Ukraine War: incompetence vs fecklessness

[SeanF]

4 hours ago, Bironic said:

I don't agree with this "in the past we were led by lions and now by donkeys", almost all of the people usually mentioned have massive failures, faults and flaws under their belt. IMHo there are no statistics to back up that belief either... And I don't think that there are no good/great/competent leaders/politicians etc today.

That doesn't mean that I am optimistic about our future or that everything will be fine, but this weird nostalgia makes me always uneasy, it somewhat resembles the MAGA slogans (when was america great the last time? under Ike? Kennedy?) BS if you ask me...

American Isolationism is stupid, purely in terms of defending American interests.

[Stark Revenge]

22 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Knocking Churchill is now very popular in the kinds of circles that don’t see that much difference between the Western powers  and the Nazis (Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Tariq Ali, Clive Ponting, David Irving etc.)

One can argue that the leaders who founded and guided NATO, and led the West, from the 50’s to the 90’s, were just one cheek of the same sordid arse as the leaders of the Eastern bloc, who provided the other cheek.

But, I think that’s an argument that comes from a place of great privilege.

100% this - when you defeat the Nazis and win WWII, all other criticisms are basically footnotes and come off as very petty. It misses the forest for the trees.

[polishgenius]

28 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Knocking Churchill is now very popular in the kinds of circles that don’t see that much difference between the Western powers  and the Nazis (Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Tariq Ali, Clive Ponting, David Irving etc.)

 

Yeah, with all due respect, piss off. I criticised Churchill for some very specific things did in response to an argument that he was 'clear-sighted' on foreign policy. Comparing me to a holocaust denier for that is not just beyond dishonest: given that my argument was made on the basis of being Polish and you might, if you'd spared a thought for what was actually being said and who was saying it and not playing clownish point-scoring, have considered that I had family in concentration camps and trying that on is insanely offensive. 

 

[SeanF]

Just now, polishgenius said:

 

Yeah, with all due respect, piss off. I criticised Churchill for some very specific things did in response to an argument that he was 'clear-sighted' on foreign policy. Comparing me to a holocaust denier for that is not just beyond dishonest: given that my argument was made on the basis of being Polish and you might, if you'd spared a thought for what was actually being said and who was saying it and not playing clownish point-scoring, have considered that I had family in concentration camps and trying that on is insanely offensive. 

 

These four writers quote each other, so no apology, I’m afraid.

[Werthead]

Churchill was racist, imperialist, colonialist and repeatedly militarily incompetent throughout his career. He also had an outstanding PR machine and knew how to write and deliver a good speech. He was the right person in the right time in a very narrow period of history, and the British people were aware of that, hence him not being voted into office the first time, and being booted out the second an alternative was available, and only being voted back in by riding the nostalgia wave and then clinging onto power for far longer than he should have, given his evident health issues (so evident the King actually tried to ask him to resign, only to drop dead himself before he could follow through; an event Churchill ironically used to excuse staying in power for longer). He was also prophetically correct about Russia and nobody listened to him, which is kind of annoying, but Roosevelt was correct to suspect his motives coming from a place of wanting to preserve the Empire as well as anything else.

It is entirely possible to agree that Churchill was a very good Prime Minister during wartime, had some good instincts in foreign affairs, and was a more or less colossal fuckup in almost everything else he did in his life.

14 minutes ago, Stark Revenge said:

100% this - when you defeat the Nazis and win WWII, all other criticisms are basically footnotes and come off as very petty. It misses the forest for the trees.

So there is no valid criticism that can be made of Josef Stalin who, y'know, did about 5,000 times more to actually defeat the Nazis and win WWII than Churchill?

[polishgenius]

17 minutes ago, SeanF said:

These four writers quote each other, so no apology, I’m afraid.

 

Unless you think I'm one of those four writers, I'm not sure of the relevance. You tried to daisy-chain reasonable arguments to a bigoted crackpot and paint them the same, and you faceplanted doing it. 

[SeanF]

12 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Churchill was racist, imperialist, colonialist and repeatedly militarily incompetent throughout his career. He also had an outstanding PR machine and knew how to write and deliver a good speech. He was the right person in the right time in a very narrow period of history, and the British people were aware of that, hence him not being voted into office the first time, and being booted out the second an alternative was available, and only being voted back in by riding the nostalgia wave and then clinging onto power for far longer than he should have, given his evident health issues (so evident the King actually tried to ask him to resign, only to drop dead himself before he could follow through; an event Churchill ironically used to excuse staying in power for longer). He was also prophetically correct about Russia and nobody listened to him, which is kind of annoying, but Roosevelt was correct to suspect his motives coming from a place of wanting to preserve the Empire as well as anything else.

It is entirely possible to agree that Churchill was a very good Prime Minister during wartime, had some good instincts in foreign affairs, and was a more or less colossal fuckup in almost everything else he did in his life.

So there is no valid criticism that can be made of Josef Stalin who, y'know, did about 5,000 times more to actually defeat the Nazis and win WWII than Churchill?

Two very big things he got right.

His record in WWII.  His realisation that the Soviet Union was a major threat to Europe.

He, like everyone else I mentioned, had plenty of flaws.  Great leaders do.

[Maithanet]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

Churchill gave Poland (which didn't want to be communist) to Stalin in return for stabbing the leftist anti-fascist rebels he'd been allied with in Greece (who did want to be communist) in the back to keep Greece 'Western'.

Was there any real hope for pro-democracy Poles in 1945?  Would British (or even combined US+UK) backing have made much difference?  I don't know that much about the details of post-war power maneuvers in Poland, but I always thought that since the Red Army controlled all of Poland that Stalin's opinion was basically all that mattered.  Is that (broadly speaking) correct?  What could hypothetical British support actually have accomplished? 

[polishgenius]

1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

Was there any real hope for pro-democracy Poles in 1945?  Would British (or even combined US+UK) backing have made much difference? 

 

I don't know, but I'd have a lot more respect for the way Churchill handled it if that had been the basis, rather than bartering the future of countries based on what was most important to himself and Stalin, rather than what those countries wanted. 

[Stark Revenge]

47 minutes ago, Werthead said:

So there is no valid criticism that can be made of Josef Stalin who, y'know, did about 5,000 times more to actually defeat the Nazis and win WWII than Churchill?

This is pretty silly. Churchill was doing all he could to ensure the West remained liberal and democratic given the geopolitical realities he faced. Stalin did nothing of the sort and was an evil on par with Hitler. The difference is quite clearly in the ideals they espoused. Churchill failing to live up to these ideals, but doing much to ensure they remained alive, does not redeem Stalin as his ideals were never liberal nor democratic. 

[polishgenius]

2 minutes ago, Stark Revenge said:

 Stalin did nothing of the sort and was an evil on par with Hitler. 

 

Hey, you're the one who said this was a petty footnote.

[Stark Revenge]

2 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

Hey, you're the one who said this was a petty footnote.

The discussion was clearly about Churchill.

[polishgenius]

Just now, Stark Revenge said:

The discussion was clearly about Churchill.

 

Yeah, but you didn't say 'Churchill'. You said 'you'. In English, in that kind of context, that's a generalisation which means 'anyone who does it'. 

If you didn't want to say that the Holodomor was basically a footnote and bringing it up comes off as petty... well, that's on you. Because you did say that. 

[Stark Revenge]

7 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

Yeah, but you didn't say 'Churchill'. You said 'you'. In English, in that kind of context, that's a generalisation which means 'anyone who does it'. 

If you didn't want to say that the Holodomor was basically a footnote and bringing it up comes off as petty... well, that's on you. Because you did say that. 

I think we're getting into levels of pettiness that I will refrain from partaking in.

[Hmmm]

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

So there is no valid criticism that can be made of Josef Stalin who, y'know, did about 5,000 times more to actually defeat the Nazis and win WWII than Churchill?

This statement needs to be amended with that no other foreign leader also did as much to strengthen the Nazis as Stalin did.

Without the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact there is a decent change that Germany could have been defeated in like a year or two, and maybe never even taken complete control of Poland, due to critical shortages of raw materials. 

Stalin's alliance with Hitler really screwed up the French and British war planning. 

Edited February 20 by Hmmm

[Heartofice]

12 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

I don't know, but I'd have a lot more respect for the way Churchill handled it if that had been the basis, rather than bartering the future of countries based on what was most important to himself and Stalin, rather than what those countries wanted. 

Countries putting their own self interest ahead of others?! Who'd have thought it?

[Derfel Cadarn]

The Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine last yesr was shot and killed in Spain

https://news.sky.com/story/russian-helicopter-pilot-who-defected-to-ukraine-shot-dead-in-spain-13075929

[Snowy89]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/us/politics/ukraine-prisoners-avdiivka-russia.html. Lovely. Up to a 1000 men potentially captured.

This is what this Bidens and EU's incrementalism gets you, only providing support enough for Ukraine not to loose outright. This means you only need one black swan defeat like this for the larger war to completely reverse, since there is no slack available to Ukraine to catch unexpected setbacks. I am so tired of the hubris on western policy makers that think they can manage this tightrope.

Edited February 20 by Job Snow

[Celestial]

1 hour ago, Job Snow said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/us/politics/ukraine-prisoners-avdiivka-russia.html. Lovely. Up to a 1000 men potentially captured.

This is what this Bidens and EU's incrementalism gets you, only providing support enough for Ukraine not to loose outright. This means you only need one black swan defeat like this for the larger war to completely reverse, since there is no slack available to Ukraine to catch unexpected setbacks. I am so tired of the hubris on western policy makers that think they can manage this tightrope.

I do not think it is a case of "the pool of competent leadership dried up, right across Western democracies, at some point in the 1990's" as SeanF put it, but rather the fact that NATO and the United States have not faced a major threat from a near-peer adversary for more than 30 years. Just like muscles atrophy if you don't use them, so could strategic thinking.

Basically, we have a political class who has lived in a kind of "la belle epoque" for 30 years and who suddenly found itself required to deal with a kind of brutal military expansionism from a near-peer adversary not seen since WW2. It is no surprise that they all, without any single exception, displayed massive complacency, lack of imagination and total incapacity to think outside the box. It is like taking a person who lived for 30 years in a luxury penthouse, all his need covered by a trust fund, and suddenly asking him to plough.

And the same thing can be said about the population of Europe and US. If the politicians lived "la belle epoque", so did their constituencies. If you take a population who had not experienced major hardships for decades and suddenly ask them to make significant sacrifices, they are going to scream and whine. Just look at the European farmers recently: the climate change IS coming and is likely to be brutal, yet they don't give a fuck, all they care about is to have cash NOW. If that's how they react to the global warming which is going to affect everyone no matter where they live, to expect them to show better judgment with regard to Russia (which is not likely to march through Berlin or Paris, no matter what turn the events will take) is pointless.

This kind of politicians and this kind of constituencies is a match made in hell. Say what you want about Churchill, but, despite all his other flaws, he at least had the boldness to tell point blank that "blood, toil, tears and sweat" was what was required. Any politician of today would rather hang themselves than tell their constituency the same. It's safer for their careers to bury their heads in the sand, offer off-ramps to Putin and hope everything will solve itself away by some kind of divine intervention.

This applies to American internal politics as well: because Biden and the democrats never had to deal in their whole life with a situation where a president attempted a coup and with a major political party doing the bidding of a foreign power, they have no clue how to deal with this problem. However, going soft on putschists is a very bad idea, because, if there are no consequences for plotting a coup, they would try again. In Jan 2021, someone like Stefanik claimed the insurrectionists had to be punished. Now, the same Stefanik says there was no insurrection. Why this happened is pretty obvious: in Jan 2021, the MAGA-affiliated politicians thought Trump was done for and will end up in jail quickly. But nothing happened to Trump on that account and, as a result, we have the Republican party back in his thrall and the Project 2025, with the fascists preparing to have a second try and to do it right, this time.

Edited February 20 by Celestial

[Bironic]

7 minutes ago, Celestial said:

Basically, we have a political class who has lived in a kind of "la belle epoque" for 30 years and who suddenly found itself required to deal with a kind of brutal military expansionism from a near-peer adversary not seen since WW2. It is no surprise that they all, without any single exception, displayed massive complacency, lack of imagination and total incapacity to think outside the box.

I wouldn't say all without exception, there were and still are plenty of politicians that have shown exactly that (both when it comes to Ukraine as well as in regards to climate change).

In regards to Ukraine specifically I would say most of the political leaders in power in Ukraine, the Baltics, Poland, Northern Europe, Czech republic, the Netherlands, the UK have shown these qualities. The problem is more that some of the big hitters such as the USA, Germany, France, Italy (with the exception of a very short period lasting from around January 21 to may 22) haven't shown it...