* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.
* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The war in Ukraine thunders on; the Russian Army is bogged down -- literally, it's the muddy season there -- but continues to pound Ukrainian cities. Western sanctions against Russia are being extended, with American public opinion strongly tilting towards even halting the purchase of Russian oil. America only gets 10% of its oil from Russia, so it's do-able, likely without too much trouble, but will the public accept the trouble?
There's also American public support for a "no-fly zone" over Ukraine, but that won't happen -- it's effectively going to war with Russia. The Ukraine misadventure has demonstrated how hollow Putin's war machine is, meaning it's likely it would be beaten, but that would drive Putin towards going nuclear. Considering how rash it was of him to attack Ukraine, it is by no means out of the question that he would be willing to use the Bomb. Even if not, he could easily throw NATO on the defensive by throwing missiles into Poland the Baltic States, and then dare NATO to do something about it. In addition, Putin would be able to use NATO intervention to sell the war to the Russian people, saying he was right about Western aggression all along.
For the time being, NATO can only help with sanctions and arms. The sanctions are drastic and unprecedented, a journalist named Julia Ioffe commented on Twitter:
QUOTE:
"Everyone is f***ing stunned," says one source close to the Kremlin. Another source says no one in the presidential administration expected a full-scale war -- or the sanctions. "You can't resign," said the first source. "You can only resign right to jail."
END_QUOTE
Russians are leaving the country in numbers, one American journalist saying a Russian contact walked across the border into Estonia with his dog. Things are going to get much worse in Russia. Ioffe ran a commentary in Russian by one Maxim Mironov, with an edited translation below:
QUOTE:
Many people ask me to comment on the sanctions. In short, my scientific conclusion as a professor of finance, doctor of the University of Chicago is:
Russia is F***ED. And double-f***ed up that the inhabitants of Russia, even the educated, for the most part, do not understand what awaits them.
I explain. Very soon, the Russians will face a shortage of basic products. I'm not talking about all kinds of iPhones, the import of which has already been banned, but about food, clothes, cars, household appliances, ETC. Gazprom, the main exporter of gas, is already under sanctions -- that is, it is generally unclear how it will receive foreign exchange earnings.
The Russian Central Bank has accumulated a huge savings of $650 billion USD. However, a good chunk of that has been frozen, and it's also not clear what the bank will do with its gold -- since few banks will want to touch it, lest they get hit with sanctions themselves.
Many people think that Russia has for the past years built a bunch of factories, only all these factories -- automobile, aviation, household appliances, and so on, use imported components. Planes even within Russia will soon stop flying. After all, almost all of them are imported, and the West has already been banned from supplying spare parts. Therefore, we will soon see a massive aircraft decommissioning.
The internet as we knew it will also be shut down. They have already blocked a bunch of information sites, with Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube likely to follow.
As for agriculture, realize that in Russia, the share of imported seeds is almost 40%; for potatoes, the share of imported seeds is 90%. Of course, farmers will come up with something over time, but at least in the short term, we should expect a shortage of basic agricultural products and a sharp rise in prices.
And that's not all, either. Everyone who can get out of the country will start to get out. The government understands this, which is why they introduced a bunch of measures today to keep IT people. They won't work; therefore, it is very likely that exit visas will soon be introduced for certain categories, or everyone. The only plus from this story is that those who are nostalgic for the USSR will be able to enjoy all its delights first-hand -- and it will not be a relatively herbivorous USSR like Khrushchev-Brezhnev-Gorbachev, but a USSR headed by a crazy dictator.
END_QUOTE
The war has no real support; the government never tried to sell it to the Russian public, saying Russian forces were engaged in exercises, and even told that to the troops -- who found it a rude awakening when they ran into bitter Ukrainian resistance. Ukrainian forces have been circulating videos of drone strikes on Russian vehicles, with the light bombs carried by the drones sometimes resulting in staggering secondary explosions -- one vehicle, apparently a fuel truck, went up in a huge fireball.
The drones are silent, as are the laser-guided small glide bombs they drop, and the first thing Russian troops know about an attack is the blast. Such attacks are terrifying and demoralizing to troops who don't want the war in the first place. The videos show the dead and wounded lying around -- but when a video showed a glide bomb hitting a surface-to-air missile launcher with a satisfying explosion, the soundtrack had the operators cheering, and it felt like the right thing to do. It is sad to kill young men, but too bad for them.
Nobody knows what will happen to Putin, but it is clear that his trajectory is downward. Army General Mark Hertling, cited here last week, replied to attempts by pundits to figure out Putin's strategy in Ukraine:
QUOTE:
It?s confounding. I'd suggest his strategy is to subjugate a nation of 42 million freedom-loving people with 200,000 poorly trained soldiers, while trying to divide a 30-nation alliance. It will fail.
END_QUOTE
* Fox News and the other Right-wingnut outlets started out siding with Putin in the war against Ukraine, but quickly reversed that position when it became obvious the great majority of Americans detest Putin. Of course, Fox and company are doing all they can to place the blame on Joe Biden, if not with much success. In any case Desi Lydic -- THE DAILY SHOW's literal Fox-watcher -- ran through the scene at Fox:
QUOTE:
Russia has invaded Ukraine. Why is this happening? What does it mean? Where is Hillary Clinton's email server? Well, I've been watching Fox News for 648 hours straight, and I'm ready to FOXSPLAIN UKRAINE.
Why did Putin invade Ukraine? The answer's complex, but let me try to explain. Burisma. Critical race genders. Minnie Mouse in a pantsuit. Don't believe me? Take a look inside the gender-neutral bathroom in Hunter Biden's laptop.
This is happening because President Biden is weak. When Donald Trump was president, Putin didn't meddle in Ukraine. He meddled in America. Putin is strong and Biden is weak. America needs a strong leader. By the way, why are we supposed to think that Vladimir Putin is evil? He's not the one poisoning our children with critical race theory!
[INTERLUDE PLEASE STAND BY]
Vladimir Putin is evil. I have always said that. I have never said that Vladimir Putin is a handsome genius with a hottie's body. Let me be clear. Vladimir Putin is a handsome genius with a hottie's body. He is a tyrannical leader. He was not democratically elected, and he alone is responsible for this. I'm talking about Joe Biden, if that isn't clear.
Sanctions, really Joe? We need to be sending cruise missiles, Chevy Cruzes, Penelope Cruzes, Norwegian Cruise Lines. We need to do far more to support our allies in Yugoslavia.
[CREW MEMBER] Ukraine.
-- Ukraine. Tom Cruises, Terry Crewses, booze cruises, Booz Allen, Tim Allen, Allen Iverson? You know who can solve this crisis in minutes? Ivermectin.
Vladimir Putin, if I was your mother, I wouldn't make you wear a mask at school. Vladimir Putin is evil, but in some ways he's a hero, but in more ways, he's a villain, a strong villain, a patriot, a tyrant, a menace, a mensch. Pete Buttigieg took maternity leave? Vladimir Putin rode a bear. He's evil, though, yet seductive. Vladimir Putin supports Trump. I also support Trump. Does that make me Vladimir Putin? Russia is basically being canceled. First Mr. Potato Head, now Mr. Putin Head,
[SIGH] And that's pretty much all you need to know about the Ukraine situation, according to Fox News.
PSST: NATO's RUN BY VAMPIRES!
END_QUOTE
* As discussed in a NASA press release ("Island Obliterated" by Adam Voiland, NASA Earth Observatory, 15 January 2022), a volcano in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga began erupting in late December 2021, to finally blow its top in mid-January 2022. The explosion was expected; an international team of researchers had been monitoring the island since 2015, when new land rose from the water and joined two existing islands. The researchers used surface and satellite observations to keep track of events there.
The double island, named Hunga Tonga / Hunga Ha'apai, is the top of a large underwater volcano. It rises 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) from the seafloor, spans 20 kilometers (12 miles) across, and is capped by a submarine caldera 5 kilometers in diameter. The two islands are elements of the rim of the Hunga Caldera. The explosion destroyed the new land bridging the two islands, and also tore large chunks out of them. NASA scientist Jim Garvin of the Goddard Space Flight Center, a member of the research team, said:
QUOTE:
This is a preliminary estimate, but we think the amount of energy released by the eruption was equivalent to somewhere between 4 to 18 megatons of TNT. That number is based on how much was removed, how resistant the rock was, and how high the eruption cloud was blown into the atmosphere at a range of velocities.
END_QUOTE
The blast was hundreds of times bigger than that of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. For comparison, scientists estimate Mount Saint Helens exploded in 1980 with 24 megatons and Krakatoa burst in 1883 with 200 megatons of energy.
Garvin, working with other researchers, develop detailed maps of Hunga Tonga / Hunga Ha'apai above and below the water line. They used high-resolution radar imagery from the Canadian Space Agency's RADARSAT Constellation Mission; optical observations from the commercial satellite company Maxar, and altimetry from NASA's ICESat 2 mission. They also used sonar-based bathymetry data collected by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, in partnership with NASA and Columbia University.
As the new land emerged from the sea, researchers from NASA, Columbia, the Tongan Geological Service, and the Sea Education Association collaborated to watch the young terrain was eroding due to waves and the occasional cyclone. They also observed shrubs, grasses, insects, and birds moving from the two islands onto the new land. For the first few weeks of 2022, the volcanic activity seemed typical, with intermittent, small explosions of tephra, ash, steam, and other volcanic gases as magma and seawater interacted at a vent near the middle of the island. These ongoing "Surtseyan" eruptions -- named for the island of Surtsey, off the south coast of Iceland, which emerged from the sea from 1963 to 1967 -- and added new land to Hunga Tonga / Hunga Ha'apai. Garvin says:
QUOTE:
By early January, our data showed the island had expanded by about 60% compared to before the December activity started. The whole island had been completely covered by a tenth of cubic kilometer of new ash. All of this was pretty normal, expected behavior, and very exciting to our team.
END_QUOTE
On 13 January, however, a powerful set of blasts sent ash into the stratosphere, with the blasts continuing to 15 January, when the island was wracked by explosions that sent material as high as 40 kilometers (25 miles) in altitude and possibly as high as 50 kilometers, carpeting nearby islands with ash and triggering destructive tsunami waves. This was not expected behavior; it appears that large quantities of seawater flooded into the subsurface magma chamber led to the massive explosions. Garvin says:
QUOTE:
... something must have weakened the hard rock ... and caused a partial collapse of the caldera's northern rim ... allowing huge amounts of water to rush into an underground magma chamber at very high temperature.
... This was not your standard Surtseyan eruption because of the large amount of water that had to be involved. In fact, some of my colleagues in volcanology think this type of event deserves its own designation. For now, we're unofficially calling it an "ultra Surtseyan" eruption.
END_QUOTE
The geology team appreciates the disastrous impact of the eruption on nearby inhabited islands, but nonetheless finds the event fascinating. Aside from Surtsey, which still exists, most new Surtseyan islands get eroded away within a few months or years. Hunga Tonga / Hunga Ha'apai represents a case study that will yield valuable data.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: One Igor Sushko released a commentary on Twitter, supposedly written by a Russian FSB security officer. There's no verifying it, but if it's propaganda, it's very well written. A severely-edited version follows:
QUOTE:
I've hardly slept at all these days, at work at almost all times, I have brain fog. Maybe from overworking, but I feel like I am in a surreal world.
I can't say what guided those in charge to decide to proceed with the Ukraine invasion, but now they are stubbornly blaming us at the FSB -- being scolded for our analysis, while being pressured to come up with more reports. The powers-that-be are generating chaos. No one knew that there would be such a war -- it was concealed from everyone. We were asked to analyze various outcomes and consequences of a Western political-economic campaign against Russia. We then conducted the study, being reassured that it was entirely hypothetical, and not be too concerned with details.
The impression was that the report was just a checkbox for some bureaucrat. In any case, the conclusions had to be positive, lest we be reprimanded for doing bad work. We concluded that Russia could respond to and nullify the Western campaign. The hypothetical question, however, turned out to be reality, and our analysis was complete trash. We really have no good response to the sanctions. Nobody really knew there would be such a war, so nobody was really prepared.
Chechen boss Kadyrov sent a special combat team into Ukraine -- they were absolutely demolished before they had a chance to fight, they got blown to pieces. Kadyrov has gone nuts, since the Ukrainians claimed they got intel from the FSB on the Chechen team. I don't believe that's likely, the Ukrainians would be smart to sow doubts in such a way and wouldn't compromise an FSB source, but I can't rule it out.
Our blitzkrieg has totally collapsed. It was an impossible task. If Zelensky and his deputies were captured in the first three days, all key buildings also captured, and they were forced to read an address of their surrender to the country, then Ukrainian resistance might have collapsed. Then what? Who do we deal with? If we get rid of Zelenskyy, then who signs an agreement? If Zelenskyy signs an agreement and we get rid of him, then the agreement accomplishes nothing. Even pro-Russian Ukrainian opposition is not cooperating with Russia. There is no suitable puppet leader available. Bring back Yanukovich? Ridiculous.
Russia can only control Ukraine with an occupation force. If we installed a puppet government, it would be overthrown ten minutes after we left. Where would we find enough personnel for an occupation force? Commandant's office, military police, counter-intelligence, security -- assuming minimum resistance from the Ukrainians, we'd need over 500,000 people, not including supply & logistics. Even that number is assuming an ideal scenario that doesn't exist in the real world.
Russia would need a general mobilization to obtain such a force, and that would create enormous political, social, and economic strain. Worse, supporting such a force would be impossible. Russia is already logistically over-extended. Ukraine is a vast country, and the people are completely hostile to Russia. The roads couldn't handle the supply convoys, they would be under attack, and the ability to manage such an effort isn't there.
With regards to Russian military losses, who knows? We had some information in the first two days, but now nobody knows what's going on. We've lost contact with major divisions. They may re-establish contact, or maybe have been shattered by Ukrainian counter-attacks. Even the commanders don't know the size of the losses -- thousands dead, certainly, probably like 10,000 dead.
What can we do? Russia can only kill more Ukrainians and make them hate us more, while the West floods them with weapons. Resistance will get stronger, our losses will increase. Cities under siege can hold out for years, and the Ukrainians are turning them into fortresses, new Stalingrads. Europe will organize humanitarian convoys; will we attack them? If we do, what good will it do us? Trashing Ukraine will not win us the war. Events are likely to come to a climax by June -- because by then, Russia's economy will have collapsed, and we will have nothing but ruin.
END_QUOTE
It seems Putin has had a number of senior FSB officials arrested, probably both as scapegoats for failure, and to head off a potential coup.
* A Professor James Goodwin -- Director of Science & Research Impact at Brain Health Network in the UK -- spent twelve years as infantry in the Queen's Army in the 1970s and 1980s, confronting the Soviets in Germany. He published his comments on the Russian offensive into Ukraine in THE TELEGRAPH:
QUOTE:
... it seems weird watching the Ukrainian Army doing so well at what we trained to do. But one thing is missing from all the media reports so far -- the total absence of any understanding of what it's like for the infantry soldier on the ground. And often that is the key to what's happening.
The apparent military incompetence of the Russian Army in Ukraine has been startling. Miles of static armoured and mechanised convoys. Cities like Kharkiv, only 20 miles or so from the Russian border, unoccupied and undefeated. And most revealing, evidence of the pathetic state of ordinary Russian soldiers, out of fuel, out of food, and out of morale.
My view that something was very, very wrong in their basic military management was reinforced by video footage of troops advancing into an urban area: all the basics were missing. Troops clung around their small, lightly armoured vehicle. Others were strung out either side, ambling along in no discernible formation. Their reaction to incoming small-arms fire was almost risible -- no organised response, no immediate return of fire, no smoke and no supporting fire. And the real giveaway? The vehicle was reversing down its axis of advance, ready for a quick escape.
Any army is only as good as its individual soldiers. The British Army has learnt this lesson multiple times in its illustrious history. Look after your soldiers and they will fight well. Neglect them and your war effort will fall apart. They are your most precious asset. This lesson does not appear to have been learnt by the Russians.
I can't help but think back to how I prepared my soldiers for the Cold War when I was an officer. On deployment, every single one of them had to understand where we were, what we were doing and what the plan was. Endless hours were spent on pre-deployment briefings and once on the ground, in giving orders for deployment, occupation, defence, patrolling, actions under fire -- and especially at night -- who was on our left flank, who was on our right, who was behind us. Exhaustive detail.
... Fast forward and I'm astonished. What do we see in Ukraine? Not just Russian troops who don't know where they are, or even where they are going, but worse, troops who have been misled by their officers as to their mission.
Which brings me to another vital issue: morale. In his book THE BRAMALL PAPERS, Field Marshall Lord Bramall persistently reflects on the importance of high morale -- the feeling that you as a soldier can achieve anything and overcome any odds. In my Cold War trench, I often thought about how I would raise and keep up the morale of my soldiers (and my own, for that matter). By and large we achieved it, by good management, by good discipline and by meeting their basic needs.
Prior to deployment, my company commander insisted that I inspected my men's feet and check they had the regulation spare socks. On a formal inspection, if a soldier was deficient, they were charged. After two to three weeks of living outside in the freezing wet conditions I understood why. I also understood why I had to check cleanliness and hygiene in the field. And make sure that troops were being rotated, had sufficient sleep where operations allowed and were getting hot food. And why my company HQ made sure that letters from home were delivered.
The sight of Russian troops raiding shops for food or even begging for it can only mean rock-bottom morale. When you have been lied to by your officers, I can only think that you won't believe anyone cares about your welfare -- a recipe for doubt, defiance and desertion. And prior to the invasion, these same troops were kept outside in freezing conditions for weeks at a time. Not ideal preparation. Or equally, for days in a static convoy with little apparent resupply.
... Modern warfare, with its high volumes of fire, requires constant re-supply. If the Russian resupply is as bad as we are led to believe, then that is a compelling reason why the front elements would be reluctant to engage. It's also another reason why the Ukrainians leave the long Russian convoys alone and interdict their supply lines, stretching for miles over the same endless type of landscape which we defended on the northern German plain. The convoy isn't going anywhere if it's out of fuel, has no spares, no battlefield repair, no water, no food and only a first line issue of ammunition.
The problem is made worse if troops aren't trained in marksmanship. Huge volumes of fire are no substitute for hitting the target, much more difficult for the infantry than people would believe. In the Cold War, we practised the application of fire at all distances, at all kinds of targets, moving and still. Knocking over the enemy conserves ammunition, reduces the odds, and raises morale. Blasting away ineffectively is a recipe for defeat. Unless, of course, your tactics are simply to stand off and fire artillery into women and children, removing at a stroke the problems of fighting at close quarters and resupplying your infantry.
... The army trained me exquisitely in how to defeat the Russians. It centered around immaculate and detailed preparation, thorough training, teamwork and sound leadership at all levels from the ground up, to maintain the fighting efficiency and morale of the individual soldier. Given the evidence I have seen, it is not just the higher levels of strategic decision-making that explain the apparent lack of progress of the Russians. It is their callous failure to look after and manage the individual soldiers whom they require to engage in close fighting against a determined Ukrainian Army. And yet another reason why blasting cities into brick dust is their default option.
END_QUOTE
Morale of Ukrainian troops is by all evidence very high. A video from THE SUN of the UK started with a camera drone surveying the wreckage of a Russian mechanized column, with the view switching to the ground and Ukrainian soldiers picking up salvage. A cheerful soldier explained to the newspeople:
QUOTE:
We hit [the column] thanks to the gifts from Her Majesty the Queen. [RAISES A FINGER] Give us more toys like this, and there will be more destroyed tanks. Civilians also ask for them, but we cannot give NLAWs to every Ukrainian -- though we would like to.
END_QUOTE
An older soldier, possibly an NCO, said: "There was a column. We were waiting for them, and finished them. Here's the result. Slava Ukraini!"
* The war continues to go viral online. A pretty little blonde six-year-old girl made a hit, singing the Disney tune LET IT GO in Ukrainian in a bomb shelter. A few days later, it was announced she was safe in Poland. Kremlin trolls infest reply threads on Twitter, blaming the conflict on everyone but Putin, and saying the Ukrainians should surrender to end the war. I reply with a GIF: NOT GONNA HAPPEN.
The trolls are laughable, accomplishing nothing -- eh, maybe they don't care, as long as they get paid. Elizabeth de la Vega, an ex-prosecutor with a following on Twitter, commented on Putin's intent to nationalize assets of foreign companies that are pulling out of Russia:
QUOTE:
Elizabeth de la Vega@Delavegalaw: Well, if Putin wants to "nationalize" Ikea, we know he's off his rocker. Has he ever tried to put together a HEMNES dresser or a STUVA loft bed?
Michael Dresser @michaeltdresser: That would throw an Allen wrench into his economy.
END_QUOTE
* I finally got my COVID vaccine booster shot this last week. I was holding off because I didn't feel at much risk, living a solitary existence, and was thinking a Omicron-optimized vaccine would arrive. It didn't, it appears that Omicron punched through supposedly optimized trial vaccines about as easily as non-optimized vaccines. I decided to stop stalling.
The shot didn't go badly. I was playing a puzzle game on my smartphone when I got the shot as a distraction; that works, to my surprise I didn't notice the shot. My shoulder got a little swollen; then, after I went to bed, I got the chills, even though I was under four layers of comforters. I turned on an electric heating pad and managed to warm up. I woke up in the middle of the night and was too warm, so I turned the heating pad off.
The next day I was sluggish. I did a light morning workout, and even that was a struggle. I ended up taking a nap, sitting upright in my chair, for 40 minutes -- I almost never take naps. The day after that, I was fine, other than my digestion being plugged up for a few days. I'll stop masking up in April, since diseases don't circulate so much in good weather; get another booster shot in the fall, before I go on a road trip; then mask up from November through March again. The N95 masks are comfortable, so why not? I don't get around much in the winter anyway.
I'll need to make sure I have access to antiviral drugs. I just ordered four free government COVID testing kits; I still don't know about getting my hands on the drugs, but that should become clear. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, the pandemic's over, now I live with COVID. I feel much the same way about America's seemingly endless Trump-driven political crisis. That will pass too, I don't know when, I live with it as well. I'm reassured, knowing MAGA is going to lose. I'm thinking they've already lost.
* As reported in an article from REUTERS.com ("Biden Administration Sets New Requirements For US Secure Networks", 19 January 2022), in January 2022, the Biden Administration issued a new set of requirements for America's secure networks, stipulating the use of government-approved encryption and ordering officials to report breaches to the National Security Agency (NSA).
The order requires agencies including the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Energy to implement baseline security measures for "national security systems". The requirements include multi-factor authentication; NSA-approved encryption; and "zero-trust" architecture, an industry term for the ongoing validation of user or devices identities. The order follows previous ones from the Biden Administration for less-critical Federal civilian networks.
ED: The interesting thing here is that the measures stipulated are simply common sense, not that hard to implement, and should be universal. The recent fiasco over the ID.me identification system was a setback, but only a glitch on the road to more secure systems.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The war in Ukraine thunders on, and it doesn't seem to be working out well for Vladimir Putin. As discussed in an article from VOX.com ("Is Russia Losing?" by Zack Beauchamp, 18 March 2022), the Russian Army expected to overrun Ukraine in a few days. That not happening, the Russians settled for pounding Ukrainian cities with artillery, air, and missile strikes. That led to some incremental gains, but even those are fading away -- the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) saying that Russia's offensive "has largely stalled on all fronts" -- with the Ukrainians now conducting counter-offensives.
Estimates of Russian casualties are not reliable, but the Pentagon estimates that at least 7,000 Russian soldiers have been killed. Overall losses of effective strength are estimated at 10%; more than 25% would mean collapse of the offensive. Robert Farley, a professor at the University of Kentucky who studies air power, says: "We're seeing a country militarily implode." On paper, Russia's military might is far greater than Ukraine's, and many expected the Russians to indeed walk over Ukraine.
A decade ago, Ukraine's army was anything but professional; it is now, while the Russian Army remains decrepit. Morale of Russian troops is very low, and their logistical support is totally inadequate. Not only have combat vehicles been abandoned for lack of fuel, Russian troops appear to be starving, reduced to begging or stealing food from Ukrainians.
The Ukrainian Army, knowing they were outgunned, didn't seriously try to halt the multiple Russian drives into Ukraine, performing fighting withdrawals instead of standing their ground. The Ukrainians have fought in towns and smaller cities, where intruders are easily ambushed and house-to-house fighting favors the defense. In the meantime, well-armed and mobile Ukrainian combat teams attack isolated Russian units on the open roads, in particular attempting to cut Russian supply lines. A WASHINGTON POST article described a battle near the Kyiv suburb of Brovary, based on Ukrainian military videos and interviews with witnesses:
QUOTE:
A column of tanks moved down a main highway toward the town of Brovary. As they passed a cluster of houses, the Ukrainian forces saw an opportunity. They pummeled the convoy with artillery shells and antitank missiles, destroying or disabling several tanks and armored personnel carriers. Russian soldiers fled their vehicles and ran into the woods, according to videos posted on social media by Ukraine's military. One tank slowly rolled to a halt, engulfed in flames.
END_QUOTE
The Russians appear to be having the most success in the south, where they are besieging the port city of Mariupol. They have been trying to do the same to Kyiv in the north, but their attempts to encircle the city have failed.
By all evidence, the initial invasion plan was put together in secret by a handful of Putin's top military and intelligence advisers. It reflected the Russian dictator's sincere belief that Ukraine was a fake country, and they could achieve regime change with limited resistance through a "special military operation". It would be no more troublesome than the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Over the longer run, poor logistics have proven a critical failure. A big part of that problem is corruption in the Russian procurement system. Corruption in Russia is less a bug in its political system than a feature; one way that the Kremlin maintains the loyalty of its elite is by allowing them to profit off of government activity. Putin's regime is a kleptocracy, a government of thieves, and the military is continuously looted for personal gain, with food and housing being substandard even in normal times. There was really no serious logistical plan to support the invasion. The Russian Air Force has also proven notably reluctant to commit aircraft to the battle. Farley says:
QUOTE:
There's a big hangover from the 1990s and the early 2000s, when [Russia] literally didn't have the money to pay for the gas to make the aircraft fly -- so your pilots ended up not having many hours in the sky. Unlike the United States, which wages a massive air campaign every decade, the Russians really haven't done stuff that require a lot of fixed-wing against any kind of prepared defense.
END_QUOTE
Possibly the biggest factor in the conflict is the great imbalance between the morale of Ukrainian and Russian forces, being very high and rock-bottom respectively. According to Dartmouth political scientist Jason Lyall, whose recent book DIVIDED ARMIES examines the role of morale on battlefield performance:
QUOTE:
Russian morale was incredibly low BEFORE the war broke out. Brutal hazing in the military, second-class (or worse) status by its conscript soldiers, ethnic divisions, corruption, you name it: the Russian Army was not prepared to fight this war. High rates of abandoned or captured equipment, reports of sabotaged equipment, and large numbers of soldiers deserting (or simply camping out in the forest) are all products of low morale.
END_QUOTE
Putin kept the Russian invasion plan a secret from everyone but his inner circle; before the invasion, Russian diplomats and propaganda outlets were mocking the West for suggesting it might happen. Putin, it appears, simply thought soldiers were mere automatons, who would go fight if ordered to do so, when the troops were in no way prepared to fight. As for the Ukrainians, Lyall says:
QUOTE:
High morale empowers units to take risks, adopt unpredictable tactics, and to endure hardships even when outnumbered. High Ukrainian morale, fueled by Zelenskyy's remarkable leadership and personal courage, has improved Ukrainian cohesion and the ability of its forces to impose significant casualties on Russian forces.
END_QUOTE
Lyall warns that significant Russian gains could upset this imbalance, and even dispirited troops can win wars, through the indiscriminate use of firepower. However, even if Russia begins to perform better on the battlefield, its initial objective, a subservient Ukraine, is completely out of reach. Russia doesn't have the forces to control the country, and no puppet regime would survive once occupation forces are withdrawn.
At this point, Putin's only card is brutality, to inflict as much damage on Ukraine as possible in order to extract significant political concessions from Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. Even that is problematic, Zelenskyy showing no signs of begging for mercy, recently announcing in a public video:
QUOTE:
I want everyone to hear me now, especially in Moscow. The time has come for a meeting, it is time to talk. The time has come to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia's losses will be such that it will take you several generations to recover.
END_QUOTE
Incidentally, videos do suggest that morale of Ukrainian troops is sky-high. A video from THE SUN UK showed Ukrainian artillery pounding a vehicle park, to the tune of AC/DC's rock classic HIGHWAY TO HELL. Another showed a Ukrainian soldier with a Javelin anti-armor missile launcher in front of a Russian armored vehicle with its turret blown off. He grinned, pointed to the wrecked vehicle, patted the launcher, and blew a kiss into the air. It appears the US-made Javelin is highly regarded, possibly because it's common, with references to "Saint Javelin".
* The war has underlined America's rejection of Donald Trump's dubious notions of foreign policy. In an editorial titled "Trump's America First Policy Is Dead (18 March 2022)" CNN's Julian Zelizer commented, with some editing here:
QUOTE:
If the last two years have shown us anything, it's that America's strength depends on its international alliances. The twin shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's war on Ukraine have exposed the pitfalls of former President Donald Trump's "America First" policy, which was premised on the idea that working with our allies requires the United States to contribute more than what we gain in return.
The pandemic revealed that the only way to handle a devastating virus in an age of global movement is through international coordination and cooperation. Sharing valuable research on the virus and information about caseloads or new variants, not to mention working across borders to distribute vaccines, have all been crucial to the fight against the pandemic.
And with Vladimir Putin waging war in Ukraine, the US has worked in concert with its allies to apply immense and unprecedented economic pressure on Russia and provide military support for Ukraine. The fact that an attack on any NATO country bordering Ukraine would trigger a fierce response from other members of the alliance remains an important check on Vladimir Putin's ambitions.
Today, we are seeing a revival of support for the international outlook that President Harry Truman promoted during the early Cold War. Of course, this support is less about ramping up military spending or committing US forces to fight against communist expansion around the globe, and more about his insistence that international alliances were crucial to US diplomatic and military success.
Liberal internationalism was certainly far from perfect. After all, it was under this approach that the US went down the disastrous path of Vietnam. But the Vietnam War did not totally discredit the virtues of Truman's vision. In many ways, President Lyndon Johnson's greatest failure was ignoring key elements of this strategy -- and rejecting the French President Charles de Gaulle's proposal to accept a negotiated settlement, for example -- in favor of militarism.
For decades, Truman's vision has come under continued attack. During the 1950s and 1960s, right-wing extremists railed against international institutions as some sort of liberal conspiracy to undermine America's strength. Robert Welch, the founder of the conspiracy-driven John Birch Society, once claimed that NATO was a communist "hoax."
In the 1990s and early 2000s, criticism of NATO grew among conservatives who claimed that other countries took advantage of the US by forcing it to shoulder too much of the financial burden (Some liberals, on the other hand, argued that the expansion of NATO was provocative to Russia after the Cold War had come to an end.) After the strong show of international support for the US after the horrific attacks on 9/11, President George W. Bush decided to launch a war against Iraq in 2003, despite the opposition of key allies. Bush also dismissed international agreements, such as the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Kyoto Protocol, as unnecessary inhibitions on US policymakers.
Then Trump revived America First arguments out of the far-Right shadows and directly into the Republican mainstream, which included his ongoing criticism of NATO and warm relationships with adversarial leaders such as Putin. The past few years have reminded us of the steep costs that come from going it alone. Working without alliances can often leave the US much weaker as a nation and without crucial resources that we need to contain serious and dangerous national security threats.
At a time when autocratic governments around the world are gaining strength and Russia and China appear to be forging closer ties, US policymakers must remember that alliances like NATO are greater than the sum of their parts. This has always been true in international affairs, and rarely has it been as urgent as it is today when we face so many threats that transcend national boundaries.
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* As discussed by an article from INSIDESCIENCE.org ("From LEGOs To Ziploc: The Science Of The Snap Fit" by Katharine Gammon, 1 December 2020), the "snap fit" is as pervasive a technology as the screw -- examples being pen caps, IKEA furniture, ziplock bags, and of course Legos. Oddly, however, the physics of snap fits has not been articulated.
Wada Hirofumi -- a physicist at Ritsumeikan University in Kusatsu, Japan -- noticed all the petty tech around his house using snap fit, and decided to conduct a study on the subject. Working with one of his students, Yoshida Keisuke, came up with an experimental scheme, in which they used a cylinder and a thin plastic sheet that had been treated with hot water to bend to the shape of the cylinder, then measured the forces at work as the sheet bent over the cylinder and eventually snugged into place. They identified at least four different processes as the snap happened, the strongest force being when the sheet bent wildly.
Dominic Vella -- an applied mathematician at Oxford University in the UK, who was not associated with the study -- says that the key thing in any snap system is that it should be easy to push on and hard to pull off, a characteristic embodied in the "locking ratio". He adds that the study shows how getting a good snap fit depends on the interaction between the geometry of the object, along with its ability to deform, then return to its original shape.
The study doesn't really affect snap-fit technology in any fundamental way, but it points the way towards expanding use of snap-fit, suggesting it could be used to eliminate adhesives, which tend to be environmentally troubles. Another extended application would be for robots, which could use snap-fit to handle packages, instead of the robot using a complicated gripper.
Wada is continuing his work, investigating what he calls the "Type II snap" -- which works the reverse of the Type I snap, being easier to pull apart than push together. He's also interested in rigorously investigating how a plastic ball joint works. Wada says: "In any structure, form and function are always intimately coupled and much needs to be studied from the viewpoint of physics."
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: On the 26th of March, US President Joe Biden delivered a forceful speech in Warsaw on the war in Ukraine that went over very well, with excerpts listed here:
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"Be not afraid." These were the first words that the first public address of the first Polish pope after his election in October of 1978, they were the words who would come to define Pope John Paul II. Words that would change the world.
John Paul brought the message here to Warsaw in his first trip back home as pope in June of 1979. It was a message about the power, the power of faith, the power of resilience, the power of the people. In the face of a cruel and brutal system of government, it was a message that helped end the Soviet repression in the central land in Eastern Europe 30 years ago.
... Today's fighting in Kyiv and Melitopol and Kharkiv are the latest battle in a long struggle. Hungary, 1956. Poland, 1956, and then again, 1981. Czechoslovakia, 1968. Soviet tanks crushed democratic uprisings, but the resistance continued until finally in 1989, the Berlin Wall and all the walls of Soviet domination, they fell. They fell! And the people prevailed.
... Today, Russia has strangled democracy and sought to do so elsewhere, not only in his homeland. Under false claims of ethnic solidarity, there's invalidated neighboring nations. Putin has the gall to say he's 'denazifying' Ukraine. It's a lie. It's just cynical, he knows that, and it's also obscene.
... Let us remember that the test of this moment is the test of all time. A criminal wants to portray NATO enlargement as an imperial project aimed at destabilizing Russia. Nothing is further from the truth. NATO is a defensive alliance. It has never sought the demise of Russia. In the lead up to the current crisis, the United States and NATO worked for months to engage Russia to avert war. I met with him in person, talked to him many times on the phone.
... Russia wanted less of a NATO presence on its border but now he has a stronger presence, a larger presence with over 100,000 American troops here along with all the other members of NATO. In fact, Russia has managed to cause something I'm sure he never intended. The democracies of the world are revitalized with purpose and unity found in months that we've once taken years to accomplish.
... A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never erase a people's love for liberty. Brutality will never grind down their will to be free. Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness. We will have a different future, a brighter future, rooted in democracy and principle, hope and light. Of decency and dignity and freedom and possibilities. For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power. God bless you all. And may God defend our freedom, and may God protect our troops. Thank you for your patience.
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The comment that Putin "cannot remain in power" raised some controversy, sounding only too much like the discredited notion of "regime change" -- but though it could be interpreted in such a fashion, it was clear the USA and NATO have no intention of trying to force the issue. A broader interpretation reads it as something that is just going to happen. In any case, it cost him nothing.
* As discussed in an essay from BLOOMBERG.com ("Ukraine Is Changing the World Order, Just Not How Putin Hoped" by Marc Champion, 22 March 2022), two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his armed forces into Ukraine, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti published an article proclaiming imminent victory, celebrating "a new era" -- marked by the end of Western domination, the severing of the connection between the US and continental Europe, and the return of Russia to its rightful "space and place" in the world. RIA Novosti soon took the article down, but it was correct: Putin's decision to invade Ukraine is changing the international order, just not in the way he planned.
Existing ideas of defending Europe have been discarded. Nobody ever seriously thought Russia would resort to old-school aggression in the 21st century. That assumption having proven wrong, European nations are reconsidering what they spend, what they buy, and how they would need to fight. Instead of being split from the USA, they have grown closer to it, while asserting NATO power. General Richard Barrons, a former commander of the UK's Joint Forces Command, says:
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No matter how this war turns out, and as cynical as it sounds now, historians will say that Putin's attack on Ukraine gave Europe the time it needed to recover so it could confront Russia and, further down the road, China. Ukraine is paying a high price to buy us time.
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Fiona Hill, the former senior director for European and Russian affairs on the US National Security Council, commented that Putin's invasion of Ukraine "is a post-imperial, post-colonial land grab. If we let this happen, we're setting a precedent for the future." Putin is demonstrating no inclination to acknowledge his mistakes, and knows that defeat would call his political survival into question.
Germany has stepped up with a commitment to spend an additional 100 billion euros ($110 billion USD) -- that being a particularly significant action from a country long noted for its anti-militarism. Other countries are also raising their defense budgets, with the Baltic States asking NATO for permanent bases and long-range anti-aircraft systems.
Exactly how that will work out remains, of course, to be seen. Over the short run, the Russian military has been badly chewed up and its stockpiles of munitions depleted. It is of course possible that Russia will suffer a social breakdown -- but given Russia's nuclear stockpile, even that poses threats. Putin's regime may survive, remaining a threat to Europe; certainly there is no possibility of reconciliation as long as he's in office.
China's role in this is ambiguous. The Chinese government officially is on Moscow's side, but how deeply does that go? Putin's war in Ukraine is a loser, and Beijing can't see any advantage in supporting it. The disastrous path of the campaign also must be giving Chinese leadership second thoughts about military action against Taiwan.
In any case, it is Europe that is in the front lines, and the war has proven a shock to complacency. Barrons says: "It's a 90-minute journey, and there are cruise missiles over London."
* Not incidentally, Putin's miscalculations may well prove even more wrong in the long run. The war will come to an end, and Ukraine will prevail. Given the devastation of the conflict, Western powers will have to help with reconstruction -- with the USA likely being the biggest player. The end result will be a Ukraine closely allied to the USA on Russia's southwest flank -- with Ukraine possibly having expanded influence in the Central Asian "Stans" to the east, which the Kremlin regards as their assets.
For another small note, as brutal and ghastly as the war in Ukraine has been, it has its flashes of humor -- as of late, in videos of Ukrainian farmers towing off Russian tanks and other combat gear. There was a photoshop of a Lego kit, the cover showing a Lego tractor pulling a "FREE TANK INCLUDED!". More amusing was the Ukrainian special operations patch:
* The war in Ukraine has aggravated the global economic difficulties left in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As discussed in an essay from TIME.com ("Why You Probably Don't Need to Worry About 1970s-Style Stagflation" by Zachary Karabell, 24 March 2022), there are worries about the "stagflation" of the 1970s, when inflation was roaring while the economy was stagnant.
The 1970s stagflation confounded traditional economic wisdom, which saw inflation as a product of an overheated economy and loose monetary policy. Stagflation was due to the OPEC oil embargo of the West, imposed in response to Western support for Israel after the 1973 October War, along with a US Federal Reserve that was too slow to react. Many suggest that things are not so different now:
Add on top of this the dramatic sanctions imposed by the West on Russia. However, although Russia is faced with economic depression, it is not a key player in world markets. Its GDP is the 11th largest in the world, but that makes it economically about the size of Texas, with about five times the population. Its economy is dependent on oil exports, the only other sectors of importance being wheat production plus a few specialty minerals, such as nickel.
Russia controls only 10% of the world's oil supply. In the 1970s, in contrast, OPEC controlled nearly 60% of the world oil supply, and the 1973 embargo saw the price of oil quadruple in a few weeks, compared to the 25% increase now in the weeks since the Ukraine invasion. The energy shock in 1973:1974, followed by later supply shocks, was by orders of magnitude greater than Russia today represents. To be sure, markets have been thrown into confusion by current events, attempting to compensate for the loss of Russian exports, but so far the disruption has been less than feared, though volatility persists.
Yes, inflation has been and continues to be troublesome, but it's not in a league with the 1970s. Inflation from the mid-1970s through 1980 were in the double-digits, reaching 14.5% in the summer of 1980. The annual rate of inflation of the US was 4.7% for all of 2021. Inflation's picked up in 2022, but it's still not near that of the stagflation years. Unemployment was worse then than now; interest rates also reached double digits, with a 30-year home mortgage reaching 11.2% by the end of 1979.
Could things get worse? They could, but the relative strength of not just the US economies but also the major European ones argues against that. The trillions of dollars injected by governments because of COIVD-19 has led to consumers having less debt and more income, even with inflation starting to erode those gains. As a result of COVID spending, governments today have more debt than ever, but rates remain historically low, extremely low in fact, which means that interest to service that debt is less than it was in the 1980s when government debt was much lower. We have further trouble to endure, but have cause to think it can be endured.
* As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Event Horizon Telescope Captures 'Beautiful' Images Of Second Black Hole's Jet" by Daniel Clery, 19 July 2021), radio telescopes can be used as "inteferometers", in which widely-separated instruments can be hooked up into a network, all observing the same object at the same time, with the timing of the radio signals being received being linked to atomic clocks and precisely recorded. Using computing power, the recorded signals can be summed, taking into account slight phase differences, with the result being a highly detailed image. A radio interferometer will have a best resolution proportional to the maximum distance between radio telescopes in the network, though the gathering power will still only be proportional to the sum of the areas of all the instruments in the network.
The "Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)" is an interferometer array, hooking up a number of widely dispersed radio dishes, from Hawaii to France and from Greenland to the South Pole. It only operates for a few weeks out of the year, the radio telescopes performing individual observations the rest of the time. In 2019, the EHT got a close-up of a giant black hole, lurking at the center of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87), which got a lot of press. It has now obtained an image of a second, somewhat smaller giant in the nearby active galaxy Centaurus A. Astronomer Philip Best of the University of Edinburgh says of the new image: "This is really nice. The angular resolution is astonishing compared to previous images of these jets."
The EHT took a shot of Centaurus A during the same 2017 observing campaign that produced the image of the supermassive black hole in M87. Centaurus A, about 13 million light-years away, is one of the closest galaxies to Earth that is bright at radio wavelengths. It also has obvious jets spewing matter above and below the galactic disk, an indicator of an active giant black hole. The EHT images have more detail of the jets than any obtained before, showing a dark center flanked by two bright stripes. It is suspected the jet appears bright around its edge because its outer regions rub against surrounding gas and dust, causing them to glow.
Astrophysicists are still trying to understand how galactic nuclei drive the powerful jets. One theory holds that an accretion disk, the swirling whirlpool of matter spiraling into the black hole, generates a magnetic field that funnels some of the matter into a jet. Others suggest this magnetic field taps into the rotational energy of the black hole to achieve such colossal power.
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