Too proud to fight?
Bringing people together to resolve conflicts without war is not weakness - it is strength. pic.twitter.com/BkZh4z3Mc6
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) February 10, 2022
I've never liked this argument. Partly it's because I dislike the whole framing of war as weak or strong, but mostly it's because this is such an unconvincing bit of sophistry. I mean, does anyone really believe that refusing to fight shows resolve and strength?
I don't mean this as anything against Bernie. He's just parroting a common liberal refrain here. But regardless of whether it's true or not, I really don't think anyone buys it. Why not simply frame it in terms of national interest instead?
While I often agree with Bernie, I've never been convinced that national interest (vs Bernie branding) is his sole priority.
While Bernie is right, this isn't an effective way to convince the people who highly value the appearance of strength.
Telling the bully that hes showing weakness when he puts on a display typically doesn't make him see the light.
You should probably take that up with Winston Churchill who said: , Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.”
I believe the quote was "Jaw, jaw, jaw is better than war, war, war".
That’s what I thought, too. But evidently not. (You have to scroll down a bit)
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/quotes-falsely-attributed/
Read "Churchill's Shadow." It reveals a man whose entire history belies that quote.
That’s certainly true. Especially his early years and his time as First Lord of the Admiralty are a mixed bag, with a lot of bellicose activities, numerous disasters,and very little of the commitment to thoughtful dialogue implied by the quote. On the other hand, he pretty much saved the world from the Nazis so I’m willing to overlook a lot.
Actually, no. The Soviet Union pretty much saved the world from the Nazis. The US saved the world from the Japanese. The UK saved the world from the Italians.
Yes, the Soviets did the bulk of the fight and dying. And it was they who broke the back of the German army. But Churchill was deeply involved in building the alliance with the USSR, his leadership was instrumental in keeping Stalin in the war, and the British supply convoys were essential in the Soviet war effort.
Actually, I believe that most of the British supply ships were sunk before they reached the Soviet Union.
As for his leadership to keep Stalin in the war, Stalin insisted that the Allies invade France to take the pressure off the Red Army. Churchill opposed the Normandy Invasion up to the day it took place, insisting instead on the Italian campaign, which proved disastrous for similar reasons as the Gallipoli campaign he also supported decades earlier.
It's impressive how effectively Churchill hijacked the history of WWII to adopt the successes of others and expunge his own mistakes.
Friendo, the Soviets would have lost the war without US (not much British!) supplies and trucks.
Also what happend in Italy was neither disasterous nor anything like his failure at Gallipoli.
I believe that most of the British supply ships were sunk before they reached the Soviet Union.
I don't know about "most"—although losses were certainly heavy. However, by the late spring of '43 the Wolf Pack was a largely spent force, and the vast bulk of ships were making it safely through to both Britain and Russia.
By Feb 1943, the battle of Stalingrad was over and the Nazis were already losing the eastern front.
While it is true the west has a tendency to wildly underrate the significance of the Soviet Union's huge role in WW II, it's probably equally unwise to assign the role of sole savior to the Soviet Union. The war had been going for nearly 2 years before the Soviet Union even joined in he fighting. I'm not a military expert but I'm not sure the Soviet Union would have been able to withstand the German military if there had been no non aggression pact and if there had been no western front for Hitler to spend all his time and efforts for the better of 2 years. Would the Soviet Union have withstood the German blitzkrieg if it had just continued east from Poland in 1939 ?
Stalin's key allies against the Germans were January and February.
I'll leave the speculative counterfactuals to others. The fact is that the beginning of the end for Hitler was the retreat from Stalingrad. The Soviet Union was able to throw back the Wehrmacht in spite of the fact that Stalin had murdered most of his generals and subsequently tens of thousands of his own troops.
The fact is that the beginning of the end for Hitler was the retreat from Stalingrad
The "beginning" of the end was outside the gates of Moscow in December, 1941.* The Wehrmacht was never the same after the gigantic losses it suffered during Barbarossa, and Hitler also declared war on the United States that month. The Nazis were now fighting a two-front war against a vastly stronger foe: a coalition comprised of the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and the United States of America—and doing so with a gravely weakened military. The odds of a German victory after that juncture in the war were tiny.
*Maybe the clearest piece of evidence of this dynamic is the very nature of Hitler's 1942 eastern front offensive (Case Blue) leading up to Stalingrad: it was highly limited in scope and objective, because Germany no longer possessed the military power necessary for a massive campaign like the one it had waged the previous summer. And of course by this time it was dealing with a far more capable and lethal adversary in the Red Army. Stalingrad (42-43) was the obvious turning point, but Moscow (41-42) the more critical one.
Come on Kevin, this is bordering on an "all lives matter" argument.
We've just lived through decades of conservatives insisting that every international disagreement should be solved with carpet bombing, and that negotiating with bad guys is weakness.
Obviously this should be read as "staying out of war is ALSO a sign of strength".
God forbid we should try and persuade people.
This. Look at the captioned quote -- "familiar drumbeats."
He's not saying never resorting to fighting is strong; he's saying that always resorting to it, especially first, is not strong.
(And seriously, is anyone seriously suggesting the US take military action in Ukraine? Next door to Russia -- and Belarus, etc. -- and almost 5,000 miles away from the US? I mean, what are they smoking?)
Yeah - this statement was definitely meant more as "being able to avoid resorting to war and solving problems peacefully is a sign of strength" and not "not going to war is strong." Like, what?
Typical Copepinkery: the US is always the warmonger.
Meanwhile, the Altright & Altleft's besty Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin rattles his sabre at every independent state in the near-abroad, &... crickets.
Well said. Apparently the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are already forgotten.
Biden should rattle sabers at Cuba and Venezuela if we’re doing spheres of influence.
Naw, they both have military capability, and Venezuela especially is geographically complex. It would be messy, and Americans might get killed!
Far better to follow the courageous leadership of Ronald Reagan, and invent a reason to invade a tiny and militarily completely incapable place like Grenada. It's done in just a few weeks, you can hand out more medals than there were service members in theater (true!), and America can rejoice in Victory once again!
Is there any unrest in Belize? I hear it's nice this time of year.
The kind of people who want to see blood aren't going to be impressed by a student teacher telling them they need to examine their feelings and question hostility.
It's like the scene in Clockwork Orange where Alex in prison reads the Bible.
I don’t think that’s what Bernie is saying. His point is that the NATO/Biden strategy is the correct one. We can deter or even destroy Putin with sanctions against Russian oligarchs generally (as opposed to meaningless sanctions on Putin as an individual) and, realistically, the negotiations that matter are within the West and not with Putin.
On the other hand, silly bellicose posturing about military options we can’t use or increased military spending to convey “strength” are laughable and Putin knows it (and probably the clowns preening themselves on cable news know that Putin knows it). There’s a real danger that all of this performative belligerent posing will box Putin in and make it impossible for him to back down. Remember, he’s essentially the “boss of bosses” in a mafia state so he really can’t back down without at least a fig leaf.
And that’s what needs to be the west’s objective: absolutely no substantive concessions but we need to offer Putin a way out without war.
I think you're entirely correct, but I can't think of what fig leaf would be big enough to cover it. Recognize his seizure of Crimea, recognize his seizure of part of Ukraine?
Those both seem like examples we can't afford to set, and wingnuts everywhere would be rabid about it.
Something about the pipeline through Ukraine, doesn't seem big and dramatic enough. That and something about the banks? Maybe, but I think that situation is untenable now.
So I can't think of a fig leaf big enough, or one we'd be willing to part with. He's created a situation where only a defeat of someone can work.
I think the fig leaf could be that Ukraine won’t apply to join NATO for ten years. Something along those lines.
I agree that you can’t give him anything more without turning appeasing Putin into a regular ritual. But the more pressure Biden puts on Boris and the banks (which, in turn, threatens the oligarchs) to support real sanctions, the more domestic pressure will build on Putin to just walk away from the war. I think it’s a tricky situation all around.
Think Kevin has been in OC too long.
The insecure reach for their guns at every disagreement. Sensible folks prefer positive-sum, or at least less-negative, outcomes, and seek them from a position of strength.
If the idea is more bellicosity will win some votes, I think that's idiotic in general, likely only possible for Dems in specific, time-gated circumstances.
If you're just bored and trolling tour own blog, well, my mistake for falling for it, carry on.
KD: "I mean, does anyone really believe that refusing to fight shows resolve and strength?"
Where did Sanders argue for "refusing to fight"? You know he didn't say that, so why imply that he did? Is "sophistry" the right word for that?
More of his speech:
There are estimates, however, that come from our own military and intelligence community that there could be over 50,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine ... what could be the worst European conflict since World War II. That is why we must do everything possible to find a diplomatic resolution to prevent what would be an enormously destructive war in Ukraine.
My colleagues, we must never forget the horrors that a war in the region would cause and must do everything possible to achieve a realistic and mutually agreeable resolution. That approach is not weakness. It is not appeasement. Bringing people together to resolve conflicts without war is strength, and it is the right thing to do.
Sanders advocates finding a diplomatic resolution to the situation in Ukraine, which sounds like a good description of exactly what the Biden administration is trying to do. Finding a diplomatic solution is not "refusing to fight." It is an effort to make sure war is truly a last resort. Not to mention, US troops are not expected to be engaged, regardless.
I don't often agree with Plaschke or Sanders, but today they're making more sense than Kevin.
We must do it, but not El Santo Socialista's Muscovite benefactor.
Wake me up when #OurRevolution says jackdick about Vladdy's bellicosity.
The bigger issue is "why fight"?? I would have no problem carpet bombing Israel or the KSA. Neither would I Niger or Brazil. Saving the world ecologically means major population reduction globally. The rain Forrest will heal.
It's not fighting that matters, but what for.
Still believe the bogus yellowcake claims, Shooter?
Pretty much Bernie said "the bellicose rhetoric that gets amplified" undermines "the ability of negotiators to reach a peaceful resolution", he's right.
Sounds like Bernie should have more louder in his dissent that "defend the police" was a bad, overly simplistic rallying cry, then.
*been louder
I opposed the Iraq War after 9-11 way back in the day too, which was based on lies and "bellicose rhetoric", if you care to know I went by freelixir back then before (in t he heated days of Billmon and then DailyKos), settling on jimm just to have some anonymity here in Kevin's threads, who I find an eminently reasonable and excellent framer of issues, even though he was wrong about the Iraq war, and wherever life took me I still come back to drop a comment once in a while.
I think Kevin’s too focused on the cable new talking heads and the sabbath gasbags. Biden’s beefed up the American military presence in the front line NATO states. These human “tripwires” are serving the same function as their predecessors did during the Cold War. Fatalities among their number would be impossible to ignore and difficult for Putin’s allies in the Republican Party to justify—those soldiers and NATO’s article five are red lines that I believe even Putin will fear crossing.
The military action that will matter is how effective the Ukrainian military can be against the larger Russian army. The Russian general staff must be aware of the example of Finland. And the Ukrainians have significant advantages which the Finns lacked in term of outside actors working strongly on their behalf. Russia would probably have only a few days to take the entire country or weeks at most.
The critical thing, as Bernie notes elsewhere in his speech, is clarity about the west’s willingness to impose crippling sanctions not simply on Putin but on all of the oligarchs and their families. That means the real action will be on Biden’s negotiations with our NATO allies and with neutral countries with important financial sectors like Switzerland and Sweden.
If he can persuade those countries to expel Russian nationals and impound their money and property during the period of hostilities, that will almost certainly deter Putin. So, as a practical matter, the people Biden needs to play hardball with are Boris and the big money center banks. That, plus Fox News, is Putin’s Fifth Column and it’s what he counting to give him cover while he takes Ukraine. Biden needs to land on these people hard and mean.
Military posing is good for Fox News and impressing the rubes but it’s negotiating that’s the way out of this crisis.
"Why not simply frame it in terms of national interest instead?"
Because it would be singularly unenlightening to do so. Every war is fought on a set of competing national interests. And the victor gets to write history. So, in the end, the national interests of the victorious nation prevail without any lesson other than if you fight a war, make sure you win it.
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
I. Asimov
So, based on Chechnya, Crimea, Dagestan, Syria, Tskhinvali, etc., Putin is incompetent?
One of things that Asimov was wrong about. But really he just wanted a paraphrase of Johnson's "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel".
I assume Asimov wanted an expression parallel to the "last refuge of a scoundrel."
I think it is interesting that when we use those expressions we and Salvor Hardin really mean the first refuge, not the last.
That's the response one would expect of the average American.
I think the point is that a country as strong as the US is (militarily, at least) shouldn’t have to engage in violence for show, so diplomacy should be more effective coming from a country that everyone knows could, strictly speaking, set every land mass on earth ablaze. Diplomacy from a position of power is strong because it’s not absolutely necessary.
There is no legitimate national interest argument. Ukraine isn’t worth saving. The US and NATO should have a good laugh with Putin and let him take it back just like he owns Belarus. These are not and never will be anything but Russian colonies.
"These are not and never will be anything but Russian colonies."
The "natives" would disagree.
But not enough to make a difference. It’s not my place to fix their broken societies. There are lots of them all over the world. Heck, our is in pretty rough shape at the moment too. Maybe we should send the marines into all our gang and crime ridden neighborhoods. Apparently the police can’t get the job done.
The sophistry is Kelvin’s.”Staying out of war is strength” is a slogan. It’s a useful slogan if it achieves its goal. To dissect it is to disable it. The sophistry is in your airs of superiority.
I mean, does anyone really believe that refusing to fight shows resolve and strength?
Nobody believes that, including Bernie. But that's not what he said. Trying to avoid war by talking isn't the same as "refusal to fight."
War is the most destructive and deadly activity humans engage in. It should normally be reserved for those occasions when there's no other option.
PS: To clarify, an optional war—a war of choice, that is is—is almost never in the national interest.
So, like the Red Army annexing Donbass?
I probably should've narrowed that to mean that a war of choice is rarely in the national interest of democratic states. But still, I'm not sure the same doesn't apply to Russia, either. What did they gain from their Donbass (or indeed Crimea or indeed Georgia) incursion? Have these actions in any way made Russia a truly more prosperous or secure place? Have they increased the willingness of other countries to do business with Moscow, or increased its trustworthiness globally?
We can't know that the endgame for the country might be if their gradual shift to overt military aggressor is met with crippling sanctions and increasing isolation by Western nations. China will try to fill the breach, but I doubt action on the part of Beijing will be adequate. The thing is, Russia had the opportunity to transform itself into a kind of really large Finland (a prosperous and highly developed country by any reasonable definition): untold resource wealth, a huge cohort of STEM-educated workers, proximity to lucrative markets...
And they blew it. Peaceful development and democratic good governance is the rational way to go.
Really Kevin? Wanting to avoid war is being weak? This may be your most utterly nonsensical statement ever. I guess Kennedy was weak cause he didn't bomb the shit out of Cuba? Then look at how being "Strong" against Afghanistan and Iraq are working out for us?
Putin seems to have hoped that his military buildup on Ukraine's borders and sabre-rattling would expose rifts in the NATO alliance (esp between UK, Germany, and the US) and make it difficult to resist an invasion and annexation of Ukraine. To Biden (and Blinken's) credit, that hasn't happened. But I'm not sure what Biden's end game is with his rhetoric that an invasion is basically a foregone conclusion, Ukraine will fall, and that we're on track for another Cold War with Russia (which, admittedly, has basically been the case for at least 10 years now, save for 2016-20 when Putin successfully installed a dim-bulb client in the WH who constantly criticized NATO). It seems to have been singularly unhelpful up to this point and the Ukrainians themselves have asked him to knock it off. Maybe there's some good cop/bad cop element to it or something, but I'm having trouble seeing it.
"I mean, does anyone really believe that refusing to fight shows resolve and strength?"
I mean, yeah, it can. If there's a push to war (see:Iraq, or the Mexican American War) it takes political resolve to resist it. It also can take political resolve to go to war. Really, organizing any political action, good or bad, war or peace, takes resolve and strength. That's why it's a dumb framing.
I suppose you could argue Bernie is just countering the popular opinion that being against war is a sign of weakness, which is even worse than his argument.
“The man who raises a fist has run out of ideas.”
— H. G. Wells
Or, --he just has that one idea he really likes.
Now I am utterly confused. Maybe I am missing something, being a non-native English speaker and all (and probably missing a lot of background history not being American), so please enlighten me. I don't find this post at all consistent with what I usually read here. To me it seems to indicate that Kevin doesn't think solving conflicts by nonviolent means such as communication is always better than going to war. Apologies for being naïve.
I think Kevin's point is that, as a blanket statement, it's just sort of a meaningless platitude. Context and circumstances matter.
Thanks. I guess there's some truth to that. However, situations where doing whatever you can to avoid war would not be the wisest - and strongest - way to go should be rare. Rare enough to make it a reasonable and meaningful statement nonetheless.
No one thinks that avoiding war is ALWAYS a sign of strength or always a better path. The point, which I can't imagine you don't understand, is that being goaded into a stupid or immoral or self-destructive war by your enemy's provocations or political considerations is stupid and weak. This is just silliness.
Another way to look at this: Russia entering the First World War: A sing of weakness, the government was vulnerable and tried to use a foreign conflict to solidify its power (this is far form the only example). On the other hand: General Franco resisted pressure to join Germany in the Second War; a sign of strength.
Co
Come to think of it: The US starting the "War on Terror" was clearly a sign of weakness; the results are accordingly bad: Lots of people killed and no end of terrorism.
Russia's resolve to defend the Ukrainians of Donetsk and Luhansk from the fascists in Kiev, put in power by the US, demonstrates the kind of strength Democratic liberals lack when they accept and support neo-conservative arguments for overthrowing democratically elected governments.
Will no one rid me of these meddlesome shitlibs at MSDNC, cry out the petty tyrants of Maralago & Rio.
Let me get this straight- Bernie Sanders (a politician) bloviates with general platitudes on the evilness of war and KD has a conniption? WTH!?
"But regardless of whether it's true or not, I really don't think anyone buys it. "
And how do you think politics works? 99% of political rhetoric is idiotic nonsense that *is* actually believed (for some sense of "belief") by the people on the team spouting it. People who also cannot believe that anyone else would not believe this nonsense except if they were motivated by the devil (or the various new words for the devil, like racism or transphobia).
This has always been the case. Intelligent political commenters were clearly pointing it out in the 1920s. Hell, there are those who go back to Dante and Machiavelli, pointing out the contrast between Dante (idiotic blatherings about what the political utopia should look like couched in language that makes little contact with reality) and Machiavelli (substantially more interested in contact with reality).
The only reason Bernie sounds so silly is because he's from a previous generation, a generation whose particular form of idiocy included a bunch of silly claims about the nature of war and peace their relationship to human nature. Speaking at any time from basically just after WW2 up till maybe 2005, he would be been just another leftist, the sort you saw thousands of running around singing "99 Luftballon" and demanding that (US) bombs be banned.
Poor Bernie! If he had got with the program and phrased his speech in terms of "white males have always been violent imperialists, but we are entering the new age of the female and I say, as I proud female supporter, that we can go beyond violence", blah blah, then he'd be having the MSM and most of the left demanding he run for president again in four years.
The greatest strategists can defeat an enemy without fighting, at least that's what I learned from Sun Tzu. Having practiced aikido for 40 years now, I know that a little movement left, right, up, down, back, or forward, depending upon the circumstances, is enough to break the balance of an attacker and hold them in that precarious position or send them to the ground. It ain't about weakness versus strength. It's about intelligence and centeredness.
Tried to teach that to Joe Nye, Harvard's "soft power" guy, once upon a time but I don't believe he ever got the message.
Putin's goal is to evict america from Europe …and to eliminate NATO. He is making his play to reassert Russian dominance in world affairs…along with Xi…who is trying to evict america from Asian affairs. The people who care are those in the Baltic states…former countries in the USSR….Finland also remembers Russian occupation…and Taiwan. South Korea…Vietnam etc..in Asia. What to do? Capitulate? Pack our bags and go? Europeans.. have never liked america playing politics in europe making threats that they will have to bear the consequence for…but the muscle has always been appreciated…no choice but to stand up to Putin…interesting to see how the Fox News Fifth Column reacts ….
Others have made the comment I had on my mind while logging in: that it's the *opposite* argument that seems to be accepted without question. We typically go to war to project a strength that is often illusory at best. I'm not sure I accept Bernie altogether, but I'm darn skeptical about the opposite argument, that we need to be at war or we will show weakness.
That said, much of the commentary here is missing one essential point. WHAT DO UKRAINIANS THINK? A large part of the problem here is that you have this entire geopolitical chatterati going on and on and on, completely disregarding the locals. I can understand Putin wanting to disregard them. But the West? Almost all reporters / bloggers / political wonks? That seems to me to be a pretty solid principal, and it seems to be the one response to which Vlad does not have an answer. In fact, it seems to be the thing Putin wanted Trump most to avoid--hence putting his agent in the White House, hence instigating the "perfect phone call," hence sending Giuliani and other aides flitting around and avoiding US policy positions, etc. Ever since Putin's and Flynn's boy got tossed out, the ex-KGB don has been obsessed with *silencing* Ukrainian voices. So maybe working to make sure they have voice and agency might be our focus, rather than obscure projections of strength.