NY Mag: ‘Strategy’ May Be More Useful to Pawns Than to Kings

policies address the “what”, strategy addresses the “how”

in war, tactics are the “actual fighting”, where grand strategy is where leaders coordinate the nation’s resources to achieve a collective goal

The Cold War is thought of as a golden age of strategic thinking for the US government

  • the State Department created the Policy Planning Staff
  • many have lamented the decline of American strategic thinking since the end of the Cold War

regardless of how much power you have, you can use strategy to “do what you can with what you have”

  • any strategic challenge requires contending with limits and obstacles
  • it’s always better to have a strategy rather than not have one

Underdog movements have taken strategy seriously

  • the labor movement could be ruthless
  • the civil rights movement focused on nonviolent protests as a “strategy for confrontation”

Recently, the political right has been using strategy. The left, by contrast, has favored leaderless movements and radical inclusion

Marginal Revolution: China’s Private Cities

PCOs - private city operators

  • plan, finance, build, operate and manage entire cities
  • this means urban planning, industry development and public services

China Fortune Land Development Co is the biggest

  • it manages 125 new cities

Common Sense: A Liberal Interventionist

Philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy a liberal interventionist

  • says the situation in Ukraine is relevant to us
  • made a documentary about people around the world fighting against illiberal ideas and getting killed
  • says that there’s a new form of antisemitism that defends refugees, but the refugees are openly anti-Semitic, so Jews who are already in the country are vulnerable to attack

Economist: France withdraws forces from Mali

France arrived in Mali in 2013. It was supposed to be a brief intervention. They’re leaving now, and their mission is incomplete

why? a diplomatic breakdown with Mali. A junta overthrew the elected government in 2020

France will continue to fight jihadist in the region, but now it’ll be more difficult

Medium: Putin’s Plan

this plan was briefed to allies in November 2021, also from a European war game analysis. They were leaked to the press in January 2022

Russia’s view

  • Ukrainians don’t exist. They’re just confused Russians or Poles
  • Kyiv is a Russian city that belongs to Russia
  • The fact that Ukraine exists is unbearable

Putin doesn’t care about Ukraine’s concessions

  • NATO guaranteed that Ukraine will never join
  • Ukraine is trying to reintegrate Donbas

Putin made insane demands so he could say that America rejected negotiations

  • there’s no reason for Putin to limit his war. He wants to invade Ukraine and russify its people. He has said this in writing

Russia has moved every combat-ready unit to Ukraine’s borders

  • even fighters from the Pacific coast

Putin’s Goals

Russia will invade Ukraine from the North, East and South

  • might create a false flag event as a pretext

Phase 1: long range missiles for military positions inside Ukraine , cyber-war Ukraine’s IT-infrastructure

  • goal is to demoralize Ukrainian forces, prevent reservists from organizing

Won’t try to occupy smaller towns. Will try to pin Ukrainian units down so they can be bombed from the air

Russians depend on railways, so they’ll try to capture Ukrainian railways

Russians will try to encircle and besiege Ukraine’s largest cities

  • once civilians start to freeze and starve, Ukrainian commanders will have to surrender

Russia plans to annex only Eastern, Southern and Central Ukraine. It doesn’t care about Western Ukraine

  • resistance would be fiercest there
  • A new, small nation centered around Lviv wouldn’t be a threat, and it would be a buffer to NATO countries