1. It is entirely obvious that Israel has an outsized influence on the United States. In fact, Biden could end Israel's.war with a single phone call, as Reagan did in 1982. He does not, because of that Israeli influence.
2. It is also entirely obvious that Ukraine is a puppet regime, with less authority than the Biden family dogs. The war continues and will only continue to escalate, because the West prefers escalation to conceding defeat. Aka, the "Martingale" betting strategy. With each escalation, the cost of conceding defeat increases.
This abuse of The Sunk Cost Fallacy is entirely intentional.
“All we can do is fear the worst and hope for the best.” This is itself a recipe for citizens’ acquiescence in genocide, and quite possibly, WWIII. That might be fine with you, but I would suggest it’s not fine with quite a few of us.
Regardless, of whether the US stopping arms shipments to Israel does not fully address all issues, and would leave unresolved issues, and even lead to additional problems, stopping the mass slaughter is a necessary first step.
I wish it was acceptable for governments to "do nothing" rather then expecting them to "do something" even when there is nothing useful to do and/or nobody know what actually they are trying to accomplish and no clue on how to accomplish it.
The level of complexity involved in, well, pretty much anything is staggering and beyond human comprehension. Nobody really understands what is going on, there are no right answers, and the difference between humanitarian disaster and glorious break through is more a matter of dumb luck then any sort of skill or deep level knowledge.
"Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times". Guess where we are now?
Not original I know, but I tend to think in over simplifications (the real world is messy) and allowing for the fact that on many occassions we have had "hard women" too (and maybe in the future some hard folk of the other 642 genders that are supposed to exist), I do think this is at the root of our current problems. The author notes that too many "trade in moral indignation" and that is another cause of our problems - decisions made using EQ not IQ - IMHO - and at the danger of over using acronyms.
In a fairly successful business career (now thankfully finished) I was engaged in much business turn-around and also corporate undertaking type work - leading and advising various participants who based decisons on what might be a pleasant and preferred outcome instead of focussing on hard facts like an absence of positive cash flow. Now I've had many psychological profiles done and it is fair to say that I am heavily biased towards the task orientation end of the spectrum - focusing on outcomes and results, and methods to get there. Keeping people happy not so much.
I only mention this because to be a success in national leadership these days such an approach would be so counter-productive as to ensure that the proponent would never attract enough votes to take office. Of course you could be a complete sociapath and pretend, and indeed to be a politician at all I suspect that is an entry level requirement. Nevertheless I judge we are now led by "weak" [men] who have created hard times. They seem unable to recognise that they are the cause of the problem and I despair as I watch them flailing about creating yet more chaos.
In a world which is complex, messy and the information base keeps chaning you might think over-simplification is not a good thing. On the contrary, it can be the sole guiding light in the dark, a nuanced focus backed by a modicum of brains and training will generally be better than indecision and an attempt to keep everyone happy and cannot deal with objective reality. However in my view, we are not blessed with leaders who think that way - at least in the West. So we face hard times and let us hope these throw up some hard [men] as opposed to the soft clowns we have dominating our political and media landscape.
Yeah, we get it. “Few people in New York were interested”. (What that has to do with anything is not clear.) “The British were confused” - as always! “western states became lost in internal complexities”
A picture is drawn of how the ‘west’ is merely a troubled and incompetent but well-meaning actor, doing its poor best in a complicated world, but no malice or ill-intent can be imputed.
This is nonsense.
It is nonsense because there are thousands of documents proving the both the UK and US have interfered, effectively, and with deliberate and pre-planned ill-intent in a very large number of countries, since their respective empires were conceived, including in the war in Bosnia. It would be superfluous to list them all - such lists can be readily accessed - but this is just a mind-bogglingly stupendous piece of fabricated propaganda.
I'd be astonished if anyone who read my essay came away with the impression that western powers in 1991-92 were well-meaning. They were impelled for the most part by domestic political considerations and jealousies and rivalries as I explained. There is a mass of conspiracy literature about this era of course. Much is garbage and none, so far as I know, is written by people who were there, as I was.
Your explanation that "domestic political considerations and jealousies and rivalries" were the main motivation for 'western' actions does not hold water. Sure, there may have been such as you describe, and because you, as you say were 'there' they may have taken up most of your attention. But, for example, there is documentation dating back 80 years, that one of the most important drivers for US actions were the writings of various 'think-tanks' and hard-line anti-communist right wingers. The personnel employed by these 'think tanks' are continually rotating between government and 'think-tank' giving a guaranteed continuity of aim. E.g. , the use of the Ukraine as a weapon to be used against Russia can be traced, as I said right back to 1945, when the CIA placed saboteurs inside the Ukraine and Russia via Latvia and Poland, and continued up to and beyond the US instigated coup, shelling in Donbas and subsequent war. This example was not a product of 'domestic jealousies and rivalries' but a long-sustained, pre-planned campaign.
(In a similar vein, but more diffuse vein, the US government 'war' against the left, (beginning in the 19th century, and continuing right up to the post-war 'witch-hunts' overseen by Hoover shows all the signs of a long-sustained political movement, which was totally unaffected by those 'domestic jealousies and rivalries' which you describe).
The above cannot be brushed off as a 'conspiracy theory' - unless you accept that the US at any rate was involved in a conspiracy which it comprehensively documented itself.
What I seem to be saying is that while your explanation of 'domestic considerations' may be sufficient for some small-scale purposes, it is not sufficient for a comprehensive and broader explanation of 'western' countries motivations.
Well, if you allowed me, I think that could be useful to make a division in two aspects of sociology or politics.
Exist what we can call "macro" issues on sociological, like the view of States that play between them for big economic issues, for security, for transport and commerce, for religion or for the use of types of energy...
There is also exist what we can call a "micro" sociological view to that. In my view, Aurelien always tend to point to that "micro" aspects, talking us about the internal behaviour of the elits, or of the media, like he does in this article.
Both optics look the same: societies, institutions and individual people in relation. But they look it at a different level. Depending on the issue and the detail or complexity we can use different models.
You're probably the first person who's ever managed to help me make some sense of this time. 1990s were a catastrophe in Russia and there is indeed no shortage of conspiracy theories. But even as kid witnessing a collapsed country and experiencing the social disorder and anomia firsthand I wasn't entirely convinced that there are some mystical figures posessing infinite wisdom across the border and beyond. Needless to say I was (and to an extent still is) very lonely in my skepticism. Thank you for your alleviating essay.
Susan Strange: States and markets, is also helpful, it is about the world as a game of negotiations, where the result is due to the resources the negotiators can mobilize.
Dan Davies: The unaccountability machine, is another. It is about how routines in the end get so messed up that nobody even know how they work. In normal times there are security vaults (so to say) but they have now been thrown away. Davies blame economists that have persuaded people to let the routines (or "the market" as it is called) take care of themselves. But I agree with Aurelien that "people" (in this case "the party") should have known better.
Of course the most system-thinking book I know is Immanuel Wallerstein: Historical capitalism. About what is constant, and what is changing, and how, and why. It all hangs together very neatly, even if I think he misses some points.
In that case you may be interested in why it is so dangerous for a country not to have the most up-to-date industry? There are two excellent books about that: Erik Reinert: How rich countries got rich and why poor countries stay poor, and Ha-Joon Chang: Kicking away the ladder. At least the foirst one is also very funny.
I believe that was one reason why the Soviet empire fell. It got outdated. A friend of mine gained his living smuggling computer equipment to the SU – selling computers there was largely forbidden both by the US and by the SU whose bureaucrats thought that things would get out of their control if it was permitted.
When bureaucracy loses contact with the reality the fall is inevitable. In Soviet case this bureaucracy was the product of negative selection. It accelerated the detachment and the following catastrophe.
Your ludicrous description of the dissolution of Yugoslavia perfectly explains why the western diplomacy is broken. This idea that it just happened on it's own for no good reason is so ridiculous that it is amazing, for me at least, that someone actually believes it. Here a a few clues:
Before the war IMF and the USA cuts of funding to all parties that are not "democratic". Who gets the money? The far right and the separatist. As soon as they get into power, WWII Nazis that were living in exile start showing up in Croatia and Germany starts shipping guns. And no, they did not push for the recognition of Croatia because they are Catholics, they pushed for that because they were their former WWII allies. Similar scenario goes on in Bosnia&Hercegovina. There the European diplomats actually pushed for a settlement before the war started and all sides signed it. Then the USA ambassador shows up at Izetbegović's residence and says: You don't have to accept this, you can get more and we will back you. Izetbegović withdrew his signature and plunged the country into war. And it continues with plenty of similar moves. And no, the war did not end because all sides were tired. The muslim side banked on pulling in the USA (the same thing Ukraine and Israel are trying to do today) but mostly failed. They were loosing badly and their total defeat was prevented by USA intervention and bombing of Serbs.
In summary: you have extremely shallow view about that conflict and I'm seriously questioning should I even continue to read your analysis about European politics.
You show Aurelien's point very well – how outsiders can only get it even more messed up. But at least Branko Milanovic finds the roots of the mess in internal Yugoslav politics – the governments of the republics always blaming the other republics for their shortcomings. The blaming got worse and worse, and more and more venomous, and in the end Serbs, Croats, etc were quite convinced that "the others" would come and kill them.
Of course everything was even more bitter because of the Volcker shock. But that was not directed specifically to Yugoslavia but to all debtor nations.
I find it strange that people can find comfort in blaming outsiders for their mess. Blaming outsiders is actually equal to disclaim their own agency, which should be even more painful. But, of course, if one blame others one doesn't have to re-examine anything. Which may seem easy – even if it is certainly not productive.
I think you believe too much in the myth Aurelien tries to explode here and in the essay Little people with agency. Foreign forces can do nothing if there are no agents - and fairly powerful agents at that - on the ground to support.
Perhaps it is my inner cynic, but I see world 'leaders' as mostly bumbling along, crippled in understanding because of a core incorrect ideology; ie, they don't think right. The Americans with their notion of global dominance and American Exceptionalism are the worst. The Chinese with their millennia of Taoism and Buddhism are the best. In all cases, seeking to control or not to control the uncontrollable is the fault.
"First, do no harm" would seem to be better than the emulation of headless chickens currently favoured by our misleadership classes in their feverish need "to be seen to be doing something" ...
I spent most of my career in business, mainly working with large corporations. We like to believe in that world that all problems can be solved too and that all we need is a plan and a project to do so!! But the older I get the more I realise that many problems are either unsolvable or eventually solve themselves.
But the urge to “Do Something” is just so hard to resist and so tricky to argue against in a meeting……
At the risk of oversimplification, which itself may be an attempt to gain illusory control, the premise of the essay, which I admire for its breadth of knowledge, eloquence, and elegance, may assert a false dichotomy from the get-go. The title of the essay is "Out of Control," which implies that if things—history, politics, futures and procurement contracts—aren't under control they're out of it, that those with some power to make things happen are, without absolute power, powerless in the face of events, dear boy, events. (I did post the oversimplification alert.) But between all and nothing, between white and black, exist shades of influence, and it is here that many take issue with quietist, older-but-wiser resignation before the clamorous minutiae of the particular. So while it would not put an end to strife and inaugurate a thousand years of peace and prosperity to stop arms shipments to Israel and Ukraine, it would be, from some perspective of constructive influence, a start. Arguably things seem on the edge of catastrophe and madness because of a refusal, call it cowardly or pragmatic, to do what can be done for peace rather than fantasies of dominance. If we want to throw around a word like "appeasement," it would be better understood in terms of interests and lobbies that seek endless escalation toward illusions without futures or, still worse, futures without illusions, because there will be no one left to have them. It's not that the influential are rationally refusing to do anything for fear of making matters worse so much as that their apparent assumptions and subsequent actions originate from not only misguided but corrupt motives and goals. I understand and don’t contest the emphasis on insolubility, on an entangled, shifting multiplicity of conflicting agendas. It's sadly, infuriatingly accurate, and maybe John Cage was right when he wrote, in another title, "How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)." However it’s perhaps excusable, if on a comic note, to pretend that hope can occasionally, partially triumph over experience, and something different can be done.
All well and good, but what are the prospects, given what's on offer by way of elite human resources? To that I find myself staring into space, ready to concede that Aurelien's title may be more apropos than I'd like concede, with a subtitle that couldn't be simpler or a better summation of the current state of affairs in affairs of state. Little things go on as before, under control in windowless conference rooms, while outside a confused world absentmindedly smokes and flicks hot ashes amid a gathering pool of gasoline. So I’ll join Aurelien in hoping for the better, if not the best. Experience must have some say.
Yes, though I did say, I think, that nations try and sometimes succeed, exercise a measure of control, at least temporarily. As you say it's not black and white.
Firstly, I find your name to be extremely ironic given the subject matter of the essay itself. Aurelian was the Roman Emperor who was an extreme micromanager and essentially reordered and reconstituted the fractured Roman Empire in a time of major crisis. His example itself seems to rebut much of the content of this essay.
You seem to trade in relativism and nihilism in equal parts while also believing in a materialist view of history. You dismiss "conspiracy theory" out of hand without examining or acknowledging any of the merits or possible truthfulness regarding specific theories. The historical examples you offer do not support the claims that you are making and the assumptions or evidence that you rely upon are not entirely factual. The concept of agency and power do not seem to factor into your analysis of past or present events.
I don't find much of this Aurelian micromanagement in the article in wikipedia, perhaps there in other places. He seems to have tried to strengthen Roman religion but it failed a few decades later. He seems to have tried to strengthen the economy by a conage reform, but it didn't help. Are there other examples?
Oh, a second disagreement! You: »… Hitler would not have been “stopped” because the nature of the Nazi regime itself demanded constant war«. I would add: »they«, that is: Britain and France did not have the military wherewithal to do that. But in addition, and more importantly, they wanted to guide Hitler against their arch-enemy, the Soviet Union. See: Munich. Only after the German six-weeks-triumph over France (not to mention the Scandinavians who sank more to Nazi Germany than they were conquered, the British and the U.S. realized that a continental hegemon was rising and they decided to prevent that at all cost and really (not in a »phony« manner) go to war.
No, both Britain and France began rearmament in 1936, specifically against Germany. There were certainly those who believed that the Soviet Union was the greater enemy, and they did have some influence in France, but none of it was decisive.
You: » …. much of the western decision-making class was still in a state of shock anyway«. From what I know, they were much more »in a state of triumph anyway«. As George Bish, the elder, exclaimed in his 1992 (?) State of the Union speech: »Thank God, we won the Cold War«. And from here all the »problems« you enumerated (and which I remember quite well) were dealt with: We are the almighty, »we are the exceptional nation, stand higher, see further …« … and, therefore, will finish off the evil … whoever. Foremost Russia, of course. And: Yugoslavia where nationalist activists started, then helped by do-gooders of all sorts, then our foreign minister Genscher, finally Nato. (By the way: I remember all that, but at the time did not think much about it. Not at all, in fact, but shared the general mood of triumphant victory and »end of history«. I lived in West-Berlin then. Knowing what I do now, more than a generation thereafter, I am speechless when it comes to this … stupidity? of mine!)
I can't claim to have met each member of the western elite personally, but whilst there was a pervasive shallow triumphalism, and in the case of parts of the US a desire to finish off Russia, most of the political class was reacting like robots, incapable of grasping the sheer extent of the changes that had taken place.
Let us start with a bit of "folk physics", based on just about everyone's lived experience: It is easier (and usually cheaper/faster) to BREAK something complex than it was to BUILD it. Throw a rock at a TV screen, drop a lit match in a house... We all know.
Economic actors that learn to profit from the sequelae of "breaking stuff" and then occasionally to CAUSE stuff to be broken (optimizing their profitability with foreknowledge of event timing) would be expected to have an inherent advantage over those limited to chasing the market and limited to responding a news cycle later.
Given the time, expertise, knowledge base and computational power commanded by the most powerful financial/investment/banking interests in the world and their attention to even a few .001% of advantage in their constant struggle to maximize profits and acquire more "stuff" (and their promotion of those managers exhibiting best quarterly gains!), combined with the dilution of personal ethical & moral responsibility for collateral damages which a large organization grants? A person (thinking there would be no PERSONAL blowback!) who figured out how to most economically make those extra .001% here and there (yo, shorting stocks?!) could go far by throwing a monkey wrench in a gear box (critical canal "accidentally" blocked for a month supply chain ripples lasting far longer?) dropping a match (ethnic tensions fanned into open warfare by a respected leader's assassination?).
After the first investment fund manager "went there" and their competitors noticed, they all MUST join in to keep up, assuring that those organizations capable of so profiting would "never let the opportunity (to precipitate) a good crisis go to waste".
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This is all just one of the premises for a dystopian science fiction novel I'm story boarding, of course. The real world can't work like this, there would be constantly escalating financial and social chaos, the winners in profit margins conducting buyouts and mergers of investment houses, leading eventually to only a few gigantic multinational investment funds, eventually only one gigantic financial holding company remaining & effectively ruling the world.
"This is, pretty much, what any sensible government would want to say in such a situation."
Perhaps I question it because I have never been a civil servant, and not a civil servant of a country with a past history of colonial conquest, or a mission of "uplifting the savages".
You appear to define a government with a non-intervention policy in the affairs of a far-away sovereign country that is neither a threat or a supplicant asking for help... as being something other than SENSIBLE.
Your definition seems even less sensible, given you stipulate the Govt. being urged to act by various local NGOs and lobbyists actually does not have enough facts to analyze the facts on the ground to develop a program (to help) and operationally define (in advance) what outcomes would indicate success/failure/end of the program.
1. It is entirely obvious that Israel has an outsized influence on the United States. In fact, Biden could end Israel's.war with a single phone call, as Reagan did in 1982. He does not, because of that Israeli influence.
2. It is also entirely obvious that Ukraine is a puppet regime, with less authority than the Biden family dogs. The war continues and will only continue to escalate, because the West prefers escalation to conceding defeat. Aka, the "Martingale" betting strategy. With each escalation, the cost of conceding defeat increases.
This abuse of The Sunk Cost Fallacy is entirely intentional.
“All we can do is fear the worst and hope for the best.” This is itself a recipe for citizens’ acquiescence in genocide, and quite possibly, WWIII. That might be fine with you, but I would suggest it’s not fine with quite a few of us.
Regardless, of whether the US stopping arms shipments to Israel does not fully address all issues, and would leave unresolved issues, and even lead to additional problems, stopping the mass slaughter is a necessary first step.
I wish it was acceptable for governments to "do nothing" rather then expecting them to "do something" even when there is nothing useful to do and/or nobody know what actually they are trying to accomplish and no clue on how to accomplish it.
The level of complexity involved in, well, pretty much anything is staggering and beyond human comprehension. Nobody really understands what is going on, there are no right answers, and the difference between humanitarian disaster and glorious break through is more a matter of dumb luck then any sort of skill or deep level knowledge.
"Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times". Guess where we are now?
Not original I know, but I tend to think in over simplifications (the real world is messy) and allowing for the fact that on many occassions we have had "hard women" too (and maybe in the future some hard folk of the other 642 genders that are supposed to exist), I do think this is at the root of our current problems. The author notes that too many "trade in moral indignation" and that is another cause of our problems - decisions made using EQ not IQ - IMHO - and at the danger of over using acronyms.
In a fairly successful business career (now thankfully finished) I was engaged in much business turn-around and also corporate undertaking type work - leading and advising various participants who based decisons on what might be a pleasant and preferred outcome instead of focussing on hard facts like an absence of positive cash flow. Now I've had many psychological profiles done and it is fair to say that I am heavily biased towards the task orientation end of the spectrum - focusing on outcomes and results, and methods to get there. Keeping people happy not so much.
I only mention this because to be a success in national leadership these days such an approach would be so counter-productive as to ensure that the proponent would never attract enough votes to take office. Of course you could be a complete sociapath and pretend, and indeed to be a politician at all I suspect that is an entry level requirement. Nevertheless I judge we are now led by "weak" [men] who have created hard times. They seem unable to recognise that they are the cause of the problem and I despair as I watch them flailing about creating yet more chaos.
In a world which is complex, messy and the information base keeps chaning you might think over-simplification is not a good thing. On the contrary, it can be the sole guiding light in the dark, a nuanced focus backed by a modicum of brains and training will generally be better than indecision and an attempt to keep everyone happy and cannot deal with objective reality. However in my view, we are not blessed with leaders who think that way - at least in the West. So we face hard times and let us hope these throw up some hard [men] as opposed to the soft clowns we have dominating our political and media landscape.
“I could go on, but I think you get the point”
Yeah, we get it. “Few people in New York were interested”. (What that has to do with anything is not clear.) “The British were confused” - as always! “western states became lost in internal complexities”
A picture is drawn of how the ‘west’ is merely a troubled and incompetent but well-meaning actor, doing its poor best in a complicated world, but no malice or ill-intent can be imputed.
This is nonsense.
It is nonsense because there are thousands of documents proving the both the UK and US have interfered, effectively, and with deliberate and pre-planned ill-intent in a very large number of countries, since their respective empires were conceived, including in the war in Bosnia. It would be superfluous to list them all - such lists can be readily accessed - but this is just a mind-bogglingly stupendous piece of fabricated propaganda.
I'd be astonished if anyone who read my essay came away with the impression that western powers in 1991-92 were well-meaning. They were impelled for the most part by domestic political considerations and jealousies and rivalries as I explained. There is a mass of conspiracy literature about this era of course. Much is garbage and none, so far as I know, is written by people who were there, as I was.
Your explanation that "domestic political considerations and jealousies and rivalries" were the main motivation for 'western' actions does not hold water. Sure, there may have been such as you describe, and because you, as you say were 'there' they may have taken up most of your attention. But, for example, there is documentation dating back 80 years, that one of the most important drivers for US actions were the writings of various 'think-tanks' and hard-line anti-communist right wingers. The personnel employed by these 'think tanks' are continually rotating between government and 'think-tank' giving a guaranteed continuity of aim. E.g. , the use of the Ukraine as a weapon to be used against Russia can be traced, as I said right back to 1945, when the CIA placed saboteurs inside the Ukraine and Russia via Latvia and Poland, and continued up to and beyond the US instigated coup, shelling in Donbas and subsequent war. This example was not a product of 'domestic jealousies and rivalries' but a long-sustained, pre-planned campaign.
(In a similar vein, but more diffuse vein, the US government 'war' against the left, (beginning in the 19th century, and continuing right up to the post-war 'witch-hunts' overseen by Hoover shows all the signs of a long-sustained political movement, which was totally unaffected by those 'domestic jealousies and rivalries' which you describe).
The above cannot be brushed off as a 'conspiracy theory' - unless you accept that the US at any rate was involved in a conspiracy which it comprehensively documented itself.
What I seem to be saying is that while your explanation of 'domestic considerations' may be sufficient for some small-scale purposes, it is not sufficient for a comprehensive and broader explanation of 'western' countries motivations.
Well, if you allowed me, I think that could be useful to make a division in two aspects of sociology or politics.
Exist what we can call "macro" issues on sociological, like the view of States that play between them for big economic issues, for security, for transport and commerce, for religion or for the use of types of energy...
There is also exist what we can call a "micro" sociological view to that. In my view, Aurelien always tend to point to that "micro" aspects, talking us about the internal behaviour of the elits, or of the media, like he does in this article.
Both optics look the same: societies, institutions and individual people in relation. But they look it at a different level. Depending on the issue and the detail or complexity we can use different models.
You're probably the first person who's ever managed to help me make some sense of this time. 1990s were a catastrophe in Russia and there is indeed no shortage of conspiracy theories. But even as kid witnessing a collapsed country and experiencing the social disorder and anomia firsthand I wasn't entirely convinced that there are some mystical figures posessing infinite wisdom across the border and beyond. Needless to say I was (and to an extent still is) very lonely in my skepticism. Thank you for your alleviating essay.
Susan Strange: States and markets, is also helpful, it is about the world as a game of negotiations, where the result is due to the resources the negotiators can mobilize.
Dan Davies: The unaccountability machine, is another. It is about how routines in the end get so messed up that nobody even know how they work. In normal times there are security vaults (so to say) but they have now been thrown away. Davies blame economists that have persuaded people to let the routines (or "the market" as it is called) take care of themselves. But I agree with Aurelien that "people" (in this case "the party") should have known better.
I love system thinking books, thank you so much.
Of course the most system-thinking book I know is Immanuel Wallerstein: Historical capitalism. About what is constant, and what is changing, and how, and why. It all hangs together very neatly, even if I think he misses some points.
In that case you may be interested in why it is so dangerous for a country not to have the most up-to-date industry? There are two excellent books about that: Erik Reinert: How rich countries got rich and why poor countries stay poor, and Ha-Joon Chang: Kicking away the ladder. At least the foirst one is also very funny.
I believe that was one reason why the Soviet empire fell. It got outdated. A friend of mine gained his living smuggling computer equipment to the SU – selling computers there was largely forbidden both by the US and by the SU whose bureaucrats thought that things would get out of their control if it was permitted.
Thanks, I’ll check them out.
When bureaucracy loses contact with the reality the fall is inevitable. In Soviet case this bureaucracy was the product of negative selection. It accelerated the detachment and the following catastrophe.
Your ludicrous description of the dissolution of Yugoslavia perfectly explains why the western diplomacy is broken. This idea that it just happened on it's own for no good reason is so ridiculous that it is amazing, for me at least, that someone actually believes it. Here a a few clues:
Before the war IMF and the USA cuts of funding to all parties that are not "democratic". Who gets the money? The far right and the separatist. As soon as they get into power, WWII Nazis that were living in exile start showing up in Croatia and Germany starts shipping guns. And no, they did not push for the recognition of Croatia because they are Catholics, they pushed for that because they were their former WWII allies. Similar scenario goes on in Bosnia&Hercegovina. There the European diplomats actually pushed for a settlement before the war started and all sides signed it. Then the USA ambassador shows up at Izetbegović's residence and says: You don't have to accept this, you can get more and we will back you. Izetbegović withdrew his signature and plunged the country into war. And it continues with plenty of similar moves. And no, the war did not end because all sides were tired. The muslim side banked on pulling in the USA (the same thing Ukraine and Israel are trying to do today) but mostly failed. They were loosing badly and their total defeat was prevented by USA intervention and bombing of Serbs.
In summary: you have extremely shallow view about that conflict and I'm seriously questioning should I even continue to read your analysis about European politics.
You show Aurelien's point very well – how outsiders can only get it even more messed up. But at least Branko Milanovic finds the roots of the mess in internal Yugoslav politics – the governments of the republics always blaming the other republics for their shortcomings. The blaming got worse and worse, and more and more venomous, and in the end Serbs, Croats, etc were quite convinced that "the others" would come and kill them.
Of course everything was even more bitter because of the Volcker shock. But that was not directed specifically to Yugoslavia but to all debtor nations.
You can always find some internal disruptive forces to fund and use for nefarious purposes: Divide et impera.
Branko Milanović is too much of a liberal, pandering to his liberal clique with historical distortions.
Milanović's essay can be read at https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/four-historico-ideological-theories-628.
I find it strange that people can find comfort in blaming outsiders for their mess. Blaming outsiders is actually equal to disclaim their own agency, which should be even more painful. But, of course, if one blame others one doesn't have to re-examine anything. Which may seem easy – even if it is certainly not productive.
I think you believe too much in the myth Aurelien tries to explode here and in the essay Little people with agency. Foreign forces can do nothing if there are no agents - and fairly powerful agents at that - on the ground to support.
Perhaps it is my inner cynic, but I see world 'leaders' as mostly bumbling along, crippled in understanding because of a core incorrect ideology; ie, they don't think right. The Americans with their notion of global dominance and American Exceptionalism are the worst. The Chinese with their millennia of Taoism and Buddhism are the best. In all cases, seeking to control or not to control the uncontrollable is the fault.
"First, do no harm" would seem to be better than the emulation of headless chickens currently favoured by our misleadership classes in their feverish need "to be seen to be doing something" ...
Great essay.
I spent most of my career in business, mainly working with large corporations. We like to believe in that world that all problems can be solved too and that all we need is a plan and a project to do so!! But the older I get the more I realise that many problems are either unsolvable or eventually solve themselves.
But the urge to “Do Something” is just so hard to resist and so tricky to argue against in a meeting……
At the risk of oversimplification, which itself may be an attempt to gain illusory control, the premise of the essay, which I admire for its breadth of knowledge, eloquence, and elegance, may assert a false dichotomy from the get-go. The title of the essay is "Out of Control," which implies that if things—history, politics, futures and procurement contracts—aren't under control they're out of it, that those with some power to make things happen are, without absolute power, powerless in the face of events, dear boy, events. (I did post the oversimplification alert.) But between all and nothing, between white and black, exist shades of influence, and it is here that many take issue with quietist, older-but-wiser resignation before the clamorous minutiae of the particular. So while it would not put an end to strife and inaugurate a thousand years of peace and prosperity to stop arms shipments to Israel and Ukraine, it would be, from some perspective of constructive influence, a start. Arguably things seem on the edge of catastrophe and madness because of a refusal, call it cowardly or pragmatic, to do what can be done for peace rather than fantasies of dominance. If we want to throw around a word like "appeasement," it would be better understood in terms of interests and lobbies that seek endless escalation toward illusions without futures or, still worse, futures without illusions, because there will be no one left to have them. It's not that the influential are rationally refusing to do anything for fear of making matters worse so much as that their apparent assumptions and subsequent actions originate from not only misguided but corrupt motives and goals. I understand and don’t contest the emphasis on insolubility, on an entangled, shifting multiplicity of conflicting agendas. It's sadly, infuriatingly accurate, and maybe John Cage was right when he wrote, in another title, "How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)." However it’s perhaps excusable, if on a comic note, to pretend that hope can occasionally, partially triumph over experience, and something different can be done.
All well and good, but what are the prospects, given what's on offer by way of elite human resources? To that I find myself staring into space, ready to concede that Aurelien's title may be more apropos than I'd like concede, with a subtitle that couldn't be simpler or a better summation of the current state of affairs in affairs of state. Little things go on as before, under control in windowless conference rooms, while outside a confused world absentmindedly smokes and flicks hot ashes amid a gathering pool of gasoline. So I’ll join Aurelien in hoping for the better, if not the best. Experience must have some say.
Yes, though I did say, I think, that nations try and sometimes succeed, exercise a measure of control, at least temporarily. As you say it's not black and white.
Firstly, I find your name to be extremely ironic given the subject matter of the essay itself. Aurelian was the Roman Emperor who was an extreme micromanager and essentially reordered and reconstituted the fractured Roman Empire in a time of major crisis. His example itself seems to rebut much of the content of this essay.
You seem to trade in relativism and nihilism in equal parts while also believing in a materialist view of history. You dismiss "conspiracy theory" out of hand without examining or acknowledging any of the merits or possible truthfulness regarding specific theories. The historical examples you offer do not support the claims that you are making and the assumptions or evidence that you rely upon are not entirely factual. The concept of agency and power do not seem to factor into your analysis of past or present events.
I don't find much of this Aurelian micromanagement in the article in wikipedia, perhaps there in other places. He seems to have tried to strengthen Roman religion but it failed a few decades later. He seems to have tried to strengthen the economy by a conage reform, but it didn't help. Are there other examples?
Oh, a second disagreement! You: »… Hitler would not have been “stopped” because the nature of the Nazi regime itself demanded constant war«. I would add: »they«, that is: Britain and France did not have the military wherewithal to do that. But in addition, and more importantly, they wanted to guide Hitler against their arch-enemy, the Soviet Union. See: Munich. Only after the German six-weeks-triumph over France (not to mention the Scandinavians who sank more to Nazi Germany than they were conquered, the British and the U.S. realized that a continental hegemon was rising and they decided to prevent that at all cost and really (not in a »phony« manner) go to war.
No, both Britain and France began rearmament in 1936, specifically against Germany. There were certainly those who believed that the Soviet Union was the greater enemy, and they did have some influence in France, but none of it was decisive.
Thank you Aurelien🙏
You: » …. much of the western decision-making class was still in a state of shock anyway«. From what I know, they were much more »in a state of triumph anyway«. As George Bish, the elder, exclaimed in his 1992 (?) State of the Union speech: »Thank God, we won the Cold War«. And from here all the »problems« you enumerated (and which I remember quite well) were dealt with: We are the almighty, »we are the exceptional nation, stand higher, see further …« … and, therefore, will finish off the evil … whoever. Foremost Russia, of course. And: Yugoslavia where nationalist activists started, then helped by do-gooders of all sorts, then our foreign minister Genscher, finally Nato. (By the way: I remember all that, but at the time did not think much about it. Not at all, in fact, but shared the general mood of triumphant victory and »end of history«. I lived in West-Berlin then. Knowing what I do now, more than a generation thereafter, I am speechless when it comes to this … stupidity? of mine!)
I can't claim to have met each member of the western elite personally, but whilst there was a pervasive shallow triumphalism, and in the case of parts of the US a desire to finish off Russia, most of the political class was reacting like robots, incapable of grasping the sheer extent of the changes that had taken place.
Let us start with a bit of "folk physics", based on just about everyone's lived experience: It is easier (and usually cheaper/faster) to BREAK something complex than it was to BUILD it. Throw a rock at a TV screen, drop a lit match in a house... We all know.
Economic actors that learn to profit from the sequelae of "breaking stuff" and then occasionally to CAUSE stuff to be broken (optimizing their profitability with foreknowledge of event timing) would be expected to have an inherent advantage over those limited to chasing the market and limited to responding a news cycle later.
Given the time, expertise, knowledge base and computational power commanded by the most powerful financial/investment/banking interests in the world and their attention to even a few .001% of advantage in their constant struggle to maximize profits and acquire more "stuff" (and their promotion of those managers exhibiting best quarterly gains!), combined with the dilution of personal ethical & moral responsibility for collateral damages which a large organization grants? A person (thinking there would be no PERSONAL blowback!) who figured out how to most economically make those extra .001% here and there (yo, shorting stocks?!) could go far by throwing a monkey wrench in a gear box (critical canal "accidentally" blocked for a month supply chain ripples lasting far longer?) dropping a match (ethnic tensions fanned into open warfare by a respected leader's assassination?).
After the first investment fund manager "went there" and their competitors noticed, they all MUST join in to keep up, assuring that those organizations capable of so profiting would "never let the opportunity (to precipitate) a good crisis go to waste".
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This is all just one of the premises for a dystopian science fiction novel I'm story boarding, of course. The real world can't work like this, there would be constantly escalating financial and social chaos, the winners in profit margins conducting buyouts and mergers of investment houses, leading eventually to only a few gigantic multinational investment funds, eventually only one gigantic financial holding company remaining & effectively ruling the world.
I question the initial premise:
"This is, pretty much, what any sensible government would want to say in such a situation."
Perhaps I question it because I have never been a civil servant, and not a civil servant of a country with a past history of colonial conquest, or a mission of "uplifting the savages".
You appear to define a government with a non-intervention policy in the affairs of a far-away sovereign country that is neither a threat or a supplicant asking for help... as being something other than SENSIBLE.
Your definition seems even less sensible, given you stipulate the Govt. being urged to act by various local NGOs and lobbyists actually does not have enough facts to analyze the facts on the ground to develop a program (to help) and operationally define (in advance) what outcomes would indicate success/failure/end of the program.