I think that there is actually a more frightening answer to the question of how the war started.

I fear that the causation chain of the war was inequality within nations leading to the rise of populist nationalism, followed by populist nationalism degenerating into unrestrained conflict between nations along the fault lines of imperial power.

If you read the story in those terms, Kiev looks a great deal like Sarajevo.

This sense of the rhyming of history is reinforced when you consider the speed with which supposed lightning war was replaced with fixed trenches and attrition.

Vestal_Flame said:

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I think that there is actually a more frightening answer to the question of how the war started.

I fear that the causation chain of the war was inequality within nations leading to the rise of populist nationalism, followed by populist nationalism degenerating into unrestrained conflict between nations along the fault lines of imperial power.

If you read the story in those terms, Kiev looks a great deal like Sarajevo.

This sense of the rhyming of history is reinforced when you consider the speed with which supposed lightning war was replaced with fixed trenches and attrition.

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You've lost me, particularly your second point. Can you elaborate on both?

My legal practice involves a good bit of defense-related work.

An O-6 recently said to me, "You're looking at this all wrong. We're not reliving 1938. We're reliving 1912."

My fear is that, as in the late Gilded Age, inequality in the industrialized economies is at a point of unsustainable concentration of wealth.

That inequality is driving the authoritarian nationalist movements (and their socialist mirror images) that we see in the major democracies.

The nationalist authoritarianism that we have embraced in The United States is not unique to our circumstances. I was in France on election day in '22 and in Belgium on election day in '24. I was also in London, about a month before the election in '24. In all three cases, the things that I saw were strikingly familiar.

At the same time that we have a climate of nationalism in much of the industrialized world, the imperial problem is not going away.

The Russians are fighting an imperial war in Ukraine. We are slow to stabilize the eastern flank of Europe, because the nationalist political climate of America demands an inward focus.

If the Europeans can't keep their house in order, then the my fear is that the war will spread.

I had a tangible moment of epiphany on this topic on Sunday, as I was looking at a trench simulation in Kansas City.

Like Putin, Wilhelm expected a short war. Like Putin, Wilhelm ended up with a trench war that was being fought to exhaustion. Russia collapsed. France mutinied. Then Germany collapsed.

It was a damn mess. The only reason that it was good for us is that we stayed out until everybody else was tired.

Vestal_Flame said:

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My legal practice involves a good bit of defense-related work.

An O-6 recently said to me, "You're looking at this all wrong. We're not reliving 1938. We're reliving 1912."

My fear is that, as in the late Gilded Age, inequality in the industrialized economies is at a point of unsustainable concentration of wealth.

That inequality is driving the authoritarian nationalist movements (and their socialist mirror images) that we see in the major democracies.

The nationalist authoritarianism that we have embraced in The United States is not unique to our circumstances. I was in France on election day in '22 and in Belgium on election day in '24. I was also in London, about a month before the election in '24. In all three cases, the things that I saw were strikingly familiar.

At the same time that we have a climate of nationalism in much of the industrialized world, the imperial problem is not going away.

The Russians are fighting an imperial war in Ukraine. We are slow to stabilize the eastern flank of Europe, because the nationalist political climate of America demands an inward focus.

If the Europeans can't keep their house in order, then the my fear is that the war will spread.

I had a tangible moment of epiphany on this topic on Sunday, as I was looking at a trench simulation in Kansas City.

Like Putin, Wilhelm expected a short war. Like Putin, Wilhelm ended up with a trench war that was being fought to exhaustion. Russia collapsed. France mutinied. Then Germany collapsed.

It was a damn mess. The only reason that it was good for us is that we stayed out until everybody else was tired.

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Those two narrative are being driven by the left leaning media.

If the left leaning media suddenly started preaching the American dream is achievable by anyone from anywhere, instead of class warfare we'd see a lot less 'protests' (which are themselves manufactured by institutions looking to disrupt American life for their own gain) and more hard working Americans getting along, regardless of political affiliation.

And who is the "we" who have embraced nationalist authoritarianism? No one I know feels this way. A lot of folks with TDS sure do however, but then they completely ignored the authoritarianism pushed on us during the covid lockdowns and forced compliance to taking a shot we didn't need.

Fascinating thoughts Vestal. I've really been studying the Gilded Age the last few years as I find that time period interesting today seeing similarities in the industrialists such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, and Vanderbilt to the tech giants of Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg. However, I always associated the end of the Gilded Age with the Great Depression as a lead up to the events that led to the rise of Hitler and Germany which was very much economically driven.

The suggestion that the rise of authoritarian nationalism around the world alongside imperial ambitions is something I haven't connected and is certainly worthy of further study.

Answer if you want to but am really curious about the conversation with that O-6 who shared that idea.

Edit-wordsmithing

FIDO, the conversation with the O-6 was a debate as to whether and how America can build the manufacturing capacity that is necessary to go to war in 2027.

Agracer, I am willing to make the argument that our current government tends to choose tactics that are both more authoritarian and more nationalist than anything seen in America from 1980-2010.

I leave to the politics board the question of whether authoritarianism or nationalism is a prudent solution for the problems that we face. Whether we want more centralized power or more dispersed power is a legitimate question for each generation to debate.

The label of "authoritarianism" requires both the centralization of political power and suppression of dissent.

The centralization of political power is fairly easy to quantify. If you look at the number of executive orders produced by each administration, the current administration is producing EOs at roughly five times the rate seen in recent prior administrations. Executive orders are a useful quantitative proxy for the more amorphous question of centralized power.

It is probably fair to argue that the authoritarian label, in addition to requiring centralized power, also requires a tendency for that centralized power to invest resources in the suppression of dissent. In blue cities, we see federal law enforcement being used to suppress protests. We see the president personally calling for his critics to be removed from private sector employment. Without touching the question of whether either of these phenomena is a good idea, I simply note that they exist.

As to the question of whether our government is more nationalist than its predecessors, I think that it would be difficult to argue that our unilateral tariff policy is not unabashedly nationalist. Not for nothing do we call our foreign policy "America First."

Again, I do not intend to debate the question of whether the authoritarian nationalist approach is wise.

That the authoritarian nationalist approach has been embraced by the American people is demonstrated by the fact that the GOP won the popular vote and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in 2024. The GOP is delivering the government that was promised in the campaign.

You are not wrong.

My comments focused on authoritarian nationalism in the federal government. My focus was motivated by the impact on foreign policy and federal spending.

To focus in that direction is not to say that I am blind to the various forms of ideological repression practiced in other sectors (e.g., academia) by what we can most gently call the cosmopolitan neo-Marxists.

what's bizarre is seeing all the green grass

similar to what it looked like in the movie "1917"

but certainly at Paschendaeele there was ZERO grass and it was all black and brown mud everywhere.

LMCane said:

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what's bizarre is seeing all the green grass

similar to what it looked like in the movie "1917"

but certainly at Paschendaeele there was ZERO grass and it was all black and brown mud everywhere.

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Nature finds a way.... and it is also 1919.

The land heals quickly, but the First World War is still killing French and Belgian soldiers and civilians.