Month: April 2014

NATO expansion and ’90s era analysis

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I found the following on NATO expansion at Fas.org:

Russia is the main opponent to this expansion, because it interprets this as an increasing military presence on its borders. There is also a concern over old territorial claims to parts of Russia’s new neighbors that Moscow may try to pursue subsequently. For example, one vague scenario is of Russian intervention in the Eastern Ukraine to “protect the lives and property of Russian citizens”. Despite this, there has been a detectable thaw in Moscow’s opposition to NATO expansion as its leadership recognizes that the alliance no longer poses a threat to Russia, and this should be a manageable concern. For example, Russian Defense Minister Igor Rodionov recently stated the following: “I have become convinced NATO is not a threat to Russia, but I have millions to convince in Russia who are still worried that it is a threat.”(2)

United States Marine Corps
Command and Staff College
Marine Corps University
2076 South Street
Marine Corps Combat Development Command
Quantico, Virginia 22134-5068
MASTER OF MILITARY STUDIES
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF MILITARY STUDIES
Author:
Captain Gyula Bene, Hungarian Army
AY: 1996-97

If NATO expansion had occurred in a different way, one without the stripping of the Russian economy, aggressive democracy promotion as regime change, Iraq and Libya and a “global” NATO diluting its capabilities, what then?

Update: Great comments by all. In case it wasn’t clear from my series of posts, I agree with commenter dearieme: “But what would be the point of expanding NATO? It’s job was done. Declare victory and dissolve it: replace it by some low-key organisation that doesn’t worry the bear. And, above all, don’t, don’t, don’t interfere in places like Georgia.” In this post I was trying to point out that even if one thought NATO necessary, the nature of its expansion hollowed it out. But I think the US has to start thinking in a very different way about our security. We are not well-served by our foreign policy elite.

The Old Shell Game

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Saw a bumper sticker today that said, “I’m a member of the 99%, and I vote.”

…intended to imply, surely, that members of the 99% (based on income) have common economic interests on which they should be voting together.

But a professor of environmental studies, on the one hand, and a welder working in the oil/gas industry, on the other, do not have common economic interests, even if their incomes are exactly the same. Quite the opposite..the professor is likely to profit from a more restrictive approach to energy infrastructure, whereas the welder is likely to suffer economically from those same policies.

An inner-city couple concerned with getting their kids a good education does not have common interests with the local head of a teachers’ union striving to maintain antediluvian policies and consequent low standards, even if they are in the same income bracket.

The game the Democrats and their media sycophants are playing is this: to try to focus public attention on generalized income-based class conflict in order to divert attention from the preferential treatment given by government to certain groups at the expense of others.  The hope is that if sufficient anger can be generated and directed at “the rich,” people will be less likely to reject those politicians who want to cripple America’s energy infrastructure, leave the public schools to continue their multigenerational wrecking program, etc etc.

The Computer, as Seen from 1955

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Modern Mechanix has the full text of Time Magazine’s 1955 article on the emerging computer industry, centered around an adulatory interview with Tom Watson Jr of IBM.

I mentioned the interesting backstory on this article in comments at my review of Watson Jr’s excellent autobiography. The magazine had assigned a reporter named Virginia Bennett to find out about “automation in America.” She went to see Remington Rand, whose UNIVAC product was then the epitome of computing coolness…but, “fortunately for us, they weren’t very forthcoming that day.”  Walking back to her office, she passed the IBM building, saw the “Defense Calculator”  (IBM 701) in the window, and decided to see if IBM would be interested in doing the interview. When she asked the receptionist who she could speak with, the receptionist was smart enough to say, “Well, the head of this company is Mr Watson. He isn’t in the building today, but his son Tom is the president and you can certainly see him.”

The resulting article was very powerful publicity for IBM, and surely no help at all for Remington Rand’s relative industry standing.  If the receptionist had greeted the reporter with the all-too-typical bureaucratic approach (“The Watsons are very busy men, you’ll have to call Public Relations and make an appointment.”) the outcome would likely have been quite different.  Tom Jr notes that his father considered the receptionist position very important, and always chose those women himself.

In comments to my review of Tom Jr’s autobiography (see link above), I quoted an Israel general who asserted that “there is no substitute for the alert and intelligent infantryman” and noted that this is also true of the alert and intelligent front-line employee.

Cigars All Around!

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Lookie here – an Easter present for the farm. Introducing Dexter. We think.

We were lucky enough to receive this bundle of joy on Easter Sunday. It comes right up to humans and other cattle alike. Pretty friendly. We think it is a boy, which is awesome. A dun bull calf is highly prized in the world of Scottish Highland cattle, and there are already breeders and others sniffing around the farm to take a look at him. If it is a boy, this will be the first one we outright sell for breeding purposes, and his name will have our farm’s prefix in it, and so will his descendants, which is pretty cool. It also saves us the hassle of us castrating him. Which isn’t that big of a deal, but still. We won’t have our normal beef haul from this guy, but the money we will get for him will more than offset that little inconvenience.

Cross posted at LITGM.