As I indicated in comments last night, I wanted to save this so I could focus pretty much on it and it alone. So if you’re expecting me to go over the new deep dive interview/reporting regarding General Zaluzhny. We’ll get to that tomorrow night. As well as several really interesting new reports from the Carnegie Endowment, France’s Foundation for Strategic Research, the Swedish Defense Intelligence Agency over the weekend. All the strategic analysis you could hope for!
But for now, above the jump, we deal with the sad, infuriating reality that when the Russians set up their torture chambers in Kherson one was built specifically for violently and painfully interrogating and abusing children! Not that the ones for adults were acceptable either!
Law enforcement officers found 10 torture chambers in Kherson, incl one for underages. Kids were abducted & held there for doing sth like taking photos of russian military equipment. The other two children's prisons were in Balakliya
Source: ombudsman Lubinets pic.twitter.com/Ls7xyNhItZ— Olena Halushka (@OlenaHalushka) December 14, 2022
If you want to know how people could do such a thing, this is a pretty good example:
A Russian MP picks a child’s wish from under a charity tree “Vova, a boy from Kyiv dreams of rockets. Vova, you’ll get rockets – just wait” Before adding – “That’s a joke of course.” https://t.co/BccEl1vkOR
— Isobel Koshiw (@IKoshiw) December 14, 2022
Also, this illustrates perfectly that Russians are ok with killing and torturing Ukrainian children https://t.co/zgeHlSXdvQ
— Olga Tokariuk (@olgatokariuk) December 14, 2022
Ukrainska Pravda has the grim details:
During the occupation of Kharkiv and Kherson Oblasts, the Russian military set up torture chambers for children who, in their opinion, offered resistance.
Source: Dmytro Lubinets, Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, during a briefing at Ukraine-Ukrinform media centre on 14 December
Quote: “Yes, it’s true [there are torture chambers for children – ed.]. We recorded the torture of children for the first time. I thought that it is not possible to bottom out again after Bucha and Irpin. I personally saw two torture chambers located opposite each other in Balaklia [Kharkiv Oblast]. One guy stayed there for 90 days. He said that he had been tortured: they cut him with a knife, heated metal and burned part of his body, several times he was taken out to be shot and they shot over his head. He heard the screams of women and men being tortured for 24/7. I thought that was the rock bottom.
No. We saw the rock bottom in Kherson. In one of the torture chambers, we discovered a separate cell where children were kept. According to the people who were there, they knew that there were Ukrainian children next to them. The occupiers themselves called it a “children’s cell”. It’s the same damp room, it differed only in that they threw [on the floor] very thin carpets [mats – ed.] and said that these were for children.”
Details: Lubinets states that the occupiers gave the children water every other day, gave them almost no food, and also used psychological pressure, telling them that their parents had abandoned them and that they would not come back to them.
One 14-year-old boy was captured just because he took a picture of broken Russian equipment. He was detained and held in such a chamber being tortured.
“These are children who, according to the occupiers, offered resistance,” added Lubinets.
From this and other reporting I’ve seen, the Russians seem to have decided that the children of Kherson were acting as informants for the Ukrainian partisan underground and Ukrainian SOF operating in the Russian occupied areas. Historically this would make sense. We know that during World War II children were actively involved in the various partisan undergrounds in NAZI occupied states. If I recall correctly they were also active within the various Jewish partisan groups like the one run by the Bielskys.
However, that does not justify, it does not even come close too justifying, what the Russians did in Kherson. And what I’m sure they’re doing in the other parts of Ukraine they’re occupying.
Several times a week I scroll through the Auschwitz Memorial’s Twitter thread. One of the things that I’ve always automatically done from the first time I saw one of their tweets with the name, picture, and brief description of someone who died on that specific date at the hands of the NAZIs is automatically calculate the age. Every one of those victims should have lived much longer, but every day there is almost always a child among the tally of those murdered. Sometime they made it to sixteen, sometimes to twelve or thirteen, often they barely made it to or past their first or second birthdays. Sometimes they didn’t make it that far:
13 December 1943 | A French Jewish boy, Leon Herbstman, was born in Vichy.
On 13 April 1944, he was deported from #Drancy to #Auschwitz in a group of 1,500 Jews.
On 16 April 1944, he was murdered in a gas chamber together with his mom Frida and father Henri. pic.twitter.com/3vN9VhYpJW
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) December 13, 2022
Sometimes there’s no picture and sometimes the victim wasn’t Jewish, but that didn’t safeguard her to even her first birthday:
15 December 1942 | A German Sinti girl, Gertrud Müller, was born in Halle an der Saale.
In #Zigeunerlager (Gypsy camp) in #Auschwitz II-Birkenau from 8 March 1943.
No. Z-1500
She perished in the camp on 23 March 1943.— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) December 15, 2022
I have written here before that Never Again either has to mean something or we need to just stop pretending and retire the phrase. And for it to mean something we have to imbue it with meaning. We have to make it mean something. Britain is training Ukrainian judges to carry out war crimes trials for Russian soldiers. And the US and our NATO and non-NATO allies are sending a lot of military and economic aid to assist the Ukrainians. And I know that a lot of people from all over the world are also donating whatever they can. But when things like this are reported I think of the names, the faces, the dates, and the descriptions in the Auschwitz Memorial’s daily posts and wonder if we’re really doing enough or if we’ve used our fear as an excuse. Historians and non-historians are still debating FDR’s, America’s, Churchill’s, and Britain’s culpability in not doing more and doing more sooner in World War II seventy-seven years after it ended. I wonder what they’ll be debating about our’s when we’re seventy-seven years on from the end of this war. And I wonder about the names, the faces, the dates, and the descriptions of the victims that will be posted on whatever social media platform is being used at that time.
The video and English transcript of President Zelenskyy’s daily address are after the jump:
Good health to you, fellow Ukrainians!
Briefly about today.
First. There is a confirmation of the macro-financial aid from the European Union for Ukraine for the next year. The volume is 18 billion euros. This is a good result.
Second. I spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau. It was a good conversation – we are preparing to strengthen our defense cooperation. I am grateful to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and all Canadians for the principled leadership on sanctions policy. Every sanction step against Russia for the war that has already been taken by the free world really helps us bring peace closer.
Third. We are preparing important international events for the next week. Something that could give Ukraine more defense support this winter, more military capabilities.
During another Russian shelling of Kherson today, a projectile hit the aid station of the Red Cross. The woman who died was a paramedic, a volunteer. My condolences to the relatives… Just since the beginning of this day, Russia has shelled Kherson more than 16 times! Only in one day! And it is so every day.
Today, communities of the Kharkiv region were shelled again…
Today in Donbas, as in all previous weeks, brutal Russian attacks continue. The occupiers throw everyone and everything they have into the offensive. They cannot defeat our army, so they physically destroy every town and village so that there are no buildings, not even walls, that can be used for any kind of defense…
The only way to stop this is to push out Russian terrorists step by step from our Ukrainian land. To continue the pressure on Russia. To find new ways to hold every Russian terrorist, every Russian oligarch who helps the terrorist state and all Russian officials and propagandists to account for everything they do. Do against Ukraine, against freedom as such.
Thank you to everyone who fights and works for Ukraine! Thank you to everyone who holds the front in Donbas, in the south, who holds the border, who protects our sky and our people.
Eternal memory to all those who gave their lives for freedom!
Glory to Ukraine!
.@ZelenskyyUa
Only today, russia shelled Kherson more than 16 times! Only in 1 day! It is so every day. The Kharkiv region was again shelled. Brutal russian attacks continue in Donbas. They can’t defeat our army, so they physically destroy every town and village. pic.twitter.com/b7AliqSuVF— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) December 15, 2022
Here is former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent assessments of the situations in Bakhmut and Kremenna:
BAKHMUT AXIS /1415 UTC 15 DEC/ Spearheaded by contract fighters from the Wagner group, RU has increased the tempo of its offensive operations in the vicinity of Bakhmut. High volumes of RU artillery continues to target the urban area and key terrain. pic.twitter.com/SqjeD2Tk0W
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) December 15, 2022
KREMENNA/1820 UTC 15 DEC/ RU artillery has continued fire missions directed against the village of Pischane, indicating the presence of UKR forces on the east bank of the Krasna River. UKR precision strike munitions have targeted the P-66 HWY in the vicinity of Stara Krasnyanka. pic.twitter.com/X9l9mTa5B8
— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) December 15, 2022
Reportedly, Bakhmut pic.twitter.com/tatNJZ3wmg
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) December 15, 2022
.@ZelenskyyUa
russia is destroying city after city in Donbas – like Mariupol, like Volnovakha, like Bakhmut. Defense in such conditions is not just heroism, it is something more. And I thank all our warriors who withstand the pressure from occupiers. pic.twitter.com/ssTtJvzIx7— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) December 14, 2022
There was also another successful prisoner exchange yesterday:
64 Ukrainian soldiers are coming home from Russian captivity pic.twitter.com/tW6zhlJNIr
— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) December 14, 2022
Another 64 Ukrainian service members have been released from captivity through an exchange procedure.
Ukraine remembers everyone who is being detained by the enemy and will return every one of them home. pic.twitter.com/o9CI79l0bj— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) December 14, 2022
And a supermarket has reopened in Bucha!
⚡️Touching moments when a Ukrainian shop can reopen. This is how shopkeepers welcome returning customers.
The humanism, respect for each other and love of life radiates from this recording!
Heartbreaking!
Slava Ukraini! 💔#Hungary #Ukraine 🇭🇺❤️🇺🇦👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/xCNJFFRNSU
— Dénes Törteli 🇪🇺🇭🇺🇺🇦 (@DenesTorteli) December 15, 2022
I think that’s enough for tonight.
Your daily Patron!
There are no new Patron tweets, so here’s a Ukrainian battle cat:
Lookout.
📷@DubchakA pic.twitter.com/7MZJOXhXAj
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) December 14, 2022
Touch not the cat, but a glove!
And a new video of from Patron’s official TikTok:
@patron__dsns Режим капустини – on ✅ #песпатрон #патрондснс
The caption machine translates as:
Mode kapustini – on ✅ #PatrontheDog #PatronDSNS
I think this is a reference to Ukrainian composer Nikolai Kapustin.
Open thread!
Alison Rose
I don’t ever want to see another person, on this blog or anywhere else, complain when we say that every single russian has blood on their hands in this war, or talk about these poor young conscripts thrown onto the front lines, or whatever. Go ahead and think it if you must, but keep it to yourself. Not a single one of them deserves a single ounce of your sympathy.
Thank you as always, Adam.
M31
Kapustin is such an interesting composer! Lots of modern dissonance with distinct jazz textures:
https://youtu.be/Yn9fTO7zp5Q
the man himself performing
CarolPW
Very powerful. Thank you.
M31
The Auschwitz memorial twitter feed is extremely sobering. My father is in his late 80s now and every day on the feed is someone around his age, murdered ‘after selection’ or ‘did not survive’.
Too bad we couldn’t have killed more Nazis, sooner.
trollhattan
So very much to digest. As technical and automated aspects of war have become, the depth of depravity shown by the invaders seems to have no lower bound.
Hearing and reading the longer the war continues, the more the Russians back home are hardening against…Ukraine, and not Putin who started it all. Want it over, yes, but want Ukraine to pay for their dead Russian soldiers. TBH was hoping for a babushka uprising against Vlad’s folly. Two-week war as years-long slog? God, I hope not.
Spanky
I think I’m gonna have to sit this one out.
Subsole
And this is why Yedolf, Spencer, Raichik, Fuentes, and every other little rightwing gremlin who honked and clapped along like a trained circus seal can go jam the business end of a railroad spike through their urethrae. Sideways.
PaulB
I think this cannot be said too often. Either we mean it, in which case we should be doing everything in our power to back it up, or we don’t, in which case we should shut the fuck up and accept our apathy, our cowardice and the judgment of history.
What’s sad is that the cost of “never again” in this case is really pretty low for us. The Ukrainian people are prepared to do what is necessary, so all we need to do is assist them with weapons, training, ammunition, humanitarian assistance, and money. We are doing some of this, thanks to Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats, but we can, and should, do more.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So, rounding up and torturing kids was the mostly half ass thing could do to make their superiors happy, so of course they did it. Banality of Evil is always so disgusting.
Subsole
@trollhattan: It is a sad fact that when one loses one’s moral compass, it very often has to be reinserted by the survivors.
Manually.
With powertools.
Ohio Mom
Of course, war crimes trials and punishments but will that enough? Russia has a deeply dysfunctional culture and polity (and too many nukes!), somehow that country needs to be dismantled and put back together so it is different going forward. But I don’t see a Marshall Plan or anything like it happening.
SpaceUnit
I’m starting to think that fascism might not be too healthy for the soul.
Subsole
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Also, I suspect there is something at work here similar to the US Border patrol under Trump. Rounding up children to auction off to suburban whites is much, much lighter duty than trading lead with the cartels.
Same deal with the Einsatzgruppen or Interahamwe: for a certain type, war is a lot of fun – provided the other guy can’t shoot back.
CaseyL
I don’t honestly care about blog conventions or red lines at this point. Russia needs to be destroyed. Depopulated. Scattered to the winds.
trollhattan
@PaulB: It’s a huge concern. My kid, now twenty, had a class presentation in grade school by a lady who had survived a concentration camp and had the number tattoo, to show the children. She has since passed, who can replace her and bear witness?
High school, she did a Germany exchange student program and their itinerary during the three weeks there included a trip to Dachau. Germans, I give due credit for confronting their past, these years and generations on. I have no confidence Russia took the right lessons from the same war’s horrors. “We won!” In which sense?
YY_Sima Qian
There isn’t even any method to Russia’s madness & cruelty, just sociopathy tolerated & exhibited at the highest levels.
NutmegAgain
Thank you for this. Oof, this is the kind of information that just brings me up short. I’m quite sure if we know about one site, there are a great many more, worse, more depraved, that we haven’t heard of yet. In the absence of being 40 years younger, and having skills that would be useful, I find that my small donations and, really, bearing witness is what I can do. Sometimes I am really torn between wanting to ensure whatever tatters of personal dignity people in videos may have left (and not watching), and feeling that the act of witness–even anonymous, distant witness–has value. So much awful rotten. I agree that really, it’s past time to go in as Nato, the US, or whoever, and just stomp the fuckers, or at least provide the most righteous ass-kicking weaponry we have.
NutmegAgain
@M31: And their collaborators. The last bunch of years have seen a lot of scholarship (in English anyway) about the Holocaust by bullets, further to the east, and starting a couple of years earlier than the death camps. Just cruelty and horror beyond belief. And lots and lots of local participation in the slaughter.
Gin & Tonic
Patron’s use of “капустини” does not refer to the composer, however interesting he may be, as it would then be capitalized and have a different declension. Since “капустина” is the word for a head of cabbage, I surmise that the “regime of cabbage” is a reference to winter – although that’s not a phrase I’m otherwise familiar with, and Gsearches don’t come up with usage contexts.
cain
@Ohio Mom: The worst part is that the UN can do nothing given that they are part of the security counsel. I find it ridiculous that we have colonial powers in charge of the UN.
Whomever
@trollhattan: When I was in 5th grade a Cambodian fellow student of mine gave a presentation on the Khmer Rouge. It was…eye opening for someone that age.
(This was in Australia, which took in a bunch of Cambodian refugees; I’m not sure what relation she or her family had to the regime, though both she and I were born in 1974).
Sadly there will be other things kids can give presentations on (including, someday, Ukraine)
Gin & Tonic
Due respect to Julia Davis, who watches this shit so you don’t have to – here’s a TV pundit essentially justifying this last month:
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Ok, I went with the composer because the music changed in the video.
oldster
Regarding the razzian MP “joking” about sending rockets to Vova, a boy from Kyiv:
Wasn’t that a joke about Volodymir Zelensky? It is certainly a “joke” about attacking the city with rockets. But isn’t the choice of the name designed to pretend that Zelensky is the child?
I am not saying this to lessen the horror of the razzian torture and killing of children. Clearly there are some very sick and evil people there. And this MP may well be one of them.
But when I saw that tweet a few days ago, I assumed it was a joke about Zelensky. And if that’s right, then it does not illustrate the razzian readiness to kill and torture children, just an appalling bad taste in jokes.
Did anyone else think that “Vova from Kyiv” is a reference to Zelensky?
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
Germany only confronted their past because they were forced to. The country was occupied by foreign powers who required them to confront what the Nazis did, and for long enough that the lesson had time to really sink in. It’s noteworthy because it’s so historically unusual. Russia isn’t going to learn the same lesson until they get the same treatment, which just isn’t going to happen.
Gvg
I think part of the reason we are doing “so little” is that we have a silent civil war going on among us with our own orcs. Remember we haven’t held to account Trumps separation of children at the border (should have been jail for border patrol and family services who took custody) and before that Bush’s policy of torture. The reason we can’t hold them accountable is …we can’t count on our citizens to convict in a jury and their is danger of more violent attacks. Seriously, not all of us are to be trusted.
I think the same kind of dynamic is going on in most of the other western countries. Think of the news we have heard the last 20 years every where in the west or even elsewhere. England/Brexit, Hungary, Israel, India, recently Germany, and on and on. Nowhere is really not under attack of turning darker. So I think that is why we haven’t done better yet. It’s actually kind of surprising and hopeful we stuck together and have done as well as we have.
I also suspect similar problems were happening before WWII. I seem to recall reading about some of them which kind of get forgotten in the triumphalism written after.
There is nothing to be done except keep on keeping on.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
This was brutal to read.
Brutal, but necessary.
Also, Allison Rose has it right.
I cannot say anything else right now.
FelonyGovt
This hits hard for me. My friend’s mom, a 102-year-old Holocaust survivor who became a translator at the Nuremberg trials, passed away this past weekend. Never Again indeed needs to mean something. But now we have Nazis ascendant in this country.
Ksmiami
I know I repeat myself but Russia cannot be allowed to exist after this.
Ksmiami
@cain: Russia is not the Soviet Union. Revoke their membership.
Ksmiami
@Ohio Mom: Break up the country by monetarily and diplomatically incentivizing the smaller internal republics to join with civilized nations and leave Moscow a shell.
kindness
Let’s see MTG give some Putin love on Russians torturing children.
Omnes Omnibus
Of course historians will debate what perfect response would have been. It is what historians do. What leaders can do now is weigh the facts that they have before them and make the best calls they can. I am glad I don’t have that job.
The disgust and horror at these, among many other, revelations is well warranted. There should be war crimes trials. There should be action to keep Russia from doing this again. There should be international enforcement to prevent and prosecute any future actions by any country that starts a war of choice. I don’t know exactly how we can do that as we keep trying and failing. I am pretty sure that wiping Russia off the map, etc., is not the way to go. But, after this comment, I will probably walk away from this thread. People may feel free to pie me.
Aussie Sheila
@Gvg: Yes. We are witnessing what happens when the generation that remembers WW2 and all it entailed has finally passed. Since people are still what they were then, we can expect much the same shit that happened in the thirties and forties to be attempted again. This time though, decent people ‘know’ where it leads, and be visceral in their refusal of any of it.
This time round, we know exactly the forces that support this kind of excrement, and politics as usual must be adjusted accordingly.
SpaceUnit
@Omnes Omnibus:
The nukes sorta complicate things.
Ohio Mom
@Ksmiami: That’s a plan I suppose but where does the money come from? Who is doing the diplomatic work? Who spearheads this effort? Can you imagine the US taking this role, or the UN, I can’t.
The most I can hope for is this war sending Russia home with its metaphorical tail between its legs to lick its wounds quietly for awhile.
ETA: and war crime trials, needless to say.
Omnes Omnibus
@SpaceUnit: Yes, they do.
NutmegAgain
@Roger Moore: Per my reading, and also confirmed by my adult kid, who has lived in Germany for more than a decade, the war generation was barely forced to confront anything, alas. The Nuremberg Trials only skimmed some fish, and then the USSR trials killed a whole big bunch more. And then there is the use by the Soviets of the camps to imprison captured German soldiers. But the “deNazification” process in the late ’40s and ’50s was hardly rigorous or even a little bit thorough. And all those scientists who came here? yeah. When the ’68 generation came of age, and realized that their social institutions were still run by Nazis, they (the younger gen) broke loose as much hell as they could. This is what led to the revised school curricula, where German school kids learn about Nazi crimes (and they do, they learn the lessons, and as far as I can tell, they take them to heart.) I’m sure there are plenty of holes in this super short synopsis, and of course I could say more but I won’t. I just really, really hope the world can somehow hold the Russians accountable for their genocide.
Ksmiami
@Ohio Mom: we create a new UN then and realize that bringing millions out of poverty and 18th century living will payoff in a safer future world. War is failure at every level.
Aussie Sheila
@Omnes Omnibus: Decent people and the centre left/left need to ensure that going forward, everything Russia and Russian is opposed at home and abroad. No quarter should be given for any excuse not to come down hard on their influence operations abroad. Looking at you, EU.
I honestly believe that short of an actual invasion of Russia, they won’t use their nukes. They know they would be in even more trouble now than before, and I am certain China would be even more pissed off than they are already.
Their Nukes don’t bother me. Their influence operations are more threatening imo.
Amir Khalid
@Ksmiami:
I agree that Russia needs to be stripped of permanent membership in the UN Security Council. Unfortunately, there is no rule or precedent to let the Security Council do that. Especially when it has accepted the Federation of Russia as the Soviet Union’s successor state for over three decades. I suppose the rules, but I would pity whoever has to draw up the new rules, and also whoever has to campaign in the General Assembly for the vote to adopt them.
AxelFoley
AxelFoley
@CaseyL:
Russia delenda est?
CaseyL
@AxelFoley: yes.
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
Correctified
kalakal
@NutmegAgain:
It was cynically known as the Persilschwassen as everybody came out whiter than white.
That’s the impression I got
Aussie Sheila
@kalakal: It wasn’t until the ‘60s that a real reckoning with their past happened in Germany. Twenty years after the end of WW2, despite the utter ruination of the country in 1945.
I don’t think it will be any different in Russia. But Russia can be made poorer, less influential, and more a pariah state. That is what must happen, not idiotic attempts to invade it or attack it. And in the meantime, UKR needs to be given every advanced weapons system known to drive Russia back with its tail between its legs, and a whole generation left angry and ripe for change.
Agitate for more and better weapons for UKR, now, not some time later. Short of peace, the best war is the shortest war, and right now, everything must be done to shorten the war by ensuring UKR wins-decisively.
Tony G
Noam Chomsky and Chris Hedges (and some other “progressives”) ignore (and, de-facto, accept) these atrocities, and wanted Ukraine to surrender unconditionally (in the name of “negotiations” with the invader) back in February. This should never be forgotten. These men should be reminded of this for this rest of their lives (not very long in the case of Chomsky, but possible a couple of decades in the case of Hedges). Just repulsive; normalizing fascism and mass murder. From what I’ve heard and read of Hedges, he’s particularly pompous and thin-skinned, so I’d like to see him try to justify his idiocy for the rest of his life.
Feathers
Thanks for this.
The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee have announced that they support Russian and Belorussian athletes being allowed to compete as individuals at the 2024 Paris Olympics, just without the Russian flag and anthem. They’ve been competing as athletes from Russia since the 2014 doping shitshow, without any contrition or change in practices, as the 2022 figure skating competition shows.
This is such bullshit. They don’t get government funding, so that can’t be taken away, but there still needs to be consequences for breaking international law in the way that they have.
And NBC is garbage on this. I’ve been watching the figure skating this fall. Only a perfunctory message each competition about the Russians not being there due to the situation in Ukraine. Can you imagine the entire season of a sport being covered without any mention of the US team still not having their medals from the Olympics because of the Russians stonewalling the doping regulators? It was brought up once when there was a fill in announcer. Tara and Johnny have stayed loyal to the Russians.
i know this is nothing compared to the torture of children, but it gets me angry in terms of Russians not facing consequences for being garbage humans ruining everything they become involved with.
Tony G
@NutmegAgain: … and it’s my understanding that the Japanese, by and large, never even acknowledged their war crimes. My wife (born in Japan and migrated to the U.S. as a young woman) says that her Japanese history classes in high school somehow always “ran out of time” once they had covered the late nineteenth century. Probably typical, I guess. (When I was a kid in the sixties and early seventies, history classes never talked about the “Indian Wars” (genocides) at all.)
Chetan Murthy
I’m sure there are a number of excellent books on how Germany started finally to come to terms with their past. The one I read that had a big impact on me, was by Susan Neiman: Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil. She’s Jewish born and raised in Atlanta (in the South, in any case) and eventually moved to Berlin. She tries to draw lessons from Germany’s experience of facing their past, for us, who have never really faced our past (not as a nation like the Germans have). I have to say, I think her lessons are pretty dour. But nevertheless, she goes to some length to explain how (as @NutmegAgain: put it so well) the war generation confronted nothing, learned nothing, and then their children and grandchildren, once grandpapa and crazy uncle Fritz had kicked the bucket (or were in their dotage), start figuring all this out anew. I remember that the US TV series Holocaust apparently played a massive role in really kickstarting the national conversation when it aired in Germany.
Anyway, the big thing I took away from her book (and from other stories I’ve read about, like the story of the “Dirty Girl” Anna Rosmus that got made into a movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Rosmus ) is that it’s pretty damn hard to get a nation to confront their crimes.
My own belief is that this is something deeply embedded into the Russian Imperial psyche. And the only way for it to end, is for the Russian Empire to end. For the subject nations of Russia to be freed. Yes, that’ll be chaos for a good while, and dangerous. But I don’t see any other way for Russia to be made safe for the world.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony G: Yes agree re Hedges. Pompous, and forgotten everything important and remembered nothing. He is a bloviating bore. As for Chomsky, I have no idea what happened, but in my charitable moments I remember my mother who remained lucid until her nineties when she didn’t.
Tony G
@Aussie Sheila: I haven’t closely followed Chomsky’s career, so I can’t say whether he’s always been this way or whether this is the effect of old age. (He’s 94 years old! Time to retire.). But repulsive all the same.
Gin & Tonic
@Tony G: He has always been this way.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony G: I agree with repulsive. It is shocking but revealing, the number of people who I expected to know better, who try to condone or at best excuse this atrocity of Russia’s.
Such people should never be allowed to be part of any respectable public debate ever again. And anyone who trades on ‘left’ bona fides should be instantly shunned and shamed.
I just can’t with these people.
Aussie Sheila
@Gin & Tonic: Actually no he hasn’t. He has been a resolute anti imperialist for as long as I have been aware of him. He is now dead to me, because his anti imperialism obviously doesn’t apply to Russia, which makes him either a hypocrite or senile. I prefer the latter explanation.
Tony G
@Tony G: Also … my half-baked view of human aging (based only on my own experience) is that as a person ages their basic characters don’t change, but their characters become more pronounced. (Maybe there’s some degradation in executive function that causes the person to say the quiet parts out loud.). So … maybe … Chomsky at 94 is the same as Chomsky at 34, but just not editing his remarks as carefully.
brendancalling
I would gladly kill Putin and his willing countrymen with my bare hands for this. This is on every single Russian person. I’m not interested in hearing how “they don’t know” or “they don’t support this.”
the only reason the Russian men fled the country after conscription was they didn’t want to die. It had nothing to do with resistance to the war or sympathy for Ukraine. They just didn’t want to die. I see what those people say about Ukrainians. I see what they say about their own sons and husbands.
If any country needs to be occupied and de-Nazified, it’s Russia. And frankly, maybe it shouldn’t be allowed to be a country anymore.
Tony G
@Aussie Sheila: Judging my your name, perhaps you’re Australian. I’m a garden variety American boomer. My view of my countrymen/countrywomen is that an appalling number of them are flag-waving believers in (white) American exceptionalism. Trump is just the latest manifestation of that idiocy. But there are also a small number of “public intellectuals” who have a knee jerk reaction that anything that the United States does is automatically wrong and that, therefore, any adversary of the United States (e.g., Putin) is automatically right. Hedges and Chomsky (and some others) seem to be an example of that knee-jerk response, dressed up in some fancy words.
Gin & Tonic
@Aussie Sheila: His alleged anti-imperialism has always manifested only as anti-Americanism.
Chetan Murthy
@brendancalling:
One of the ways we can know that this is a correct take, is that we never read stories of large demonstrations of Russian exiles in the West against Russia and for Ukraine, but we *do* read many stories of such large demos pro-Russia. Some sickeningly so. We never read stories of pro-Ukrainian Russian emigres confronting pro-RU Russian emigres: instead, it’s Ukrainian refugees doing that work.
So it goes.
brendancalling
@CaseyL: yup. I endorse that.
level the Kremlin, with everyone inside.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony G: Yes I am Australian. I agree with you about the tendency of some of the US left, but nevertheless it shows an execrable lack of judgement, as well as a complete absence of any real politics. It is the latter that makes me so scornful of much of the US left. If imperialism, invasion, killing and torturing men women and children is bad (and it is ) it is opposed for that sake alone, not for who is doing it.
I understand you probably agree, but I have been truly shocked at a lot of the US left over this. It is unique in the English speaking world. I am familiar with very left currents at home, and not one, not one, has come out to excuse Russia. Sometimes silent, when they should speak up more, but never excusing or condoning.
Chetan Murthy
A little more about how Russia might emerge from this nightmare into which they periodically plunge their neighbors: I remember reading in Susan Neiman’s book, about a famous speech given by the Germany President, where he exhorted his fellow Germans to view the Nazis’ defeat in WWII, as their liberation *also*. That is, that it liberated Germany and Germans from the Nazis, and so Germans should be happy for it. Ms. (Dr?) Neiman stressed how important this was, and I kind of agree.
And so: if Russia is going to emerge from this mindset of “kill the neighbors unless they comply”, it’ll happen because large parts of the Russian population gets to see Russia as occupiers, as imperialists, as oppressors of them also. And this isn’t hard, b/c so much of the Russian Federation is composed of nations that aren’t ethnic Russian, and are treated *like shit* by the ethnic Russians of “Muscovy”. I think that if Russia is taken apart // falls apart, then the pieces can start viewing “Russkiy Mir” (the Russian world, IIRC) as an oppression from which they’ve been freed. And maybe they can then start adopting the attitudes and practices of other of their neighbor nations.
YY_Sima Qian
@Tony G: In the telling of Japanese textbooks, they too were victims of WW II. In a sense the Japanese civilians certainly were victims of the militarist regime, but all of the crimes committed by Japanese imperialism during WW II (or during the preceding decades in Korea, Manchuria, Taiwan & Okinawa, for that matter), are whitewashed.
Of course, one will not find any mention of the violence that imperial Chinese regimes (dynastic or republican) have visited upon the ethnic peoples (whether w/in the imperial borders or on their peripheries) throughout history, either. In Chinese textbooks one finds a fictitious historical “kumbaya” between Chinese dynasties & other peoples (who now make up the rest of the 56 ethnic groups in China). An interesting distortion is that even the fabled generals that led Chinese resistance against invasions by northern nomadic peoples, & their legendary deeds in doing so, are now deemphasized in textbooks.
I think Germany may well be the only former imperial power that has truly come to grip w/ its past, & even then only wrt the period associated w/ the Nazi regime.
Aussie Sheila
@Gin & Tonic: With respect, no it hasn’t .
kalakal
@Aussie Sheila: He’s always had a very strong tendency to see only the ‘West’ as having agency. I was sickened by his pronouncements on the Khmer Rouge & Cambodia
kalakal
@YY_Sima Qian:
I think you’re right. The French got part of the way there after it was shoved in their faces by their defeats in Indo-China, Algeria, and the subsequent collapse of the Fourth Republic in 1958. I know the British haven’t.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian: Yes. Both my parents refused to buy Japanese goods, including cars, until they died. They hated them, as did most of that generation. For my generation and younger, the Japanese did terrible things, but mostly for people under 50, no-one really remembers now. The treatment of Australian POWs was the issue with my parents generation.
Although they were resolute anti nazis, they never felt the same way about Germany. Thus memory, and the visceral effect of being personally effected by someone or thing.
Gin & Tonic
@Aussie Sheila: I have known of Chomsky and have read his work, both academic and political, for a half century, and I am completely unsurprised by his current position.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: There are elements of the US Left that has taken principled positions on Ukraine, but they do not get media attention in the US or around the world. It is the apologist Left that consume what limited oxygen the Left does get. (I do wonder why that is the case. I suspect that establishment interests want to take the opportunity to discredit the Left in general, to reduce the threat to their vested socioeconomic interests, at this populist & anti-establishment moment.) However, you are right that more elements of the US Left have become Putin apologists, their anti-imperialism is myopically focused on the American or Western manifestations of imperialism.
So now we are left w/ this sorry state of affairs: many of the anti-imperialists in the US have become apologists for Russian imperialism, there are very few credible critics of US hegemonism remaining in the US, & what few there are receive no oxygen.
Chetan Murthy
@Aussie Sheila: Either here or over at LG&M, someone related this: https://www.campfirecycling.com/blog/2016/11/30/geef-me-min-fiets-give-me-my-bike-the-bikes-of-world-war-ii
Hard memories live a long time. Ukrainians and CEE folks will be remembering what Russia did to them for a long, long time. Estonians have written a ton about it in recent months, as have Lithuanians and Latvians.
Raoul Paste
@M31: Very enjoyable. Thanks.
Chetan Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian:
Uh, wut? Many of us are still opposed to things like our involvement in KSA’s war on Yemen, and more generally the way we prop up dictators all over the Middle East. It just happens to be the case that Biden got us *out* of the Afghan war, and Obama got us out of Iraq. And we’re glad of that. But sure, we also think that there are cases where the US needs to be involved, b/c otherwise even worse things will happen. Like saving Kosovo from being put to the torch by Serbia. Or supporting Ukraine.
Lots of us are “leftists” and we have a healthy skepticism of American military adventurism. There’s a term many of us use to describe those rabid leftists-turned-Russian-apologists: “leftier-than-thou”. It’s a pretty good description of Tracey, Chomsky, Hedges, and a good number of others. “leftier-than-thou”.
MomSense
Absolutely evil.
patrick II
@kalakal:
That is in pretty Clear contrast to what is happening in Florida right now .
YY_Sima Qian
@kalakal: The Brits went on to keep living the imperial dream, vicariously through the US.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian: Very interesting analysis. If true, I hope that the next left wing Dem who challenges/runs for some office doesn’t have this stain on their cv. Not that I think anyone should challenge Biden. That would be madness. But of course, someone probably will.
YY_Sima Qian
@Chetan Murthy: At the grass roots level, sure. At the political, policymaking, policy advisory/advocacy level, I don’t think so. You have a few Representatives, & Bernie Sanders. How much influence do they actually have in the D coalition for foreign policy, let alone the US body politic in general. How much media oxygen do they actually receive, except as pawns to serve the MSM’s “Dems in disarray” narrative? (& I don’t even like Bernie Sanders. I like much of his policy advocacy, but the less said about his political acumen the better.)
Lyrebird
You might not see this, but thanks for offering this comment.
I am glad that the German Marshall plan did what it did, rather than trying to make Germany not exist, after everything.
Chetan Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian: Biden pulled the US out of Afghanistan. Does that not count for anything ? I mean … *c’mon*.
Ohio Mom
@Aussie Sheila: It was the opposite during my Jewish New York childhood, it was German cars and products that were verboten.
Japanese goods were fine, in fact it seemed at times that almost every consumer product was made in Japan.
kalakal
@patrick II:
too right, I live in Florida, it’s very strange, not all of us here are right wing fruitcakes but a terrifyingly large amount are
@YY_Sima Qian:
You would have thought Suez would have been a teachable moment. TBF to many it was*, the strangest thing is how the place seems to have regressed in the last 15 years or so, I honestly believed that the progress made in the second half of the 20th century, uneven and flawed though it was had deeper roots. I’ve lived a semi-detached life from the UK but the last 12 years or so have deeply shocked and shamed. The mindless xenophobia is appalling.
* Most British politicians at the time learnt that lesson, it’s their successors who have forgotten it.
Arclite
For those of you that can’t wait for Adam’s take on Zaluzhny’s interview, The War Zone has a good recap.
kalakal
@Ohio Mom: My parents never really said much about either the Germans or the Japanese. My mother had a hatred of Hitler for bombing her family house but didn’t extend it to post war Germany. My father fought in Europe and was in what was then Palestine up until 1948 and rarely talked about either. The only constant was a loathing of Menachim Begin. He was actually pro Israeli but had been involved in clearing up the King David hotel in 1946 and it scarred him deeply.
I know exactly what he would think of the Putin and his military’s actions in Ukraine
Aussie Sheila
@kalakal: I am not surprised at the UK. Australia had a similarly shameful moment during the prime ministership of John Howard (1996-2007). At that time the issue was refugees coming by boat to Australia. Sound familiar? Their treatment was, and remains simply shocking. They were parked on a god forsaken island, and a Australia even refused to let New Zealand take them when they offered.
There’s no bottom when it comes to a certain kind of xenophobia. That is why I was always convinced trump would win in 2016.
Anti immigrant sentiment never seems to fail with a certain segment of the populace. The only thing that can beat it back is political unity across party lines, and unfortunately that often means the weaker party in the line often remains silent, if not worse.
Starmer’s leadership on this is no better than that of the ALP in the early 2000s.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila:
The best chance any lefty candidate have of winning office in the US is by focusing on socioeconomic justice, & not anti-imperialism/hegemonism. Probably applies everywhere.
We are at a populist/anti-establishment moment in most parts of the world, w/ anxiety pervading everywhere. One political force or another will take advantage. The Liberal-Left coalition cannot allow the reactionaries to get to their “left” on addressing these anxieties. It won’t matter if the reactionaries are cynical & insincere in their economic populism, & their actual policies will worsen the plight of the working class.
The Biden Administration has been more progressive & leftier than anticipated in aspects of domestic economic policy, such as industrial policy/domestic investment elements of the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act. However, the welcome turn away from neo-liberalism is in danger of falling into the trap of economic nationalism, as evidenced by the trade restriction elements of the IRA & CHIPS, the continuation of Trump’s trade war w/ China, continued defense of Trump’s tariffs on aluminum & steel or spurious national security grounds, & the continued neutering of the WTO’s trade dispute adjudication mechanism (that renders any judgement against the US meaningless, but also has turned the partial-somewhat rules based global economic order into entirely might makes right). Then there is the escalating geopolitical rivalry w/ China.
I don’t think many US liberals really understand that burgeoning nationalism & geopolitical rivalry makes the political terrain more favorable to reactionary forces, or at least nor alert enough to the rising danger. Ds will never win the race to the bottom of rah-rah jingoism & xenophobia against the Rs. R governors are calling & enacting restrictions that forbid selling any land in their states to any Chinese entity, in the name of anti-CCP & protecting “American soil”, to counter a made up phantom menace. & yet you have the likes of Chuck Schumar (plus plenty of Ds in the Senate & the House) who is happy to bang the drum protectionism & anti-China rhetoric.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian: Yes, agree about the state of the US left. Sanders performed a useful service imo, by opening up US economic debate far beyond the tepid official US Dem position at the time. I never thought he would win a general election though, and while at the time I was a bit disappointed in Biden’s win, I really think Biden has been better than I could ever imagine.
The problem though I think in the US is structural. The Dem coalition is simply too big, the repugs too small, and there is little ability to change either voting systems to proportional/preferential voting, or to legislate to outlaw gerrymandering and voter suppression. Of course some of that could have been achieved, but ‘muh filibuster’.
Honestly, that would be the single best reform a Dem Senate could make. Who cares what the repugs do if it is gone. At least it would be clear to even the most uninterested voter what the repugs are really like. The worst thing about US politics is the ‘reach across the aisle’ bs. But that is because there are too few viable parties imo.
kalakal
@Aussie Sheila: Yeah, it shouldn’t have shocked me but it did. Bastards like Murdoch & Dacre have a lot to answer for, they have totally poisoned the place and cowed politicians utterly. Kinnock was utterly destroyed by The Sun**. The UK went through a very racist phase in the 70s but by the early 80s popular revulsion seemed to have reduced it’s overt expressions to knuckle dragging skinheads* in the NF ( National Front) and BNP(British National Party).
Seems we had only scorched the snake not killed it.
I have a few relatives and friends in your part of the world, they really loathed Howard
*I know a lot of left wing skinheads
**The other person I blame is Leopoldo Galtieri of Argentina. Thatcher was failing badly by 1982, even the right wing media were trashing her, then that dumb bastard invaded the Falklands to try to prop up his own failing regime and turned her into a right wing hero, despite all her governments fuckups that helped encourage the nitwit to start a war.
Yutsano
@YY_Sima Qian:
The Yakusuni shrine. Japan will never admit war criminals from all their external conflicts going back to at least the Meiji are buried there.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian: Agree with all those points. I am truly terrified of US chest beating about China. If there is war, Australia is truly effed. And I am not talking trade here. We can always find new customers for our exports. But we are a huge country with a tiny population, and if we were attacked we would be hard pressed to prevail. Knock out our two biggest cities and 40% of our population would be gone.
Chetan Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian:
Yeah, *no*.
I have worked with colleagues who worked with Chinese customers, and the rules around technology transfer and partnerships are extremely one-sided: you have to give up all your technology in order to do business in China. I’m *glad* the US is getting serious about fighting back on this. And when it comes to Taiwan, that’s a non-negotiable. I’ve worked with Taiwanese folks, and the idea that they might get invaded by the PRC is anathema.
I have a Hong Kong Chinese friend who lives in the US, and we often discuss the situation in Hong Kong. There again, the idea that somehow China isn’t a malevolent actor is bullshit.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: I think you are making a generational error. You’re correct that among people 40 and older there are few outspoken critics. Below 40, there are a huge number. Basically if you grew up after 9/11 and don’t have a solid memory of the day itself, all you have are a constant string of US foreign policy adventures and failures, combined with a constant string of financial and capitalist failures. Those of us who are older tend to view the Bush era as an aberration from the norm. Those who are younger tend to view it as the norm.
Millennials generally occupy the memory space leading up to 9/11 and the Great Recession. Zoomers have the double whammy of the failures of both eras. For them there’s one good American thread to hold onto and that was Obama. Everything else has been fucking garbage.
Aussie Sheila
@kalakal: Yes it is really depressing when one has to face just how ugly many people are in their attitudes to immigrants and refugees. As for Dacre and Murdoch, a big defeat for the Tories next election should shut them up for a while, and meantime the British Labour Party simply must introduce PR if elected next time. You suffer from the same problem as the US. Two big parties that have to encompass too many under their tent. It makes the Tories near fascists, and the Labour Party snivelling and kvetching in a corner.
Chetan Murthy
@Aussie Sheila: I felt like I should mention something that non-Americans (and a lot of Americans) don’t know: the Senate’s representation cannot be changed:
I’m not a Constitutional scholar, but it’s possible that this means the Senate’s representation simply cannot be changed, period. What could change, is to strip the Senate of all powers, but …. well, I doubt that’s happenin’ — it’s require a Constitutional Amendment and that’s a high bar.
dr. luba
Patron: when you thought that, this winter, you were going to be the most fashionable one in the neighborhood…..but the weather, as always, brought its own corrections/adjustments.
“Cabbage regimen”: perhaps referring to all the layers he’s wearing? That would be my guess.
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy: I believe China acts like any other great, or would be ‘great’ power. Don’t get me wrong, I have no illusions about their system or the idiocy of Zhi’s strutting authoritarianism. But stealing trade secrets is something every country tries to do. As for Taiwan, I truly believe that the resolute support for Ukraine by the US and NATO, as well as Australia and New Zealand, will give some in the Chinese politburo food for thought.
I believe the Chinese political leadership are as ruthless as any other, but I also believe they are uncommonly pragmatic and cautious. Much more so than the US elite. That is why I am so worried about US chest beating about China. Not because I think the Chinese are saints, but because the US ruling elite thinks its own farts don’t stink, wouldn’t hesitate to demand we do something stupid to provoke China. If we have a conservative government when that happens, their response will be to comply. That is why I am so worried.
YY_Sima Qian
@Chetan Murthy: Pulling out of Afghanistan & Iraq were welcome, but that do not make Obama or Biden anti-hegemonists. That speaks to their basic foreign policy competence & recognition of reality (which is much more than we can say of most Rs), but not to their overall philosophy & approach to US power & its role in the world. By the time of the pull outs, there was broad consensus in DC that these war efforts were distracting the US from the Asia Pacific, where its hegemony was/is under the greatest threat.
Their entire foreign policy record is in pursuit of maintaining US supremacy around the world, which is the inviolate bi-partisan consensus. Otherwise, why did Obama support the disastrous Saudi intervention into Yemen? What threat did the Houthi rebels pose to US interests at the time? Biden has been much better on Yemen, but why did he threaten to veto the Yemen War Power Resolution that has bi-partisan support? No, he is not covering for MBS here, but he could have just worked w/ Bernie Sanders (& Sanders w/ the WH) to align on the specific language to facilitate its passage, rather than turning it into a kerfuffle. Why is Biden escalating the tech war w/ China, w/ no end in sight, & twisting the arms of very reluctant allies to do so? The advanced technology nodes targeted are actually irrelevant to military/space & most telecom infrastructure applications, & certainly not relevant to any conflict over Taiwan in the timeframes that Biden Administration officials have been carelessly bandying about (before 2027). The only conclusion is that the US aims to curtail China’s technological & economic development, in a bid to maintain US supremacy, not only by running faster but also by putting the other competition in chains.
Steve Crickmore
@Gin & Tonic: I once rapped on his office door at MIT in the spring of 1971, unannounced, to talk about his famous 1959 review of Skinner’s 1957 Verbal Behavior. I was doing a major undergraduate paper at the time of Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions and its theme of paradigms for a Philosophy of Science course I was taking in Canada, and how it might relate to some of the larger controversies in social sciences. He received me very warmily, and proceeded to chat with me, mainly about the war in south-east Asia, which was raging, for the next hour, a topic he seemed much keener about to go into it. I asked him how he could delve into subjects so divergent. He admitted linguistics was his professional study. On the other hand, American foreign policy, particularly on the war, was his consuming non-professional interest.
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy: My point is the filibuster can be changed. By majority vote. I know constitutional change can’t happen in the US. But voting reform and gerrymandering of federal congressional districts could have been changed, but Sinema, Manchin, and an unknown number of other Dems opposed abolishing the filibuster to achieve this. That was the most unforgivable own goal of the Dems so far imo.
Omnes Omnibus
@YY_Sima Qian:
With subjects as complex as international relations and international trade, I think it is fair to say that suggesting that anything is the only conclusion that can be drawn is usually incorrect.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: Until Trump came along, I though GWB was the aberration, as well. I actually agree w/ you on the generational split, but the millennial & zoomers do not have a significant influence in policymaking, yet. I do look forward to the day when they are. I am very encouraged by the material some of the younger policy analysts & scholars are producing, especially their willingness to discard the conventional wisdom & the old framing.
YY_Sima Qian
@Omnes Omnibus: I am not the only one drawing that conclusion. It is the conclusion being drawn by just about every China scholar/analyst in the US and Europe. However, the entire development has flow under the radar in the US, not been subjected to meaningful debate.
Omnes Omnibus
@YY_Sima Qian: That doesn’t change my point.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian: I don’t know how old you are, but I never thought Bush2 and his cohorts were a US aberration. I was politically sentient at the end of the Vietnam war, and I remember the simply hysterical US response to the Iranian revolution and the capture of US embassy staff, and subsequently the failure of the rescue mission. Nothing, but nothing can calm the US down once it gets a ’mission liberatrice’under its nostrils.
It is a very dangerous polity to be on the wrong side of. Something I am sure most of the world, including China, understands. Just for once the truly bad actor at the moment, Russia, is getting the US backhander, but pity other countries and their people that have fallen afoul of the US in the last century or so.
Kayla Rudbek
@Chetan Murthy: I know someone who works for the State Department. When he was learning Dutch for his European assignment, about 2016-2017 if I recall correctly, his teacher was complaining about the Germans being bike thieves.
Chetan Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian:
When my colleague FB went to China to debug a SIP application on a big-ass AIX box, China’s rules forced him to (a) divulge the source code of every tool he used to debug, and (b) show Chinese non-IBM workers how all those tools worked.
Spare me this bullshit, *this bullshit* about “competition in chains”. China has had an overt policy of technology theft for decades. And sure, every country does it: that doesn’t mean I want my country rolling over and playing dead.
YY_Sima Qian
@Omnes Omnibus: Have you studied the technological restrictions enacted to date, especially the semiconductor restrictions enacted on 10/7, the implications on the global supply chains, & how Biden administration officials have made it clear that their goal is to freeze China’s current semiconductor technology level (either indigenous capabilities or access to foreign technology) in place rather than keeping the US a few generations ahead?
Then you have to address the problem of self-fulfilling prophecy. I believe Biden himself does not want a Cold War w/ China, I believe that he does not intend to contain China’s economic development. However, if the consensus opinion in the US, China & US allies are that Biden Administration is pursuing a strategy of economic & technological containment against China, then something is badly amiss.
Jon Bateman at Carnegie Endowment has written a good OpEd at Politico that lay out the dangers of the current US policy & politics wrt China:
Carlo Graziani
@Chetan Murthy: You know, I wish this kind of debate could be approached with the nuance that it deserves. Which is not what you’re serving up here, despite the fact that I agree that some pushback is in order.
The way that I would state matters is this: from the US perspective elephant in the room is Xi’s transformation of the Chinese outlook, and the new Chinese tone-deaf determination to rewrite international rules to better suit its own self-serving, nationalistic, and not conspicuously realistic understanding of international relations. That transformation is, not to put too fine a point on matters, a non-ignorable source of potential international conflict, which the US now has decided needs to be managed using a whole-of-government approach.
That decision is undoubtedly correct, because the danger is real, and its source is real. It is Xi. Who, unfortunately, appears to live in an epistemic bubble, a created reality in which the US and the West are in decline, conceptions of democratic social order are of no possible relevance, or even threatening (when mentioned in connection with Taiwan), soft power is a meaningless concept, and the real world is one that can be molded into a desired shape by economic and military sticks and carrots, so that the only intelligible national drive is one to more control through more economic or military power.
This is not the intellectual world that Xi’s predecessors appeared to live in, which is the reason that the state of tension between the US and China is new. To be perfectly clear: the West is not in decline, and certainly would never regard itself as being in decline. Conceptions of democratic social ordering are central to how the US and the West understand themselves and interpret international relations, and imagining that a discussion of Taiwan could be somehow separated from such conceptions is purely delusional. Should such misconceptions drive Chinese pressures on US interests in the Pacific, the effects could be catastrophic.
So the Biden administration’s pressures on China are not, in fact purely mercantilist actions, although those factors do dovetail nicely with domestic politics. There is now a serious strategic problem to be managed, and it was not created in Washington. If someday a conflict that we can imagine now does break out—believe me, I get cold sweats even imagining such a thing—then it would have been irresponsible of the US government not to do everything in its power to keep every high-tech component it could out of the PLA’s armory.
I miss the good old days when the US and China practically lived in each other’s pockets, and did too much business to even conceive of going to war. Xi destroyed that arrangement, because he has another vision. He’s an asshole.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: I was not yet born at the end of Vietnam War, so much younger than you!
dr. luba
@YY_Sima Qian: The last reasonable Republican president was Eisenhower.
But many consider him a RINO now, and they have deified Reagan because who else have they got in living memory?
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian: Yes I get the angst about the US aggressive stance re China and technology. But I am confident China will find a workaround. It simply isn’t worth it to react aggressively and in an aggrieved manner. The US is dangerous. So would a dominant China be if the boot were on the other foot. Perhaps not as dangerous as the US, because it doesn’t have the US Protestant tradition of universalising every brain fart held by its elites.
Nevertheless, China should speak more softly, and find ways around US trade aggression. The US is still very powerful, and when elephants fight, the ants get crushed.
Chetan Murthy
@Carlo Graziani: As I wrote, I have a HK Chinese friend, and he has described to me how when he would go on forums in HK, he would be accused of being a PRC stooge, b/c he was anti-Trump. HK folks were extremely pro-Trump, b/c for the first time, somebody was taking their side against the PRC.
What China is doing to HK, what China threatens to do to Taiwan, is a big driver for why the US has to take this antagonistic position. Taiwan is a democracy and an advanced country. An ally and a friend.
Last: yes, the US is having to drag our allies forward on this. Just like we had to fucking drag them forward on Ukraine. Many Western European allies got fat and lazy under the US security umbrella, and even now they’re not realizing what danger they’re in.
YY talks about “American hegemony”. FFS, that’s better than Russian or Chinese hegemony. And he forgets that US hegemony is what has given us two 37-year cycles without a war in Western Europe that cross the Rhine river (unlike the entire period 111BCE-1945CE). American hegemony gave us that gift. I for one am not going to throw that away willy-nilly.
American hegemony prevented the genocide of the Kosovars. Where THE FUCK was China? Oh right, it was supporting SERBIA.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: I think you are too fixated on the personality of Xi, & ignore the policy continuity from Jiang to Hu to Xi.
I recommend Susan Shirk’s
Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise
Despite the sensational title, the book is actually a nuanced examination of the shifts in Chinese foreign policy over the past 2 decades. The focus of her book is on the Chinese side, but the most China scholars/analysis would agree that the rapid deterioration in relations was an interactive process, driven by action/reactions on both sides of the Pacific. (Have we forgotten the Trump years? For the ROW, Trump was not a page just to be turned & forgotten.) She also included a chapter at the end that advised against overreaction by the US, a point Jon Bateman also makes in his OpEd. That is where I think Biden Administration is at right now, & Congress worse, & the Rs much worse.
There is a good summary of the themes in this interview w/ Susan Shirk on the China Project:
Overreach and overreaction, with Susan Shirk
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy: Hi Chetan. I agree that China’s stance on a number of issues leaves a lot to be desired. But a lot of it would be to stymie the US rather than as a positive statement of values. Both countries are Security Council members, and use the forum to project as much at ‘home’ as it is to the rest of the world.
I am sorry to say, I fear US hysteria about China, a lot more than I do China itself. Their stance re Hong Kong is terrible, and so would any adventurism against Taiwan be terrible. But I fear the US precisely because US elites are, to a point, attentive to US popular feeling.
It is US populism I fear the most, particularly when welded to a powerful faction of the US elite. Nothing, but nothing can resist that force.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: I fear the vicious cycle. China has not yet retaliated, because on advanced technology China has fewer cards to play, today. That & China wanting to keep the skeptical US allies ambivalent, as well as not to scare off the MNC operating in China. That does not mean China won’t retaliate in the future.
But, we have probably seen the last purchase of Boeing aircraft from China for quite some time.
I do hope China finds a face saving way to remove the economic sanctions on Australia & Lithuania, utterly pointless. Copying the US playbook w/ such gusto is hardly reassuring for China’s emergence as a great power.
Chetan Murthy
@Aussie Sheila: If by “US populism” you mean “herrenvolk nationalism”, aka “blood-and-soil populism”, then sure, we all fear it. But that’s got nothing to do with why the Biden administration is going with this pushback on China. That’s happening b/c China is demonstrating (to all its neighbors, too) that they’re unsafe as neighbors.
And many of China’s neighbors are American allies (gosh, for good reason).
The dismemberment of Hong Kong society is an object lesson that China cannot be trusted to do the right thing by its neighbors, and specifically by Taiwan.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: Also, remember how the US acted the last time there was a perceived challenger – all the anti-Japan hysteria in the 80s, w/ some of the exact same talking points as used on China today (“stealing our technology”, “stealing our jobs”). This was a democratic US ally, a front line state in the Cold War against the USSR, & a country that the US had tremendous leverage over across all spheres.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian: China will never be as great a power as the US until and unless its elites manage a better relationship with the dominant zeitgeist of the West. Not saying it is perfect mind you. Far from it. But you simply can’t contend with the US, the EU, and the Anglo sphere with chest beating and threats. Their combined GDP still outranks China, by a lot.
Yes it is unfair that the US believes it can contain and constrain China in a way that the UK couldn’t with the US in the late 19th, early 20th century. That moment has passed. The Chinese political elite would do better reforming at home, and continuing to bring their people up to, and past, the mass of the people elsewhere. Therein will lie real strength.
In the meantime, China should remember how people feel about imperial bullies, no matter what their origin or language.
Chetan Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian: As you might remember, that didn’t cause the US to stop Japanese investments in the US (lots and lots and lots, all over the country). And also: Japan had significant protectionist barriers that prevented trade Remember “Japan will not allow themselves to become dependent on food imports” ? I mean, that”s *bollocks* when you’re expecting the US to open trade in other goods.
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy: No I don’t mean just ‘blood and soil’ nationalism. The US has a peculiar combination of Protestant messianism combined with herrenvolk populism. I maintain it is the most dangerous hegemon the world has ever known.
That doesn’t mean I am happy for another, equally dangerous hegemon take its place. It’s just that I don’t take US statements about its own policies and values seriously. I have seen too much blood shed in my lifetime in the US pursuit of those values. Like every imperial power before them.
As to ‘free trade’ spare me. The US want to smash every public health regime they can via free trade agreements. They are very dangerous particularly for social democracies. They like to smother those impulses abroad, in case their own benighted masses get any ideas.
YY_Sima Qian
@Chetan Murthy: Maybe you should read up on how the countries in the Asia Pacific are reacting to US pushback against China.
Inside the Trilateral Commission: Power elites grapple with China’s rise
Singapore PM Warns US Chip Curbs Can Have ‘Wide Ramifications’
US chips war hits allies but likely misses long term Chinese strategic target
Chetan Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian: Yes, and meanwhile https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/11/30/national/japan-buy-tomahawk-missiles/#:~:text=Nov%2030%2C%202022-,Japan%20is%20looking%20to%20buy%20up%20to%20500%20U.S.%2Dmade,a%20so%2Dcalled%20counterstrike%20capability.
Dude, China needs to stop destroying Hong Kong and stop threatening Taiwan. That would go a long way to reassuring both its neighbors and the US.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Agree. I am very dismayed that, as China’s power has increased, its behavior has been rather reminiscent of all those great powers that have come before.
There has to be alternatives to a “durable” world order dominated by US hegemony or Chinese hegemony, or some kind of Cold War bifurcation into camps. The only international relations theorists that are imagining alternatives are those on the Left, but they are very much at the margins of policy debate. The “balance of power” system promoted by Realists is probably not durable. To be honest, I don’t think such out of box thinking will emerge from either great power.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian: Asian regional feelings about China and US behaviour aside, China’s elites should be under no illusion about how the region would react to any military aggression outside China’s own circle of perceived hegemony. While many might turn a blind eye about Taiwan, (shamefully, imo) they will not hesitate to support the strongest side in any conflict. And that side will be the US and its allies in the region.
Australian popular feeling is a lot less anti China that US popular feeling. There is a strong pro China faction within the ALP. But not at the expense of freedom of the seas, and toleration of regional bullying.
China can out wait the US, but first it has to reform at home.
YY_Sima Qian
@Chetan Murthy: Agree on Hong Kong & Taiwan, but the shift in US sentiment toward China started at the end of Obama’s 2nd term, & accelerated during Trump years. That shift long predated the protests in Hong Kong in 2019 or the imposition of National Security Law in 2020, or the escalation of tensions across the Taiwan Strait. In fact, Chinese encroachment into Taiwanese ADIZ (not to be confused w/ sovereign air space) did not escalate until Trump administration started to play the Taiwan card in dealings w/ China in 2019 – 2020.
The semiconductor restrictions have nothing to do with Hong Kong or Taiwan. Chips used for military/space applications (not just in China) are mature nodes that China is entirely self-sufficient in.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: I agree. I think China has actually been fairly smart in not forcing its regional neighbors to choose (knowing that it does not have the leverage to compel a favorable decision), & has so far kept coercion to deterring full alignment w/ the US.
As for domestic reforms, we have to see, too many uncertainties. As is the case everywhere, the greatest threat to prosperity is actually domestic.
Chetan Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian: China has been attempting to turn the South China Sea into a Chinese lake (and annex various bits of land claimed by others) for a long, long time.
I’m not going to excuse Trump’s saber-rattling: frankly, if China expected better from Trump, they should have bribed his daughter more, or maybe bribed him directly. Certainly nothing he did was about America: it was about his wallet.
More directly put: He ain’t my President and he never was. He was a Russian shitpile agent installed by Putin, and you can take it up with him if you want.
Ruckus
@YY_Sima Qian:
“There isn’t even any method to Russia’s madness & cruelty, just sociopathy tolerated & exhibited at the highest levels.”
This deserves to be repeated loudly, throughout the world.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian: China would be wise not forcing its Asian neighbours to choose. Remember, it’s not just Australia and Japan that would resist Chinese adventurism. India would also. And while the Modhi regime is odorous, India has a huge population, a very big army, and possible nukes. Pakistan as an ally simply won’t cut it if push comes to shove.
Chinese supporters need to urge reform at home, and less belligerence abroad, no matter how hypocritical the US is. It is what it is.
Speak more softly. The US is a hegemon partly because lots of countries don’t object too much. Once they do, or once the US stumbles again like it did in the early oughts, it’s time will be able to be seen. Until that day, China will have to cool its heels. Military adventurism will simply mean China will lose.
As for trump, I agree China got what it deserved. A bad lapse of judgement there. I was surprised that Chinese foreign policy leadership was so mislead about him. Better diplomats abroad are needed, and a better, more subtle understanding about the real dangers of the US.
Trust me, ‘chips’ will be the last thing to worry about once the US decides to go ‘all in’.
Chetan Murthy
@Aussie Sheila:
This is exactly right. Obama had to go around the world apologizing for our enormous fuckup in Iraq. And when TFG came along, we lost even more credibility. A hegemon holds sway by convincing other countries that they’re better than anarchy and the other alternatives. A shithead hegemon is not those things. And if the US does that kind of shit again, yeah, I fully expect that our allies will make other arrangements, and rightly so.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: I would prefer the future be a true international order, w/ institutions & frameworks that bind all countries alike, w/o carve outs for great powers (such as the UNSC). Chinese hegemony will not be an improvement over American or British versions, even absent the proselytizing instinct.
Alas, I think the momentum for such an order will have to come from middle powers, at a moment when no great power is strong enough to impose its will.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
In the last century we of course had 2 world wars. We’ve learned a bit about not to be quite as dangerous to each other – mostly. But there still are those who think they should be head of the world and have enough power to at least make a shot at it and who don’t care how badly it turns out. I have no idea if it is because a lot of the world is changing, often for the better and that takes several generations and we have some who do not want better, they want power above all else. And we have people like this here in this country, and in at least most other countries. With the weapons we have and the trade that is necessary by they size of the world’s population it seems we need to find a way to shut down the concept of the kind of power that got us into those 2 wars. And I see that a lot of that comes from the conservative side of the aisle in every country. They care far more about freedom and power for themselves and jack shit for everyone else. The trumps of the world if you will. I’m not offering any answers, I’m not sure there are any, or at least any that will work everywhere. Our idiot right wing is a part of the problem as conservatism is in every part of the world, because what they want really is a return to fighting for things they think will make them more powerful so that they can always win everything. Life of course doesn’t work that way which is one reason we keep having wars that end up proving this.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: In a way, I am also encouraged by the pushback to China’s “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, as well as rising domestic challenges, in 2022. Xi & the CCP regime had been getting far too triumphalist at home & abroad after China contained/suppressed/eliminated the 1st COVID-19 wave in Spring 2020, while the pandemic raged elsewhere. Leaderships need a dose of reality from time to time.
Whether Xi & the regime can successfully navigate needed economic transition in the coming years is TBD, & that will matter much more to China’s short/medium/long term prospects than US semiconductor sanctions. By constraining China’s ability to take leadership in the emerging industries, the latest US policies are seen in China as economic warfare aimed to make China’s economic transition as difficult as possible, whether that is the objective of the Biden Administration or not. These policies will also deeply alienate a generation (or two) of tech savvy Chinese, the same people most open to domestic liberalization.
For an example of how the US can wring concessions from China, see how the 2 sides were able to reach agreement to allow the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board complete access to audit records of Chinese listed companies in US stock exchanges in Hong Kong, the 1st time ever that such records have been allowed to leave the Mainland. The issue of opaque & novel ownership structure, questionable accounting practices & equally questionable audits, have been pervasive w/ Chinese companies listed overseas, & have given room for massive fraud. This is a real problem that the US in a strong position to force the issue, has internal alignment on the objectives (realistic objectives that account for 2nd/3rd order effects should the two sides fail to reach resolution) across the bureaucracy, & is willing to compromise w/ China to reach those objectives. This is how one can compel changes in Chinese behavior.
Aussie Sheila
@Ruckus: Your idiot right wing is indeed very dangerous, because it can be relied upon, together with the ‘bien pensant’ liberal establishment to support US adventurism abroad.
The only solution is electoral reform that doesn’t require constitutional change. That can be achieved, but only by busting the filibuster. That is why I am so pissed off by the Senate Dems. I don’t believe it was only cinemamanchin that prevented support for election reform. I believe that conservative Democrats, from reliably blue states quietly supported them.
That is precisely why I fear the US, and why everyone else should too. Including China. The right wing in the US is only one of a number of factors preventing US reform, both at home and abroad.
Chetan Murthy
@Aussie Sheila:
You are 100% correct. Chris Coons was one of those who drafted behind Cinemansion on the filibuster. IIRC, also Feinstein.
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy: Why isn’t Feinstein retired yet? I have never known a bunch of other wise reasonably intelligent people who are so wedded to gerontocracy like US Dems. Unbelievable.
Sorry, it is not ageist to insist that people past a certain age retire, particularly when they have to make judgement calls involving life and death. As for Chris Coons, I know little about him, but if that is true, he should primaried to the hell and back. That was the last chance for electoral reform for a decade imo. Truly terrible.
the pale scot @ gmail
It’s like The Return of the Archons but it isn’t ending in a night
Chetan Murthy
@Aussie Sheila: Chuck Grassley raises his hand. Strom Thurmond comes to mind also. It’s not just Dems. These are 100 of the most powerful people in the US. Who would give up that power voluntarily? *Sigh*
And it sure ain’t ageist. I’m 58, and I can feel myself slowing down. I sure don’t want my President to be like me: I want ’em to be hard and strong and fast. And sure, Biden’s great. But I really don’t want us to need to pick guys his age, crrrrikey.
the pale scot @ gmail
Simply, the war isn’t going to end until RU runs out of Russians, and the UKR, Poland, the Baltic states are A/OK with that. RU’s demographic projections are incredible. The educated class is leaving or gone. The birthrate is about to crater, as there is already a coming dearth of women and men who weren’t born during the economic crisis of the late ’90s
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy: I worked till I was 65, in a demanding job with lots of responsibility. I reckon I could still work well in that role if I had to, but luckily I don’t. I get the repugs and Grassley, but I expect better of a putative ‘centre left’. In this country, I don’t think we have had a leader over 60 yrs old since the early 70s. As it should be. The future must be forged by those who have to live it. No dissing olds, but a gerontocracy is always bad. No matter who it is and no matter their politics. Judges in Australia are forced to retire at 70. Quite right too.
Jesse
@Roger Moore: FWIW, the mainstream German take on the torture situation is: “Each side accuses the other of torture.” No mention of children at all.
I’m tired of hearing that Germany has some kind of morally superior position about any of this, or that they “get it”.
sab
@Chetan Murthy: Of course its ageism. Different people age differently. You are making assumptions about his abilities just based on his age. Feinstein has been senile for at least ten years, as has Grassley. Biden’s mother lived to 93 and seemed to be mentally pretty sharp to the end. My dad at 98 is senile, but he was still sharp at 84, which is where Biden will be at the end of his term.
There is a lot to be said for experience. Biden (and Pelosi) have gotten more progressive legislation through than any Democratic team in my lifetime. I am 68 and have only a fraction of the enerfy of those two. That’s on me, not on my age.
ColoradoGuy
There are parts of the USA industrial infrastructure that have become dangerously hollowed out, and the parts shortages from Covid shutdowns around the world have exposed this. Minor case in point: I’m in electronics, and was shocked a few years back to found there was only ONE supplier of steel transformer laminations in the USA. Transformers are used in just about every single piece of electronics that are AC powered, so this is not a trivial application.
The push to “reshore”, or come back to North America, is due to the recognition that the USA was, and is, dangerously exposed to a small region of China around Shenzen. For a while, it was the most economically productive region in the world, but tiny changes there resulted in massive disruptions everywhere else. The EU sits behind a tariff and regulatory wall that keeps the little manufacturers in EU alive, but US manufacturers chased every penny to drive down costs. But supply-chain disruptions in the Just-In-Time age (without warehouses) has cost far more than the pennies saved in offshoring, so moving back to North America is the prudential move.
Aussie Sheila
@ColoradoGuy: I am sure you are right. But even if not, little can or should be done by China if the US decides to onshore a lot more technology based manufacturing. It is its prerogative. I just wish the US extended the same forbearance to other countries that prefer their own domestic arrangements to those forced on them by so called ‘free trade agreements’, whose templates the US has forged over the years.
Jesse
@Aussie Sheila: Here in Germany, people are only slowly waking up to what the Inflation Reduction Act is all about. Here, they’re complaining that it’s billions and billions in subsidies, paid by the US to American companies. They think it’s unfair, and they think that it’ll harm their ability to dump their junk in the US. (Germany is extremely dependent on exports.)
Aussie Sheila
@Jesse: It will harm German exports. But Germany has huge investments in China manufacturing, and it will have to look elsewhere for exports if the US pulls up the drawbridge. Germany has existed on an export surplus for years. That also is coming to an end. The US will do precisely what it’s elites and the electorate that actually votes, wants it to. Alliances be damned.
It has a right to that. So does everybody else. So I am hoping there won’t be a complete retrenchment of trade, but things are changing, fast. Remember, it was the arguably the Smoot-Hawley Act that set of the worst of the Great Depression. The US will do it again if it has to domestically.
Gvg
@Gin & Tonic: agreed. He has always driven me nuts, because it has always been so unwise. He totally ignore how dangerous anyone else is and just supports whomever America is against. It’s totally stupid and I really don’t understand why anyone ever paid attention to him. Something about him being brilliant in some other field I think.
It is wiser to try to improve American policy, not try to destroy America. Take note of the alternatives before you destroy.
YY_Sima Qian
@Jesse: What have the Europeans, the Japanese & the South Koreas up in arms is not the subsidies in the IRA per se, but the fact that any non-NAFTA content in vehicles sold in the US will render the vehicle ineligible for subsidies, starting from 2023. In the short term the only thing it will accomplish is making EVs more expensive in the US, since every EV has non-NAFTA content. The perceived threat is that the US industrial policy is aiming to onshore the entire EV value chain ASAP, at the expense of all its non-NAFTA trade partners. Not even China has employed foreign content rules so aggressively.
Industrial policy to support EV industry (beyond just Tesla) in the US is the right thing to do for the US. However, I am not sure the US has understood how Chinese industrial policy has provided China w/ advantageous position through most of the EV value chain. China was frustrated that the inability of its automobile industry to be competitive in ICE vehicles. The American/European/Japan automakers became quite adept at keeping the latest technologies from the JVs required by the Chinese government, & the Chinese SOEs were lazy w/ the easy revenue from those JVs. The Chinese government saw EVs as an opportunity to start at parity again, & from the mid-aughts made huge investments though every step of the EV value chain, at a time when Western governments & corporations were still high on ICEs: Chinese state owned mining concerns bought rare earth metals mines around the developing world (> 60% of the world’s current supply), Chinese companies proceeded to drive out or buy out most of the refining competition (now > 85% of global share) & now own most of the IP associated w/ refining, Chinese battery makers received a lot of support (starting from making batteries for mobile phones & laptops) & BYD/CATL now dominate EV battery production (> 76% of global share) & are among the leaders in IP, state & private capital were encouraged to enter the EV space, consumers of TVs received generous tax credits to help build demand (China now accounts for > 53% of world’s EV demand), & the government subsided a huge build out of charging infrastructure (1.15M charging stations & rising rapidly). When progress in the industry failed to meet expectations even as EVs were starting to taking around the world, China welcomed Tesla to stimulate competition, w/o needing JV (1st at the time), but w/ the condition of localized sourcing of component (83%, not 100%). It takes a long time, a lot of investment, & a lot of false steps, to building a new ecosystem. I am not sure new US industrial policy has taken into account the complexities, or countervailing risks of trying to force an outcome too quickly.
The European (& Japanese) auto industry is in a precarious position. Its automakers stuck w/ ICEs (especially diesel) for far too long (the Japanese automakers stuck w/ hybrids for too long, & were too enamored w/ hydrogen). While they are now pushing out EV models, they are over priced, Tesla has seized a lot of the market share in the medium to high end, & state owned & private Chinese automakers are poised to disrupt the EU market on the low to medium end. The European automakers are behind Tesla & Chinese (& Korean) automakers in developing dedicated EV platforms & architectures. To protect European automotive industry, the EU may very well have to provide greater subsidies, & raise tariffs on imports (especially Chinese). Of course, the side effect is slowing EV adoption, w/ Climate Change implications.
Gvg
@Aussie Sheila: Some of it was cultivated by communist regimes back in the day. Haven’t heard much about it still going on, but originally going back to the beginning of communism, those countries funded a lot of leftist organizations in the US and elsewhere, trying to get sympathetic support and sometimes spies. Many useful idiots. This also caused a bunch of over reactions by our homegrown idiots and red scares that caught the innocent. Anyway, there has always been a history of this kind of thought and because a lot of the accusations were false and in bad faith, I don’t think that type of idealist believes or cares that they are dupes and fools. Still today there are some of that kind of voice who do have financial or known social ties with Russians and Russian propaganda sources. A few politicians included! Mostly unsuccessful so far. America is big and powerful and all would be authoritarian governments try to influence us. This has been going on so long that some of it is traditional like this weird anti American leftist strain. I don’t know that it’s all foreign because we are a pretty contrary people, but the foreign links mainly Russian have been there since the Communist revolution.
US capitalism labor relations were really bad back then. Frankly, before the Unions got some reforms in labor conditions, we were pretty ripe for violence. The problem was that all the communist countries were more repressive than our version of capitalism.
Chetan Murthy
@Jesse: My understanding was that that was the official *Government* position. That Germans pretty much blamed Russia ? That was what I gathered from the news — was I misled/mistaken?
Aussie Sheila
@Gvg: Well if you are talking post WW2, sure. While nothing can excuse or elide Stalin’s atrocities, the rest of the world is quite aware of the fact that the US has only had a multi racial voting rights regime since 1965. When I was a school child. It still can’t guarantee equal electorates and voting rights in most states, and it’s industrial/Labor law regime is a shocker compared to the rest of the civilised world.
US Red scares are, and were, ludicrous, as you well know. As for other countries tying to influence the US, of course they do. They just don’t invade it, and can’t upend its government like the US has regularly done to others throughout my lifetime.
As for ‘communists’ trying to influence the US, pity they didn’t have better luck. Maybe you would have better social and political conditions if they had. Don’t try that red baiting on me. It doesn’t work where I live.
Aussie Sheila
@Gvg: Well if you are talking post WW2, sure. While nothing can excuse or elide Stalin’s atrocities, the rest of the world is quite aware of the fact that the US has only had a multi racial voting rights regime since 1965. When I was a school child. It still can’t guarantee equal electorates and voting rights in most states, and it’s industrial/Labor law regime is a shocker compared to the rest of the civilised world.
US Red scares are, and were, ludicrous, as you well know. As for other countries tying to influence the US, of course they do. They just don’t invade it, and can’t upend its government like the US has regularly done to others throughout my lifetime.
Aussie Sheila
@Gvg: Pity communists didn’t have better luck influencing the US. Maybe its social and political arrangements would be more egalitarian. For Christ sake, US red scares have been a laughing stock, when they haven’t resulted in people being killed in both the US and abroad for years.
The US has only been formally democratic since the VRA 1965. In my lifetime. Everyone knows it. The US deals with formal racism better than the UK and Australia, till recently, but the place is a general mad house, and a trump will be elected again, only next time he or she will be smarter, less obviously a criminal and more hard working. Heaven help us all.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: One outlier among Australians may be a guy named Tim Anderson I ran into while following news of the Iran protests on Twitter. A former (I think) professor of “Anti-Hegemonic Studies” at an Australian University, Anderson weighed into the Iran debate on the “this is a CIA regime-change op” side. A review of his account showed he was also on the Chomsky side regarding the war in Ukraine, as were others taking the pro-regime side in the Iranian debate.
Anderson, as well as some of these same people, also take a vehemently anti-Zionist view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I would distinguish this debate from the two others because there is a better foundation for this viewpoint than in the debates over Iran and Ukraine.
I mention it because I think that in Noam Chomsky’s case, his decades of advocating for the Palestinian cause may have generated enough animus towards the US as Israel’s sponsor to make his opposition to this country’s support of Ukraine reflexive.
Chomsky analyses the Ukraine conflict not as the ruthless and racist imperialist aggression that it is but rather as an example of a broader struggle between the Hegemonic power- the US and its instrument, NATO- and the anti-Hegemonic forces led by Russia. This is a discreditable intellectual trick, and I think some use it in bad faith because it advances a broader anti-US agenda.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid: Anderson has a murky background. He is as uninfluential in OZ as he could be. He had some cache with bits of the left here some thirty years ago, but at haven’t heard of him for years. I won’t repeat the actual incident here, I could be sued in my country. But look him up. Trouble. Big time.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: One example in the EV-auto area is how Volvo, now owned by a Chinese company, is selling a stand-alone brand of Chinese-made electric vehicles in the US. Numbers are low- ~7000 so far this year- but that will change when Volvo builds a plant in South Carolina to produce these cars.
The Washington Post had an article a couple weeks ago that described this and other efforts by Chineze car companies to market their products in the US.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: I saw that Anderson apparently is a former Professor of AntiHegemonic Studies, although he doesn’t look like he’s retirement age. Now I am curious and will look him up.
evodevo
@Aussie Sheila: Here in KY I observed this first hand when the Toyota plant came to our county in ’86…a LOT of the adults over 50 were NOT happy that the “Japs” company was locating here. 40 years after WWII and their hatred was still evident…most of them have passed on, and the 7000 jobs Toyota brought to the state assuaged feelings, but the older generation hadn’t forgotten.
Same with German hatred…it was more rampant in the early 20th century, around WWI…a professor of mine in the Sixties told the story that his family name had been Zimmerman before then, but they changed it to Carpenter because of the rampant anti-German sentiment then.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Yep. Given how full of sensors modern EVs are, expect Chinese produced EVs to be banned in the US soon, or be priced out of the market due to tariffs. Members of Congress have been agitating to ban Chinese branded subway cars & electric buses, even if they are assembled in the US.
We will have to see if Volve, Polestar, & Smart get a pass.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid: Yeah. Anti-hegemonic studies. It should be parodic. Unfortunately it’s not.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: I disagree with you on the proposition that “the Dem coalition is simply too big.” That is not that uncommon a view here but I do not share it. I actually think our coalition is the right size. Its ability to advance important legislation through Congress despite narrow majorities tends to support this. It is not so broad a coalition that it cannot find consensus on policy. I don’t think Manchin’s or Sinema’s obstructionism contradicts this view because I do not think they represent a party faction among voters or electeds.
It seems to me that a coalition is not too broad if it can fight tough elections cohesively and successfully. Here I will once again quote political scientist turned practitioner Rachel Bitecofer, who tweeted the weekend before the midterms:
Paul in KY
@YY_Sima Qian: Solzhenitsyn once compared the Gestapo and NKVD and said the Gestapo was actually just a bit better, as if they came to the firm conclusion that you were actually not guilty of anything, they would let you go. The NKVD operated on a quota system and really didn’t care if you were innocent or guilty.
Paul in KY
@AxelFoley: yeah, CaseyL will now be required to end every post with that.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid: Sure. The mid terms were a democratic and Democratic Party triumph. But that was last month. Trump is spent as a personal political force imo. But his movement isn’t. I don’t buy the ‘ ‘Gen Z’ will save us bs, because young people are hard to get to the polls, and I would hazard a guess not many of them live in lightly populated rural states and counties.
I still think the Dem coalition is too big, but there is nothing to be done about it now. The time for electoral reform has passed, thanks to feckless Dem Senators, and my calculation is at least a decade before they will have a real chance to try again. Pity. For the whole world.
Paul in KY
@Chetan Murthy: Old French joke about the German partition was: I love Germany so much, there should be 2 of them.
Tony G
@Aussie Sheila: Yes, I agree with you on that. I’ve been watching the U.S. “left” (and the U.S. right) since the era of the Vietnam War (which, luckily for my health, ended shortly before I was of draft age). I put the word “left” in quotes because, from my perspective, there is no real left political movement in the United States. (People like Bernie Sanders, AOC, etc., who I mostly support, would just be considered mildly left-of-center in almost any other country.). From my point of view, people who are viewed as being on the “left” in the U.S. — famous people like Chomsky and Hedges, and obscure people like the campus Marxists when I was in college many decades ago — are mostly performing for their fans — like a cover band playing the old hits. In a way it’s similar to the MAGA rallies, but with a much smaller audience. My perception, anyway.
Tony G
@Aussie Sheila: Yes, and the American right is now trying their best to turn back the clock to the time before the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That’s the “Again” in the “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: You and I will get more chances to chime in on the “Coaltion too big?” debate, as it is an occasional focus here on the more political threads.
In the matter of tbe Ukraine war, the coalition has been unified in support of the Biden administration’s policies with only a few inconsequential diisents from the leftward edge of the coalition.
Tony G
@Tony G: There seems to be an aspect of American culture that views the United States as the center of the universe. The world revolves around us. We’re either exceptionally great (for the right) or we’re exceptionally evil (for a handful of people on the “left”). Equally stupid points of view, in my opinion.
Tony G
@Aussie Sheila: Career prospects are exceptional for a kid with a major in Anti-hegemonic studies and a minor in Whiteness studies.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony G: Agree completely regarding the ‘performative’ nature of much of the US left, and its unfortunate refuge in academia. The language used to engage with people on difficult topics which are sometimes controversial is often simply second rate academic jargon, and very alienating for most people. Terrible political practice and utterly useless in mass organising work.
Tony G
@Aussie Sheila: Yeah, the academic jargon of so many American “leftists” is just comical! Here’s my half-baked “analysis”: At some point in the past half-century or so most American “leftists” have basically given up on trying to convince ordinary people to support their ideology. That’s because talking to people who don’t already agree with you is difficult, unpleasant work. It’s much easier (and a way to make some money to pay the bills) to hide yourself away in academia, and talk only to people who already agree with you. Academic people, in any field, love jargon, because it sets them apart from the uninitiated. (That’s true in all fields, actually. Listen to an I.T. nerd talking about an ASRA S0C4 abend leading to a storage violation.). Combine the two tendencies and you get clunky expressions like LatinX (which, asurprisingly is not actually one of the X-Men superheroes) and “people of color” (which is Double-plus-good) as opposed to “colored people” (which is a Bad phrase). The other day I read an article that referred to an acronym that I hadn’t seen before — QTBIPOC — which apparently means Queer Transgender Black Indigenous People Of Color. Normal people DO NOT TALK THIS WAY, and by insisting on this arcane jargon, “leftists” are choosing to perform for each other, rather than trying to talk to ordinary people. They should attain some common sense (or. if not, get off my lawn)!
NutmegAgain
@Aussie Sheila: And of course, the Germany of the 1940s was far more advanced in terms of things like residential infrastructure (indoor toilets! telephones!) and material quality of life indicators. So that population knew what it had lost when the Allies blew it to hell and gone. (Tangent: the Soviet soldiers who got to Germany in 1945 really couldn’t understand why the Germans had invaded them–despite war damage everything they saw seemed so much more advanced than at home, from food to well, toilets.) So much of non-urban center Russia today remains impoverished and materially lacking in basic creature comforts. I think only if the Muscovites and St Petersburg residents feel real destitution will there be meaningful impact.
Tony G
@NutmegAgain: Yup. Of course, Hitler’s plan (which he had described in “Mein Kampf”) had been to depopulate (through mass killing and forced population movement to the east) the entire European territory of Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the Soviet Union — and then to settle the depopulated areas with Germans. (The history of the United States apparently served as an inspiration.). So the poor state of Soviet technology didn’t matter to Hitler. He intended to depopulate and settle the Soviet lands.
Tony G
@Tony G: What’s interesting and appalling about the decade or so prior to the 1939 invasion of Poland is that anyone who had bothered to read “Mein Kampf” (in German or in translation) would have known exactly what Hitler had planned to do. But, for countries that were still traumatized by the First World War, it was easier to look the other way and not take the Nazis seriously. (As a strange, nerdy kid in high school, I read an English translation of “Mein Kampf”. Say what you will about Adolf Hitler, but he clearly laid out his mission statement and his high-level project plan.)
Chetan Murthy
@Paul in KY:
In E.A. Johnson’s _What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life In Nazi Germany_, he explains this. Everyday Germans knew that the vast machinery of the totalitarian state was not meant to be directed at them, and that even if they strayed a bit, they’d be let off with a warning. Undesirables, well, their mere existence was a crime, so there was nothing they could do to be spared. But for most Germans, the Gestapo was no danger at all. So sure, it looked like the Gestapo was better than the NKVD, which was meant to be rooting out class enemies — hence, members of the Russian population itself.
That Solzhenitsyn doesn’t realize this, is just another example of “Russiky Mir” — he can’t see that Russian Imperialism was practiced first and foremost on its own people (*all* its own people), where Germany’s was practiced first on a small subset of its own people (Jewish, Roma, a few others) and then on the rest of the peoples of Europe.
It’s not surprising that near the end, IIUC, Solzhenitsyn was a big Putin backer.
Tony G
@Chetan Murthy: Huh. I hadn’t realized that Solzhenitsyn supported Putin toward the end of his life. Sad. Solzhenitsyn was courageous as a dissenter against the Soviet Union, but overall he was a right wing figure (from an American perspective anyway).