Catastrophe 1914 « Isegoria

Catastrophe 1914

Tuesday, September 16th, 2014

While reading Catastrophe 1914, by Max Hastings, Vox Day has noticed a few things:

Civilian leadership usually appoints the wrong commanders.
The main thing lacking in military leaders, from the highest level to the lowest, is a willingness to accept the risk of defeat. Nothing assures failure like indecisiveness.
Advances in communications technology increases the amount of civilian interference into war operations.
Civilian leadership seldom has a clear objective in mind.
Military commanders regard “the book” as an intrinsic excuse and therefore have a tendency to cling to it.
A historian’s take on a given war is strongly influenced by his nationalist sympathies.
The temptation to interfere with a strategic plan once it is put into action appears to be almost overwhelming.

Posted in Policy, War | 2 Comments »

Comments

Rollory says:

September 16, 2014 at 5:04 pm

There are reasons why nations with a warrior aristocracy tend to be able to impose upon those around them.
Cassander says:

September 16, 2014 at 11:03 pm

Before 100 or so years ago, was there any country that didn’t have a warrior aristocracy?

roy in nipomo: The inclusion of “stand your ground” when discussing murder seems to be an attempt to preclude self-defense.
McChuck: The RAND corporation is wholly Leftist, and the conclusions it arrives upon are those it was paid to produce.
Bob Sykes: America does not have a gun problem. It has a black problem. Over 55% of all gun murders, and over 75% of all mass shootings are committed by underclass black men between 15 and 30. Without young black men, America’s crime statistics would be pretty close to Switzerland’s. People like Zaid Jilani are a major problem themselves, as they are committed to obscuring the problem and diverting attention away from the cause, which is black genetics.
Jim: Respectfully, the Gnomes of Zürich are unlikely to have “eagerly acquiesc[ed]” to the surrender of their ancient, cherished neutrality. Let’s not blame the presumed victims of vaguely articulated threats of bunker-busting nuclear rain for their submission to FATCA et al. For Americans, of course, the tragedy is in how the set of U.S. persons can be implicitly expanded or contracted to a truly shocking degree according with the objectives of the executive agency in question.
Phileas Frogg: Jim, That’s true, on both counts, but with regard to the second we’ll see if Switzerland and its reputation can survive the present imperial hubris inspiring the dictate’s coming from Washington, to which it appears to be eagerly acquiescing. There is still time to salvage their traditional neutrality, and the strength prestige it afforded them, but the portents are certainly disfavorable. https://www.nato.int/cps /en/natohq/news_213105.h tm?selectedLocale=en...
Buckethead: Isegoria, you seem to have a disappearing comment issue.
Brod Ross: I your interested in this subject Mail me. B
Jim: But it’s also possible to overfit the patterns of life. Switzerland has been the impenetrable mountain fortress of world banking for seven centuries.
Jim: Bomag: A harping of two themes: the libertarian love of trade as the source of wealth; and apologizing for Africa. Wondering if he dealt with the usual counter-factuals: Japan, rocky islands less than 200 miles wide, did so well; Argentina, lots of ports and resources, did not do so well. Why did Switzerland, no ports and difficult geography, do so well? Great comment, LOL.
Bomag: A harping of two themes: the libertarian love of trade as the source of wealth; and apologizing for Africa. Wondering if he dealt with the usual counter-factuals: Japan, rocky islands less than 200 miles wide, did so well; Argentina, lots of ports and resources, did not do so well. Why did Switzerland, no ports and difficult geography, do so well?
T. Beholder: Then it made England friendly to the United States. Then it made France friendly to the United States. Then it made Finland friendly to the United States. And then Canada and Mexico… uh… wait… Nevermind, «As of 2014 all — including Japan — are allies». And if you boosted a washing machine to spin as hard as the author spins this, it would be able to turn yarn into millinery felt. :]
T. Beholder: And then there’s… https://englishrussia.co m/2009/09/15/the-white-c itizens/ https://englishrussia.co m/2016/09/29/ways-how-to -protect-yourself-from-a -polar-bear/ https://englishrussia.co m/2018/11/19/why-does-th is-house-needs-those-spi ked-bars/ https://englishrussia.co m/2019/02/11/russian-tow n-is-invaded-by-polar-be ar-and-it-is-truly-shock ing-photosvids/ https://web.archive.org/ web/1/siberiantimes.com/ ecology/others/news/vill age-besieged-by-polar-be ars-as-hundreds-of-te...
Jim: The most interesting aspect of CBDC is that its dollars would not be created by the mortgaging of real estate.
Jim: Some days I like hipsters more than bears, and some days I like bears more than hipsters. But at least they aren’t conservatives.
Phileas Frogg: Strategy games are actually pretty useful for developing, honing, and maintaining competitive thought patterns, but I’ve noticed that you can have several different successful patterns emerge when you observe a closed strategic eco-system (as it was with my friends when we used to have to do everything via LAN in the 90′s and early 00′s) My one friend was always good at optimization, he grasped the internal systems of the game quickly and then ruthlessly exploited them....
Bomag: I thought empathy was an important tool for successful people. Dole it out judiciously; don’t give it to every negative marginal utility person who sneaks across a border.
Jim: Back when I played first-person shooters semi-competitively, not only would I dream about it, I would “see” (à la blindsight) flicker-flashes of game movement throughout the day, eyes open. Whether they were memory fragments or simulation runs bleeding into consciousness I was never able to determine. The all-consuming relentlessness with which one pursues game objectives is an excellent lesson for life.
Jim: I have nothing against the legitimate government of the Han, and I am disturbed by the International Clique’s use of U.S. power to launch the Chinese Communist Party to hegemony, but it remains a fact that Mainland China is sixty-two times more massive than Taiwan. Numbers matter.
Gaikokumaniakku: Bob Sykes said, “Lai, the DPP candidate for president, won the presidency with only 40% of the vote, and the party lost its majority in parliament. So, the independence movement lost ground.” The Taiwanese people do not need to “declare independence.” The Republic of China has been a de facto country longer than the PRC has existed. Taiwan needs strong operational industrial connections, such as European countries that depend on cooperation with Taiwan. It already has some...
Bob Sykes: A pitot tube extends outside the aircraft, and it measures the pressure at the open tip. The Bernoulli equation then lets the pressure be converted into a flight velocity.

Isegoria

Catastrophe 1914

Comments

Leave a Reply

Search

Recent Comments

Categories

Archives