“But if China were to deliver weapons to help Russian forces in Ukraine, then US-Chinese relations would deteriorate much more severely.”
This is Junior High School stuff from the US Administration. It is OK for NATO to donate materiel and even men to one side of a conflict, but not for China to sell materiel to the other side?
Of course, the fun reality is that China is selling to both sides – since US and NATO weapons incorporate Chinese parts. Let’s not forget that the best of the US weapons also include Russian titanium, but Our Betters do not discuss that!
Before the balloon went up we discussed how Biden’s bluster would goad Putin to invade in that failure to invade would be a loss of face. This confirms:
I have to admit I skipped most of it – every time I jumped forwards 5 minutes, it seemed just as tedious. But the ending is hilarious: Lord George Robertson (an old Labour Party hack) describing a vision of a post-war reconstructed Ukraine covered in windmills shipping electric power to their friends in Europe.
I, OTOH, listened to it all. Guess it was fascination with listening to how the liberal mind works, since I so rarely listen to much of anything liberal. Most of the time I just get a headache.
But these guys were serious. They seemed to think Ukraine was IMPORTANT to THEM. There was a comment at one point that one of the simpletons claimed to hear others say, “We’d better win this damned thing”. I burst out laughing. As a liberal friend of mine recently said, “Texas has been good for you - you’ve developed a sense of humour.” Where once I might have rated about this idiocy, now I laugh. Maybe it’s because I realize I will not live long enough to see this nonsense be instituted. There are still large pockets of resistance.
The Satellite Hack Everyone Is Finally Talking About
As Putin began his invasion of Ukraine, a network used throughout Europe—and by the Ukrainian military—faced an unprecedented cyberattack that doubled as an industrywide wake-up call.
[…]
The way each of the connections in his community switched off one by one left him convinced that this wasn’t just a glitch. He concluded Russia had hacked his modem. “It’s a scary feeling,” Wickberg says. “I actually thought that these systems were much more secure, that it was sort of far-fetched that this could even happen.”
Viasat staffers in the US, where the company is based, were caught by surprise, too. Across Europe and North Africa, tens of thousands of internet connections in at least 13 countries were going dead. Some of the biggest service disruptions affected providers Bigblu Broadband Plc in the UK and NordNet AB in France, as well as utility systems that monitor thousands of wind turbines in Germany. The most critical affected Ukraine: Several thousand satellite systems that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government depended on were all down, making it much tougher for the military and intelligence services to coordinate troop and drone movements in the hours after the invasion.
Terrible management skills without tremor are maybe explained by a sufficient dose of vodka prior to the call:
However, when a long-term drinker suddenly quits drinking, the brain continues to function as if it were still exposed to alcohol. In this accelerated state, a person will begin to feel the symptoms of withdrawal, including tremors, anxiety, sweating, an elevated heart rate, and nausea and vomiting.
The interesting element of the Biden* Mal-Administration’s silly effort to blame the Ukrainians for blowing up the 50% European-owned expensive NordStream pipelines is what the impact will be on German support for Zelensky’s regime. Will the Germans cool towards donating more money & weapons to people accused by the US of destroying German property and undermining German prosperity?
No wonder the Ukrainians are denying the Biden* accusation!
I’ve previously pointed out the fact (and it is an admitted fact – against interest) that the prediction “markets” (at least the ones that aren’t real money markets) fail at the extremes of probability 0 and 1. That said, Metaculus has nearly a 1 in 50 chance of Putin nuking Ukraine this year:
If this is the “true” probability, there is no way the financial markets have discounted this risk of a “black swan” event IN THE NEXT YEAR!!!
Pascal’s Scams, as I’ve also previously discussed, involve extremely low probability events with enormous conditional absolute value – but IF we are going to tolerate enormous concentrations of wealth/power, THEN we must also insist that the fiduciaries possessing that wealth/power perform due diligence to discount those probabilities.
I’m sure that many would say prediction markets that end up with probabilities like 2% for nukes detonated in anger in the next year should not be taken seriously because those prediction markets aren’t designed for black swans.
Very well…
But that leaves the question:
Where is the work on prediction markets that attempts to overcome their weakness at the extreme probabilities of 0 and 1?
Now, I can understand in the case of government concentration of wealth and power since it is that very concentration that results in brain damaging insularity from consequences. There is no hope that the conventional minds ruling the world will be capable of so-disciplining themselves.
However, reading through “The Powers of the Earth” by Corcoran how crucial prediction markets are in the mythos of anarcho capitalists, one should certainly expect anarcho capitalist literature to have addressed this weakness of prediction markets. This is particularly to be expected since anarcho capitalists have no difficulty with enormous centralizations of wealth (hence power), so at the very least there will be fiduciaries answerable to stockholders for such due diligence.
Some might argue that the situation is worse than that – probabilistic predictions for unique one-of situations are meaningless, if not outright dangerous.
The classic example is Bill Gates’ zero entry fee Russian Roulette – while Bill watches, spin the chamber and pull the trigger; either the player walks away with the prize money Bill put on the table … or he does not. Any statistical prediction market would say that the game has a positive Expectation Value – so play. Realism says there are only two possible outcomes, one of which is unacceptable; therefore, don’t play.
The foolish assumption the DC Swamp Creatures seem to be making is that any use of nuclear weapons would be limited to the territory of the Ukraine. A moment’s thought shows that any use of nuclear weapons by any participant in Biden*'s proxy war must necessarily & quickly escalate to a global thermonuclear war. No-one will choose to be the sole loser in that war. And that is an unacceptable outcome for the human race. Prediction markets are worthless in this kind of situation.
I don’t see why this is an obvious or even probable outcome. There are only two parties who could transform the Ukraine conflict into a global thermonuclear war: the U.S. and Russia. I do not believe there are any circumstances under which the U.S. would be first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict that did not involve its own territory. That leaves Russia. Should Russia use one or more tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of Ukraine, is the U.S. going to respond with an “empty the silos” wargasm salvo against Russia? Of course not—that makes no sense and would only invite retaliation against which the U.S. has no defence. Would the U.S. employ its own tactical nuclear weapons against Russian forces in Ukraine? What U.S. tactical nuclear weapons? According to a Federation of American Scientists report, “Status of World Nuclear Forces” issued on 2023-02-23, the U.S. has only 100 deployed nonstrategic warheads, all B61 bombs stored at six bases in five European countries. And the B61 is a pretty beefy “tactical weapon”, with a maximum yield of 340 or 400 kilotons depending upon the model. Yes, it can be used in a primary-only mode at a yield of 300 tons, but that’s a waste of a very limited asset.
Personally, I think the most likely outcome if Russia uses a few tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine is the U.S. transferring some precision guided munitions to Ukraine, including conventional cruise missiles, but nothing more provocative because of the eruption of a “peace now” movement in the U.S. and cold feet among the military who realise the whole racket will come to and end if they actually have to use their nuclear weapons.
As regards threatening the U.S. with strategic nuclear weapons, I am reminded of Thomas Sowell’s observation that Japan in 1945 was a lot tougher country than the U.S. is today, and it only took atomic bombing two cities to bring them to surrender. (OK, there were also a lot of other things going on which motivated that decision.) But then he asked, how many cities would it take before the U.S. signed the act of capitulation on, say, the aircraft carrier Khomeini in Chesapeake bay? Probably less than five.
Here is Herman Kahn’s 44 rung escalation ladder from his 1965 book On Escalation.
Now, there’s no guarantee things will go in a linear fashion or that decision makers act rationally in reaction to reverses in conflict, but there’s a long way from rung 21 (“Local Nuclear War—Exemplary”) to 44 (“Spasm or Insensate War”). I cannot conceive of circumstances where one jumps directly from the first to the (in every sense) last.
But would the countryside be happy enough with “Khomeini’s Gift” to accept yet another theocracy, even if not as malign as the one currently operating out of the aforementioned parking lots? Probably not – which is why none of the nuclear-capable BRICS nations have supplied a “Khomeini” with the requisite nukes (or, in the event they are already forward-deployed – detonated them). Don’t want to give those redneck Christians something for nothing. Better to just keep infiltrating and tormenting them with the current theocracy until they say allahu (UNCLE) akbar!
You might be right. But what if you are not? What if Iran, or North Korea, or even China decided to stir the pot by slipping Zelensky a nuke? Doubtless anonymous sources in the Biden* MalAdministration would blame any nuclear explosion on Russian territory on a handful of Ukrainian patriots (probably the same ones who blew up the NordStream pipelines). Everyone else would still blame the US.
Unfortunately, I do not share your sanguine belief that the Biden* Krew would not be the first to use nuclear weapons – or to surreptitiously slip a nuke to Zelensky rather than see him fall. We have seen no evidence of common sense & humility among the Swamp Creatures – the same Swamp Creatures who cannot articulate what interest the people of the US have in supporting a Zelensky regime which has waged civil war against fellow Ukrainians for 8 years; which failed to implement the Minsk treaties it signed; which locks up opposition politicians; which bans opposition political parties; which censors & distorts all media; which press-gangs young & old into untrained military service; which even has seized control of churches.
The occupant of a comfortable Think Tank can certainly lay out 44 possible steps to nuclear Armageddon – but that does not mean those steps will get followed sequentially in a rapidly-evolving crisis. Russian commentators suggest that President Putin faces a lot of dissatisfaction from Russians who oppose his slow measured approach to the war in the Ukraine. At some point, a Russia which believes itself to be facing an existential crisis may decide to roll the dice by cutting off the head(s) of the NATO snake.
The risks of the course that the US/NATO are on now may be bigger or smaller, but the consequences of the outcome could be immeasurable.
