The Russian destroyer Udaloy I forced the USS Chancellorsville to maneuver to avoid collision in the Phillippine Sea today. They were sending a message – look at the guys sunbathing on the flight deck.
BREAKING: #USNavy has released video of #USSChancellorsville being forced to maneuver to avoid collision, after #Russian destroyer Udaloy I made an unsafe and unprofessional approach in the Phillippine Sea, June 7th. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/HpmAMtYraS
— U.S. Navy (@USNavy) June 7, 2019
BREAKING: #USNavy has released video of #USSChancellorsville being forced to maneuver to avoid collision, after #Russian destroyer Udaloy I made an unsafe and unprofessional approach in the Phillippine Sea, June 7th. (2/2) pic.twitter.com/bM9ZHuYSUM
— U.S. Navy (@USNavy) June 7, 2019
The maneuver was planned and approved by the fleet. Probably at the suggestion of Vladimir Putin, or certainly to please him.
If the ships had collided, Russia would have screamed that it was all the fault of the American ship.
The Russian government has been cranky this week over the observances of the 75th anniversary of D-Day. The Allied landings on Normandy beaches were the beginning of the end of Germany’s Western Front.
Russia would like to have a word about that. Russia defeated Germany’s Eastern Front, at enormous cost. The message the Russian government was trying to get out was that it was the eastern front that was really the defeat of Hitler. Further, Russia is owed bigtime by the rest of Europe for that.
The Russian role in World War II is often minimized in Western versions of the defeat of Hitler. Russia suffered enormous losses.
But the Russian role is not unambiguous. In 1939, the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to fight together with Germany and divide up the parts of Europe between their then boundaries after the victory. That assured Hitler that he could concentrate on the Western Front and invade France and adjacent countries while bombing the UK. Without the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and with the USSR solidly standing with the rest of Europe, Hitler would have had to think twice.
Hitler double-crossed Stalin, of course, by invading Soviet territory in 1941. That forced Russia to fight on the side of the Western allies. Russia could have put up a better fight if Stalin hadn’t purged the generals in 1937. The Soviet military was in disarray, allowing the German army almost to reach Moscow.
Meanwhile, bombing on the Western Front weakened Hitler, and American Lend-Lease strengthened the Soviets. But a competition remained: Soviet spies were sending the plans for American nuclear weapons to Moscow, and there was a race in the Far East to occupy Japan first.
But Russia wants the story to be of the damage it survived and went on to help the Allies win. That is true, but it is only part of the story. Adam Elkus says what I’ve just said with more snark in a Twitter thread.
For the past couple of weeks, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been, to use Adam’s word, shitposting, like this
#Zakharova: The Normandy landings were not a game-changer for the outcome of WWII and the Great Patriotic War. The outcome was determined by the Red Army’s victories – mainly, in Stalingrad and Kursk. For three years, the UK and then the US dragged out opening the second front pic.twitter.com/LhzkEzNCQN
— MFA Russia ?? (@mfa_russia) June 5, 2019
The anniversary of D-Day is the immediate cause, but the problem goes deeper. Russia, particularly Vladimir Putin, wants to be treated like a great power. Further, Putin has a few problems at home. His popularity is down. There are fights about provincial boundaries in the North Caucasus. People are demonstrating against accepting Moscow’s garbage in landfills in the North. He needs something to get people behind him, and what better than American hostility.
If that hostility can be combined with dissension among Americans, so much the better. So Moscow released a facsimile of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact a couple of weeks ago, for the first time. Moscow has refused to discuss the Pact in the past. They aren’t saying much now, but its release could spark strong feelings among Americans whose background is in the countries that suffered from the Nazi and Soviet invasions, along with western controversies associated with those Soviet actions.
Add in some dissing of D-Day to fan other fires. The mixture doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t have to; all it needs to do is rile Americans up an several sides of several issues. And irritate them at Russia, so that they will generate commentary that can be used to show the Russian people how Americans hate them.
The propaganda game was largely being ignored, so some escalation was necessary, hence the incident in the Phillippine Sea. This is genuinely dangerous because it could result in a collision and perhaps escalate further. The sunbathers are essentially offering a middle finger to the United States. Putin’s, perhaps.
The incident should be demarched, but who knows what Donald Trump and John Bolton are likely to do. We could engage Russia on extending the New START Treaty. That is undoubtedly one of the things irritating Putin. Extending New START would be a good thing for both countries and the world. Negotiating a treaty with lower limits on nuclear weapons and better verification would be better, but the base we are working from is hoping that Trump and Bolton won’t withdraw from the treaty altogether.
Russia will continue its propaganda drumbeat. The purpose is to fan division in the United States and to provide material for Putin to try to ramp up his popularity. The best way to respond is to avoid division and call out trolls when they appear.
Ah, a troll who can't even read the name on the offending ship. Or figure out how the US Navy got the Russian video.
Blocked. pic.twitter.com/HJ31drOf2H
— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) June 7, 2019
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
HA!
I love how the russian twitter account has “free Maria Butina” has their cover photo.
Shameless.
Ohio Mom
I guess the Cold War was never really over, just on hiatus. I liked it better when I thought it was over.
Interesting details on Russia’s doings with Germany in WWII. Filled in some gaps for me.
JGabriel
Cheryl Rofer @ Top:
That’s a bit difficult when conservatives, Republicans, Fox News, and other conservative media outlets, are fanning and insisting on division every minute of every day.
It’s not just Putin who wants America divided – it’s also the GOP. And Rupert Murdoch. And, of course, Donald Trump.
Cacti
The eastern front was the Soviet Union reaping what it sowed for casting its lot with the Third Reich in 1939.
Lest anyone forget, Poland was jointly invaded and occupied by the Wermacht and the Red Army coming from opposite directions.
Joint German-Soviet victory parades were held in multiple cities.
MattF
I’m just waiting for the last volume of Kotkin’s biography of Stalin to see how he treats Stalin’s immediate reaction to the invasion.
Cheryl Rofer
@JGabriel: There are lots of ways to splinter the US. Yes, the GOP is a force in that direction. The Russian stuff has potential for other fault lines, though.
Adam L Silverman
This was also a favor to Xi in Beijing. If you can get the word out that the US Navy can be pushed around in the Asia-Pacific Area of Responsibility and the President won’t do anything about it, then it favors Beijing’s attempts to project power, especially Sea Power, throughout the region.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: Always a good move if you can send multiple messages. Will be interesting to see how Trump responds.
rikyrah
Get the ENTIRE Phuck Outta Here!
Cacti
@Cheryl Rofer:
A. He won’t
B. Like a fawning sycophant
C. A bit of both
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s the response from the Chief of Naval Operations:
Bluemouser
Apparently the popularity of HBO’s Chernobyl, especially in areas of Eastern Europe, also ruffled some feathers there. The Kremlin and Russian state media have said they want to do a television show of their version of events. They are claiming some foreign actors (read American) did some shenanigans and were responsible for the explosion of reactor 4. The price of lies indeed
TenguPhule
@Ohio Mom:
Apparently WW II never really ended, the Axis merely swapped places with the Allies.
Another Scott
@Adam L Silverman: Yup. It’s hard to believe that it’s a just a coincidence that this happened in the Philippine Sea (according to the BBC, Russia claims it happened in the “southeast of the East China Sea”).
How long until Donnie apologizes??!?
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Cheryl Rofer
@Bluemouser: Yes, one more irritant for Putin.
TenguPhule
Too late. Republicans are Russian backed traitors.
Mike G
Trump will probably be calling Putin to apologize for Putin’s warship trying to collide with a US Navy ship.
Like that Repub congressman who apologized to BP after they took a giant oily dump in the Gulf of Mexico.
vhh
Starting in the late 1920s, the USSR sold raw materials to Germany and also providing training to the Luftwaffe under the Treaty of Rapallo. In fact, the USSR was still shipping stuff to Germany under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pack right before Operation Barbarossa started in 1941—some six months after Germany declared war on the US. Sort of suicide pact, as it turns out. There were failed attempts to form an alliance against Germany of the USSR, the UK, and France, but Stalin was simultaneously pursuing a deal with Germany. Once Germany attacked the USSR, the US and UK agreed to ally with the USSR against Hitler, and provided substantial war materiel, food, trucks etc via arctic convoys to Murmansk, Arkangelsk, etc. The only way to understand all this is the psychology of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
lumpkin
@Adam L Silverman:
Seems they’re reminding trump who’s the alpha in this relationship. But even for a normal president, what besides a sternly worded letter are the available options?
TenguPhule
@lumpkin:
Cracking down on Russian money laundering comes to mind.
Cacti
@vhh:
Without Lend-Lease materiel and supplies propping up the USSR on the eastern front, Hitler’s prediction of “kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down” would have come to pass by 1942.
TenguPhule
@Cacti: On the plus side, we shipped Russia a lot of SPAM in a can as relief supplies.
Mike in NC
We’ll need to wait until AF1 lands to hear Trump’s apology. Maybe Jared will be tasked with updating the Incidents at Sea guidelines. Dress him up in a blue blazer and a jaunty yachting cap.
Mike in DC
Poland, Latvia, LIthuania, Estonia, Finland and Romania would all like to get a word in with Russia about all the stuff that happened in between 1939 and 1941. The Brits fought the Nazis in Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece, and North Africa before D-Day, and of course–with the US– defeated Italy the year before embarking on the biggest invasion in history. Not to mention the aerial campaign and the massive lend-lease effort to the USSR–which resulted in many deaths of merchant marines and sailors due to the U-boat campaign.
Kent
@Cacti:
Finland more or less also got the same treatment
TenguPhule
John Kelly is a piece of shit.
Origuy
I’ve been watching a show called Nazi Megastructures; some of the episodes are on Netflix, others on Nat Geo channel. They did one on the Battle of Kursk, the biggest tank battle in history. The Red Army fought the Wehrmacht to a standstill. The show indicated that the Germans could have done better, but the Allied invasion of Sicily led Hitler to pull reinforcements to defend Italy.
TenguPhule
@Kent:
The difference was that Poland didn’t have the White Death living there.
TenguPhule
He lies. CALL IT A FUCKING LIE FOR FUCKS SAKE YOU GUTLESS NEWSPAPERS!!!
TenguPhule
There are days when I just want to hand Hillary Clinton a bat and give her an hour alone with Trump in an empty room.
Kent
Russia’s GDP is smaller than that of Texas.
Other than diamonds and oil, what do they produce that anyone elsewhere actually wants?
The biggest trend over the past decade seems to be Russian oligarchs looting the country and exporting their cash to the west to hide in western banks and real estate. That cannot be a good long-term trend for the health of the Russian economy.
Other than nuclear weapons and troll farms, why are we paying so much attention to Russia? In another couple decades after they are done looting it, the whole place will look like Gary Indiana or Youngstown Ohio.
Philbert
How about: The Cold War never stopped, we won the battle of the USSR and it took them ten years to get back on their feet. Then they won the initial battle of Trump, we will have some years before we are stable again. Maybe the next phase maybe will be when Putin leaves power however that happens.
MattF
@TenguPhule: The ‘maybe’ is a tell and a typical Trump fudge. So, it’s a different lie from the one it seems to be at first glance.
Kent
@TenguPhule: The Finns were pretty bad ass. They just had the unfortunate circumstance of being stuck between Germany and Russia, same as Poland.
rikyrah
@Kent:
Russia is the 12th largest economy…ridiculous….
TenguPhule
@Kent:
Food and natural gas.
TenguPhule
@Kent:
They’re exporting their culture of corruption to fertile American and British soil.
Gin & Tonic
@TenguPhule: Ukraine is actually doing better at that.
mrmoshpotato
@TenguPhule: Where is that from?
Kent
@rikyrah:
GDP of the state of Texas: $1.645 Trillion in 2017 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Texas)
GDP of Russia: $1.579 trillion in 2017 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Russia)
Gin & Tonic
@Gin & Tonic: I meant the food part. You added “natural gas” after.
Omnes Omnibus
Since I am not a navy guy, I have a question: Do ships have a trajectory? Bullets do. Artillery shells do. But don’t ships have a course?
Kent
@Gin & Tonic: Ukraine is not Russia
Gin & Tonic
@Kent: Um, I know that.
Cacti
@Kent:
Because the dictator of Russia has never forgiven the US for the collapse of the Soviet Union. And while he knows his country will never be a super power again, he’d love to see the US knocked off the top perch and actively works toward that end.
Kent
@TenguPhule:
I don’t know about the Brits. But our own culture of corruption is pretty deep-seated and home-grown. Look at the Trump Family crime syndicate for example. That’s some pretty professional-level home-grown generational corruption right there.
Mike in DC
Russia struggles to develop new industries because of all the corruption. Nobody’s going to invest money there if they’re afraid it’s going to be scammed away, and the oligarchs aren’t going to invest money into projects that will take years to show profits. So Russia is likely to do a slow fade as the fossil fuel industry declines and the oligarchs continue to loot the country. My only further comment is that I hope when the West is forced to bail them out, we demand denuclearization in exchange.
trollhattan
Good grief that’s some provocative crap they pulled, not to mention two ships each armed to the gills sufficient to destroy the other twenty times over in a fraction of a minute. The hell, Vlad?
Mart
My dad’s Manhattan Project office was next to a Czechoslovakian who was a Russian spy. A few years after the war during the Red Scare, the FBI showed up to my parents house near an atom smasher project he was working on. The FBI proceeded to knock down dry wall, rip up attack insulation, cut open mattresses and sofas. All while two of my sisters screamed. They did not find anything (or pay to fix anything). My terrified mom offered to the FBI that she was instructed to develop ten copies of the first atomic bomb explosion in Japan, and handed over the 11’th to them that she skirted out in her purse. A little tense at first, but by that time the film was widely seen so not a big deal. I took mom’s extra copy of the filmed explosion, and a chip of the New Mexico desert turned to glass by the first atomic explosion to HS to show the class. After show and tell of course my locker was broken into and the film and chip stolen. Parents were devastated.
trollhattan
@TenguPhule:
Supermodels and gymnasts.
Adam L Silverman
@lumpkin: Issue a demarche. Persona non grata and expel the Russian senior defense official (SDO) and defense attaches from Moscow’s embassy in DC. Persona non grata and expel all the covered “illegals” – the covered FSB, GRU, and SVR personnel in the US posing as diplomatic and other personnel, do a huge sweep, round up, and prosecution of Bratva members in the US. Electronic warfare directed at all Russian air force and naval assets. Have CNO Richardson publicly indicate that US Navy assets, both ships and fighter jets, are now operating under relaxed Rules of Engagement and are weapons free to interdict all apparent attempts to ram US Navy vessels and planes. And then when Putin pushes on this, we make it hot.
That is what is going to be necessary at this point. By not bloodying Putin’s nose over Crimea, it actually goes even farther back to not standing up for the Georgians who were helping us in Iraq and bloodying his nose over invading Georgia in 2008, and doing nothing over the ongoing undeclared war the Russians have been waging against the US and our allies and partners, we’ve left ourselves with no options that are not kinetic. Everything that had lower risk and higher reward we failed to do. Now we’re only left with high risk, potentially high reward options. If a Democrat is elected president in 2020, come 2021 the only way to stop Putin is interstate war. It’s that or do nothing. We decided we weren’t going to or couldn’t do things the easy way. Now all that we have left is the hard way.
Cheryl Rofer
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking, and I am not a Navy person either.
But here’s an answer: Ships have momentum. Some are more maneuverable than others, but water slows down the ability to change direction. So if something suddenly comes at a ship (like another sip), it may not be able to avoid it.
I saw a comment on Twitter to the effect that the official response that it’s unprofessional is correct in that responsible ship captains don’t do what the Udaloy did, but the maneuver was carried out totally professionally – the ship did exactly what the captain wanted it to do.
TenguPhule
@mrmoshpotato: The Guardian Politics live section.
Kent
@Cacti:
I don’t think we need to assign any kind of psychological resentment to Russian behaviour. Or psychologically analyze Putin. He is simply playing the age-old great power game. Expanding Russian influence overtly in places like Crimea. And undermining the competition with all the soft-power meddling in western democracies. That’s exactly the same path that any other self-interested Russian government would have taken. Putin is just better at it and more ballsy than most. The United States has been doing EXACTLY the same thing in Latin America for two centuries.
trollhattan
@Mart:
That’s a lot of misadventure for one family!
Found out relatively recently that an Austrian friend’s dad was sent to a Soviet Gulag on a charge of collaborating with occupying Americans. He was eventually released after Austria and USSR signed some kind of treaty.
A fucking gulag.
TenguPhule
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah, I remembered the pipeline deal with Germany and the EU. Ukraine is a breadbasket, but Russia does grow a lot of wheat too.
TenguPhule
@trollhattan:
He is confident that Trump will not take any actions no matter what resulted from the confrontation at sea.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I believe the term that used to be applied when the Russians would do these types of provocations, either with Russian Navy ships or with Russian Air Force or Navy fighters was nekulturny.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: I don’t entirely agree with Adam that we have no options left but the kinetic. We have lots of things to talk to them about starting with renewing the New START Treaty and going on to revivifying the INF Treaty. Both would require Russian concessions and could get communications going again. Russia needs those treaties too, particularly New START.
Russia is kinda stuck in Ukraine and Syria. Their goals haven’t been achieved in either place (maybe partly in Ukraine), and leaving won’t be easy. Those situations are more complicated than the treaties, but there are probably diplomatic means of working toward solutions.
One of the reasons Putin is kicking up dust is that he expected a bunch of things to happen when Trump got elected, like sanctions removed (they’re still there), and none of what he expected happened. The discussion on that at Helsinki was probably why Trump looked so beaten when the two came out of the conference room.
ETA: Of course, Trump doesn’t have the wit to do any of this, and Bolton wants ALL the treaties ripped up.
Kent
@Cheryl Rofer: I think Omnes was just asking about the correct nautical terminology: ‘trajectory’ vs ‘course’ Trajectory is the more scientific/physics term, course is the more nautical term. But a quick peek at google suggests that trajectory is commonly used to describe the movement of ships, especially in scientific papers.
Has anyone seen any annotated video or video-simulation of this incident that explains to the lay person what actually happened and who was in the wrong based on international maritime rules of the road?
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: That’s a good word.
Gin & Tonic
@Mike in DC: Bill Browder’s Red Notice is a useful primer on Western investment in Russia.
The Moar You Know
@Kent: Really cheap armaments that work reasonably well. Don’t underestimate that. They’ve kept most of the world in VERY effective guns/missiles/tanks/bombs/aircraft for the last 70 years.
Offset by violent skinheads, possibly the world’s most vicious organized crime cartels, institutional alcoholism, drug-resistant TB, awesome prison tattoos (the price for those may be higher than you wish to pay), and an entire population of about 150 million people who are almost as racist as the North Koreans.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kent: What the Russian ship did was the equivalent of a car doing a sideswipe at a bicycle.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cheryl Rofer: It isn’t a big thing, but the tweet from ole nkarei was talking about the ships’ trajectories. It seemed off to me.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: There is no diplomatic solution with Putin. We are so far past that point that it is dangerously naive. Russia has been fighting an undeclared unconventional war against the US, our allies, and our partners since at least 2014. We’ve been acting as if it’s business as usual and working through normal channels. Those options have not worked, they are not working now, and they will not work in the future because Putin believes, perhaps correctly, that he’s taken our measure and is, at least winning, if he has not actually won. We decided to assume a lot of risk. Specifically we assumed the risk that Putin was a normal, responsible actor. That he was actually seeking to reasonably and rationally (and I’m using it in terms of Weber’s bounded rationality, not the rational choice crap) represent the best interests of the Russian people. What he really was doing was using the facade of the Russian government, and leveraging all elements of Russian national power, to run and maximize profit for an international organized crime organization that is utilizing the Russian state as a facade. Putin is a mob boss with a 12th rate economy, a poorly functioning conventional military, a highly functional intelligence service, and a nuclear arsenal. Diplomacy will not resolve this problem. Diplomacy isn’t going to change Putin’s behavior. Putin understands force. When we could have employed force with far less risk, we failed to do so. Now we have two choices. 1) Accept that this is the new normal and live with it or 2) accept the significantly larger amount of risks that comes when you’ve limited your own potentially successful options to the point where you only have one reasonable chance of success left: force.
Cacti
Right. Because the guy who called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest political tragedy of the twentieth century” would certainly never be motivated by such things. ;-) ;-)
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Thank you. I knew you’d like it.
Kent
@Cheryl Rofer: I don’t think arms control does much for Russia one way or the other. They aren’t REALLY worried about missile attack from the US or UK. What Russia really needs is civilian economic investment that will bring jobs and wealth. Like all the Japanese and European car companies that have been opening up massive assembly plants in the American south. But they really need to clean house and rebuilt their institutions before that sort of thing is going to happen.
There is a very wierd and hard-headed culture in industrial blue collar Russia. They can be incredibly competent but at the same time incredibly hard-headed and difficult to work with. Back in the late 1990s I was working as an observer on big American factory trawlers on the Bering Sea. Some of them were hiring a lot of Russian crewmen and deck hands who were leaving the Soviet far east after the fall of communism. It was total wild west. The Russian guys could damn near fix anything on a ship with a cutting torch and wrench. But they had weird habits that were hard to break like dropping what they were doing and walking off deck the instant their shift was over, even right in the middle of complicated and dangerous operations like hauling back nets. The Americans would be looking around like “where the fuck is he going? get back here and finish the job” I would imagine it would be a very difficult place for foreign companies to develop workforces because of the cultural hard-headedness.
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
Ruckus
When the DDG I was on would sail in the North Atlantic often a Russian ship of similar size and capabilities would steam along side about 1/2 mile apart for days on end, turning as we turned. It was quite common. This was over 45 yrs ago.
Now this is a bit different in that an actual attempt was made, a maneuver designed to cause repercussions. Of course drumpf will react badly, he knows no other way. But it is not an altogether new tactic on the part of the Russians.
NotMax
One thing fer sure, the U.S. won’t be sending the John S. McCain as part of any show of force.
;)
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer:
The only diplomatic solution Putin sees for both is “FUCK YOU, THEY’RE MINE.”
At some point you have to recognize that the other side only respects force.
Mike in DC
@Adam L Silverman: Well, one interesting option, particularly if Zelensky[sic?] makes headway on corruption there, is for Next American President to fast-track Ukrainian admission to NATO, and to announce we will do so regardless of whether their “border disputes” are resolved, and in the event they aren’t, we will “help” them under Article 5.
Kent
@Cacti:
That’s probably a sentiment shared by 90% of the Russian population. I’m not sure that it’s all that informative in terms of predicting their behavior in the future. They are doing exactly what any kind of rational analysis would predict that they do. The naivete on the part of the west was in expecting that after the fall of communism that Russia would somehow morph into Sweden or Canada when nothing in their culture or history or geographical location suggested anything of the sort.
TenguPhule
@NotMax:
I’m sure Trump would sell it out to Russia for a dime.
Harb
@Kent: My understanding (amateur at best) is that the Russian were technically correct that they had the right of way in that situation but that they created the problem by maneuvering too closely when it had literally miles of open sea to use. Sort of like your driving down the road and you have the right of way over people merging onto the road but you slow down and drive very close to the merge point just to be an asshole.
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
@Kent:
This is correct. A ship is on course, but it also has a trajectory.
An artillery shell is fired on a course and has a trajectory to get there, often it is not fired directly at the target but more lobbed at it. A ship does take time to change course and it is often not exactly as expected because it depends on the currents, the waves, the speed of rudder change, the degree of the rudder angle, the design of the ship/ruder, the speed of the ship, the length of the ship… A destroyer will turn much quicker than a carrier which is around twice as long.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: We disagree and will continue to do so.
Conceptualizing what is happening as a war implies certain things that will lead to kinetic action. Competition, yes, espionage, sabotage. But I’d prefer to keep the term war for people throwing explosive things at each other.
Are you saying that we need great-power war to stop Putin?
Russia has serious limitations, particularly in the economic sphere. An arms race, beyond Putin’s animations and talk about stuff that’s never going to be built, is something they can’t afford. So the treaties, particularly New START, help them too. The treaties also give them information about US capabilities they can’t easily get otherwise. So yes, those are to their benefit.
Diplomacy, properly done, is always backed up by force. And yes, it can change Putin’s behavior. He wants the sanctions taken off. Trump had that leverage but has no idea how to use it. Diplomacy hasn’t even been tried. Recall Mitch McConnell’s threat to Obama if he used a counter-information campaign.
Information is a weapon. We’re only just beginning to see that. I’ve got a series of posts on that planned out. The top post contains some elements of what we need to understand. Unfortunately, stuff keeps happening that keeps me from writing all those posts.
Aleta
@Mart: What a piece of history, that story.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kent: Arms control isn’t directly about missile attack. Although yes, Russia is very worried about missile attack. Their geographic situation is very different from the US’s. We’ve got friendly states to the north and the south (although Trump is trying to change that) and fish in the other directions. Much of Russia’s western boundary is within missile distance of Moscow, and NATO is there. So a cruise-missile arms race will make Russia more vulnerable in that respect.
The real benefit of arms control, though, is that less money needs to be used for defense and can be put into developing the civilian economy. Unfortunately, Putin knows as much about developing the civilian economy as Trump does.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I’m using doctrinal terminology in very precise ways. Using language to obscure what is actually going on is strategic malpractice and should be avoided at all costs. And to answer your specific question, yes, we have left ourselves with only two options: acceptance of the status quo or war. The war option may be unconventional or conventional or a hybrid. But it will have to be kinetic. The problem, of course, is Russia’s declared doctrine regarding the use of nuclear weapons within conventional theaters of operation. Hence my repeated statements regarding that we’ve reached the point where we’re left with only high risk options left. This being among the highest of the risks. But recognizing that does not change the reality. The Russians have been prosecuting an unconventional war, leveraging all aspects of their national power, against the US, our allies, and our partners since at least 2014. Putin, Gerasimov, Lavrov, and others have stated, repeatedly, since 2014 that Russia is at war with the US and that the US is the aggressor. We can either actually hear what they are saying, accept it, and develop strategy and policy based on what they are actually communicating or we can delude ourselves that they’re not really saying what they’re saying. We are at war with Russia. We have been at war with Russia for at least five years now. And for all that time we have refused to accept that we are at war with Russia, refused to acknowledge that it is a war, and, as a result, our responses have been inappropriate, unproductive, and have now severely limited our options and potential responses to the least desirable/least good ones.
J R in WV
@Kent:
Caviar, and furs, natural gas, … hmm … now I’m starting to draw a blank…
trollhattan
@Cheryl Rofer:
I would welcome a month of stuff not happening. We could all pretend it’s Paris in August.
Harbison
@Cheryl Rofer:
Hmmm… forgive student loans for people who learn Russian and agree to work on troll farms ….
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike G:
Or Harry Whittington, who apologised to Dick Cheney for putting his face in the way of Cheney’s shotgun.
Peale
@J R in WV: Their mustard is pretty good, actually. And they have some interesting bacon for those interested in that.
Bill Arnold
@Kent:
The long game is a move into Siberian real estate. Burning all that Russian fossil carbon (oil, methane) will create large amounts of sweet habitable land. Win-Win! Unfortunately, sorta serious here. (Those billions of nice humans south of Russia will surely stay in place as their lands become uninhabitable.)
Could climate change make more of Siberia habitable? (07 Jun 2019)
Note: we’re headed towards RCP 6, 4.5 if we (humans) get serious soon.
Assessing landscape potential for human sustainability and ‘attractiveness’ across Asian Russia in a warmer 21st century
(html, open, Elena Parfenova, Nadezhda Tchebakova, and Amber Soja, 7 June 2019 (2 RU, 1 US authors))
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: I understand that you are speaking from within the military establishment’s view of the world. I disagree that that is the only view of the world. That is why, for example, we need feminist analysis of such things. I’m pleased that a colleague and I managed to slip a bit of that past the gatekeepers recently. (Please ignore the headline, which comes from the non-feminist-analyst part of the world.)
Within the military worldview (and it’s international), you are probably correct. But if we want the world to continue more or less as we know it, we have to look from other viewpoints.
Like, we could start from the assumption that we don’t want a nuclear war and neither does Russia. (BTW, some of that alleged Russian doctrine isn’t.) Then go from there.
The military is a great tool. But there are more tools than hammers.
Matt
If they want commendations for how good they are at getting rid of fascists, they should start with Vlad and his cronies.
Raven
Speaking of, the Women’s World Cup just started!
Mnemosyne
Is it bad that the sunbathing Russian sailors made me laugh?
The Russians took quite a chance, because it’s not like our Navy hasn’t been in several disastrous accidents lately. It could have ended even more badly than they bargained for.
Bill Arnold
@Harbison:
LOL.
Something like that, that doesn’t create a new extra-filthy-rich-and-powerful segment of the MI complex.
And more focus on inexpensive distributed defenses against information warfare.
Cheryl Rofer
@Mnemosyne: I was wondering if the guy on the right had anything on at all.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Is cutting Cyprus out of SWIFT considered “kinetic”?
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: Yes, and when we had the time and space to use those other tools we failed to do so because we refused to actually recognize the strategic reality we were facing. As a result, none of those other tools will now work to resolve the problem. That leaves us not with only hammers, but, unfortunately, only military power left as an effective response. Not all of those responses are hammers. Or we can simply accept that this is the way things will be from now on.
Quiltingfool
@TenguPhule: I’d pay cash money to see that. I should be better than that, but here we are.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: As I say, we will continue to disagree.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Haven’t we actually been at war with this country for around at least 100 yrs? And for all the same reasons. Yes there has been times – WWII – that we both worked against and with each other – we do that now with the anti piracy co-operations, but realistically we have been at odds with them for many decades. And not every citizen but with the power structures. Our attempt at being the worlds police, while they don’t have the money to play that game, has thrown the game into a different level. Our almost instance in telling the story that has left out their role in say WWII doesn’t help at all. We play the game from a position of power, monetarily and militarily. They can’t do that, even though they have tried so they have switched tactics to powers that they do have in abundance and that we seemingly have no power to stop. Or at least believe.
Mnemosyne
@Cheryl Rofer:
I still think that Putin and the Russians don’t understand our system as well as they think they do, in part because they relied on bragging from Republicans about how they were in complete control of the country, or would be after the 2016 election.
Mnemosyne
@Cheryl Rofer:
I’m not zooming in to find out! ?
Cheryl Rofer
@Mnemosyne: Yes, and I also think that we don’t understand Putin and the Russians as well as Adam and many others think we do. I’m not going to get down in the weeds on their nuclear doctrine, but there is a gigantic argument right now about what their nuclear doctrine actually is. Plus their warfighting doctrines and whatever they mean by “war.” Here’s an example from those arguments.
That’s why we need finer tools in addition to the military hammer.
Kent
@Bill Arnold:
So Russia is going to become…..Kansas?
Captain C
@vhh:
I’m pretty sure Germany didn’t declare war on the US until 4 days after Pearl Harbor, or almost 6 months after the initial invasions of Barbarossa.
Captain C
@rikyrah: The response to that should be to point out that without a) Lend-Lease, b) the war in the Pacific (which ensured that Japan wouldn’t take advantage of Barbarossa to attack Siberia), c) the US and UK’s air campaign against Germany (which drew off elements of the Luftwaffe which would otherwise have been deployed on the Eastern Front), and yes, the D-Day invasion (as well as the North African and Italian campaigns), the USSR would likely have been left with a best case scenario of a long, drawn-out war of attrition with higher casualties and more damage to them, as well as uncertain ultimate victory. The USSR fought the lion’s share of the war against Germany, but received lots of useful and important material help.
This is before the USSR-Germany alliance of 1939 is taken into consideration, too.
Kent
@Mnemosyne: I don’t think the Russians actually thought Trump was going to win. They were just trying to undermine the future Clinton administration. They are like the dog that caught the car. When Dems take the White House they will be good and truly fucked. Because there will be prices to pay in a million ways both seen and unseen.
Bill Arnold
Semi-serious question, what would stop somebody extremely rich like Jeff Bezos from anonymously seeding a IRA-USA private non-profit corporation with 200 million dollars and a mission to break Russian society tit-for-tat the way the IRA tried and Russian continues to try, except USA! USA! USA!
I mean, besides “heart attack with associated head trauma”, which would be a serious escalation.
Bill Arnold
@Kent:
People in Russia have been thinking this for a while; some academics finally had the nerve to model it and publish the results.
It’s really stupid; productive soils don’t just magically appear. It takes time, a lot of time, to turn lousy soil into productive soil.
Fair Economist
@Bill Arnold cites:
This seems plausible, but the fact that 1.5 billion Chinese in the next country over may be facing serious habitability problems suggests Russia can’t count on reaping those benefits.
Bill Arnold
@Fair Economist:
Yeah, it’s not a good plan.
Cheryl Rofer
@Bill Arnold: The attack on Russian society would have to be quite different. It might, for example, try to exacerbate regional tensions, although there seem to be no strong leaders there who might press for secession from the Russian federation.
People in the larger cities might be urged to demonstrate, but that didn’t work in 2012, and it’s clear that Putin would be willing to stop them, perhaps more readily this time around.
Falling out of high windows also may be a demotivator.
I like the idea, I’m just not sure what the approach would be. Need to think about that.
Kent
@Captain C: Well it was a WORLD war. That said, a really simplistic summary would be that:
In the war in Europe, the USSR defeated Germany with a major assist from the US and the British Empire
In the war in the Pacific the US defeated Japan with a major assist from the British Empire and China.
Here in the US we tend to diminish the roles of everyone else not wearing an American uniform.
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer: Not only do ships have momentum, but they’re operating in a fluid and you get the wonders of fluid dynamics coming into play. E.g., if they ships get too close together, then can (effectively) be sucked together via the venturi effect. It’s very dangerous for ships to get too close together at speed.
NavyTimes has a little more about the incident.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
@Adam L Silverman:
I find it disheartening that I agree with both of you. Only because it means that we really aren’t being successful at either approach, militarily or politically. And probably because we don’t do either one all that well. Cheryl’s concept of the military as a hammer is correct, we have, for as long as I’ve been standing, not used, as official policy, the military as anything but a hammer. We have numerous study groups within the military studying power, military make up, usage, projection and how to interact with that power and the various civilian worlds in which we interact. But it’s always from a position of power. (I have a cousin whose husband was in the AF for 30 yrs doing this) And we suck, and I think primarily because pretty much our countries entire existence we have had only a male perspective presented. Which, given most male perspectives, is power, a hammer if you will. It doesn’t have to be that way any more than all women have to be/are soft and demure, they aren’t. But the hammer is often tried before any other approach. Take our crime position. Huge prison sentences, the death penalty, cops indiscriminately shooting black people, while in Europe many nations do not treat people this way and their crime rates are better. The hammer is not working. And we live in a new world, different than 20 or 40 or more yrs ago. The information age, the recovery from WWII, the availability of technology manufacturing has dramatically changed the world as it was 50-70 yrs ago, and the same concepts no longer apply. Take brexit. Those that want to leave want to return to a different time, same as our conservatives. I don’t think they understand the changes and think that they have and will lose all power, because they will and have lost some. People can see that others do not live like them, that others are not scarred of everyone else stealing everything not tied down, like they have done. The new world scares them because power is not absolute, is not theirs alone. Countries have power from manufacturing, from being better able to grow food, it’s no longer only the wealthy countries that have our class structure that can have power, and that power is not gained by the hammer, nor is it completely controlled by it.
Kent
@Cheryl Rofer:
Rather than trying to use the Russian people as cannon fodder, it would seem the more productive forms of economic warfare would be to attack their business infrastructure. Do things like ship below-cost natural gas to Europe to undermine their natural gas markets. Flood their grain markets with subsidized US alternatives. Ratchet up sanctions on Russian financial institutions for a bazillion real and made-up reasons. Starve them of capital by making it easier for ordinary Russians to get their money out and invest overseas. Create new sanctions and standards for US companies doing business in Russia.
That kind of economic warfare can be fought on thousands of fronts without deliberately putting Russian people in harms way.
Robert Sneddon
@Cheryl Rofer: The Russian nuclear doctrine is determined almost entirely by what they inherited from the Soviet Union, left to rot and decay over the past thirty years but with the Cold War requirements of surviving a first strike from the capitalist West and returning a devastating counter-strike over half the globe. The existing fleet of ageing missiles and warheads is of dubious functionality way below US, French and British standards of expected performance of their own weapons and platforms.
The past few years have seen assorted PowerPoint weapons presentations from the Russians, assorted super-weapons which don’t really exist and never will exist. That’s a good sign that what they’ve got they don’t trust will work if push came to shove. Their big signature nuclear weapons upgrade, the replacement of the fifty-year-old SS-18 silo-emplaced missiles with the RS-28 Sarmat missile is slipping and the numbers of expected missiles to be deployed keeps on falling, probably due to cost overruns and perhaps technical problems.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: Okay. I had never before seen the word used in reference to something that can change direction.
Mainmata
Sorry, I know it’s not protocol but if I was the captain of the Chancellorsville, I would have fired a warning shot across the bow to indicate that the Russians were being deliberately provocative and we weren’t having any of it.
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer: +1
It’s far too easy to think that we understand what the other side wants, and misunderstand statements made for domestic consumption as being something intended for foreigners. (I know Adam knows this, too.)
I’m very, very leery of thinking that the only way to get Putin and Russia to stop (apparently) pushing for a hot war with the USA and NATO is to ratchet things up more, or somehow strike “first”. There are always, always alternatives before the missiles start flying.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bill Arnold
@Cheryl Rofer:
It was more of a hypothetical. Russia is not the only actor and there are already non-Russian companies and other actors (state and non-state) that specialize in influence operations including destabilization.
The point would be to put tit-for-tat retaliation on the table. There would need to be some metrics to limit escalation, tweeked continuously as they are gamed.
Not particularly happy about the idea but it might be worth a discussion. (Harbison mentioned it upthread fwiw.)
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Navy ships often interact at very close distances and are tied together at the same time. Refueling and restocking. And it’s done very carefully and rather slowly, the largest ship takes station and the more maneuverable ship comes along side. The currents and wave direction and formation are critical to making this work. But it’s done all the time, I can’t began to count the number of times I’ve been involved and my position was forward refueling communications, I’ve seen this done a lot, up close.
But it is a lot different than having a ship do a close by approach at a higher rate of speed. That is when the suction effect is most pronounced. And, like highway right of way, there are specific rules so as to avoid collisions. As presented here, the Russians did everything intentionally the wrong way.
J R in WV
OK, since Assholes is one of the several topics Cheryl picked to start her post, I need to put this information up on the world wide web. This headline (which is a link to the story) is about the governor of West Virginia, ultra wealthy coal baron Jim Justice:
Jim Justice is kind of famous for not paying fines levied on his mines, and debts owed by his businesses, which include the somewhat-famed Greenbrier Resort, a spa since before the Civil War. This story includes at the bottom pdfs of the court documents instructing law officers and banks to take his property for delivery to the folks he owes money to.
I imagine he has the cash to pay up, but was just doing a Trump, telling people to make him pay up, and now they are. HaHa… one more totally embarassing factoid about our poor state.
He also is refusing to reside in the (palatial) Governor’s Mansion on the state house grounds, preferring to reside in one or another of his estates in the south east of WV and in Virginia. In spite of legal requirements that the person elected as governor must live in the county of the state capital.
I guess the staff at the Governor’s Mansion is just all hanging around taking it easy?
It would be really funny if it wasn’t so sad for Jim Justice to be carrying on like this. Did I mention he is a volunteer coach for girl’s basketball teams? I got nothing else to say about that ~!!~
Captain C
@Adam L Silverman:
Along those lines, what would happen if all of his and the oligarchs’ properties, bank accounts, and so forth were seized under RICO and similar laws, in particular, the ones that allow the cops to take property associated with criminal activity without charging anyone with an actual crime (note that I am opposed to such laws, but will make an exception in this one particular case, a la Bush v Gore)? What if it was done quietly?
Heck, we could put the proceeds in trust for when a (relatively) honest Russian government finally comes into power and needs some real scratch to start rebuilding. OK, that may be overly optimistic, but still..
trollhattan
@Raven:
Woot!
Recording to watch tonight. Bet S Korea was chuffed at being offered up as an amuse bouche for the French gals, to begin the tournament.
Such a talent lineup this time. Perhaps four legit title threats and at least two or three others who could surprise the world.
TenguPhule
@Bill Arnold:
But not much to do the opposite.
Ruckus
@Kent:
Well that does dovetail nicely into the overt racism that we also suffer from. And unfortunately we are not close to the only humans that do this.
TenguPhule
@Mainmata:
Do you have any idea how much guided missiles cost?
Nobody is going to waste one on a warning shot. Fire for effect only.
Jay
Caroline Orr
@RVAwonk
·
5h
14 Russia-backed YouTube channels spreading disinformation have been generating billions of views and millions of dollars in advertising revenue, according to researchers, and had not been labeled as state-sponsored, contrary to YouTube’s policy.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
That changing direction bit is the actual issue, and why a ship has a trajectory.
It is always somewhat of a gamble that the ship will respond as desired. Everything done correctly it looks easy. Everything done wrong it goes horribly wrong. I’ve seen extreme direction changes and it is very, very hairy. Once on an extreme Atlantic transit with huge oncoming waves and winds consistently over 90 mph we suffered some external damage and had to turn the ship 180 deg to fix things. Everything had to be done at precise timing and speed with the wave action to keep from capsizing. We all had to be ready for it to go very wrong. They got it perfect, both the first turn and then going back on course after the damage was cleaned up/secured. And it was the only time in 7 days that we weren’t going up and down dramatically every minute of the day. There was a sliding seem on the main deck that allowed the ship to have some give and it was moving what looked like an inch on every wave. Scary to watch but also reassuring that the designers knew what they were doing.
Bill Arnold
@Jay:
This is an interesting way to fight back. Peaceful, just respecting and promoting The Truth. :-)
Jay
@TenguPhule:
Build a “provocation” warship. Take a DDGV, heavilly reinforce the bow, stern, hull and any cabin structures vulnerable in a collision.
Keep changing it’s name and hull number to match an existing ship in the fleet.
Sure, it will be slower, and less maneuverable, but at passage and patrol speeds, it won’t matter.
Crew it with a crack crew and brace for collision.
Back in the day of armoured cruisers and battleships, or an aircraft carrier, any collision with one of those ships by one of the more lightly built vessels, was often fatal to the smaller vessel.
If the Russians want to play chicken on the high seas, have a vessel regularly going to the provocation spots that won’t be hurt.
Basically the Russians are playing chicken with a Honda Accord. Meet their game of chicken with an F-450 kitted out with the steel offroad bumpers, roll cages and body bars.
Bill Arnold
@Bill Arnold:
Skimmed that paper on improved habitability of Siberia later this century. They are rather coy about where migrants into the area might come from, saying things like this, bold mine:
Jager
@Ruckus:
It’s called “Hove to”, it causes the ship to ease it’s motion in heavy seas.
Captain C
@J R in WV:
Cheap, reasonably reliable weapons, wood, minerals, and a lot of desperate humans who can be trafficked. Not much else.
Captain C
@Bill Arnold:
Unfortunately, it will take centuries before the land becomes fertile enough to farm. But it’ll probably be more temperate.
It’ll be interesting when China, in order to relieve population pressures, starts making noises about how the 19th Century treaties that gave away large chunks of Siberia to Russia were coerced, unequal, and unfair, and need to be rectified. Already, there are many Chinese immigrants into the area, as there aren’t nearly enough Russians who want to move to Siberia and East Asian Russia to fill the job vacancies there. Plus, there’s the possibility of large swaths of South Asia becoming uninhabitable due to temperatures and floods; that’s over a billion and a half people who will be looking to move north to survive.
Captain C
@Kent:
This seems like a quite reasonable summary.
Captain C
@Kent:
Even more than the USSR’s contribution, people tend to forget how much blood China spilled in their end of the war with Japan; also that they were fighting from 1937 (or 1932 if you count the Manchuria takeover). Like the USSR, their losses ran into the millions and included a large proportion of civilians.
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: Late to this, but have questions.
The conclusion that force, or kinetic (lethal) warfare, is the only effective option is based on what ? The argument seems to be
1) because Russia has been using “all aspects of their national power” to attack the US
(I assume this means cyber attacks and disinformation, manipulations via politics and diplomacy, going after US hearts and minds, etc. in order to divide/weaken the US internally and limit its range of options to respond; + troop maneuvers, attempted economic damage, and taking care of people who may talk )* ; and
2) because what the US has done in the last 5 or more years didn’t work
* Both inside and outside of the military, some define this as war and some don’t, so leaving that definition aside.
I’m missing the reasoning for why military force would work.
And an explanation of why 1) and 2) prove that kinetic warfare is the only option. After all, 1) seems to assume the power of non-kinetic options.
The reasons for stopping short of kinetic warfare come from what we’ve learned about how its unpredicted, unwanted effects can destroy what a country was after. Going after a single “mob boss’ or a network of criminal orgs. is a different discussion.
Uncle Cosmo
@Cacti: You are, as usual, full of shit. Lend-Lease for the USSR wasn’t even approved until October 1941 & no significant amount of supplies could have reached them before the Wehrmacht was stopped west of Moscow in December. The primary reason for that was the transfer in force of Red Army units from Siberia to the West, which was underway well before Pearl Harbor thanks to intelligence that the Japanese had committed their forces to strike south rather than north. Highly unlikely in 1942 as well, since the tanks, aircraft & artillery the Soviets were turning out in the factories they’d uprooted & moved to the Urals were at least as good as anything the USA had to offer at the time – although the trucks were helpful.
Ruckus
@Jager:
No, actually it wasn’t. They didn’t slow the boat and it’s rolling for a better ride and study sails. And yes it was because going with the wind and seas allowed people to go on deck and secure the loose equipment. But normally it’s heaving to to allow a better sailing angle that doesn’t beat up the boat. We turned right back on course as soon as possible because otherwise we would have ended up where we came from. And went right back to the same course, pitching and nose diving that we had been doing. I have pictures of green water coming up to the bridge, on a 450 ft ship. There were maybe 5 or 6 of us out of 300 who didn’t actually get sick. On a normal crossing it was usually the reverse. The captain at the time was not a very pretty shade of green for most of the time. And we ended up several hundred miles north from where we wanted to be. It wasn’t a better ride we were after it was getting to the east coast of the US at all, and we had to make it the only way we could.
Cheryl Rofer
@Bill Arnold: Definitely – tit for tat retaliation in information warfare could be a useful tactic. The usual caveats about escalation apply, but that’s the kind of thing we should be thinking about.
Information warfare is utterly different from kinetic warfare: once the other side figures out what your weapon is, they can nullify it. The societal approach you are talking about is more robust, but it will still need constantly changing tactics.
The Pale Scot
@NotMax:
Good One
The Pale Scot
@Kent:
I remember reading articles about how various libertarian organizations were sending newby college grads to teach the Soviets how to set up a capitalistic economy, pushing them to sell state enterprises and property before setting up a law system and judiciary to protect Duh, property rights. Which I think was a major influence on how things went down.
America has great talent making trouble for himself
The Pale Scot
@Bill Arnold:
Habitable is one thing arable is another. It will take about 5000 yrs for tundra turn into a usable soil base, and the Russian breadbasket is headed toward what’s happening in the US mid-west, heavy rains and drought.
Freshly defrosted permafrost isn’t very useful, except for releasing more methane into the atmosphere, watch one of those Alaska trucking TV shows for ref
The Pale Scot
@Kent
Simple, institute back tracking of SWIFT transfers and shut down money laundering and tax evasion. Interesting that Brexit appeared months after the EU finalized new laws against those things. The UK survives by being a laundromat for the Russian Crime Syndicate. Jacked up RE prices allow banks to lend out money they don’t have. The loans help Uk’s economy to keep on running
Jay
@The Pale Scot:
Most of Siberia isn’t tundra, it’s tiaga, in the more northern part of the tiaga, yes, over permafrost.
Because of the cold, there is an absence of bacterial, fungal and soil organisms to break down and decompose the leaf litter and other detritus. ( although worms are moving north).
In Canada, much of the tiaga is underlain by the Canadian Shield, so the “soil” is 12” of slowly decomposing detritus on top of a gravel layer of varying thickness over solid granite at best.
In southern Siberia the soil is often 3-4’ of slowly decaying detritus over up to 12 feet of fossil soil. In the northern tiaga, the soil is often 1-2’ of slowly decaying detritus over an 8’ layer of permafrost formed in fossil soils.
Jay
@The Pale Scot:
The guy who ran the IMF programs for the Baltic’s and Poland has been saying for decades that not extending the same programs of economic, political and justice reforms and assistance, along with bridging loans to Russia, was the greatest mistake the West made in the latter half of the 20th Century.
Jager
@Ruckus:
I misunderstood the situation
Procopius
This is probably true, but do you remember the history after the 1917 Revolution? The U.S., Great Britain, and, I believe, France, all had armed forces in Russia fighting on the side of the Whites in the Civil War. Afterward trade was heavily restricted and propaganda warfare was conducted at a high level. Western elites were terrified that “Revolution is exportable.” I was in high school during The McCarthy Years, and have always believed that the elites knew very well they were guilty of the kinds of exploitation Marx accused them of, and their bad consciences made them think Communism was a mortal danger to them. The actual performance of Communism in the U.S. during the Great Depression should have reassured them, but they continue to this day to fear Communism. Anyway, the Western Powers were active enemies of the Soviet Union in 1939, so it seemed to be advantageous to Stalin to make a temporary arrangement with Hitler.
Mohagan
This thread may be dead, but just in case it isn’t, I have a question that is driving me crazy: when did we start naming United States Navy ships after Confederate victories ??!!?? USS Gettysburg, sure, and maybe even USS Antietam, but Chancellorsville?
ETA: the only win about the battle for the Union was the death of Stonewall Jackson
azlib
@Captain C:
Not really. Lend_Lease helped make the Red Army more mobile. They liked our trucks, but as far as weapons, the Soviets pretty much supplied most of their own weapons. The USSR paid in blood to defeat the Germans. We still owe those soldiers a huge debt.
Our attitude towards the USSR’s role in WWII is colored by the Cold War and also a lack of access to their war archives. Up until the 90s our histories have been distorted because we only had access to the German archives. German generals did not help matters by writing memoirs in the 50s which blamed Germany’s defeat on Hitler (he was a madman!) while diminishing their own culpability in the military mistakes they made (we were just honorable soldiers!), to say nothing of the war crimes committed by the Wehrmacht under their command.