Comments on: Deterrence is a game where a big enough mistake kills hundreds of millions if not billions of people

By: Pseudo-Chrysostom

Pseudo-Chrysostom — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 02:22:28 +0000

Wars of attrition are not bloody endless stalemates.

Bloody yes; but neither endless nor stalemates.

The stalemates exist only in the minds of personages afflicted by the condition of map autism, who think that lines on the map sum the total of reality.

As regards to correlation of forces in reality, how men are fighting other men in the Ukraine, and what the results of that fighting is, they are not equivalent at all; but you can’t learn that by just looking at lines on a map.

By: Pongo

Pongo — Sat, 02 Sep 2023 23:48:19 +0000

The initial celebration of Russia’s invasion on parts of the dissident right and its subsequent implosion, partial rollback and stalemate have permanently stained the armchair generals of the right IMO.

By: Biff Shickendorf

Biff Shickendorf — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 15:59:55 +0000

When Putin dies another progression downward occurs. Russia is structured very like organized crime cartels with Putin as the chief of chiefs. The war of succession may be the end of all things.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Sun, 27 Aug 2023 14:26:44 +0000

It’s a shame that Beaufre’s works are out of print — at least in English.

By: Gavin Longmuir

Gavin Longmuir — Sun, 27 Aug 2023 02:00:16 +0000

“It [US/NATO] is doing this by rallying world opinion to the imposition of massive economic costs …”

Unfortunately, those massive economic costs are being imposed by US/NATO on … US/NATO. And world opinion is hardly rallying to the US/NATO cause; see the recent BRICS conference, or the failed “Stand with Ukraine” conference in Saudi Arabia.

When analysts ignore the obvious aggressive moves of the US/NATO eastwards to the Russian border and ignore the impact of the coup and long civil war in the Ukraine on Russia and instead characterize everything as “Putin’s war”, it does tend to engender a very low opinion of that analyst’s assessment.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Sun, 27 Aug 2023 00:41:03 +0000

Beaufre’s point about the General Staff was interestingly mirrored by Picasso, when Matisse asked him, as the German armies advanced, WTF are our generals doing? (or words to that effect)

Picasso’s response: “Our generals? They’re the masters at the Ecole des Beaux Arts!”…ie, men possessed by the same rote formulae and absence of observation and obsessive traditionalism as the academic artists.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 21:08:05 +0000

It’s amazing how quickly wartime armies turn into peacetime armies.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 20:35:08 +0000

Haven’t read Beaufre’s strategy book, but I read his book “1940: The Fall of France”, which I thought was excellent.

He describes his experiences in the colonial conflicts of the interwar period and then as a young Captain on the general staff…where he was not impressed with the senior officers:

“I saw very quickly that our seniors were primarily concerned with forms of drafting. Every memorandum had to be perfect, written in a concise, impersonal style, and conforming to a logical and faultless plan–but so abstract that it had to be read several times before one could find out what it was about…”I have the honour to inform you that I have decided…I envisage…I attach some importance to the fact that…” Actually no one decided more than the barest minimum, and what indeed was decided was pretty trivial.”