Cold War and Chess

In chess, a player sometimes sacrifices an important piece in order to win the game.

When the Soviets sacrificed their queen by temporarily disbanding the USSR and pretending to adopt democracy, the US jumped up from the table and ran away to celebrate the victory.

Walking away from a game is equal to acknowledging defeat. The Soviets waited for a bit, then made their move, and won the game.

The moral of the story: a war is not over and you haven’t won shit until the other side actually suspends hostilities and capitulates.

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28 responses to “Cold War and Chess”

March 27, 2014

Жители Крыма, не имеющие крымской регистрации, в течение месяца должны выехать за пределы России
http://morreth.livejournal.com/2309856.html#comments

UN Gen Assembly adopts resolution backing Ukraine’s territorial integrity
100 for, 11 against, 58 abstentions
http://rt.com/news/ukraine-russia-crimea-resolution-609/

On a picture it looks like Israel decided to abstent

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J. Otto Pohl

March 27, 2014

So did Ghana and Kyrgyzstan.

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Titfortat

March 27, 2014

Or you slaughter them. 😦

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Alexander

March 27, 2014

The lesson in WWI was very simple: The war is won when your troops march in ceremony through the enemy’s capital… and nobody dares say boo about it. Didn’t happen in 1918. Did happen in 1945.

As you say, the Soviet Union sacrificed some prestige and face, abandoned some of its international fiscal sinkholes, *but was never defeated*. The Russian people never lost. No American general was appointed governor of the Moscow, no parades of GI’s through Red Square.

The idea that war has somehow magically changed from how it has been done for the entirety of human history to somehow magically conform to our modern ideals of a “clean” confrontation is madness.

I will say this though in my nation’s defense (and a meager defense it is): for every American mistake, Europe has made worse. Europe deserves nothing from us. Ukraine had nuclear weapons – had the one thing that has thus far proven to be the one guarantee of genuine independence, and gave it away for nothing. I don’t blame the Ukrainian people for this – I suspect (and if I’m wrong, please let me know!) that the Ukrainian spirit has been trodden on for so long and so when – for the first time in centuries – the situation had changed, they couldn’t recognize it, couldn’t imagine it was really possible.

The Ukrainian leadership though – anyone still alive that was within three degrees of that agreement should be hanging from a lamppost: I assume that the Ukrainians have a legal concept synonymous with high treason?

But Western Europeans from top to bottom have no excuse, there are few if any places on earth that have had more bloodshed or would-be emperors. If the Europeans are so keen to abandon any sense of responsibility for their own sovereignty after the number of examples history has provided them (and can’t even be bothered to breed at replacement, for that matter), then there is absolutely no need to spend an ounce of American blood and treasure simply because Putin desires to go where countless others have gone before.

The next time American troops fight on European soil, it should be made clear that both the aggressor and the liberated will be nothing more than American colonial subjects. That might wake them up.

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el

March 27, 2014

\\ No American general was appointed governor of the Moscow, no parades of GI’s through Red Square.

May be, it’s being born in FSU, but the only idea of that made my blood boil. And desire to remind some Americans that Russia has atom weapons too. (Full disclosure: born in Ukraine, but raised 100% in Russian culture.)

\\ The next time American troops fight on European soil

Nobody forces America to play the role of world’s policeman, except its desire for power. Your words almost sound as if somebody forces USA to fight.

\\ should be made clear that both the aggressor and the liberated will be nothing more than American colonial subjects

1) Why being an American colonial subject better than being a Russian one, in your eyes? (See 3)

2) Days of overt colonialism are over, unless you want to become a pariah.

3) You make it sound as if America would be making somebody a favor in this case, and not only fighting for its power, against Russia. The colonized would hate you and fight (if possible) as they would against Russia.

Btw, America has been all too happy to fight on soil of Muslim countries lately, without some huge benefit / success to itself. USA is a strong country, but you overestimate your abilities in this comment. And Germany is the strongest country in Europe despite losing WW2, so your first paragraphs may not necessary apply.

I think some Americans use such war-thirsty, arrogant rhetoric without thinking too much because they haven’t had any wars on their own soil for a long time. Vietnam is said to be a trauma, but it still was far away, without making American citizens die from bombs. The adventures in Muslim countries – also far away. Alexander can’t even imagine fighting on American soil, or getting an atom bomb on his head. Unlike Israelis, for instance, who constantly do the 1st and fear the 2nd.

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1. Clarissa
  
  March 27, 2014
  
  ‘Nobody forces America to play the role of world’s policeman, except its desire for power. ”
  
  – I hate to sound as a broken record, but this issue should have been raised before Ukraine delivered on its obligations under Budapest Accords.
  
  “Why being an American colonial subject better than being a Russian one, in your eyes?”
  
  – Americans never forced anybody to stop speaking their own language, for one. In what concerns Ukraine, Americans never evinced any desire to destroy Ukrainian culture or humiliate Ukrainians in any way. In any case, this whole conflict started and is continuing without any participation from the US, save for a couple of weak sanctions.
  
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2. el
  
  March 27, 2014
  
  \\ – I hate to sound as a broken record, but this issue should have been raised before Ukraine delivered on its obligations under Budapest Accords.
  
  As if some things aren’t self-evident.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    March 27, 2014
    
    I know it’s self-evident but wherever i go online, i always see the same, “But why should the US do anything at all about Ukraine?”
    
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Alexander

March 27, 2014

El,

I should like to respond to you in detail but am away from a real keyboard until Monday. If you don’t mind the wait, I will answer all your questions then. As for what I can and can’t imagine, I think you may be surprised.

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March 27, 2014

Had I stayed in Ukraine, I would’ve prayed for America not to begin having huge war with Russia that Alexander dreams of. It would turn Ukraine, parts of Russia and USA into a nuclear wasteland.

Of course, thinking about sanctions is a lot less attractive to some imaginations than images of marching into capitals.

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Clarissa

March 27, 2014

There are no hypotheticals in history, but if the US hadn’t been in such a hurry to declare a win in the Cold war and instead tried paying attention to what was going on, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now.

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March 27, 2014

I meant it was self-evident that Ukraine (or any other country) shouldn’t rely for its security on USA (or anybody else).

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Clarissa

March 27, 2014

If that is the case, we can just forget about the very concept of international relations. Countries routinely enter into diplomatic agreements. How anybody should have known that all of a sudden these agreements will not be upheld by one of the parties is a mystery.

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1. el
  
  March 27, 2014
  
  International relations are give-and-take relationships – the idea is “lets cooperate and both benefit”, not “deprive yourself of strength, and I will ensure your security and protect your borders by making huge sacrificies for some reason”.
  
  Would Israel get rid of ability to protect itself because of USA’s words? Of course, not. Ukraine was wrong to do so.
  
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musteryou

March 27, 2014

I would find it hard to imagine that there is any international situation that would not involve some degree of ‘cold war’ hostilities. There are ideological and political attempts to destablize new political regimes after a war, for instance. Those are the aftershocks that seem to follow any war. I think this may be surprising to people who have not directly lived through hostilities but have nonetheless benefited from them. Other people can more or less anticipate what to expect. But many people are very, very naive about these other types of warfare. They may even talk about “seeing reason” or “improving communication”, thus indicating that they have no basis for even beginning to understand the meaning of war. If a situation is chaotic, or bad or ‘evil’, it is because either one or both parties WANT it to be so. It’s rarely due, directly, to a lack of rationality or reason.

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Jones

March 28, 2014

There is also something else in the American psyche …

Colin Powell famously described it as “you break it, you bought it” — it’s a shopkeeper’s mentality in which there are attempts made to repair the country after the damage of war.

You can see this mentality in the Monroe Doctrine, which establishes America’s “shop” as North America, Central America, South America, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, exterior American territories, leased territories (such as Diego Garcia), and arguably anything near any of it.

Grenada got into a political bind where its elections weren’t going to be honoured, and rather than turning to the Thatcher government, the newly elected officials approached the United States. Reagan sent in forces, while Thatcher reacted with abject horror at the idea that they would be staying until the government was “repaired”.

Similarly, Americans tend to believe they’re “fixing” Haiti when they’re not looting its coffers or spreading diseases among its people. They’ll remain with cooperating forces until everything is fixed, or at least until the Haitians decree that their welcome has been thoroughly worn out and kick them out once again.

By comparison, the post-WW2 repair of Western Germany with Marshall Plan money was a giant public works project. Some Americans probably believe that the extended presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is also a giant public works project, but some of those Americans are savvy enough to realise an industrialist’s scam when they see one.

The difference with Ukraine, as I see it, is that Ukraine would like not to be a “failed client state” of Merkel’s EU, or a public works project of the United States, or a “we’re getting the band back together” project of Putin’s Russia.

But Americans probably won’t help in large enough numbers until they believe that Ukraine is “broken” and needs a public works project to fix it.

That’s assuming that American politicians don’t initiate a False Flag Fantasy, such as the infamous “Remember the Maine” incident …

I can’t actually see any way that American involvement in Ukraine will end well for anyone concerned.

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Alexander

March 31, 2014

El,

I do not dream of a big war or having a big war with Russia. I think that’s a terrible possibility, not something to be endorsed,

My point is not that we *should* have marched through Moscow, only that it is an objective fact that it is a precondition to winning a war. We did not do it, therefore we did not win. Whether that makes you thrilled or angry is irrelevant. You might as well get mad that you’re forced to respond with ‘four’ when asked ‘two and two’.

We had two realistic choices:
A) Occupy Russia. As you correctly point out, this was not practical. Not only does occupying Russia by traditional arms have a horrific historical success rate, but the USSR had nuclear weapons and would have killed us all before this was allowed to happen.

B) Not occupy Russia, and recognize that Russia was therefore still an unconquered adversary and align our foreign policy and commitments with this reality.

Instead, we went with C) Don’t occupy, don’t win… but pretend we did (and even worse, believe our own bullshit and start making commitments based on these assumptions).

Personally, I would have gone with option B.

To your other points.

1) I would love to see a return to American isolationism. Both because it would mean no longer raffling off American blood and treasure, it would contain our own power-hungry politicos running the military-industrial complex, and it would be a delight to see the ingrates overseas. For any gains of powers sought (and I do not believe this was the primary case in either world war, though after that it becomes more and more the central issue), it’s tremendously rich to hear this from Europeans. Seriously, it’s like a six-year-old screaming it didn’t ask to be born when punished. No, the Europeans are content to tell us to stay out… up until the moment they demand we step in.

2) Because small countries will always, to a greater or lesser degree, be a vassal of someone. I would rather Ukraine *not* be an American vassal, because I don’t want my country having that commitment. But from Ukraine’s perspective, it’s gotta be better to have an overlord who doesn’t have a history of oppressing your culture and language and causing a deliberate starvation of millions of your people. Now, the best solution would be for Ukraine to be independent, but they threw that away with the Budapest accords, so…

3) Disagree entirely. Colonialism is coming back with a vengeance. Again – not a good thing. What I observe (or, to be fair, what I believe I observe) should not be taken as what I promote or desire. But I think with the collapse of American dominance over global affairs, you’re going to see an explosion of overt colonization. China has been eyeing Africa, Russia, the old USSR, and once/if the dollar grinds to a halt, we’ll see interesting things in the American south-west. Meanwhile, Islam will continue to colonize Europe, be they Pakistanis in England, Moroccans in Holland, or Turks in Germany. (And it *is* colonization – large groups of a common people moving to other lands, with no desire or intention to assimilate among the native peoples is the essential definition of colonialism. Of course, there’s really no good argument as to why they *should* assimilate).

4) I’m aware, and it’s been disastrous. Getting out of the ME would be a big step forward. Though I’d be careful – calling Germany the strongest is damning with faint praise: the country is ageing, Germans aren’t reproducing, Should Germany find itself 20 years from now needing to defend the frontier who, exactly, will man the guns?

Ten bucks says they call up, telling us they didn’t really mean all those nasty things, and if they could have a hundred thousand American cannonfo… brave NATO allies… to help, that would be dandy.

And we should say no.

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Clarissa

March 31, 2014

A very interesting analysis.

Back in 1996, when Yeltsin was about to be defeated at the elections by the Communist Party led by Zyuganov, the elections were shamelessly rigged to ensure Yeltsin would win. All of Russia’s progressives celebrated this because this was for such a good cause. Who cares about something so insignificant as electoral fraud when the goal is so noble? So now, when the same people are rigging the elections in Russia in the exact same way, the protests from the dissidents who were perfectly happy when electoral fraud favored them sound a little unconvincing.

My point in telling this story is that there hasn’t been a single actual, honest, real election in Russia since 1917. And only one real, honest election in Ukraine since 1991, and that one required the Orange Revolution to take place. Nobody can expect a country just to step effortlessly into a democracy. It never happens. How the West could have believed that the former USSR would be able to do that is a mystery. People often convince themselves of whatever they want to with no regard for history or factual evidence.

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1. cliff arroyo
  
  March 31, 2014
  
  I always say that democracy is a result, not a starting point. Lots of places have relatively above board elections…. once. It doesn’t prove anything other than it’s possible to force a fair election.
  
  The real goal is civil society based on something like rule of law and social capital and social trust. When you have that elections happen on their own without tanks or angry protests for weeks on end.
  
  The problem is that even if Ukrainians (or Russians wanted that, then they have no models to observe). In both the US and EU civil society is in retreat by an unholy alliance of financial and technocratic status whoring elites wanting to force their latest hair-brained social experiments on unwilling populaces.
  
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twicerandomly

March 31, 2014

“Americans never forced anyone to stop speaking their own language” Hmm. Look up the history of the American First Nations.
Alexander: You do remember, don’t you, that Russia and the U.S. were allies in the Second World War? And Europeans and Russians are aware that it was Russia who won the war, the Americans just came in to finish off what the Russians had already accomplished. This may be why the Europeans are not as grateful to the U.S. as Americans seem to think they should be.
You sometimes acknowledge that the U.S. is in economic trouble, and yet you still think that some time in the future the Europeans will ask the U.S. for help. I think we’ve all seen that the U.S. has no help to give, and it’s not going to get better in the future. The U.S. has a huge military, but can’t afford to do anything with it.
Also, as of 2007, the U.S. has a birth rate below replacement levels, too.

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Alexander

March 31, 2014

1) Yes. And if I were an American Indian and had any chance of regaining actual independence, I might consider vassalage from Russia as a possible route. Native Americans != Ukraine.

2) Bullshit. America did not ‘come in at the end’. That was WWI. In WWII America was in December of ’41, a full year before Stalingrad – hardly mopping things up when the fight was already over. Let us not forget that the Russians were no saints. At least we were neutral with a slow outreach towards the Allies – Stalin was nose deep up Hitler up until Germany attacked, then suddenly it was a co-belligerent with the west. So Russia was in the war a grand total of six months more than America – big deal.

As for Europe being grateful: I know Danes who are thrilled that their country was liberated by the west (prioritized due to the Danish resistance leading to that nation being seen as occupied and not a collaborating nation). You can’t expect me to seriously believe that France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, the Low Countries, or Holland really have no historical preference to which group liberated them from German rule. Nor can you ignore the fact that 2/3 of the Soviet trucks (ie. there entire logistical capabilities) were made in America. Russia might have survived and even partially repulsed the Germans alone, but there’s absolutely no chance they ever would have made it back to 1940 borders, let alone ‘liberating’ Europe.

3) The fact that a nation can’t or won’t give help is no reason why a third party won’t nonetheless demand it.

4) And yes, our birth rates are bad. That is a big problem.But that problem will hit Europe first (as problems tend to do…), and so the point (in the medium term) still stands.

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1. Clarissa
  
  March 31, 2014
  
  “And yes, our birth rates are bad. That is a big problem.”
  
  – Mexico is next door. What problem?
  
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2. Alexander
  
  March 31, 2014
  
  Because I expect a country that increasingly resembles Mexico demographically to increasingly resemble Mexico in all other aspects. Personally, that matters because I don’t like the idea of my culture dying out – it doesn’t need to be better or worse than the culture replacing it, because it’s *mine*.
  
  Anymore than I’d suspect you would like Ukraine to find itself repopulated with Poles, Russians, or Romanians… regardless of individual virtues and vices.
  
  Practically, it’s a problem for anyone overseas expecting America to honor commitments twenty, thirty years from now. Not only is it unlikely that Hispanics will feel any sort of solidarity and desire to die on behalf of England or Germany or Poland or Italy, but that the new dominant culture could even create and maintain the industrial capacity or the military to do so. It’s also a problem if history repeats itself as to what happens when a large, multi-ethnic empire goes into decline. It’s *especially* a problem if you’re African-American.
  
  Which we are already seeing. La Raza has no intention of assimilating into a general multi-cultural fabric of America, and ethnic cleansing of black neighborhoods by Hispanics is well underway from Compton to Brooklyn.
  
  And it’s hard to argue that they *should*. Afterall, if they’re the only demographic willing to provide the next generation, it seems fair that they should get to dictate the society that generation lives in.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    March 31, 2014
    
    Hispanics today are what Anglo Protestants were 100-150 years ago: hard-working, resilient, not extremely religious, fanatically dedicated to family. Hispanic immigrants get far ahead of Canadians and Americans in just a few years. In Hispanic communities in the US, everything happens at the extremes. People are either completely incapable of organizing their lives in any way, or are more hard-working and organized than one would think humanly possible.
    
    I see this among my students, too. Hispanic students are always better prepared to take my courses for obvious reasons. But about half of them are incapable of getting themselves under control and not be all over the place. And the other half is so far ahead of everybody else that it’s scary.
    
    Of course, there’s crime. But that’s how every single immigrant community starts out: Italians, Irish, even the Jews. That all changes after 1-2 generations.
    
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Alexander

March 31, 2014

I have no idea why I included Spain in that… obviously, not Spain.

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Alexander

March 31, 2014

Perfectly fine. But I am Anglo-Protestant, that is my culture. There’s nothing wrong with me desiring to continue to live in a majority Anglo-Protestant society, any more than it’s not wrong for the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese to completely eschew immigrants, or Turks to hail the ethnic-nationalist *Ataturk*, or Ukrainians who wish to live in a nation where the culture and language is dominantly Ukrainian.

That personal problem becomes society’s problem when enough people on either side decide to violently impose their culture as the dominant one. History has no shortage of examples.

As to everything else, I have my doubts. Maybe not so much in organized crime: the tendency thus far does to be group X enters, the head honchos of X take control in large part through graft and organized crime, honcho’s grandchildren go ‘legit’ and the next group comes along. But I have a hard time believing that large groups of non-Anglos, allowed to live in large numbers and concentrated into the same schools and work environments, are ever going to develop an affinity for a cultural philosophy rooted in 18th century England. Nor do I see why they should.

I do not believe that you can take group A, have group A build a country X, then replace A with B and expect country X to remain substantively the same nation.

So for anyone who values the United States (or any nation, for that matter) *as it currently exists, and wishes for it to continue in the same basic form*, then native reproduction being replaced wholesale with immigration is a problem. This is not the same thing as barring immigration.

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1. Clarissa
  
  March 31, 2014
  
  Of course, all of these problems could be alleviated if immigration were facilitated for people who have demonstrated that they have adapted in the country perfectly, who speak the language, understand the culture, have good jobs and pay high taxes, like me and my husband. However, every effort is being made here, and even more so in the EU, to exclude people like us. So I’m guessing that the goal is not to bring in people who can “to develop an affinity for a cultural philosophy rooted in 18th century England.” The goal of these immigration policies seems to be the exact opposite.
  
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Alexander

March 31, 2014

Yes, it does.

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