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Comment by tenpies | Hacker News Reader

You have to understand the utter diplomatic and geopolitical incompetence of the current US adminsitration.

You're talking about the same administration that literally admitted in the open to be executing cyber attacks on Russia[1]. The fact that they haven't made most of North America glow in the dark is an utter miracle.

And to make my point clear, the issue isn't that they're conducting cyber attacks - that's a given.

The issue is admitting it, in the open, to the news media. Everyone knows this is happening, but you don't say the quiet part out loud because it's an escalation against a nuclear power and gives them carte blanche to retaliate.

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[1] https://news.sky.com/story/us-military-hackers-conducting-of...

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> gives them carte blanche to retaliate

No it doesn’t. Russia has been taking increasing amounts of direct action against other nuclear states for years (including sponsoring cyber attacks and e.g. criminally intervening in US elections). They aren’t going to start a nuclear war over e.g. the USA compromising their military computer networks and distributing the information discovered there.

Putin is doing everything he can to prevent escalation to a direct shooting war with NATO because he knows that in a conventional war NATO will wipe the floor with the Russian military, and a nuclear war is mutually assured destruction.

And yet, we're not glowing. That's because cyber attacks are not viewed the same as physical attacks, especially when it doesn't lead to loss of life. This is literally the US AND Russia's stance, so it's not a completely untoward thing to do. I'm not in support of it, but, that's the reality

You think that Russia would "make North America glow in the dark" because the US disclosed cyberattacks that were obviously attributable to the US? Like, literally, bringing on nuclear Armageddon over some computer hacking and internet trolling? Actually not even computer hacking and internet trolling, just public acknowledgment about coputer hacking and internet trolling?

I judge middle school debate and this still has to be the most wildly insane geopolitical take I've heard in a long time.

You must be hot boxing some strong stuff... might be time to roll down the windows of that information bubble and get some fresh air ;)

> over some computer hacking and internet trolling?

No, no, "some computer hacking" (because who would worry about not being able to watch funny cat videos for a while? it's not like people do anything important using computers...) won't do much. But the next Stuxnet targeted at Russian infrastructure could well spell the end of us all. Honestly, I'd be quite content in that situation - witnessing, for however short before dying to radiation, the literal end of history (instead of the pseudo-one from the '90s) could be strangely rewarding.

Highly dubious.

But okay. Suppose there were a cyber attack sufficient to trigger full scale nuclear war and which also didn't fully disable Russian's nuclear armament.

Do you really think that Russia would not launch nukes just because the US didn't publicly declare responsibility for the attack even though Russia knows the US is responsible? Because, to be clear, that was OP's assertion:

>> And to make my point clear, the issue isn't that they're conducting cyber attacks - that's a given. The issue is admitting it, in the open, to the news media. Everyone knows this is happening, but you don't say the quiet part out loud because it's an escalation against a nuclear power and gives them carte blanche to retaliate.

What you think is the "quite part" is actually not. It is standard practice to announce the nature of the military attack, especially against a nuclear power. That is the reason why you see the exact weapons being sent to Ukraine. If you do these things unannounced, and later get caught, that is what gives Russia the carte blanche to retaliate.

This same user is concerned about "woke inquisitions" so take their criticisms of the "adminsitration" with a grain a salt.

To be fair, I think that admission was probably less damaging than the "minor incursion" comment from January: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/19/politics/russia-ukraine-joe-b...

Putin definitely thought the incursion would be minor. He didn’t think the Ukrainians would be (backed with advanced western weapons and intelligence) fighting back with such vigor.

The cold war is over. There's no need to hide that which everyone knows and accepts.

I've actually been pleasantly surprised at how well Biden's administration has walked the tightrope on Ukraine. And though I'm very liberal by US standards, I'm not terribly partisan when it comes to foreign policy—I think Obama's foreign policy was largely disastrous, and have a lot more good things to say about Trump's than I thought I would when his term started (admittedly, more about intentions & gestures than actual effects, and there was still plenty that I didn't like)

Obama had the problem that he was a young guy who came in with big ambitious promises and good intentions but inherited a complete shitshow from his predecessor (both the wars and an economic crisis). His opposition was intransigent and did everything they could to undermine the USA for their own narrow political interest, and his party got bashed up in the 2010 midterm elections. He then let himself get pushed around by the US military establishment.

But if we compare to the Bush Jr, Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan administrations (let alone the Vietnam war era), it can’t really be called “disastrous”.

Trump’s foreign policy was largely symbolic and incoherent, if anything focused on corrupt self enrichment, breaking up US soft power to aid Russia (he backed out of various treaties, halted diplomacy around the world, wanted to pull the US out of NATO, ...), symbolically opposing China to appeal to anti-Asian racists, making up nonsense about Latin American immigrants to appeal to anti-Latino racists, continuing middle East aggression (and the Muslim ban etc.) to appeal to anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racists. His antics (on top of the Bush Jr. wars) further pissed away America’s global reputation. To the extent things went okay it was largely down to incompetence and uncoordination.

Syria was the worst part, because the fallout from that was really bad. Not sure we'd have had Brexit without the extra pressure that put on Europe. Likely empowered Erdogan somewhat (doubt it made a big difference there, admittedly) and contributed to the rise of far right parties in Eastern Europe. Plus, you know, sucks for the Syrians.

Nb. what I blame him for isn't the Syrian civil war itself, but for choosing to get involved in such a way that it's dragged on indefinitely, rather than concluding it one way or the other much faster. This also contributed to destabilization and suffering in Iraq.

Continuing to allow Afghanistan to bleed for his entire 8 years while everyone at the top (and probably most folks in the middle, and at the bottom) knew no progress was, had been, or would be made was a straight-up crime (see: the Afghanistan papers).

But sure, it's hard to beat Bush II for "foreign policy fuck-ups". Dude's a legend in that regard. I wouldn't be surprised if historians in 2100 will look back at that and see it as America falling on its face at the starting line, for this century, and never really recovering.

> Trump’s foreign policy was largely symbolic and detail-free, focused on breaking up US soft power to aid Russia, symbolically opposing China to appeal to anti-Asian racists, making up nonsense about Latin American immigrants to appeal to anti-Latino racists, continuing middle East aggression (and the Muslim ban etc.) to appeal to anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racists. To the extent things went okay it was largely down to incompetence and uncoordination.

Pushing NATO members to meet their defense spending obligations ended up being damn-near prescient, even if the rest of his action on NATO was mostly bad. I'd love to see more breaking down of trade relations with China, so that part was fine by me. Lots of his rhetoric was idiotic but at the same time it was refreshing to see anyone in power talking anti-neoliberalism, for once, even if he was either too ambivalent in-fact or too incompetent to accomplish much. Withdrawing from Afghanistan was way overdue and it disgusted me that NPR ran with "it's just too hard to withdraw in more time than it took to put the same number of soldiers and same amount of equipment in-theater" bullshit, in response. All his stuff related to the Southern border was moronic, of course.

I'm not saying I think he was great—dude belongs behind bars 10x over, I'd say, including for some of his foreign policy actions. In fact, a lot of it's just that, after his predecessors, accomplishing very little was kinda an improvement.

> Syria was the worst part,

Agreed. Obama came in from the context of the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan and wanted to avoid another similar, and was too cautious and non-confrontational, especially once Russia got involved.

> Pushing NATO members to meet their defense spending obligations ended up being damn-near prescient

This was not “pushing” so much as “ineffective trash talking”. And it had nothing to do with making NATO or European militaries effective, but was based on Trump’s inability to understand anything except in narrowly transactional terms, not comprehending the possibility of second-order effects or complex systems and therefore unwilling to listen when people try to explain that supporting NATO and maintaining the prevailing geopolitical order is in America’s long-term interest. With maybe some bonus of trying to help Putin.

> I'd love to see more breaking down of trade relations with China

Trump’s #1 foreign policy “accomplishment” was pulling the USA out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, undermining US economic and social power in the region to China’s great benefit.

> Withdrawing from Afghanistan was way overdue and it disgusted me

The USA should have pulled out of Afghanistan years before (or never gone in at all), but the way the Trump administration handled the transition was profoundly incompetent, and made things much harder for the Biden administration (the only president of the past 4 with the guts to go through with it).

> Trump’s #1 foreign policy accomplishment was pulling the USA out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, undermining US economic and social power in the region to China’s great benefit.

Yeah, I know. Again, I'm not saying he was good. Just that I didn't think there'd even be a single half-assed compliment I'd be able to muster for anything he did. He exceeded sub-zero expectations, and probably, for whatever reason (yeah, likely largely ineffective management of his administration) at least didn't do anywhere near as much harm as the the guys who ran things the prior 16 years. Not via his foreign policy actions, at least.

Sorry if any of this came off as "I like most of Trump's foreign policy". What I'm getting at is that I'm pretty harsh even on popular Democratic presidents, and not incapable of admitting "that was kinda OK" with Republicans even when they're an actual no-BS joke like Trump, but still think Biden's not screwed the pooch so far (he still might, certainly) on foreign policy. And I'm inclined to dislike him because I'm getting really sick of ancient dudes sitting in the Oval Office—could we get a youthful 60-year-old, even? Please?—and don't care for a lot of his legislative record.

Point is, if Biden's badly screwing up foreign policy, this particular devoted foreign policy cynic isn't seeing it. But, again, there's always tomorrow.

>> Pushing NATO members to meet their defense spending obligations ended up being damn-near prescient

>This was not “pushing” so much as “ineffective trash talking”.

Trump and Stoltenberg argue on camera (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k>). Who turned out to be right? Who turned out to completely, totally, 100% wrong?

If Trump was so bad for NATO and Ukraine's defense, why didn't the current war didn't begin in 2017-2020?

Let me guess: You think that the current state of the Ukrainian military (in terms of training and weaponry) that enabled it to survive the initial Russian invasion in February when few believed it could, somehow magically began in January 2021. It is a fact that the Trump administration continued and accelerated the training and arming of Ukrainian military by the US that his predecessor began.

Let me also guess: You are one of those gullible who say that Merkel was always against German dependence on Russian gas but could not do anything about it. For 16 years!

There is more "evidence" that Merkel is a long-term Russian intelligence asset, recruited from her youth in East Germany,^1 than that of Trump being the same. One guess on which claim is incessantly repeated by the bien-pensants of the chattering classes.

^1 Something else never talked about is how her parents moved from West to East Germany when she was a baby

Trump was literally impeached for secretly withholding congressionally appropriated military aid to Ukraine and then extorting the Ukrainian president to make up a fake scandal about his political opponent in return for keeping aid flowing. Several of Trump’s top advisors/officials were directly corruptly involved with previous Russian puppet leaders of Ukraine and corrupt pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs, notably Paul Manafort, who had directly worked for years to undermine Ukrainian democracy (Manafort was imprisoned in the USA for his illegal Ukraine-related fraud, among other charges. If you want to single out an American to blame for the current war, Manafort is your best bet.)

Remember, Trump fired the US ambassador to Ukraine because she was opposed to Ukrainian (and American) corruption, and instead sent Rudy Giuliani, Rick Perry, and Gordon Sondland – an incompetent hotel developer who bought his way into a cosplay job as EU Ambassador – to further his corrupt schemes, including not only the extortion plan to invent scandals about Biden, but also replacing the leadership of a Ukrainian state-owned gas company so that it could give contracts to Trump’s corrupt American allies, ending the US attempts to extradite Firtash (a criminal Ukrainian oligarch with Russian mafia ties who hired Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies), etc.

When Trump’s extortion scheme was exposed and blew up as a scandal, Congress appropriated additional aid for Ukraine, and Trump was driven by the scandal and intense public and congressional scrutiny (not to mention pressure from the US military) to continue the aid. (He still wanted to be re-elected, remember, so didn’t want to look totally corrupt.)

Thankfully the USA is not (as of 2016–2022) a dictatorship, and the president does not personally decide all national policy. So when Trump had some bright ideas like nuking a hurricane or selling off Puerto Rico, those didn’t actually happen. When Trump suggested pulling the US out of NATO, there were still enough powerful and sane figures in the US defense establishment who were able to thwart that proposal.

* * *

You are right that the US and NATO did some (though in retrospect it perhaps should have been more) to help Ukraine from 2014–2021. That training, funding, and support was surely one important part of the Ukrainian army’s recent success. Score one for the US military and US federal government.

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> who say that Merkel was always against German dependence on Russian gas

I don’t know about Merkel per se but German political parties clearly have significant corruption problems. The German response to the Ukraine war has been a disappointing indictment of the whole German political class.

More generally, many Europeans (and Americans, etc.) have been bought off (explicitly or implicitly) by money embezzled from the Russian people by various oligarchs and organized criminals. Russian corruption is a serious worldwide problem, and other countries should continue to make large-scale coordinated responses, ending money laundering, seizing corrupt assets, and imposing legal liability on local residents (e.g. the legal, real estate, and financial services industries) who knowingly participate.

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