Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

I was promised a recession.

Come on, man.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The willow is too close to the house.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

The revolution will be supervised.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 320: Soledar!

War for Ukraine Day 320: Soledar!

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(Image by NEIVANMADE)

A lot of the focus today was on Soledar, which is north and a little east of Bakhmut. Here’s the two most recent assessments regarding the situation there from NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer. Oldest first:

I’ll post his full sized imagery after President Zelenskyy’s address with links back to his tweets so you can get a better view without having to click through.

Here’s President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump (emphasis mine):

Good health to you, fellow Ukrainians!

Today is a new stage of our diplomatic marathon. Four more conversations with European leaders: President of the European Council, Prime Minister of Belgium, President of Estonia and Prime Minister of Ireland.

I informed them about the situation on the battlefield – about the difficult situation in the Donetsk region, about the constant Russian attacks and the fact that Russia does not count its people, does not spare the locals and does not stop before any criminal actions.

This can – and must! – be countered only by a new level of modern military equipment that Ukraine can receive from partners. I thank all the leaders who help us for understanding that now is the time for new powerful decisions, for new powerful support.

The free world has everything necessary to stop Russian aggression and bring the terrorist state to a historic defeat. And it is important not only for us. It is important for global democracy, for all those who value freedom. It is even more important now, when Russia is gathering forces for another escalation.

Together with our partners, we must do – and we are doing! – everything to make it clear to Russia’s masters that no escalation will help them. The defeat of the Russian aggression must remain unalterable, no matter who and what Russia tries to throw into the battle.

I am grateful to the President of the European Council for understanding how important it is to maintain the unwavering support of Ukraine. In this confrontation, in which Russia is trying to exhaust all of us – Ukrainians, Europeans, other partners – there must be clarity of signals. Signals that we will go all the way to the defeat of Russian terror. We will go together and with the preservation of stability in Ukraine – financial and social. And that is why financial support was one of the main topics of my conversation with Charles Michel, as well as weapons and further European integration of Ukraine.

I thank the Prime Minister of Belgium for supporting our diplomatic efforts, in particular our Peace Formula, all its fundamental elements: restoration of security, restoration of our territorial integrity, restoration of justice.

I am confident that the leadership of Belgium will help us achieve a fair peace. And I am thankful for the willingness to really bring peace closer by increasing the armed support for our state. The already provided Belgian defense assistance has significantly strengthened our state, and we agreed today that our teams would work on a new supply.

I am grateful to the President of Estonia and all Estonians for new decisions to strengthen our defense. We have also discussed with Mr. President our further steps in the European and Euro-Atlantic integration. I thank Estonia for a very strong representation of Ukraine’s interests in Europe. Even when someone doubts, Estonia finds arguments to support Ukraine and to increase sanction pressure on Russia.

I am grateful to the new Prime Minister of Ireland for the willingness to continue the course of Ireland’s comprehensive support for Ukraine. We have agreed on a powerful energy support. And I thanked Ireland for freezing Russian assets – we will work together to ensure that these funds are used for the restoration of Ukraine.

In general, since my visit to Washington, I have already held about thirty talks with leaders and representatives of partner states. And I literally feel every day how the world’s determination to overcome Russian aggression is growing.

I thank everyone who helps us defend Ukraine and freedom!

I thank everyone who fights for independence!

Today, I would like to pay special tribute to the warriors of the 46th separate airmobile brigade for their bravery and steadfastness in the defense of Soledar! Thank you, warriors!

I thank everyone who works to strengthen Ukraine!

And one more thing.

Based on the materials prepared by the Security Service of Ukraine and the State Migration Service of Ukraine, and in accordance with the Constitution of our state, I have decided to terminate the citizenship of four persons: Andriy Leonidovych Derkach, Taras Romanovych Kozak, Renat Raveliyovych Kuzmin and Viktor Volodymyrovych Medvedchuk.

If people’s deputies choose to serve not the people of Ukraine, but the murderers who came to Ukraine, our actions will be appropriate.

And these are not the last such decisions. The services are working.

Glory to Ukraine!

You’ll notice the call out to the Ukrainian forces fighting to hold Soledar. And I was really surprised to see those four terminations of citizenship. Not that they don’t deserve what they’ve gotten.

Here’s the latest British MOD assessment, which deals with the fighting in Soledar:

Here’s what the BBC was reporting earlier today:

Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group has claimed control over the town of Soledar in eastern Ukraine – but Kyiv says its soldiers are holding out.

Russia’s media carried a statement purported to be by the Wagner head, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who said Ukrainians were now encircled in the city centre.

Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar earlier said that “heavy fighting is continuing”.

The claims by both sides have not been independently verified.

In the reported statement late on Tuesday, Mr Prigozhin said: “Wagner units took control of the entire territory of Soledar. A cauldron has been formed in the centre of the city in which urban fighting is going on.”

The statement stressed that only Wagner fighters – who are not part of the Russian armed forces – were taking part “in the storming” of Soledar.

Meanwhile, Ms Maliar said a few hours before that “the enemy does not pay attention to the large losses of its personnel and continues to actively storm”.

“The approaches to our positions are simply strewn with the bodies of dead enemy fighters. Our fighters are defending bravely,” she added.

The fall of Soledar – a small salt-mining town in the Donetsk region – could help Russian troops to encircle the nearby strategic city of Bakhmut.

The UK said earlier on Tuesday that Russian troops and the mercenary Wagner Group were “likely” to now be in control of the town.

The strategic importance of Soledar is debated, but its capture would be significant for two reasons.

First, it would allow Russian forces to inch closer to the regional city of Bakhmut. Russia could use access to Soledar’s deep, city-like network of salt mine tunnels, dormant since April, to penetrate Ukrainian-controlled territory.

Secondly, invading forces would be able to give Ukraine a taste of its own medicine.

One thing that has helped Kyiv liberate territory has been its ability to target Russian supply lines.

Long-range missile strikes have often left thousands of invading troops unable to replenish personnel, ammunition, fuel, and rations, and stopped them freely moving military hardware.

The capturing of Soledar – which had a population of 10,000 before the war – would effectively cut Bakhmut off from a major supply line from nearby Sloviansk.

The UK said it believed Soledar was close to falling to Russia – but added that the Kremlin was “unlikely” to take Bakhmut immediately due to Ukraine’s “stable defence lines”.

A senior military official from the US Department of Defense said earlier on Monday there was a “good portion” of Soledar in Russian hands.

Fighting around Bakhmut has been going on for months, and the US official described the most recent exchanges as “savage”.

Despite the long and intense battle, Oleh Zhdanov – a highly respected military analyst in Ukraine – believes that neither Soledar nor Bakhmut are especially important from an operational point of view.

Mr Zhdanov said in an interview on Monday with the Ukrainian newspaper Gazeta that Russia “is trying to prove to the whole world that its army is capable of winning”.

More at the link!

Brig. Gen. Ryder, the Pentagon Press Secretary, gave a for attribution, on-camera press conference today. The transcript is at this link, but I want to highlight the Q&A regarding Soledar:

Q: And then operationally, can you give us an operational update on Soledar and Bakhmut? These reports there’s (a street fight ?) against Soledar. Do you see either one of these cities falling to the Russians any time soon at all?

GEN. RYDER: Yes, thanks, Howard.

Well, I don’t want to speculate. We definitely continue to see very intense fighting near Bakhmut and in the vicinity of Soledar. You know as you’ve seen it’s been a lot of back and forth, particularly around the Soledar area. We’ll continue to keep a close eye on it. But I don’t want to speculate at this point what the outcome may be.

Our focus is going to continue to be on supporting Ukraine and providing them with the security assistance they need to defend their country.

And here’s former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent full size imagery of the situations in Bakhmut and Soledar, as well as his most recent assessment of the situation in Kremenna:

 

Here’s some more recent reporting coming out of Soledar:

Right now, to use Long Dead Carl’s terminology, there’s a lot of fog and friction in the news coming out of Soledar. So we’ll keep watching to see whether subsequent reporting brings any clarity and clarification.

Bakhmut:

WARNING!! WARNING!! GRAPHIC IMAGERY AND CONTENT!! WARNING!! WARNING!!

The Ukrainians have sent some the Moskva some company!

I think that’s enough for tonight.

There are no new tweets at Patron’s official Twitter account, nor video at Patron’s official TikTok account, so we’ll have to focus on some of the other animals of Ukraine.

OH MY G-D!!!! A real life Fella in Bakhmut with the Georgian Legion!

That is one solid unit!

This one below looks just like my Rosie, the older of the two dog lanterns, looked as a puppy:

Though Rosie is floofier. We refer to her as the Floofarina.

You know what to do if you’re so inclined.

Open thread!

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    114Comments

    1. 1.

      YY_Sima Qian

      Thanks Adams always. Interesting point about the potential for the disused mine tunnels serving as infiltration routes. Hardly seems to worth the costs to seize Soledar, thought.

      Reply
    2. 2.

      Freemark

      Thank you again Adam for keeping us updated. Looking forward to the day Ukraine has enough Western armor to drive deep into Russian held territory away from Bakhmut and completely wipe out Wagner from behind. Hold them by the nose and kick them in the balls.

      Reply
    3. 3.

      Adam L Silverman

      @YY_Sima Qian: The only even remotely applicable use of gypsum in regard to combat is it can be used in some formulas for thermite. The whole thing is weird unless you remember that the real goal is for Prigozhin to take a Ukrainian town. Any town will do. So he can then use it as part of his vendetta against Shoigu and Gerasimov.

      Reply
    4. 4.

      Professor Bigfoot

      Those poor sorry fucks.

      From this video it looks like they had no patrolling, no sentries, and no kind of organized response to being attacked.

      No doubt an artifact of their not having a professional non-commissioned officer corps; but… damn.

      The Ukrainians HAVE to keep killing them as invaders, but Jesus what a waste

      [ed, to add referring to the Ukrainian assault on the Russian trench drone video.]

      Reply
    5. 5.

      TheMightyTrowel

      Salt mines, as you might expect, are amazing sites of organic preservation. Some of our richest archaeological contexts from European prehistory are the Hallstatt salt mines in the Austrian Alps – we have basketry, woven clothing, wooden tools and constructions, shoes, even the well preserved remains of a likely Iron Age person (recovered in the 18th century and buried at that time). I can’t help but wonder what traces of this conflict people 3000 years from now might find in those mines

       

      Edited to add: Oh and the real reason I meant to actually post – Australian media is covering Wagner Group activities in Africa. I don’t think there’s anything new here, but maybe a different perspective and good to see the coverage.

      Reply
    6. 6.

      Parfigliano

      Wagner Group are not Official Russian military are they?  My understanding is they are mercenaries.   Is that correct?

      If mercenaries arent they outside rules of war, Geneva…?  Do you have to take prisoners with them?  Can you not take them prisoner if you get my drift if you find them?

      Reply
    7. 7.

      Professor Bigfoot

      It may be my imagination, but it seems like the photos and videos we’re seeing from Ukrainian troops are more and more likely to show their faces; at least, as compared to six months ago.

      It gives me the feeling that they feel like they’re winning.

      May they kick all the ass necessary.

      Reply
    8. 8.

      Anonymous At Work

      Adam,

      To defend Bakhmut, do the UA need to pull forces from another front or is the problem that RU forces have more bodies than the UA can repel?  If the former, what’s Bakhmut’s worth against other strategic targets for UA to counter-attack?

      Reply
    10. 10.

      Adam L Silverman

      @Anonymous At Work: The Russians are just poring bodies in. I saw reporting in The Financial Times this AM that this is tying up around 10 brigades worth of Ukrainian forces, which is about 3,000 personnel. Why the Ukrainians feel they need to hold here, I’m not 100% sure. But for the time being they do.

      Reply
    14. 14.

      Anonymous At Work

      @Adam L Silverman: I imagine for a similar reason that RU want to take a town, any town.

      Strategically, trading Bakhmut’s ruins for Starbolisk would be a good trade, if it could happen.  But if RU is just using too many bodies to kill all at once, then I guess there isn’t an opening.

      I’m just worried that RU has decided that exterminating UA regardless of how many conscripts get killed is their new “strategy” and there’s not much to stop them, long-run.

      Reply
    16. 16.

      Omnes Omnibus

      @Parfigliano: My advice, and it is worth what you are paying for it, is that any combatants should be treated according to the Geneva Conventions.   A policy of not taking prisoners or of summarily executing some enemy troops will only backfire.  One wants enemy troops to want to surrender and not fight to the last bullet.  Prisoners of War can be tried for offenses committed before they were captured as long as the crime with with they are charged was on the  books before they were captured.

      Reply
    21. 21.

      pacem appellant

      @Adam L Silverman: I think that Russia continues to assault Bakhmut because it ties down Ukrainian forces that would otherwise be deployed near Svatove or Kreminna. I think that Ukraine continues to defend Bakhmut so ferociously because every shell spent on this worthless military target is one less fired on their offensive operations elsewhere.

      I do not know from a strategic point of view which side enjoys an advantage in this situation.

      Reply
    22. 22.

      Ruckus

      @Professor Bigfoot:

      My unofficial take is that Russia has lost big, they just don’t know it. And vlad has zero actual regards for the vast majority of his citizens so he’ll keep sending them to die till there are none left to send. He’s not going to give up until someone takes him out. And that, given the situation is seemingly unlikely, at least until he’s gotten the vast majority of his citizens killed. This concept that he has of his invincibility is nothing short of insane. He and his cohorts have been robbing the country blind and at some point all the money in Russia won’t be enough to keep him going. But given the situation, I just wonder how far off that is.

      Reply
    23. 23.

      Freemark

      @pacem appellant: I would say Ukraine. Defending from fortified positions means Russia has to use 3 to 10 times more of everything than Ukraine does to defend. Those resources would be much more effective/efficient if used blunting a Ukrainian offensive.

      Reply
    24. 24.

      Carlo Graziani

      It would be weird, and a regression to medieval-Renaissance warfare, if the battle were to move underground, into the warren of salt mines. Mining and counter-mining, in the Twenty-First Century.

      How far do those mine tunnels go?

      Reply
    27. 27.

      dmsilev

      Wagner, as I understand it, gets its soldiers from two sources: Russian prisons and true mercenaries from all over. I have to imagine that recruitment from the second group has fallen way off. It’s one thing to sign up to be a hired thug protecting strip-mining operations somewhere in Africa, quite another to sign up for a reenactment of the Battle of the Somme. How many prisoners does Russia have available to feed into the meat grinder?

      Reply
    28. 28.

      Gin & Tonic

      I want to take a moment to express my immeasurable gratitude to Cole for providing this space for discussion, to Adam for filling it with relevant content night after night after night (and for raising his voice on the rare occasions it becomes necessary) and to the commenters for bringing wide and deep knowledge and taking the issues seriously. Not every night brings out the best in everyone, but last night was one that, in my opinion, people can be proud of. My location in the EST zone means I fall out sooner than Chicago or San Francisco or Wuhan, but it means there’s often a lot of thought-provoking material to read with my morning coffee.

      I may not agree with all the views expressed – I think everyone knows my connection to this war is different than yours, and I do not pretend to be objective – but I am heartened that they are almost always expressed in good faith.

      This place is a treasure, really. People who, a year ago, probably would have had difficulty locating Donetsk on a map can now discuss, by name, the bridges that cross the Dnipro south of Zaporizhzhia. It’s quite something.

      Reply
    29. 29.

      Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

      @dmsilev:

      How many prisoners does Russia have available to feed into the meat grinder?

      Apparently, as of November 2022, around 325,000 prisoners were in Russian prisons. So, they have a long way to go

      Reply
    30. 30.

      Carlo Graziani

      And Christ, can I just say, If Chuck “Across All Axes Of Contact” Pfarrer is going to claim that he’s peddling “topo” maps and babble about terrain features such as “high ground”, could he tweak his goddamn map software to show some elevation contours, or at least some terrain feature shading? This is the most abysmal cartography, useless for understanding what’s going on.

      Reply
    32. 32.

      Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

      @Gin & Tonic:

      Hear, hear. Reading post authors like Adam and deeply knowledgeable commenters has me more informed than if I were reading/watching the MSM. Thank you for your perspective as someone so close to this terrible war

      Slava Ukraini!

      Reply
    33. 33.

      Geminid

      @dmsilev: A Washington Post article from about 10 days ago reported that 40,000 of Wagner Group’s 50,000 fighters in Ukraine were recruited from Russian prisons.

      I believe these were numbers given by US national security spokesman John Kirby.

      Reply
    34. 34.

      Jay

      @Carlo Graziani:

      a couple hundred kilometers in length, not point to point, but wandering as the miners followed the salt and gypsum. The tunnels and similar tunnels have been used since before WWI by Russia, then the Soviets, as ammo dumps and weapons stores.

      Reply
    35. 35.

      Omnes Omnibus

      @Gin & Tonic: ​
        On a related note, please know that we appreciate the local knowledge and insight they you provide to these discussions. Also, although we may have views that differ from yours on aspects of the war and the best way forward, I know we are hoping that the Ukrainians win as quickly as a possible. You are a valued member of this community and I hope that you know that you and yours are a part of the reason that we care so much about this war.

      (End of rare sincerity)

      Reply
    36. 36.

      cain

      I hope they evacuate the children from the town before it is over run by the RU army. Hell, evacuate everyone – with all those mass graves and torture – these soldiers don’t seem to have an ounce of morality in them.

      Reply
    37. 37.

      dmsilev

      @Geminid: Thanks.

      Presumably much of the remaining 10,000 men have the job of keeping the prisoners from just throwing away their weapons and surrendering to the nearest Ukrainian unit.

      Reply
    39. 39.

      Lyrebird

      @Gin & Tonic: Agreed on the thanks to Cole and to Adam.  I want to add my thanks to you.  I might not have known about the Dnipro river back before 2020, but it is thanks to you that I had heard more in depth about TFG’s treachery towards Ukraine.

      Getting clued in to the fact that the Chalupa sisters do not have a Mexican name was just icing on the cake.

      Mortals praying does not seem to stop wars, but please know that some jackal type mortals are sending good thoughts to your family and friends.

      Reply
    40. 40.

      Carlo Graziani

      @Jay: I see. Soledar being 15 km from Bakhmut, the implication is that some of those tunnels could easily undermine the city.

      I bet some Ukrainian mining engineers are on the way, with explosives.

      Reply
    41. 41.

      cain

      @Ruckus: If he gets to the point that there is no more army – he’s got a lot of problems. He would have killed off an entire generation. It’s going to be rough for the old and the infirm going forward.

      Putin will be humiliated that’s for sure – I’m not sure where he goes from there.

      Reply
    43. 43.

      Ruckus

      @dmsilev:

      How many prisoners does Russia have available to feed into the meat grinder?

      Likely enough to keep going for a while. OTOH it seems that vlad doesn’t really care where you came from or anything more than you aren’t upper class, IOW if you are male and between the ages of 18 and 65 you are good to go. He’s not worried if you know what you are doing or how to do it, only that you are semi-willing to be a target for the homeland. Or for him. The population of Russia was about 140 million when this started, I understand about 5 million men escaped from Russia, leaving likely around 30-50 million for targets. I just wonder how many of them would, in say a couple more months of this, would figure that taking out vlad might just be less risky. Of course I doubt they have near as many gun stores in Russia as we do….

      Reply
    44. 44.

      Freemark

      @Gin & Tonic: Back in 2003 I started learning some Russian as part of a plan to visit Kyiv (not having a way to learn Ukrainian at the time). I had just spent a week in Prague and a little time in Paris and I felt an affinity for Eastern Europe. I had originally planned to visit Moscow or St. Petersburg but in my research they seemed ‘colder’ in some way, and I don’t mean weather wise. Due to circumstances I never took that trip, which of course I now greatly regret. It is with profound sadness I saw the destruction wrought by Russia. If I feel this way it is impossible for me to imagine how you and others feel for whom the effects of this war are much more visceral. Just know you and all the people of and connected to Ukraine, who are profoundly affected by this war, have my deepest sympathy and empathy.

      The Rashists and Rashism must be defeated and destroyed to the extent they can no longer be a threat to Ukraine or any other sovereign country.

      Reply
    48. 48.

      Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

      @Ruckus:

      God, imagine sending a 65 year old to the front lines just to be a target. I would hope they’re just being given administrative jobs

      Reply
    49. 49.

      Ruckus

      @cain:

      See my comment at #43.

      His upper number limit may be smaller than I grant him there but I’d bet he really doesn’t give дерьмо (a shit) about anything but losing.

      Reply
    54. 54.

      Ruckus

      @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

      No. Thanks.

      OK think about this a different way, looking at how this war is going, think of sending anyone, because they seemed to long ago run out of men trained even in the very basics or at all, run out of working weapons for them, which is OK because they likely aren’t giving them a lot of ammo anyway. When I was in the military this was known as a complete fucking cluster fuck, except that what we referred as a cluster fuck was a lot higher up the scale than where Russia currently seems to be.

      Reply
    55. 55.

      Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

      @Omnes Omnibus:

      Wanted to say, thanks for your varied perspectives as well, from the military, the law, and politics. I especially liked your explanations when it’s come to the investigations into Trump and Judge Loose Cannon’s Kangaroo Court

      Reply
    57. 57.

      Gin & Tonic

      @Freemark: Kyiv is a modern, dynamic European city; it’s a shame you didn’t get a chance to visit. Thing is, even though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend going there now, it is dynamic and interesting even during the war, with cafes and clubs operating, new ones opening, people working around the power disruptions, life going on. The destruction you’ve seen is largely on the outskirts/suburbs – in Chicago terms, for instance, think of the Loop or the Miracle Mile being fine while Des Plaines is a smoking ruin.

      Other cities have it worse, of course

      ETA: Prior to last February, a facility with russian would have been useful in Kyiv, which was more russophone than ukrainophone. In the last year, a lot of people who were russian-speakers have switched over to Ukrainian.

      Reply
    58. 58.

      YY_Sima Qian

      @Adam L Silverman:

      The Russians are just poring bodies in. I saw reporting in The Financial Times this AM that this is tying up around 10 brigades worth of Ukrainian forces, which is about 3,000 personnel. Why the Ukrainians feel they need to hold here, I’m not 100% sure. But for the time being they do.

      I assume you mean 30K personnel in 10 brigades?

      Reply
    59. 59.

      Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

      @Ruckus:

      Oh definitely. This whole “war” is really just an insane genocide and Putin doesn’t care how many russian men he murders in the process either

      Reply
    60. 60.

      gene108

      Russia has turned this into a war of attrition. The only thing I can think of as Russia’s strategy is to outlast NATO/US interest in supporting Ukraine.

      Part of the reason Ukraine has done as well as it has is getting supplies from NATO nations, at little or no cost. I remember this past summer, Ukraine was running low on artillery shells and was desperate for NATO nations to resupply.

      If House Republicans are any indication, I think other countries must have right-wing pro-Russia parties and/or parties that favor isolationism. A lot of Russia’s success or failure rides on isolationism to take hold among NATO nations, before Putin is driven from power.

      The former Soviet and Eastern Bloc nations in NATO will continue to supply Ukraine, but they do not have the resources of Canada, USA, UK, and France.

      Reply
    61. 61.

      Aussie Sheila

      @Ruckus: I would like to take this opportunity to thank you and Omnes for your contributions to these posts. I know nothing about warfare itself, except that it is terrible for all involved.

      I am as near to being pacifist as one can be without actually being one, nevertheless next to no war, the shortest war is best.

      I wish swift victory to the Ukrainian people and justice for all those Russians who have committed war crimes.

      My father and grandfather were volunteers in the AIF in WW2.

      My grandfather was posted to North Queensland to work on repair of US vessels returning from engagements in the Pacific and Coral Seas. One day he asked  a US sailor why they never had any Japanese prisoners of war. The sailor laughed and made a throat cutting gesture.

      I learned this as a child. Who knows if the sailor was lying?
      My grandfather wasn’t lying. He had also been a volunteer in WW1.

      He despised war and the lying war mongers that caused it. In WW2 he and my father believed their country was at stake, which it was.

      Eliminationist rhetoric demeans the rhetorician as well as those who share the glee. Anger is righteous, murderous anger curdles.

      Reply
    63. 63.

      Jay

      @Another Scott:

      at one time, the mines were active under the Soviet armoury. By 2014, the Paraskoviyevka mine was a point of conflict between the UAF ATO and the Spetnaz/GRU/DPR, as it contained up to 5 million arms, dating back to the late 1800’s and into the 1990’s.

      The mines themselves are probably not valued for stored arms, as by now, anything useful should be gone. For infiltration or movement, well that would require a significant mapping operation or local knowledge, probably most knowledge holders are dead.

      I would suspect like the chalk of Ypre, the key advantage of the salt mines is many exits and entrances, and defence against shelling.

      Reply
    65. 65.

      trollhattan

      @Gin & Tonic: 👍

      Trying to roll up even a tiny fraction of on-line resources, much less filter reliable from speculative from disinformation from propaganda is hard, then throw in this viewer’s overarching ignorance and well, it’s not great for getting a big picture. So great to have Adam here as a daily resource, splendid remuneration notwithstanding. :-)

      In sum, war remains hell. Who charges into it willingly?

      Reply
    66. 66.

      Amir Khalid

      @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

      Hang on. I presume that in a salt mine, even a disused one, there is plenty of salt about. Is that a good environment for storing military vehicles and materiél? I seem to recall that there’s a lot of iron and steel in them things, and a salt-rich environment tends to promote corrosion.

      Also too, having your doodz hide out in mine shafts doesn’t sound like a great idea to me. If the other side bombs the mine entrances and collapses them, you’d have a lot of your guys trapped underground.

      Reply
    67. 67.

      Tony G

      @cain: Hitler took years and killed tens of millions before he finally blew his brains out.  I hope that history doesn’t repeat itself here.

      Reply
    70. 70.

      Carlo Graziani

      @Ruckus: One thing to bear in mind is that it is a historical fallacy to believe that unbearable things go on forever, just because they seem to have been going on forever. Impregnable, untouchable dictators and systems do suddenly topple, and when they do, people gaze upon the ramshackle gimcrack improvised theatre scenery that had supported them, and wonder, suddenly, why they ever thought of such cheesy props as mighty, unconquerable works.

      Putin is no more impregnable than his Soviet predecessors were. A decisive defeat in Ukraine could provide the sort of humiliation associated with political upheavals in Russia that could certainly sweep him away. He would not be likely to be replaced by a more palatable figure, but on the other hand, any replacement would be considerably weakened and politically crippled by comparison. So that would have to count as a win, in my view.

      Reply
    71. 71.

      Aussie Sheila

      @Tony G: It won’t. Putin doesn’t have to face an invasion and he never will, not by Ukraine certainly.

      Unfortunately, he can ‘fight’ to the ‘ last man and the last shilling’ as the idiots said about WW1.

      This is partly why the war is so terrible and the Ukrainian people and their land so vulnerable.

      Reply
    72. 72.

      Ruckus

      @Aussie Sheila:

      My father served in WWII and while I worked with him for a number of years before he retired and all that growing up stuff, he never uttered one word about his time in. Not even after I joined and was on a delayed enlistment, so kept working with him for about 4 months before I reported. I met a fair number of guys both during service and at the VA who had dads in WWII as well and the vast majority said their dads were like mine, not a word.

      BTW I have been a pacifist my entire life. I enlisted because being drafted gave me a very high chance of me being infantry, army or marines and quite possibly having to actually kill someone(s) or be killed myself. Joining the navy made that far less likely. I wasn’t ready to move to Canada, although I thought about it a lot, and the thought of being arrested and held in federal jail seemed less than favorable as well. Living, and in the end not having to kill anyone is about as good as it got.

      Reply
    74. 74.

      Aussie Sheila

      @Ruckus: Thank you for that. I understand. When my brother turned 18 we still had conscription for the Vietnam War.

      My parents prepared to send him overseas before his birthday. Fortunately a new government was elected before that happened, and conscription and withdrawal from that benighted murderous conflict was one of the first acts of the new government.

      Reply
    75. 75.

      Mallard Filmore

      @dmsilev: keeping the prisoners from just throwing away their weapons turning their weapons on the officers and surrendering to the nearest Ukrainian unit taking to the hills.

      I would put it this way.

      Reply
    77. 77.

      Sister Golden Bear

      @Amir Khalid: Unused salt mines in the States are used for a variety of different kinds of storage. Also when I visited the salt mine in Krakow, Poland things were well preserved—it’s famous for its sculptures made of salt. I assume as long as nothing gets wet, corrosion isn’t a problem.

      Reply
    80. 80.

      Ruckus

      @Carlo Graziani:

      I agree.

      He can’t fail fast enough for me. I have heard, unsubstantiated, that he has an incurable illness, maybe some sort of cancer possibly and it may actually be his desire to go out in style. He’s doing it in a rather shitty style but if rumors are correct he may be on his way. If so I wish him a shitty bon voyage.

      Reply
    81. 81.

      Ruckus

      @patrick II:

      I’d bet real money that vlad doesn’t give a shit about the future if he loses. And losing he is. How far will he go? He’s been used to pretty much getting his way, he’s supposed to be the wealthiest man in Russia, although he denies it, but I’d bet it’s true, stealing off the top seems to be a mandatory Russian path to upper management.

      Reply
    82. 82.

      Jay

      @Amir Khalid:

      salt and gypsum are not mined like you would think, The formations are ususualy very large and stable. Chambers often exceed 1500 yards in length, 600 feed wide and 300 feet high. Passages between chambers are often 60 feet wide and 40 feet tall.

      Both the salt and gypsum create an extremely dry environment, compared to the damp of a normal mine.

      Salt dust, when it encounters moisture would create a very corrosive film, but when dry, it can be easily cleaned off.

      given 3 instances of +600 casualties, caused by storing vehicles, ammo and warm bodies in for example, a “requisitioned” hotel and spa, in less that 2 weeks, and having HIMAR’s O’Clock happen, I would guess that the “strategic genius’s” of the RUAF have decided that having 300 feet of rock over your head is now a good idea.

      Reply
    84. 84.

      YY_Sima Qian

      A shocking realization for me throughout the course of following the war & the discussion here, is how much of the superficial information & impressions I had of Ukraine before 2022 were infused w/ the Soviet/Russian chauvinistic perspective, consciously or unconsciously absorbed even in western historiography.

      Looking back, it is incredible how the Soviet/Russian Russocentrism permeated (in the background) of the information space in both China & the US. Even as I followed the events of 2014, Ukrainian agency was not considered in a lot of the analyses in the US MSM (certainly not in Chinese state media or social media).

      As a personal example, when we researched places to visit in winter 2017 in the fUSSR, we spent a lot of time looking at sites & packages associated w/ Moscow, St. Petersburg & surrounding areas. We also considered the Baltic Countries. Ukraine was not even in our mental maps. The sub-conscious thought process at the time was that whatever Ukraine offered would be a “lesser” version of what we could find in Russia. Following the discussion surrounding the current war has been an education for me on the rich & unique Ukrainian history & heritage. Sadly, I often only learn about the wonderful sites in Ukraine after they lie in ruins. Of course Ukraine will rebuild after the war ends & rise again. Looking forward to visiting!

      Aside: We ended up going to Lake Baikal. At border control in Irkutsk, my wife (a Chinese passport holder) was waved through in seconds, while I (a US passport holder) was questioned for 20 min. We had a wonderful time & met some wonder people there, both ethnic Russians & Buryat Mongols. Thus, it was shocking, enraging, maddening & saddening to learn that the troops from that region committed the atrocities at Bucha.

      Further aside: I do hope Russia, whatever the ultimate form it ends up w/, find its way out of the dark & destructive (to others & to itself) hole. Such a great civilization w/ so much to offer to be cut off from large parts of the world. It is like w/ China during the autarky of the Mao years.

      Reply
    85. 85.

      OB-118

      @patrick II: I have read that approximately 10% of a country’s population can be absorbed into the military or lost before there is a major impact to that country’s economy. That percentage would vary from country to country, of course, but using it as a rough guide, Russia may be able to still function economically with 14 million in the military or lost (casualties, etc.). Russia apparently started with 1.4 million in the military, some reports say up to 5 million left after February 2022, and maybe 300,000 to 600,000 have been added to the military, so they may still have about 7 million to draw from. Sanctions complicate the situation.

      Reply
    89. 89.

      YY_Sima Qian

      Here is a long FT article discussing the recent shifts in China’s foreign & domestic policies as Xi has secured a 3rd term & the country has existed “Dynamic Zero COVDI”, including a section on the shifts in Chinese messaging (to European audiences) wrt Russia & the war in Ukraine:
      Xi Jinping’s plan to reset China’s economy and win back friends

      Here is a wonderful twitter thread from Alexander Gabuev at the Carnegie Endowment that expounds up on the context & nuances surrounding the discussion of Sino-Russian relations in the FT article, & how it relates to the war in Ukraine.

      Long story short: China is making conciliatory noises to the EU to give the impression of more distance to Putin, in order to ameliorate Sino-EU tensions (partly resulted from China’s rhetorical pro-Russian neutrality wrt the war in Ukraine) & forestall a US-EU alliance containing China’s rise. China has not changed the substance of its rhetorically pro-Russian neutrality position taken since the start of the current invasion of Ukraine (& is not likely to for the time being), not has the clear limitations to the “Friendship w/o Limits” wrt Russia, & there is clear distrust in the competence & sanity of Putin’s regime. China will do what it has always done, maximize its advantages however things turn out.

      Reply
    91. 91.

      Manyakitty

      @MomSense: all the time. Some stories are too much to bear. The ones about the kidnapped children getting ripped from their parents and adopted thousands of miles away into Russia send me right over the edge. UNSPEAKABLE.

      Reply
    93. 93.

      Chetan Murthy

      @Aussie Sheila:

      withdrawal from that benighted murderous conflict was one of the first acts of the new government.

      I once had a friend from Australia.  When drinking once, I mentioned that I thought Vietnam was a colossal mistake (and that we were in the wrong).  He tore me off a new one about how the view from Australia was different, how they were facing Communist invasion, they could see the Reds coming, and we Americans were fat and happy sitting behind our oceans, etc, etc, etc.  [Later, during TFG’s reign, he was planning on visiting SF, contacted me, and I of course was happy to meet up, but noted that I was implacably anti-TFG and while since he was Australian I expected he hadn’t voted for the man, I figured he still ought to know my position.  I never heard back from him again.  So I guess he supported TFG, too.]

      I wonder what the real state of public opinion was in Australia back then (and now) regarding the Vietnam War.  Do you have any thoughts on that?

      Reply
    94. 94.

      way2blue

      @Ruckus:

      My brother had an ‘unfortunate’ draft number so enlisted in the Coast Guard and spent four years on a buoy tender out of Kodiak.  My dad (who also served in WWII) told him not to go to Vietnam.  I think Walter Cronkite had convinced him that the Vietnam War was a mess.

      Reply
    97. 97.

      way2blue

      @Omnes Omnibus:

      Right.  The mine complex likely has all sorts of markers.  Just had me thinking of a colleague who used to go WAY down in South African diamond mines to examine earthquake faults at their hypocenter.  (My claustrophobia murmuring…  )

      Reply
    98. 98.

      Aussie Sheila

      @Chetan Murthy: Yes I do. Your friend is/was wrong. At the beginning of Australian troop deployment , 1964 if memory serves, there was opposition, including by the Opposition Party at the time.

      Opposition to the war and Australia’s involvement grew steadily.

      By 1970 at least, a majority of Australians wanted ‘out’ of the war. Conscription was bitterly opposed, including, and especially, by the prosperous middle class with sons of conscription age, even though of course there were ‘exemptions’ more easily accessed by such people, as is customary in these types of conflicts.

      The election of 1972 put an end to our involvement.
      Not one credible Australian politician, pundit or ordinary punter believes the war and our involvement in it was justified.

      No-one.

      Reply
    100. 100.

      Chetan Murthy

      @Aussie Sheila: Thank you.  It’s what I figured.  He showed his  ass about Trump, and that made me retroactively question his sanity on everything else.  It’s a pity: he was an extremely talented programmer from whom I learned a lot when I was just getting started “in the biz”.

      Reply
    101. 101.

      Aussie Sheila

      @Chetan Murthy: Ah, a techie.

      Good people to know when one has a technical snafu. Almost always useless when it comes to history and/or politics.

      BTW, the 1966 federal election saw the Opposition get a drubbing. By 1969 they nearly won the election. They finally did so in 1972.

      The opposition to the war spanned middle class and working class organisations. Much more so than in the US. Some Conservative unions supported it, but by and large organised working class opposition was stronger and more vocal here than in the US.

      The Australian experience of WW1 in particular still carried a lot of ‘folk’ and popular memory. It did in my family.

      Reply
    102. 102.

      Aussie Sheila

      @YY_Sima Qian: Very informative.

      But I think that ship has sailed. Xi may try to bend the message in two directions, but unfortunately I think that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has queered his pitch in Europe as well as more widely.

      The risks of old fashioned ‘wars of conquest’ has suddenly been brought to everyone’s attention, and not necessarily to Xi and his regime’s advantage.

      I hate the anti China sabre rattling of US elites, and there is no real appetite for it in Australia. But there is zero appetite here for seeing the world through Xi’s eyes to the detriment of free passage through the South China Sea and to the detriment of Australian citizens of Chinese origin who have been subject to regime bullying here.
      Absolutely none.

      Reply
    103. 103.

      YY_Sima Qian

      @Aussie Sheila: I don’t think Xi or the CCP leadership is expecting any country in the West to conform their views to Xi’s. They are hoping to make sure the EU (& Japan, South Korea, & Australia) does not align perfectly w/ the US, especially when it comes to economic & technological decoupling, & I think there is a chance China could partially succeed. At the end of the day, the EU/Japan/South Korea/Australia do perceive the China challenge differently than the consensus in DC, do calculate their interests differently, & have different ideas on how to confront the challenge. There is broad alignment w/ the US at the 30K ft level, wrt to criticizing/punishing Chinese human rights abuses, deterring aggression toward Taiwan, preventing the South China Sea from becoming a Chinese lake, competing against Chinese inroads into the Global South, competing against Chinese gains in industry & technology & protect the market shares of their firms, & reducing (but not necessarily eliminating) exposure to the China centered supplying, etc.

      However, as soon as one drops to lower altitudes fissures start to appear. For example, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea & Belgium have been decidedly less enthusiastic than the US in imposing the kind of export restrictions for semiconductors (beyond the most advanced technology nodes) that the latter has already imposed, & are even less enthusiastic about US proposals to expand such restrictions to biotechnology, pharmaceuticals & clean energy. Then there is the badly ruffled feathers in Brussels, Tokyo & Seoul about US industrial policy in the CHIPS & Inflation Reduction Acts. China is trying to keep it that way.

      Of course, China will need to conduct foreign policy more smartly & less truculently w/ western countries, dial down the “Wolf Warrior” prickliness & quick resort to economic coercion. On the one hand, the most famous “Wolf Warrior” of them all, former MFA Spokesman Zhao Lijian, has just been transferred to a much more obscure department, a lateral move widely seen as a de facto demotion. OTOH, the Chinese MFA just announced suspensions in issuing visas to South Korean & Japanese nationals, purportedly in retaliation against restrictions on arrivals from China due to COVID concerns. I have written in A.L.’s COVID-19 posts about how country specific screenings are pointlessly performative when there is so much domestic transmission, as both South Korea & Japan currently have. Nevertheless, it is strange & at the same time telling that China has not yet imposed similar retaliations against the US & EU countries that have implemented similar restrictions. I have seen South Korea authorities requiring arrivals from China to wear a yellow badge as they traverse the airport, though, which is creepy. Perhaps the Chinese MFA is reacting to that. Not sure what Japan has done. At the other extreme, Thailand has welcomed Chinese tourists w/ open arms, no proof of negative test or vaccination required upon arrival.

      Reply
    104. 104.

      suffragette city

      Hi Adam and Balloon Juice..

      Adam, thank you so much for all the instruction and commentary on the Ukraine crisis.

      I came across this person on the twitter machine and wonder if you are familiar with him at all. He is on twitter as Jim Stewartson. He just did a long post on his belief that Gen. Flynn is actually Q.  It makes as much sense as anything so I’m curious what your take or anyone else here thinks.

      Reply
    105. 105.

      Aussie Sheila

      @YY_Sima Qian:

      Yes I agree with you about the more nuanced approach of SE Asia, including Australia to the bloviating from US policy elites.

      As to Covid testing, it irritated me no end when it was announced that Chinese arrivals would be tested upon arrival in Australia and no-one else it would seem. Everybody coming here should be tested. Everybody.

      Our government has performed well across a number of important policy areas, but on Covid and its variants to date since their election, not so much. I took the recent announcement as a bit of truckling to anti-Chinese government sentiment in the Conservative political sphere and to the US.

      I didn’t  like picking on China, because I think everyone coming here should be tested.

      As to China’s armour propre, frankly its leadership needs to wake up and smell the coffee. The Australian Labor Party holds no intrinsic animus towards China. In fact quite the contrary, both historically and currently. Nor does the Australian electorate, taken as a whole. But no sovereign nation can or should, put up with bellicose bullying and public aggrievment when a big trading partner   threatens trading relations based on a one sided view of a fraught security environment.

      China is getting ahead of its skis in relation to both Australia, and in my opinion, the EU now as well.

      Reply
    106. 106.

      YY_Sima Qian

      @Aussie Sheila: I suspect the CCP leadership is realistic about what the “charm offensive” (I would not even put it in so strong a term) will achieve, but stabilizing/improving relations has to start from somewhere. Dialing down the rhetoric was how Albanese/Wong have signaled to Beijing a willingness to stabilize relations as the new government came to power.

      Meaningful improvement can only come if China removes the economic sanctions imposed on Australia, & convinces Australia/Canada/Japan to approve its application to join the CPTPP, which will involve making concessions that China has generally been loath to make, & subscribing to enforcement/verification mechanisms that China historically have been loath to agree to. Rhetoric from Chinese policymakers & policy advisors suggests that the application is sincere, & not just a trolling exercise.

      Similarly w/ the EU. A Comprehensive Agreement for Investment reached in Dec. 2020 has been shelved due to EU sanctions on Chinese officials for human rights abuses in Xinjiang, & Chinese retaliation against members of the European Parliament & European think tanks. China will have to climb down from the counter-sanctions, as well as economic coercion against Lithuania, before the CAI has a chance to move forward.

      Reply
    107. 107.

      Betty

      Dead thread, but a video from Dimitri this morning of Ukrainian soldiers shows them attacking Russians in Soledar . They claim to have things ynder control.

      Reply
    108. 108.

      Barry

      @patrick II: “How many non-prisoner men of working age can leave the workforce, through war or exodus, before the Russian economy takes a real hit?”

      The standard here is what it takes to substantially hit a wartime economy of a fascist state.

      Reply
    110. 110.

      Jinchi

      @suffragette city: He just did a long post on his belief that Gen. Flynn is actually Q.

      “Q” doesn’t exist. The entire thing is a fabrication by a BS artist and it’s been spun off by other BS artists to take on a life of it’s own, but “Q” is not a person whose character and biography you could fact-check.

      Conspiracy theories work much better when made out of whole cloth.

      Reply
    111. 111.

      Carlo Graziani

      @YY_Sima Qian: I must say that I question the ability of the CCP leadership to exhibit “realism”, at least in the broadest sense, concerning its ability to manage international perceptions of its diplomacy and actions.

      The party leadership has always appeared to suffer from some intellectual blockage that prevents it from even attempting to understand the West in its own terms.  In this, it is unlike the policy “blob” that you decry in DC, which certainly may be blinkered about policy ends, but does make every effort to understand the CPC (and, more broadly, Chinese political trends) in its own terms, so as to at least have some understanding of how its own ends can best be attained.

      The CPC, by contrast, seems utterly indifferent to any outlook other than its own, and repeatedly trips itself up on misunderstandings of Western policy goals (such as support of democracy) that it cannot take seriously because it cannot understand how anyone could take them seriously.  The absurdist spectacle of Xi lecturing EU officials to drop the false consciousness that was leading them into an erroneous alliance with the US against Russia last Spring is a perfect example of this sort of blind spot.

      There is no evidence that I can see that Xi, and his chosen coterie, are sufficiently capable of learning to break out of this epistemic bubble.  If anything, the opposite appears to be happening within the highest ranks of the CPC, as non-conforming voices are purged, and an intolerance for questioning imposes a monoculture policy consensus.

      In that consensus, China is an aggrieved, yet rising power in an international context within which a sclerotic, declining power (the US/the West) is straining every fiber to contain and prevent its rise.  Each territorial/economic expansionary action, whether in the South China Seas, on the Indian border, or with respect to Taiwan, is just on its own merits, requires no discussion or negotiation with any other power, and in fact any preexisting international framework regulating such matters are self-evidently part of the containment structure set up by the US to hold China back, and needs to be torn down post-haste.  All power is either economic or military, prevalently economic, but China needs to accumulate plenty of both. The correct use of that power is to advance China’s policy goals by a mixture of enticements and intimidation, promoting trade with powers that do not challenge China’s goals while stridently punishing those that do with rhetoric, threats, and sanctions—and attempting to reach extraterritorially through and to its citizens abroad.

      What the CPC has accomplished by the new assertive “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy under Xi is pretty much the opposite of the goals that it set out.  It created a Western consensus for some kind of containment, which certainly did not exist before, not even in the US.  It alarmed all of its own neighbors, driving  Japan to rearm, essentially evoking the Quad, and pretty much creating the conditions for US trade protectionism to finally find a justification in National Security.  A set of more flagrant strategic own-goals would be difficult to imagine.

      A cosmetic softening of some of the more egregious outbursts is not going to make much difference to the success of China’s diplomacy, in my opinion, because it amounts to a public relations cure to a policy disease.  The disease is a profound misapprehension of the world, and China’s place in it.  That misapprehension is not going away until the senior circles of the CPC learn to listen to people who tell them things they don’t want to hear, and adjust to a world that doesn’t work the way that they would like it to.

      Reply
    112. 112.

      Bill Arnold

      @Carlo Graziani:

      There is no evidence that I can see that Xi, and his chosen coterie, are sufficiently capable of learning to break out of this epistemic bubble.

      Interesting. Looking forward to YY_Sima Qian’s response.
      Epistemic bubbles are a weakness that can be exploited to slowly break collectives (at any scale) that rely on them for cohesion.

      Reply
    113. 113.

      Andrya

      @Carlo Graziani:  Another example of the same thing:  it was wildly self-defeating for the Chinese government to flagrantly break its promise re: special status of Hong Kong- and to crush democracy and the rule of law in HK.  The easiest way to achieve reunification with Taiwan, without a lot of blowback from military action, would have been to offer Taiwan the special status that was originally promised to HK.   Now, no one, least of all the Taiwanese, would believe such a commitment.  Clearly, President Xi did not understand that democracy, freedom, and the rule of law actually matter to people who currently have them.

      Reply
    114. 114.

      YY_Sima Qian

      @Carlo Graziani:

      @Andrya:

      Probably a death thread. Thanks for your comments, but I think you misunderstand the order of priorities for the CCP regime. The only priority for the regime is survival, in the broadest sense, everything else follows. To ensure regime survival, in the broadest sense, the Xi & the CCP regime has to accomplish the following (in no particular order):

      1. Prevent the emergence of alternative centers of power & credibility
      2. Prevent any internal dissent from ever gaining critical mass
      3. Assuage/address issues causing mass anxieties & discontent
      4. Improve the material conditions for the vast majority of the population
      5. Improve the experience that the vast majority of the population have from interfacing w/ the government bureaucracy (by improving quality of local governance, tentatively increasing transparency & predictability of the function of the local bureaucracy, stronger implementation of rule by law which is not to be confused w/ rule of law)
      6. Maintain domestic stability (such as by reducing domestic crime, & allowing means for people to vent their frustration on an ad hoc basis)
      7. Maintain nationalist credibility (which includes preventing separatism from gaining momentum, fulfill the century+ old nationalist dream of recovering & keeping Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau, standing up to & responding to perceived foreign slights, fulfill the 2 centuries old nationalist dream of reestablishing & maintaining China as a great power on the world stage)

      Like every other country, Chinese foreign policy primarily serve domestic priorities, so Chinese foreign policy goals are (in order)

      1. Maintain a peaceful international environment ((it used to be maintaining a benign environment) that is conducive to China’s domestic development (which means preventing Sino-US relations from deteriorating into a Cold War-like relationship, preventing consolidation of an anti-China coalition for containment, defeat US attempts at pressure & coercion which is where partnership w/ Russia comes in)
      2. Maximize as much as possible access to foreign markets, technology, & inputs (be they commodity materials or high tech components)
      3. Increase Chinese influence in the Global South
      4. Shift the rules based international order to be more friendly to Chinese interests & views (via active participation in the UN & gaining leadership in the myriad international agencies under its aegis, active participation in the World Bank/the IMF/the Asia Development Bank, establishing & strengthening alternative multilateral institutions such as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank/the New Development Bank/the BRICS grouping/the Shanghai Cooperation Organization), leverage its influence & sympathy in the Global South in doing so

      5 years ago, Xi had already clarified the priorities for Chinese foreign policy engagement to achieve positive outcomes – neighboring countries, the developing world, then the West. That is why China has spent so much effort in the past 5 – 10 years courting members of the ASEAN (despite the disputes in the South China Sea) via the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, Central Asia via the SCO, & Africa/LatAm/Pacific Islands via the Belt & Road Initiative.

      The goal of Chinese engagement w/ western countries, then & now, (contra the title of the FT article) is not to establish friendships, but to prevent the formation & consolidation of a containment coalition. That is a realistic goal because as of right now there is little appetite outside of the US for a coalition to contain China, economically or technologically. There is a shared anxiety concerning China’s rising power & influence, there is shared anxiety concerning the potential for PRC aggression against Taiwan, there is shared anxiety about the concentrated exposure to supply chains from & through China, & there is shared anxiety about the rapidly rising technological sophistication of Chinese industries jeopardizing the privileged positions of their own industries. There is some agreement on the general direction for policy changes, such as tightened export controls to China, tightened screening of inbound/outbound investment related to China, tightened screening of academic/technological partnerships w/ Chinese entities, challenging Chinese attempts to gain leadership positions at UN agencies & organizations, & provide alternatives to China’s BRI to the Global South. However, there is no agreement on, on what tools to use, how far to go in the applications of those tools, & most importantly, to what end. If you think otherwise, then you have been reading far too much US-centric reporting/analysis.

      In the linked talk, Evan Feigenbaum laid out the central tensions between the Biden Administration’s China policy & what anyone not name the US calculate to be in their interest. He thinks the US will resort to coercion to attempt to bring its allies & partners in line vis-a-vis China, via extraterritorial application of US laws & regulations, which I agree. We do not now how far US allies & partners are willing to bend under US coercion. BTW, Feigenbaum is the director of the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment. He has established a tremendous team of analysts & researchers at the program over the past few years, & is producing incredible work.

      Going back to the specific own goals about the “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy & crack down in Hong Kong, the CCP regime carried them out because they served domestic priorities, & arguable part of foreign policy priorities. “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy was abrasive to Western (& Indian) audiences, but they played extremely well domestically, & they played well in many part of the Global South (to the extend anyone paid attention). People in these parts are sick & tired of lecturing from the US & the West in general, & happy to see pushback. On the crack down in Hong Kong, the CCP regime felt the need to crush the challenge to its authority, since the protestors took an uncompromising positions of demanding the Hong Kong government backing down on all fronts. The regime was also alarmed by the increasing displays of separatism (flying the colonial era flag for Hong Kong, UK & US flags, etc.), challenges to the symbol of the PRC authority (burning the PRC national flag, defacing the national emblem, parodying the national anthem), & increasing violence (arson, vandalization of Mainland Chinese businesses, harassment & physical assault of Mainlanders on the streets, Mandarin speakers, & other Hong Kongers who disagreed w/ the protestors). These shifts in the nature of the protest movement also decided shifted Mainlander opinion of the protests, from apathy & slight sympathy to strong antipathy. Before the protests of 2019, no one in Hong Kong or the Mainland thought the CCP regime was in a hurry to impose a National Security Law (NSL) in Hong Kong, despite such a law being stipulated by the Hong Kong Basic Law (its mini-constitution) & having been stalled for 2 decades. Before 2019, there were attempts to squeeze Hong Kong, such as Phoenix TV turning into another CCP propaganda outlet, but anti-CCP tabloids still published freely, the government funded Radio of Hong Kong consistently took anti-government positions, Falun Gong protestors camped out daily at the tourist hot spots, Mainland Chinese dissidents still operated out of the territory, & the US/UK ran their intelligence operations targeting China out of their consulates there. Post-protests, Xi clearly saw an opportunity to correct the situation w/ the NSL, so that Hong Kong would no longer serve as a having for anit-CCP regime forces, & would no longer be in danger of falling into anarchy. Before 2019, Hong Kong might be termed a soft authoritarian system a la Singapore, after the imposition of NSL, Hong Kong now has a hard authoritarian system, whose edges are harder & sharper than even on the Mainland in certain aspects. (It is still softer in other respects: internet is still uncensored in Hong Kong, foreign social media platforms still unblocked, the South China Morning Post still routinely publish articles & commentaries critical of the CCP regime, the foreign press is not harassed as they are on the Mainland.)

      It’s not that Xi & the CCP regime are unaware of the cost in western opinion (popular & elite) of these actions, but positive Western opinion is very low the CCP regime’s priority list. It is not that Xi or the CCP regime is unaware of the impact that a harsh crack down in Hong Kong would have on popular opinions on Taiwan, or the electoral chances of the KMT there. Crushing the challenge to its authority in Hong Kong was a far higher priority. The “One Country Two System” formula was always bankrupt, toxic even to the KMT supporters, well before 2019. The CCP regime’s priority or Taiwan is deterring de jure independence in the short to medium term. That is accomplished via the threat of economic punishment & military action, the crack down in Hong Kong does not affect that deterrence one way or the other. The long term goal is eventual “reunification”/absorption, peacefully (as in non-kinetically) strongly preferred. That has not changed. Here are a few great analyses that pushes back on the alarmist rhetoric coming out of DC w/ respect to Taiwan:
      IS CHINA PLANNING TO ATTACK TAIWAN? A CAREFUL CONSIDERATION OF AVAILABLE EVIDENCE SAYS NO
      LISTEN TO XI JINPING ABOUT TAIWAN
      How We Would Know When China Is Preparing to Invade Taiwan
      The central dilemma for CCP regime is that, while it has a strong & credible strategy for deterring de jure independence for Taiwan, but it does not have a credible or executable strategy for peaceful (even if “peaceful” only means non-kinetic) “reunification” w/ Taiwan. However, that is a problem or the long term.

      The CCP regime certainly seeks to fan nationalist fervor at times to shore up its legitimacy, but it also has to carefully ride the nationalist current & tamp it down at other times, it is an interactive process. The nationalist currents far predate Xi, the PRC’s founding by the CCP, or even the fall of the Qing Empire. It is the raging water that can lift the boat that is the CCP regime, but also threatens to capsize it.

      Everything I wrote above applies to Xi’s predecessors, too. In fact there is great continuity from Deng, to Jiang, to Hu, to Xi in terms of their visions for the CCP’s centrality as it relates to the Chinese society, China’s ultimate position in the world, approach to Taiwan, & deep distrust of the motives of the US. Jean Christopher Mittlestaedt at Oxford has been posting excerpts from past Jiang & Hu speeches on Twitter to highlight the continuity to Xi. Deng’s advise for China “to hide its strengths & bide its time” was always contingent upon China being relatively weak, & not intended to last forever. Susan Shirk in her Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise documented the increasing assertiveness in Chinese foreign policy to post-GFC in 2008, in the middle of Hu era. Xi has been even more assertive because China has become more powerful. It can no longer “hide”, & few people in China at the leadership or popular level want to “hide” anymore.

      On to some specific comments:

      The party leadership has always appeared to suffer from some intellectual blockage that prevents it from even attempting to understand the West in its own terms.  In this, it is unlike the policy “blob” that you decry in DC, which certainly may be blinkered about policy ends, but does make every effort to understand the CPC (and, more broadly, Chinese political trends) in its own terms, so as to at least have some understanding of how its own ends can best be attained.

      I agree that Xi & the CCP regime have trouble understanding the West in its own terms. The greatest gap is actually engagement w/ civil society, & not just in the developed West but also in the Global South, likely because civil society is so weak China. I disagree that the US & much of the West is capable or inclined to understand stand the CCP regime or China on their own terms. There is excellent scholarship in academia & parts of the think tank world that do, although understanding China’s political economy on its own terms is sorely lacking, but there is little evidence that their outstanding output has penetrated the “Blob”, be it the Administration or Congressional staff. So, you have Biden’s SecState, Ambassador to the UN & NatSec Advisor all continuing to use decades old talking points (dating to the GWB administration) about China’s engagement w/ the Global South being “debt trap diplomacy” that delivers “shoddy infrastructure” & uses “Chinese labor”, even though such talking points are demonstrably false & have been for decades, & have had zero purchase in the Global South for just as long.

      For years US/Europe based scholars & think tankers have been warning that the US faces a huge disconnect between its threat perception of China & its planned responses versus that of virtually everyone else’s, & those voices have been getting louder over the past year, to no noticeable effect. The Biden administration did hold Summits w/ the African & Pacific Island nations, that exceeded the low expectations going in. It has encouragingly started to center the agency & the needs of the African & Pacific Island nations, as opposed to situating them in the context of the great power competition w/ China. We will have to see if the administration (& Congress) can maintain the discipline & focus here going forward.

      The CPC, by contrast, seems utterly indifferent to any outlook other than its own, and repeatedly trips itself up on misunderstandings of Western policy goals (such as support of democracy) that it cannot take seriously because it cannot understand how anyone could take them seriously.

      Honesty, I don’t think anyone outside of the West thinks “support of democracy” is a serious Western policy goal.

      In that consensus, China is an aggrieved, yet rising power in an international context within which a sclerotic, declining power (the US/the West) is straining every fiber to contain and prevent its rise.  Each territorial/economic expansionary action, whether in the South China Seas, on the Indian border, or with respect to Taiwan, is just on its own merits, requires no discussion or negotiation with any other power, and in fact any preexisting international framework regulating such matters are self-evidently part of the containment structure set up by the US to hold China back, and needs to be torn down post-haste.

      China has in fact negotiated ends to land border disputes w/ Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar & Vietnam, mostly in the late 90s to early aughts, including relinquishing claims to territories it does not control. It is an open secret in China that the standing offer to India for resolving the land dispute is for China to relinquish claims to Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern Himalayas (that India controls) & for India to relinquish claims to Aksai Chin in the western Himalayas (that China controls). However, that exchange is politically infeasible in India due to the humiliating defeat it suffered in ’62. There is Stone Age & Iron Age skirmishes along the disputed borders because the Lines of Actual Control are not demarcated, & India & China have conflicting ideas as to where the LACs lie. So Chinese troops routinely patrol to its definition of LAC, which is inside of the Indian definition of the LAC, & vice versa. Right now, the local military commands from the two sides are engaged in an interminable series of meetings to disengage from the disputed borders sector by sector. It has been accomplished in the sector that saw the skirmishes in Apr. 2020 which resulted in loss of life on both sides, but many other sectors remain pending. It is a contest of wills & staminas, & both sides will press for advantage over the other to force concessions, & neither are above instigating incidents to exert such pressure. It is stupid & meaningless game to play in the grand scheme of things, but it is the game the two sides insist on play for the past few decades.

      China has indeed put itself into a corner in terms of domestic politics wrt to the South China Sea & the Spratley Islands, by putting the Nine Dashed Line & the dots that represents the “islands” onto the Chinese passport, & by encouraging the rhetoric of “land bequeathed by our ancestors, not one speck less”. OTOH, while the Chinese Navy, Coast Guard & Maritime Militia have been aggressive in interfering w/ fishing & oil/gas exploration activities by the other claimants, it has not tried to push the other claimants off the rock features that they have occupied. The vast majority of features in the Spratley are still occupied by Vietnam & the Philippines. The claimants have refrained from occupying any hitherto unoccupied features, which would be deemed highly escalatory by all the others. China & the rival claimants (excluding Taiwan/ROC) have been working on a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea for several years, which is intended minimize escalatory activities & reduce the temperatures. For China, such a code of conduct will lock in place the existing tactical & operational advantages that the island building have achieved. For other claimants, it will prevent an island building contest that they won’t win against China, & place some constraint on Chinese behavior. It was hoped that it would be concluded in 2022, but is likely to be done in 2023, the Philippines appears to be the last claimant that still has concerns w/ the current text. We shall see. China prefers to negotiate the Spratley dispute bilaterally, where it will have overwhelming advantage. The other claimants understandably have no intention to oblige. So we have a stalemate.

      As for US containment effort against China. Well before the Oct. semiconductor restrictions, every US/EU based China scholar I follow had always dismissed of the fears from their Chinese counterparts about the US trying to keep China down as baseless paranoia. After the semiconductor restrictions, a common reaction was that Biden has just proven their Chinese counterparts right after all.

      What the CPC has accomplished by the new assertive “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy under Xi is pretty much the opposite of the goals that it set out.  It created a Western consensus for some kind of containment, which certainly did not exist before, not even in the US.  It alarmed all of its own neighbors, driving  Japan to rearm, essentially evoking the Quad, and pretty much creating the conditions for US trade protectionism to finally find a justification in National Security.  A set of more flagrant strategic own-goals would be difficult to imagine.

      I think you are ignoring the fact that this has been an interactive process, & overestimating the level of consensus outside of the US. Both sides have contributed to the collapse in relations, in their actions & reactions, & neither side wants to acknowledge their own responsibility. Some of the forces driving toward rivalry are structural.

      Japan has always wanted to rearm, especially the revanchist right wing that is currently hugging the US the tightest, the same revanchist right wing that was chafing the hardest against the “yoke” of the US alliance in the 80s when Japan was ascendant. Japan does indeed fear a China willing to use military force, & fear a Chinese attack on Taiwan. OTOH, China is also a convenient sheen for its own normalization effort, to override domestic opposition to rearming as well as any potential concerns that the US might have w/ a more independent Japan. This dynamic becomes clearer when you read scholars based in East Asia, as opposed to think tank output from DC, or pronouncements by Japanese officials to their US counterparts. That does not mean Japan is enthusiastic about following the US on tech restrictions on China (at least to the same extent), actions that would be detrimental to its economic interests.

      Now, no one, least of all the Taiwanese, would believe such a commitment.  Clearly, President Xi did not understand that democracy, freedom, and the rule of law actually matter to people who currently have them.

      No he does not. But neither did Deng, Jiang or Hu.

      I do find this obsessive focus on the impact of the personality of Xi himself as evidence of an inability to understand the CCP regime on its own terms, a failure to understand Chinese history, or appreciate the structural forces driving rivalry.

      Over the past 3 years we have seen a number of outlandish notions about Xi’s plans from Western MSM & analysts, including by China scholars that I normally respect (& still do respect):

      1. The nationwide lockdowns in Spring 2020 was a power play by Xi to institute complete control over the population – the lockdowns ended when the domestic outbreaks were eliminated
      2. The true intention of the health code system & the associated movement restrictions was control of people & not control of transmission – they have now all been dismantled as China reopened
      3. China closing borders & restricting the issuing of new passport is evidence that Xi intends to return China to Mao era autarky – the borders are now open & process of obtaining new passports has returned to pre-pandemic norms (there is a long line, understandably)
      4. Xi will be unwilling to climb down from poor economic decisions such as cracking down on internet platforms & real estate that damaged the Chinese economy – internet platforms & AI companies are now constrained by published regulations rather than targeted assault; the real estate bubble needed to be deflated, but the Chinese government is implementing policies to provide some support, not to re-inflate the bubble but to form a floor & increase market activity
      5. Hu Jintao getting hauled off at the end of the 20th Party Congress means he was publicly purged, Xi flexing his Mafia muscle as a signal to the rest of the CCP leadership – never mind that Hu was shown on national TV that evening submitting his votes, he was prominently placed next to Xi at the memorial service for Jiang Zemin, & a photo showing Xi, Hu & Jiang was placed in the background during Xi’s New Year address (just in case anyone missed their significance, Xinhua New Service published a run down detailing what each photo behind Xi meant, including the one I alluded to)

      That is a staggering level of mistaken analysis, but I have not seen much introspection from MSM or the China watching community on how they could have gotten the analyses so wrong, or why they thought the original analyses were plausible to begin w/. Yes, the opacity of the CCP regime pose severe challenges, but that does not excuse substituting evidence free speculation for informed analysis.

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