan being allowed to freely implement his naive and bad monetary policy ideas is simply dead wrong.

Noting that Putin has "improved" Russia from a period of time in which Russia was literally undergoing a generational collapse on par with the collapse of the Russian Empire and a virtual wipeout of its economic norms does little to counter the simple point that Putin has been hiding problems with petro dollars. It's also fairly limited to not see the many cracks in that system. It's also very hard to imagine Putin turning over power either when he dies or becomes infirm to someone who will even do as well as he has, he has fostered a society of scattered oligarchs mostly loyal to him, and the idea they won't be fighting like an old Roman Empire succession when he's gone seems doubtful to me, and the idea that won't send Russia teetering seems limited as well. In the historical scope what happens during one man's reign is not really that important when talking about systems. Nothing precludes individual autocrats from doing a decent enough job (which I don't even think Putin has really done, I think he's literally just gotten lucky on the economy piece because he took over a country at its literal floor of economic activity.)

Singapore is far too small to meaningfully use as an example for anything. It is a city-state that has a lot of money funneled through it by outside entities, it is not a real country in a meaningful sense. The PRC is not 30 years old, it is 72 years old. For at least the first half or so of that timeline its unaccountable leadership produced mixed to very poor results, including one of the world's greatest die-offs in the form of a famine that killed 30 million people. If you want to look only at the era of Deng + Ziang + Hu, when you had restrained Chinese leaders who focused on market reforms, a soft hand on the economy and stimulating growth as the most important things, it's easy to conclude the PRC is doing great. However note that Ziang and Hu were not examples of unaccountable leaders, they were part of a new tradition in the PRC of some checks on the paramount leader's power and some expectation they would not rule for life--Xi has torpedoed that change, and is a bellicose ultranationalist who has seen over a trillion dollars in wealth wiped out from Chinese listed companies has overseen a real estate debt bubble of unprecedented historical size, has taken actions that have led to almost all of its close neighbors to enter economic treaties specifically designed to refocus as much of trade as possible away from China, has seen Western economic partners at least start to attempt divestiture from over investment in China, has seen large scale capital flight, to little real positive.

Xi has every marker, and the Chinese economy has every marker, of mismanagement, but since PRC is an unfree society, he cannot be criticized, and since he removed the institutional limits on his power that were in place when Ziang and Hu were paramount leader, there is little the PRC can do to deal with it.

Quote from: Eddie Teach on December 22, 2021, 09:33:49 AM
Chinese growth has been pretty phenomenal though.

It has been but it also started from a place of very low development relative to other large countries when it began its Deng era reforms in the late 70s/early 80s. Also speaking about the arc of history, there is an element of "okay how long has this gone on." As noted we didn't start to really notice the "deficit" imposed by the cronyism, nepotism, lack of accountability and etc when looking at unfree societies vs ones with accountability mechanisms in history until several generations had passed by. The relative decline of countries like Spain, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire etc didn't happen in a 30-40 year period of time.

Quote from: Eddie Teach on December 22, 2021, 09:33:49 AM
Chinese growth has been pretty phenomenal though.

The best way to achieve rapid growth is to completely tank your economy first.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 21, 2021, 10:36:27 PM
No, we need to keep our commitments to our NATO allies like the Baltics, but full war over the Ukraine is too much.

And just like Germany, when they do actually overtly attack a NATO allie, they will be ready for us.  Better strike now when we can avoid a long, bloody and costly war.

And the US, under President Trump's second term might not even respond when a NATO ally is attacked.  So there's that...  Now or never.

Quote from: alfred russel on December 22, 2021, 09:23:26 AMRussia and China would need to increase per capita GDP almost 50% to hit the dizzying heights of Poland, but that isn't seen as disastrous because the soviets and Mr. Mao set a really low bar.

Sure, but it depends where you draw the line, right?

China in 1950 was at a similar place as India - both were basically at subsistence levels. India was a little ahead on GDP per capita. Even taking account of the catastophes of Mao and the Great Leap Forward by 1980 when the World Bank do their first report on China (which Adam Tooze has written about really interestingly) China's ahead of India on GDP per capita, life expectancy and education. And then Deng and the reform period happen - someone retiring now started work around then at a point when the average earnings were below $100 per month, they're now over $1000. That's basically the shift that's happened in China in the course of two generations and a huge source of, I think, output legitimacy for the Chinese regime.

Because if we look beyond the specifics of the really low bar set by Mao, I think the relevant really low, disastrous bar is when countries have achieved independence from colonial or imperial powers. In that context, which is most relevant for lots of the world (at least most of Asia and Africa), China's model has worked. If we're talking about a long run 300 year view of this stuff then for the first two thirds of that period it's not really accountability or liberal democracy that's delivering for the "successful" systems, if anything I'd argue it the ability to effectively use force.

Again - the point is not that these are necessarily better systems or that they work better, but I don't think we should automatically assume that what these other systems are doing is bound to fail and self-evidently bad. I think that's hubristic and complacent. Thinking like that, I think, leads to ossification or wrapping ourselves in formal liberal democracy without necessarily delivering what that model should. Especially at a point where I think across the last twenty years we've had two unsuccessful wars, one global recession, a pandemic that has badly affected Europe and North America and a leader of the free world that had a fluffed peaceful transition of power. This isn't a point to lean in too hard on the idea that our system obviously works - or is particularly accountable (I can't think of anyone who's really had any accountability for those failures).

And I'm absolutely certain that, say, the Russian or Turkish leadership worry about how to placate elites and the public once the pie stops growing (which is happening in Russia). Similarly, I'm certain Chinese leadership think a lot about how they can avoid losing their results based legitimacy. I think, for example, some of Xi's aggressive moves in the economy in the last year is directly linked to the perception that China's model "worked" in dealing with covid and that people were willing to take costs for that. I think there were genuine fears around that in January 2020 and they will be very happy at how things are now in comparison.

India is a disaster area. China comparing favorably to India is not a great achievement.

Quote from: alfred russel on December 22, 2021, 04:31:43 PM
India is a disaster area. China comparing favorably to India is not a great achievement.

.
China was even more so. Yet it has left India in the dust.

"If you select the best 30 year period of Chinese government in the past 300 years of authoritarianism, then you see a model that works." - Sheilbh, 2021

Quote from: Tyr on December 22, 2021, 05:08:01 PM

Quote from: alfred russel on December 22, 2021, 04:31:43 PM
India is a disaster area. China comparing favorably to India is not a great achievement.

.
China was even more so. Yet it has left India in the dust.

India has also outgrown China economically every year since 2014. I would also argue India had a much more difficult path forward than China did due to its religious / ethnic / tribal issues. I think India is much harder to govern than China, I'd even argue the sort of government China has would not even be possible in India. India is almost like a quilted together society with long history of its territory hosting multiple independent Kingdoms who spoke different languages, had different religious customs etc etc. I also think India's situation in say the 1950s is probably a bit deceptive, its aggregate numbers were likely as good as they were (which was not good) because of a concentration of colonialism driven wealth in a few major trading cities, but the Indian countryside I think was even less developed than Qing China's was, with some areas having long histories of being almost not governed at all. Much of China's primary agricultural territory has had relatively consistent history of being governed by a central government for over a thousand years. That system fell into deep corruption and dysfunction by the time of the Qing collapse, but parts of India basically were never even governed at all until the 1980s, and even some now are barely so.

India's infrastructure was also designed around moving resources to the ports, while China's was designed to move value-added goods and food.  India had more miles of railroad, but the railroads weren't particularly useful for the kind of economy India was trying to create.

One of the aspects of China's authoritarian system that served them well was the control of population movements.  The poor from the countryside were simply prohibited from moving to the cities as families, so China's cities did not get clogged with massive slums like India's.  In China, individuals could come from the countryside as guest workers in the cities, but only so long as they had jobs, and they had to leave their families behind.

The countryside in much of China is still very poor, but they are better off than those in India's slums.

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 22, 2021, 05:14:41 PM
"If you select the best 30 year period of Chinese government in the past 300 years of authoritarianism, then you see a model that works." - Sheilbh, 2021

:lol:

It seems safer to say the Chinese system has delivered in the last 40 years - which roughly coincides with the West's neo-liberal period which went well for 20 years and then bad for 20 years - and we should be aware of the possibility that it might continue delivering rather than just assuming it's all going to inevitably fail at some point if we just wait long enough. And the same goes for the illiberal democracies.

My view is that we are out of the end of history. The period is over when there was no alternative to a liberal democratic and market capitalist model, and when even most dictatorships tried to imitate at least the forms of those models. Illiberal democracy and China's development model (which was hugely influenced by Singapore) look to me like viable alternatives. They're not ideologically driven, like the USSR was, but flexible ideologically. And my view is if you believe in liberal democracy or Western democracy, because it's right as Berk put it, then we need to make it work better (certainly than it has over the last 20 years - some accountability would be great) and a more attractive plausible model for others (an approach to development would be key because I can't think of an obvious "success story").

Edit: I'm not saying we necessarily immediately slide into a new Cold War - but it is something I find really striking about the US right now. Suspicion of China seems to be one of the few genuinely bipartisan positions in Washington. The view that China is a threat and a rising one that needs a response, seems to be held across both parties. There's no effort at making Washington work or building common consensus around other issue, because if you don't do that and have some common ground you can't plausibly face up to China. I find it amazing and, frankly, a little bit decadent to have election fixing attempts and the other weirdness on the right while those same leaders seem to think the US may be entering into something like a new Cold War. One of the features of then was a high level of elite cohesion, working together etc, which helped make the American system work.

I think a new cold war against Russia/China in the next 5 years is highly likely. It arguably has already started. After all the UK/US & the USSR went from allies to enemies within 5 years.

Err, you're referring to during the Bush years, right?

Quote from: Sheilbh on December 23, 2021, 01:46:10 AM

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 22, 2021, 05:14:41 PM
"If you select the best 30 year period of Chinese government in the past 300 years of authoritarianism, then you see a model that works." - Sheilbh, 2021

:lol:

It seems safer to say the Chinese system has delivered in the last 40 years - which roughly coincides with the West's neo-liberal period which went well for 20 years and then bad for 20 years - and we should be aware of the possibility that it might continue delivering rather than just assuming it's all going to inevitably fail at some point if we just wait long enough. And the same goes for the illiberal democracies.

My view is that we are out of the end of history. The period is over when there was no alternative to a liberal democratic and market capitalist model, and when even most dictatorships tried to imitate at least the forms of those models. Illiberal democracy and China's development model (which was hugely influenced by Singapore) look to me like viable alternatives. They're not ideologically driven, like the USSR was, but flexible ideologically. And my view is if you believe in liberal democracy or Western democracy, because it's right as Berk put it, then we need to make it work better (certainly than it has over the last 20 years - some accountability would be great) and a more attractive plausible model for others (an approach to development would be key because I can't think of an obvious "success story").

I think it's important to consider how it works and how sustainable it is, though. It's basically always been true that if the decision makers in any system are very narrow, you're going to be able to push big changes fast. You saw that with Mao's Great Leap Forward, with the rapid industrialization of Russia in the early Soviet era--and even with the things FDR did in the 1930s--while a democratic leader, FDR enjoyed majorities of over 70% in both houses of Congress and had almost a dictatorial level of power in many respects. The massive military build up that made the United States into the world's pre-eminent Naval Power that started in the 1930s, the huge and sweeping social welfare changes etc, none of that would be possible in a more divided government seen in most periods of U.S. history.

Taking just the U.S. for an example though, while periods of strong one-party rule might introduce sweeping changes, there's almost always a somewhat predictable result--after enough time the ruling party starts to accumulate "problems", almost like cancer cells growing in the system. Corruption, lack of respect for the electorate, self-dealing etc. This eventually reaches a point where the ruling party collapses and you move onto a new era of the party system. This happened to the New Deal coalition in 1968. I think you saw a similar process in Canada and the United Kingdom at various points in relatively recent memory--long term Liberal Party rule with large majorities (for roughly 13 years) ended in the collapse of the Liberal Party and Harper ruling for years; arguably the UK is even more prone to these long periods of party domination than the U.S. is, with very long stretches of single party domination.

These unfree societies in some respects are akin to those periods in democratic systems, except there is no mechanism to bring them down when their excesses grow out of hand. This used to in a sense just be how governments worked, especially in the era of hereditary monarchies when there were virtually no accountable governments anywhere. So, it didn't really matter, everyone was prone to periods of misrule, and you just had to hope your country didn't suffer too many such eras consecutively or bad things might start to happen.

Unfree societies doing well even for a few decades is not particularly new, it's been a thing forever. The question is over the long term how well they compete with systems that tend to better sort out the sort of morasses that accumulate when you have the same unelected, unaccountable people in power forever. A more complex question is how unfree and unaccountable are the current crop of autocrats. Putin seems virtually invulnerable to domestic opposition. Xi likewise, but we in the West tend to know a lot less about the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party than we should, so it may be Xi at least is still held quasi-accountable to some degree (I just really don't know.)

Some of these autocrats / quasi-autocrats like Erdogan and Orban, I'm not even sure are really in power out of anything like government competence, they're appealing to revanchist nationalist interests. That's fine too as a way to hold onto power, but actually lets the leadership get away with even more than maybe in a system where the public is buying into the strong leader because they believe he will make the country better.

I don't think Western style, liberal democracy is the only way to run a country. I do think that without some strong evidence, the history of the last 200 years is that over longer stretches of time countries with entrenched, unaccountable leadership, have progressed slower, been stable less, experienced more setbacks etc than countries where the political leadership is held to account for its rule. That's a different matter from "how stable is that accountable form of government", some societies simply don't tolerate democratic norms well, and any democracies that have ever flashed up in them are only transient at best.

I also think we need to update ourselves a bit on the last few years, because to some degree these talking points made more sense 5 years ago than now. China is actually showing very serious cracks in its economic development model, to the point many are now worrying about the possibility of a major Chinese economic depression on the horizon. Some of this is directly attributable to Xi steering the country away from the approach of Deng and Deng's first two successors--and that very steering is possible because Xi is not accountable to anyone, and is more of an ideological nationalist than were Ziang and Hu.

I would go so far as to speculate that the point of Xi steering things away from that approach is *because* his goal is to consolidate power, and those approaches make that more difficult.

He is, IMO, actively sacrificing economic and social progress in return for more consolidation of power. This is *why* these systems do not work in the long run - because the Dengs eventually get replaced by the Xi's.

Or because after the authoritarian uses their power to fix the obviously screwed up system (Hitler gets those trains running on time!) as a means to consolidating power, it becomes pretty clear that getting the rains running on time was never their goal, it was just a means to their goal - which is always power and control.

Right, like for all that authoritarian power lets the government implement policies very quickly, it has an uneasy at best relationship with a very fundamental issue that democratic (liberal or otherwise) capitalist societies have--private property rights, right to contract, and the "ancillary" privileges and rights that usually need to take root for those rights to operate to their maximum potential. Things like predictable government regulators, predictable court systems, standard licensing schemes from the government, easy ability to do business with whomever you want be it a local company or a multinational, access to international capital etc etc. All of those are doors into a society that can undermine a pure autocrat, and when they are crushed, you don't get left with all the benefits and none of the costs--you lose the benefits too.

I wonder if the logic extends to corporations.  Are there any corporations with a true "democratic" system of governance (not just a matter of a dictator choosing to be a benevolent dictator)?  If there are, I wonder how they work out.  It seems like most of the reasons why democracy should work better for the country should also apply to corporations, but it doesn't seem like anyone moved away from the authoritarian mode of governance there.

Share democracy seems to work ok.

Most corporations that are not tightly controlled by a founder or founding family generally have a form of accountable autocracy. There is no real day to day say over how the CEO runs things and there is no checks on his power within the organizational stack, but the board of directors can remove him/her, and generally CEOs do get pushed out for underperformance. That is to some degree how I think the Soviet model was "intended" to work, you have an "absolute" leader, but a Politburo who can step in if he goes astray--as they did when they removed Khrushchev for example. The issue of course...is if there's an absolute leader, can't he use his powers to eventually stack and control the Politburo? Yep, and that's exactly what happened repeatedly in the USSR--Stalin was initially part of a ruling troika and was able to consolidate power. Brezhnev was brought in to replace Khrushchev and served at the pleasure of the Politburo for a time, but 7-8 years or so into his rule he had effectively sidelined any power that could hold him accountable and the rest of his Premiership he was a fully unaccountable leader.

Of course some corporations tend to get like this too where the CEO is college buddies / country club pals with half his board, and where they are very unlikely to ever act against him. Publicly traded companies are still subject to a large outsider investor coming in and demanding a shake up of the board, though.

They also are subject to outright going under and running themselves out of business, part of the corporate model is that theoretically only the strong survive (unless you're an automaker or investment bank.)

And FWIW the U.S. model at present is odd--we are still regularly voting parties out of office for doing badly, but it's not the core problem. The main issue is mostly everyone who governs the United States does so poorly now, and has for some time, because of all the minoritarian "checks" in the system that allow one minoritarian faction to intentionally sabotage government nonstop for over 10 straight years now. It makes the entire government bad and of course the voters are always unhappy.

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 23, 2021, 12:46:53 PM
And FWIW the U.S. model at present is odd--we are still regularly voting parties out of office for doing badly, but it's not the core problem. The main issue is mostly everyone who governs the United States does so poorly now, and has for some time, because of all the minoritarian "checks" in the system that allow one minoritarian faction to intentionally sabotage government nonstop for over 10 straight years now. It makes the entire government bad and of course the voters are always unhappy.

Ultimately I think the voters are the stupid ones.  They're like the teachers that give everyone a C, because they have high expectations and standards.  What they don't realize that is that if you give a C no matter what, you give up your power to influence the behavior of the students. 

Many voters equate being cynical about the political process with being intelligent, and thus they're too intelligent to ever consistently reward the less bad party.  Why wouldn't politicians just do what they want if they see that there is no reward for doing the better thing or a punishment for doing the worse thing?

Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on December 23, 2021, 10:08:53 AMI think it's important to consider how it works and how sustainable it is, though. It's basically always been true that if the decision makers in any system are very narrow, you're going to be able to push big changes fast. You saw that with Mao's Great Leap Forward, with the rapid industrialization of Russia in the early Soviet era--and even with the things FDR did in the 1930s--while a democratic leader, FDR enjoyed majorities of over 70% in both houses of Congress and had almost a dictatorial level of power in many respects. The massive military build up that made the United States into the world's pre-eminent Naval Power that started in the 1930s, the huge and sweeping social welfare changes etc, none of that would be possible in a more divided government seen in most periods of U.S. history.

Taking just the U.S. for an example though, while periods of strong one-party rule might introduce sweeping changes, there's almost always a somewhat predictable result--after enough time the ruling party starts to accumulate "problems", almost like cancer cells growing in the system. Corruption, lack of respect for the electorate, self-dealing etc. This eventually reaches a point where the ruling party collapses and you move onto a new era of the party system. This happened to the New Deal coalition in 1968. I think you saw a similar process in Canada and the United Kingdom at various points in relatively recent memory--long term Liberal Party rule with large majorities (for roughly 13 years) ended in the collapse of the Liberal Party and Harper ruling for years; arguably the UK is even more prone to these long periods of party domination than the U.S. is, with very long stretches of single party domination.

These unfree societies in some respects are akin to those periods in democratic systems, except there is no mechanism to bring them down when their excesses grow out of hand. This used to in a sense just be how governments worked, especially in the era of hereditary monarchies when there were virtually no accountable governments anywhere. So, it didn't really matter, everyone was prone to periods of misrule, and you just had to hope your country didn't suffer too many such eras consecutively or bad things might start to happen.

Unfree societies doing well even for a few decades is not particularly new, it's been a thing forever. The question is over the long term how well they compete with systems that tend to better sort out the sort of morasses that accumulate when you have the same unelected, unaccountable people in power forever. A more complex question is how unfree and unaccountable are the current crop of autocrats. Putin seems virtually invulnerable to domestic opposition. Xi likewise, but we in the West tend to know a lot less about the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party than we should, so it may be Xi at least is still held quasi-accountable to some degree (I just really don't know.)

Some of these autocrats / quasi-autocrats like Erdogan and Orban, I'm not even sure are really in power out of anything like government competence, they're appealing to revanchist nationalist interests. That's fine too as a way to hold onto power, but actually lets the leadership get away with even more than maybe in a system where the public is buying into the strong leader because they believe he will make the country better.

I don't think Western style, liberal democracy is the only way to run a country. I do think that without some strong evidence, the history of the last 200 years is that over longer stretches of time countries with entrenched, unaccountable leadership, have progressed slower, been stable less, experienced more setbacks etc than countries where the political leadership is held to account for its rule. That's a different matter from "how stable is that accountable form of government", some societies simply don't tolerate democratic norms well, and any democracies that have ever flashed up in them are only transient at best.

I also think we need to update ourselves a bit on the last few years, because to some degree these talking points made more sense 5 years ago than now. China is actually showing very serious cracks in its economic development model, to the point many are now worrying about the possibility of a major Chinese economic depression on the horizon. Some of this is directly attributable to Xi steering the country away from the approach of Deng and Deng's first two successors--and that very steering is possible because Xi is not accountable to anyone, and is more of an ideological nationalist than were Ziang and Hu.

I think that it's worth looking at whether it's sustainable in the long run - and it might not be. But I also think there is a "in the long run we're all dead" angle to this. To use Putin as an example, in terms of the policy objective's we'd probably think Putin had since he came to power in 2000, I think he's probably achieved most of them. Russia's domestically stabilised because the economy grew - absolutely because of petrodollars - which has allowed for a real increase in people's living standards, an end to the demographic collapse and co-opting the post-collapse elite. In foreign policy, Russia is back on the world stage having one-to-one summits with the US President (so France and Germany want the same) - there was a point following the colour revolutions when it looked like many former Soviet states might re-orient to the West which was broadly stopped and the big gap is Ukraine. I think it's fair to see he's been one of the most successful politicians of the twentieth century in terms of achieving what his goals were. We can say, in the long run this is probably doomed to failure, I don't know how much that should temper or influence our response to Putin now.

Similarly it may be tempting to write off as just petrodollars/luck - but I don't think that quite works because there are plenty of examples of authoritarian petrodollar regimes with grandiose goals not achieving them. At this point I think MBS's Saudi seems like a very prominent example when you look at what he's been trying to achieve v results.

In a way - aside from Ukraine - I think this is an interesting moment in terms of whether the long run is coming to bear on especially the illiberal democracies and we are going to see the importance of the democratic bit. So in Hungary the opposition have decided to form a united coalition to compete against Fidesz and they are polling neck-to-neck, similarly in Turkey AKP are not doing well in polls but crucially their coalition partner is below the threshold so it seems more likely that the CHP and IYI would have a majority. In both cases they have elections in the next eighteen months and it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Similarly I think it's tempting to point to just nationalist revanchism or propaganda as the key to success. But there have been material successes - which I think drives their support far more. In Orban's time in office unemployment fell from about 12% to 4%, their debt credit ratings have improved, numbers in poverty have declined, growth has increased as have wages. Part of the reason AKP is declining in the pollls now is because of the self-induced currency crisis - but the core of Erdogan's popularity was basically very good, more or less continuous that moved millions of Turks into the middle class. None of this is to say these are great guys or that there isn't corruption or other problems - in fact I think their politics is built on growth and basically improving the economy/life for many people while also taking a cut - but I think that record is key to their popularity. And if we think - and I do - that their version of illiberal democracy is a threat as a model/system, then I think we need to identify where are the successes within our model and if there aren't any why not? For example, does our economic orthodoxy stop policies like making jobs through work programs as Orban did in the early days, or big infrastructure projects, or expensive family subsidies? Because if our system doesn't produce politics that can deliver for people then that system isn't any more sustainable - and I think there is a reason that the Cold War was the age of high welfareism across the West.

I think looking at the last 200 years I'm less sure. For almost all of that period Russia was probably one of the two most powerful countries in the world. I think it ignores the contingency of WW1, for example, and the chaos that war throws a system into. But for the 19th century Russia had utterly unaccountable leadership, profound social inequalities and chaos at times - but also explosive growth and was, I think, the key power that a lot of international politics revolved around. Similarly that period is one of relative decline for Britain and France (generally, arguably, the more classic "liberal" states in Europe) even if that was less profound than, say Austria-Hungary or Turkey. I don't quite know how Germany fits in - and I think across it all you have to include empire and the ability to use force to extract wealth and create markets. It doesn't seem like a clear whiggish picture to me.

On China - you could be right. But I think given the success of China - on their terms - in the last forty years including (from their perspective) surviving Tiananmen/the fall of Communism and responding to a global financial crisis, I think it is worth at least thinking about the alternative - which might be wrong. But I think the alternative would be that some of this is clearly Xi personally, however in the run-up to his assuming power the other prominent candidate was Bo Xilai of the Chongqing model and red songs and Mao revival. Given that I wonder how much of this is Xi and how much of it was a collective decision at that point to move in this direction. There's no doubt Xi has enormous power now but I wonder if it's a mistake to assume that was almost done by surprise and how much - if the leading candidates were Xi and Bo - that's the decision that was made.

With the economy I think it's worth putting Evergrande and the debt issues into the context of what the CCP was talking about as issues a couple of years ago. One was a concern around debt and over-leverage in the Chinese economy, there was a concern about investment focusing on speculative real estate v the "real" economy and worries about inequality - all of these are familiar to our issues in the West (both pre-crash and in the age of QE). It is not clear to me that what's happening with Evergrande is a failure or the result of deliberate policies that were trying to deflate a bubble and address the first two of those issues. On the third issue of inequality you have the state wiping out a huge private tutoring market and the forced philanthropy of "common prosperity". Again what is our answer to real estate bubbles, misallocations into speculating on property rather than investing in the "real" economy or inequality? Because I think if we take China seriously, we need one.

It may just be about power and control. It may fail, because in the long run these systems always do. But again I think it's a mistake to assume that, not even consider the possibility of the alternative, and let that shape how we respond to/engage with China.

Edit: Or to put it another way - I'm not sure that being able to point to the last two hundred years or the collapse of the USSR 30 years ago is necessarily an obvious vindication of our system in the context of current issues and challenges which these regimes arre also facing and arguably delivering on.

Quote from: Berkut on December 23, 2021, 11:21:47 AM
I would go so far as to speculate that the point of Xi steering things away from that approach is *because* his goal is to consolidate power, and those approaches make that more difficult.

He is, IMO, actively sacrificing economic and social progress in return for more consolidation of power. This is *why* these systems do not work in the long run - because the Dengs eventually get replaced by the Xi's.

Or because after the authoritarian uses their power to fix the obviously screwed up system (Hitler gets those trains running on time!) as a means to consolidating power, it becomes pretty clear that getting the rains running on time was never their goal, it was just a means to their goal - which is always power and control.

I agree with everything here, though... I've been told (by someone who I believe to know what they're talking about) that the way Hitler got "the trains running on time" was by changing the tolerance on lateness. So, in fact the regularity of the trains didn't change - only the definition (and thus the reporting) of what was "on time" and what was "late" changed. Which sounds about right for a totalitarian regime.

I thought that was Mussolini.  :hmm:

Surely German trains have always been on time and always will be.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 24, 2021, 01:56:32 PM
Surely German trains have always been on time and always will be.

:lmfao:

No

Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 24, 2021, 01:56:03 PM
I thought that was Mussolini.  :hmm:

It was, and Mussolini was just taking credit for improvements to a shambolic system that occurred before his time in power.  Not that the trains actually ran on time, but the system of the late 1920s was so much better than that of the WW1 era that they were relatively "on time."

Quote from: Zanza on December 24, 2021, 02:56:50 PM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 24, 2021, 01:56:32 PM
Surely German trains have always been on time and always will be.

:lmfao:

No

I was actually really surprised at how bad German railway punctuality was (and I guess still is) in comparison to ours.

After maybe 200 trips to or from Barcelona or Madrid I can only recall arriving late once. In Germany, however, every second train seemed to be really late. You had to take that into account when planning your flights.

Quote from: grumbler on December 24, 2021, 03:17:32 PM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 24, 2021, 01:56:03 PM
I thought that was Mussolini.  :hmm:

It was, and Mussolini was just taking credit for improvements to a shambolic system that occurred before his time in power.  Not that the trains actually ran on time, but the system of the late 1920s was so much better than that of the WW1 era that they were relatively "on time."

When I was in Italy the Italians seemed indifferent to time.

Quote from: Iormlund on December 24, 2021, 07:12:31 PM

Quote from: Zanza on December 24, 2021, 02:56:50 PM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 24, 2021, 01:56:32 PM
Surely German trains have always been on time and always will be.

:lmfao:

No

I was actually really surprised at how bad German railway punctuality was (and I guess still is) in comparison to ours.

After maybe 200 trips to or from Barcelona or Madrid I can only recall arriving late once. In Germany, however, every second train seemed to be really late. You had to take that into account when planning your flights.

Spain and most other countries built a separate network for high speed trains.

Germany reused part of the existing network (often due to Nimbyism) and the purpose-built bits are often also used for regional or cargo trains. Also there lots of stops in smaller cities on the way due to local lobbyism.

One argument you hear is that Germany is more decentralized and more densely populated than e.g. Spain or France. But  I find that unconvincing as Northern Italy or Japan are just as densely populated if not more and have well-working train networks. 

As someone who yearns for a nationalised railway here I have been surprised (and not to my benefit) by the German trains and the price of SNCF tickets too :ph34r:

German trains are excellent.
Not best in the world excellent but a solid Everton.
Their local service is particularly great. No beeching there.

Quote from: Zanza on December 24, 2021, 02:56:50 PM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 24, 2021, 01:56:32 PM
Surely German trains have always been on time and always will be.

:lmfao:

No

I confirm. After a while, I chose TGVs over ICEs. Saarbrücken seemed to be quite the obstacle for ICEs, not just the old ones.

Local trains are a different thing and not held to the same standards, due to much cheaper prices.

Quote from: Zanza on December 25, 2021, 01:44:27 AM

Quote from: Iormlund on December 24, 2021, 07:12:31 PM

Quote from: Zanza on December 24, 2021, 02:56:50 PM

Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 24, 2021, 01:56:32 PM
Surely German trains have always been on time and always will be.

:lmfao:

No

I was actually really surprised at how bad German railway punctuality was (and I guess still is) in comparison to ours.

After maybe 200 trips to or from Barcelona or Madrid I can only recall arriving late once. In Germany, however, every second train seemed to be really late. You had to take that into account when planning your flights.

Spain and most other countries built a separate network for high speed trains.

Germany reused part of the existing network (often due to Nimbyism) and the purpose-built bits are often also used for regional or cargo trains. Also there lots of stops in smaller cities on the way due to local lobbyism.

One argument you hear is that Germany is more decentralized and more densely populated than e.g. Spain or France. But  I find that unconvincing as Northern Italy or Japan are just as densely populated if not more and have well-working train networks.

Spain is a special case since the new high-speed network uses a different gauge. so the network effect works in France unlike Spain, so the TGV uses the high-speed network and the standard network which may be very good or not.
Lately, some stations in the middle of nowhere have been built due to NIMBYism or regional rivalries (Metz vs Nancy) "beet stations" since they are in the country side nowhere near cities cf. gare de Haute-Picardie, nowhere near Amiens or any city, or Gare de Lorraine (between Metz and Nancy).