Your account of the quotidian pressures, short-termism, and wishful thinking behind pervasive groupthink in times of crisis—and other times, too, but especially then—is convincing. But I can’t help but think you are giving the false impression in this essay that European goverments are independent decision makers who could go against America’s dictates but simply fail to do so. Your description is surely accurate with respect to the decision makers in Washington. But even here there is certainly more of an organized authority strucure, albeit one containing factions and not perfectly ordered, than a mob of colleagues that the groupthink image suggests. And surely part of the continued support for these disastrous policies in Washington has to be explained by the fact that theit consequences are to be felt worst and first in Europe, and that even as the US loses vis-a-vis Russia, China, India, etc., it becomes even more powerful vis-a-vis Europe. You know these things, I know. But they are not reflected in the present essay.
A reason families and rulers they produce supported monasteries and anchorites was to provide themselves with deep and disinterested over-the-horizon radar images and reports. Only in deep calm does awareness occur.
This is a REALLY interesting analysis….THANK YOU. Although, I think, its empirical framing could be expanded ….: what about the role of the USA; what about the role of neoliberalism - victorious in 1989 and in serious trouble in 2022……; what about the role of war as a replacement for ‘politics’; what about a possible collapse of financial capitalism? Yet a comparison between those two periods is an interesting starting point. There are analyses that propose that neoliberalism at the end of 1980s was also in a state of collapse but it’s ‘death’ was prolonged by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thank you again.
Here’s a very interesting article with a discordant analysis. It tends to challenge mine quite a bit, and could brings you and some readers new reflections :
The Covid crisis just on the eve of the Ukraine crisis was like a dress rehearsal for this type of group think, don't forget that. Everybody got induced to this totalitarian mode of operation for it to be continued seamlessly when the war broke out.
The group think is re-inforced by the fixation on territorial gains. Ukraine initially took back stretches of territory around Kyiv and Sumy and also some territories around Mykolaev that Russian forces had overrun without establishing themselved firmly there. Later the Russians began to suffer from an increasing lack of manpower mainy due to contract soldiers rotating out while the Ukrainians had build up their forces in the rear. Russian forces effectively though not officially withdrawing from the Kharkov area together with Ukraine gaining a significant numercial advantage over token forces left there allowed the Ukrainians to stage what could be passed off as an offensive, albeit suffering severe losses even under these circumstances. Something similar went down to the north of Kherson. The Ukraine-is-winning narrative together with the associated group think is riding on the momentum gained from all these territorial gains, ignoring the wider strategic picture of Ukrainian and Western resources running out and Ukrainian infrastructure being destroyed.
The strategic picture is still not lost on western planners. That's why they might be preparing a nuclear false flag in the form of a dirty bomb that they will try to pass off a as Russian nuclear bomb that failed to detonate properly. They want to use that as justification for moving in with NATO troops directly, presumably spearheaded by US paratroopers that recently deployed to Romania. Again, totalitarian group think allows them to contemplate such things.
As usual, I start with the usual politeness. It is of course much easier to criticize someone's work rather than produce it yourself, so I want to pay tribute to your efforts. However, I am surprised that you can address the subject of European sanctions without mentioning the shadow of Washington once.
A bit like my father, who constantly fulminates on the absidal incompetence of our leaders, I would answer that stupidity will be the ultimate justification that will be desperately opposed to us if they face their responsability about their betrayals. I must admit, moreover, that the peremptory use of the term « conspiracy theorist » is becoming more and more inappropriate and, in my opinion, has the unique objective of removing any ability from once adversary to express himself. However, I doubt that this is your intention.
"The acceleration of history" is a rare opporunity to reveal elements that would be in other circumstances more difficult to perceive, and consequently, to open the eyes of more and more people. The annihilation of the economies, industries, and diplomacies of European nations is not a collateral effect of sanctions but its objective. Any somewhat credible analyst has known since 2014 that the sanctions "infiled" on Russia do not have the expected effects, and that they politically justify Putin's efforts to reform the Russian economy. Ignoring the shadow of Washington in the decisions taken by European leaders is in my opinion almost dishonest. The desperate sabotage of gas pipelines is an event that alone illustrates the entire sequence of the conflict in Ukraine: the objective was to prevent any possibility for German industrialists from reversing the pro-Washingtonian policy of their leaders.
On the energy policy of Europe, and more particularly of France, sabotage was much more subtle and pernicious. A properly maintained nuclear fleet, regular and timely investments and mutually beneficial trade agreements would have allowed the whole of Europe to benefit from this indisputable strategic advantage. Instead, under pressure from the EU, France entrusted the maintenance of its fleet to general electric, opening its internal market to parasites that speculate on energy without producing a single watt or investing 1 cent in the distribution network. It even has a name: ARENH! Result: half of the nuclear fleet is out, EDF is bankrupt, and France is threatening its population with power outage this winter. Excuse me Aurélien but you don't have to be incompetent to achieve such a result, you have to be motivated!
So why do our "Western leaders" appear so stupid, so corrupt, so morally disturbed? Because they are! And they are precisely in their position because they are! What better representatives of this new caste of parasites than Von Der Leyen, Macron or even Truss, who will not have lasted 50 days on Downing street! There are no more leaders Aurélien, there are executioners!
Who benefits from the economic and industrial destruction of Europe? Who benefits from the erection of a new iron curtain between Russia and Europe? They were not incompetent, they have been extremely effective for several decades.
"Take a senior official of the Foreign Ministry of a medium-sized country, responsible for political affairs. Every telegram, every letter, every email every communiqué, every media summary that crosses his or her desk has the same message: Ukraine in winning, we must keep up pressure on Putin, the sanctions are working and whilst there may be some limited short-term pain, it’s worth it. Every conversation with an opposite number, every speech written, every interview, every debate in parliament, every bilateral or multilateral meeting, every TV channel in every language, is saying the same thing. Our poor official, working probably twelve hours a day at least six days a week and travelling often, doesn’t have the leisure or the energy, even if they had the knowledge and experience, to challenge the accepted narrative."
They should call and visit Budapest for some reality check...
Your account of the quotidian pressures, short-termism, and wishful thinking behind pervasive groupthink in times of crisis—and other times, too, but especially then—is convincing. But I can’t help but think you are giving the false impression in this essay that European goverments are independent decision makers who could go against America’s dictates but simply fail to do so. Your description is surely accurate with respect to the decision makers in Washington. But even here there is certainly more of an organized authority strucure, albeit one containing factions and not perfectly ordered, than a mob of colleagues that the groupthink image suggests. And surely part of the continued support for these disastrous policies in Washington has to be explained by the fact that theit consequences are to be felt worst and first in Europe, and that even as the US loses vis-a-vis Russia, China, India, etc., it becomes even more powerful vis-a-vis Europe. You know these things, I know. But they are not reflected in the present essay.
How did European powers convince themselves that WWI was a good idea, a walk in the park, a glorious little war?
A reason families and rulers they produce supported monasteries and anchorites was to provide themselves with deep and disinterested over-the-horizon radar images and reports. Only in deep calm does awareness occur.
This is a REALLY interesting analysis….THANK YOU. Although, I think, its empirical framing could be expanded ….: what about the role of the USA; what about the role of neoliberalism - victorious in 1989 and in serious trouble in 2022……; what about the role of war as a replacement for ‘politics’; what about a possible collapse of financial capitalism? Yet a comparison between those two periods is an interesting starting point. There are analyses that propose that neoliberalism at the end of 1980s was also in a state of collapse but it’s ‘death’ was prolonged by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thank you again.
It was a good idea if you thought you could win and extend the dominance of Imperial Britain.
Germany won after two years and Washington rescued Britain.
Britain tried for two world wars and lost both.
Now it's different.
God Favours Russia . . .
https://les7eb.substack.com/p/ukraine-long-proxy-war-vi-god-favours
Here’s a very interesting article with a discordant analysis. It tends to challenge mine quite a bit, and could brings you and some readers new reflections :
https://tomluongo.me/2022/09/29/the-curious-whodunit-of-nordstreams-1-and-2/
The Covid crisis just on the eve of the Ukraine crisis was like a dress rehearsal for this type of group think, don't forget that. Everybody got induced to this totalitarian mode of operation for it to be continued seamlessly when the war broke out.
The group think is re-inforced by the fixation on territorial gains. Ukraine initially took back stretches of territory around Kyiv and Sumy and also some territories around Mykolaev that Russian forces had overrun without establishing themselved firmly there. Later the Russians began to suffer from an increasing lack of manpower mainy due to contract soldiers rotating out while the Ukrainians had build up their forces in the rear. Russian forces effectively though not officially withdrawing from the Kharkov area together with Ukraine gaining a significant numercial advantage over token forces left there allowed the Ukrainians to stage what could be passed off as an offensive, albeit suffering severe losses even under these circumstances. Something similar went down to the north of Kherson. The Ukraine-is-winning narrative together with the associated group think is riding on the momentum gained from all these territorial gains, ignoring the wider strategic picture of Ukrainian and Western resources running out and Ukrainian infrastructure being destroyed.
The strategic picture is still not lost on western planners. That's why they might be preparing a nuclear false flag in the form of a dirty bomb that they will try to pass off a as Russian nuclear bomb that failed to detonate properly. They want to use that as justification for moving in with NATO troops directly, presumably spearheaded by US paratroopers that recently deployed to Romania. Again, totalitarian group think allows them to contemplate such things.
As usual, I start with the usual politeness. It is of course much easier to criticize someone's work rather than produce it yourself, so I want to pay tribute to your efforts. However, I am surprised that you can address the subject of European sanctions without mentioning the shadow of Washington once.
A bit like my father, who constantly fulminates on the absidal incompetence of our leaders, I would answer that stupidity will be the ultimate justification that will be desperately opposed to us if they face their responsability about their betrayals. I must admit, moreover, that the peremptory use of the term « conspiracy theorist » is becoming more and more inappropriate and, in my opinion, has the unique objective of removing any ability from once adversary to express himself. However, I doubt that this is your intention.
"The acceleration of history" is a rare opporunity to reveal elements that would be in other circumstances more difficult to perceive, and consequently, to open the eyes of more and more people. The annihilation of the economies, industries, and diplomacies of European nations is not a collateral effect of sanctions but its objective. Any somewhat credible analyst has known since 2014 that the sanctions "infiled" on Russia do not have the expected effects, and that they politically justify Putin's efforts to reform the Russian economy. Ignoring the shadow of Washington in the decisions taken by European leaders is in my opinion almost dishonest. The desperate sabotage of gas pipelines is an event that alone illustrates the entire sequence of the conflict in Ukraine: the objective was to prevent any possibility for German industrialists from reversing the pro-Washingtonian policy of their leaders.
On the energy policy of Europe, and more particularly of France, sabotage was much more subtle and pernicious. A properly maintained nuclear fleet, regular and timely investments and mutually beneficial trade agreements would have allowed the whole of Europe to benefit from this indisputable strategic advantage. Instead, under pressure from the EU, France entrusted the maintenance of its fleet to general electric, opening its internal market to parasites that speculate on energy without producing a single watt or investing 1 cent in the distribution network. It even has a name: ARENH! Result: half of the nuclear fleet is out, EDF is bankrupt, and France is threatening its population with power outage this winter. Excuse me Aurélien but you don't have to be incompetent to achieve such a result, you have to be motivated!
So why do our "Western leaders" appear so stupid, so corrupt, so morally disturbed? Because they are! And they are precisely in their position because they are! What better representatives of this new caste of parasites than Von Der Leyen, Macron or even Truss, who will not have lasted 50 days on Downing street! There are no more leaders Aurélien, there are executioners!
Who benefits from the economic and industrial destruction of Europe? Who benefits from the erection of a new iron curtain between Russia and Europe? They were not incompetent, they have been extremely effective for several decades.
Amen to that and thank you.
"Take a senior official of the Foreign Ministry of a medium-sized country, responsible for political affairs. Every telegram, every letter, every email every communiqué, every media summary that crosses his or her desk has the same message: Ukraine in winning, we must keep up pressure on Putin, the sanctions are working and whilst there may be some limited short-term pain, it’s worth it. Every conversation with an opposite number, every speech written, every interview, every debate in parliament, every bilateral or multilateral meeting, every TV channel in every language, is saying the same thing. Our poor official, working probably twelve hours a day at least six days a week and travelling often, doesn’t have the leisure or the energy, even if they had the knowledge and experience, to challenge the accepted narrative."
They should call and visit Budapest for some reality check...
https://www.gettyimages.no/detail/news-photo/man-passes-by-a-poster-depicting-a-bomb-reading-we-are-news-photo/1244054448
"Compared to what". The alternatives to sanctions are WWIII or letting Russia gradually take over Eurooe. Which do you prefer?