Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Ukraine And The “Realists”

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How they so badly misjudged it:

Russia and the West do indeed have competing interests in the post-Soviet space. The problem with the realists is that they fail to see the moral, tactical and legal disparities that exist between the aims and methods of East and West. When Brussels and Washington propose EU and NATO membership, they are offering association in alliances of liberal, democratic states, achieved through a democratic, consensual process. Russia, meanwhile, cajoles, blackmails and threatens its former vassals into “joining” its newfangled “Eurasian Union,” whose similarity to the Soviet Union of yore Putin barely conceals. The right of sovereign countries to choose the alliances they wish is one Russia respects only if they choose to ally themselves with Russia. Should these countries try to join Western institutions then there will be hell to pay.

Despite all this, Cohen complains of a “Cold War double standard” in the ways we describe Western and Russian approaches to the former Soviet space. The West’s “trade leverage” to persuade Ukraine is treated benignly, Cohen writes, while Putin’s use of “similar carrots” is portrayed as nefarious. A crucial difference, however, is that when a country turns down a Western diplomatic package, as Ukraine did at the November Vilnius Summit (thus sparking the massive protests in Kiev that ultimately overthrew Yanukovych), the EU does not invade.

It should not come as a surprise why countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and other former Warsaw Pact nations that lived under the heel of Russian domination for so long might want to join the NATO alliance, which, according to its charter, is purely defensive. NATO has no designs on Russian territory and never has. But in the fervid and paranoid minds of the men running the Kremlin (and, apparently, in that of Stephen Cohen and other opponents of NATO expansion), the alliance’s defensive nature is irrelevant. If Russia were a healthy, liberal, pluralistic society at peace with itself and its neighbors, it would have nothing to fear from America, the EU, or NATO. Indeed, as crazy as it may sound today, in the 1990s, some Russian and Western leaders spoke optimistically of Moscow joining the latter two institutions. But these hopes of a European Russia were dashed when Putin came to power.

If it hadn’t been Putin, it might have been someone else. There may be something in the Russian character that wants a czar.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Ukraine Invasion

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What to do about it. Note this one:

Move to set up the anti-ballistic missile facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic which Obama scuttled in 2009–on the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, when it was an ally of Nazi Germany, in 1939.

They won’t do anything that requires an admission that they were wrong.

Mead makes the point that the pundits who predicted until Saturday that Russia would not move into Ukraine are solipsists — they assume that Putin sees the world as they do and will act as they would. That would indeed be nice. But Putin doesn’t see the world they way we — Obama supporters and Obama critics — do. We are told we should not mourn the transformation of a unipolar world into a multipolar world. It’s just selfish to want to see the United States as the world’s leading power. But the alternative is between a unipolar world and a zeropolar world, in which aggressive actors like Putin’s Russia, the mullahs’ Iran and Syria’s Assad can inflict tyranny, suffering and death to millions–and no one can stop or (preferably) deter them.

It is weakness, not strength, that is provocative:

A hundred years ago Theodore Roosevelt had warned Americans that, if we wanted peace in the Pacific, we should either withdraw from the Philippines or build a navy that Japan must respect. We did neither. Instead, US policy consisted of sonorous moral commitments to peace and good order, coupled with an increasingly hollow military: the unbridled tongue and the unready hand. The American people paid the price in blood.

[Update a while later]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Weird

SLS At A Gun Show

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A long-time reader relates a sad anecdote:

I went down to the Louisville, KY Militaria Show of Shows, and on Saturday I also went to the National Gun Day Show in the same complex(I collect antique firearms). After purchasing two old rifles, near the far side of the hall, was a table asking people to sign a petition calling for Obama’s impeachment. What was striking was that in addition to impeaching Obama, the table had a sign asking people to reject cuts to the NASA budget, specifically the SLS. Reading the form, I saw that agreeing that Obama should be impeached went along with increasing the funding for the SLS. (It also included the usual pro-gun rhetoric, needed for a gun show). I asked the people about that, and got into a discussion about the SLS aspect. From what I made of the table renter’s comments, he wants an end to SpaceX and other private sector space businesses, giving all the money to NASA. I was civil, with some effort, since he didn’t have much in the line of facts to back up his arguments on the SLS side, and started getting into personal insults. The “high” point was when he said that if I wasn’t pro SLS, I was anti-gun. This despite my carrying two rifles, a pass from the SOS, and showing him my NRA card.

He wanted me to stay and be insulted argue some more, but I was exhausted from two days of the shows, so I just walked away.

I’ve gone to over 50 shows in the last year and a half, since I got back into the firearms community after my father died and left his firearms to me. Large and small, I’ve never seen someone pushing the SLS. I’ve talked to a few people that support the new space companies, but incidental to the firearms being offered for sale. This guy was more passionate about the NASA cuts than the impeachment or the 2nd Amendment.

Sigh. Fortunately, he probably is a bizarre outlier.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Venus/Mars Flyby

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The magical thinking behind it:

This mission requires more magical thinking than a leprechaun trying to predict the track of a flock of flying unicorns on their annual migration.

MPCV employs a heat shield designed for lunar return and its CM is ~20% (thousands of pounds) overweight for its parachutes. But we’re going to equip MPCV with an even heavier heat shield for Mars return and magically it will be capable of a safe Earth landing?

There’s practically no element of the ISS ECLSS that lasts more than a year. But magically every component will remain operating for 17 months in a new vehicle when applied to a Mars flyby mission?

ASAP is warning about the lack of an ECLSS shakedown on MPCV before sending astronauts around the Moon for a few days. But magically we’re going to decide that the ASAP membership are all wimps of the highest order and decide to risk astronaut lives for 17 months on the first shakedown of the MPCV ECLSS?

At best, SLS is scheduled to have an upper stage capable of launching this mission a half decade after the mission’s 2021 window closes. And magically that half decade of development is going to be accelerated by more than a decade?

Congress can’t find funding to perform testing like AA-2 or to finish development like MPCV ECLSS in a timely fashion, and the White House is wrapped around the axle of ARM. But magically billions of dollars of federal funding are going to appear in a timely manner to develop a new ECLSS, a new hab module, a new heat shield, and a new upper stage for this mission?

If Tito really wants to see this happen, he has to give up on getting NASA to pay for it, and for it to happen with NASA hardware. He needs to sit down with SpaceX and Bigelow.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!