POTF 47 - Nominations

[Septentrionalis]

POTF is about recognising the very best posts, the best arguments and discourse in the D&D, and appropriately rewarding it.

You shall progressively earn these medals once you achieve enough wins, but first you must be nominated in threads such as this one. And it works like this.

Post of the Fortnight - Rules

-Each user can nominate up to 2 posts per round, and the only valid form of nomination is by quoting with a link as shown below the chosen post in the PotF thread designated for it.

Looking forward to getting this kicked off for real!

- Each 15 days there will be a new Nomination thread put up, and all the posts written during this period are considered eligible, if properly nominated. Exception are posts who are somewhat breaking the ToS; upon being acted by Moderation, they are always considered uneligible.

- Remember: It is possible to nominate up to 2 posts each round of the competition; it is also possible to change a nomination anytime before the actual round of nominations ends.

- There will be two competitions held every month, with a period for nominations followed by a period of voting. The submitted posts can be discussed in a dedicated space.

- Only posts that have not participated in a previous poll and that have been published in the current period of given time in any section of the D&D area may be nominated.

- The authors of the nominated post will be informed so they can withdraw the candidacy if that is their wish.

- The maximum number of participating posts in the final vote will be ten. If more than ten nominations are submitted, seconded nominations will take priority. After seconded nominations are considered, earliest nominations will take priority. If the number of posts submitted to the contest is less than ten, the organizing committee may nominate posts if it considers it appropriate.

-The members of the committee will never nominate a post belonging to one of them, but the rest of the users can nominate their posts (organizers posts), and vice versa.

-In the event of a tie, both posts will be awarded and both posters will receive rep and 1 competition point.

- Public or private messages asking for a vote for a candidate post are forbidden. Violators (and their posts) may not participate in the contest.

- People are expected to consider the quality and structure of the post itself, more than the content of the same. While it's certainly impossible to completely split the two aspects when making our own opinion on a post, it remains intended, as also explained in the Competition Commentary Thread, that commenting and discussing on the content rather than on the form/structure of the post is considered off-topic for the purpose of this competition. You are free to nominate and vote for whatever reason you want, but what happens in public has to strictly follow up with the competition rules.

A nominated post should:

1. Be focused and relevant to the topic(s) being discussed.
2. Demonstrate a well-developed, insightful and nuanced understanding of the topic(s) it is discussing.
3. Be logically coherent, well organized and communicate its points effectively.
4. Support its contentions with verifiable evidence, either in the form of links or references.
5. Not be deliberately vexatious to other users.
6. Not be composed of a copy/paste in its entirety.

Good luck everyone!

[Cookiegod]

Grand strategy, one way or another, almost always relates back to long term planning and strategic vision. But can a civilization without a word for strategy and grand strategy possess such a concept or practice in the first place? According to one of the most important and acclaimed scholars on modern strategy, the answer is yes. Rome had a comprehensive and intelligible grand strategy during the imperial era, despite never having coined a word for strategy, and its existence can be inferred by the cost-effective but also logical approach the empire took to managing its frontiers. Such is the argument put forward by Edward Luttwak in his highly provocative book, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire.

While looking at the obvious problem of devising a cost-effective way of securing the Empire’s borders for the long-term, Luttwak argues that the Romans intuitively adopted three great cost-effective grand strategies to meet their growing security needs. Important to the concept of strategy, as known to Luttwak and many practitioners, is the argument that each strategy’s ultimate goal was to provide maximum security benefit for the lowest cost.

Phase 1: The Client State System (Augustus to 1^st Century AD)



The first great cost-effective strategy, or grand defensive strategy if you will, identified in Luttwak’s book is the Client State System, which was based on an invisible frontier of neighboring allied tribes and allied states. Once made a client to Rome, the lands of these allied tribes and allied states along Rome’s border acted as a buffer against foreign invasion, while at the same time their own forces contributed to lessening the overall defense burden on the Roman army for border security. With Roman soldiers free from extended garrison duties along the border, which were now being outsourced to the client states themselves, Rome had enough disposable force to seek new conquests elsewhere which, if successful, would ideally generate new client states. This positive feedback loop of continuing adding new vassals along the periphery of the empire inevitably generated economy of force for the Roman legions which then reinforced a system of manageable frontier expenses and efficiencies. Underwriting all of this of course, and keeping Rome’s clients at bay, was the unassailable quality of the Roman army at war and the near invincible aura of Roman prestige.

Phase 2: Preclusive Defense (Late 1^st - 2^nd Century AD)



Beginning in the late 1^st century AD, changing political circumstances (such as annexation along the border and Romanization of the frontiers) meant Rome could no longer rely on the Client State System for border security. Faced with the new challenge of having to actually defend Roman citizens and the border provinces themselves, Luttwak argues that the Romans gradually adopted a second great cost-effective strategy in Preclusive Defense. According to Luttwak, the Romans once again sought cost saving measures for its limited number of legionnaires and manpower resources by purposely seeking out natural obstacles to foreign invasion: such as the Rhine, Danube, Arab and Sahara deserts, and the Euphrates river. When these “natural borders” however, were not available for conquest or just out of Rome’s reach, the Romans constructed limes and established garrisons, the most famous of which is Hadrian’s wall.


Phase 3: Defense-in-Depth (3^rd Century AD)


Western Empire Map Showing Distribution of Frontier Forces (Limitanei) and Field Armies (Comitatenses) 400AD

The last great defensive strategy identified by Luttwak is Defense-in-Depth. Here, Luttwak argues that multiple high-intensity invasions at multiple points of entry along the empire’s frontier made forward deployment of the legions and Preclusive Defense next to impossible, leading naturally then to the creation of fortified towns and mobile field armies in response. A thick Roman interior and an array of fortified towns and defensive strongholds along the way to Rome would then delay, contain, channel, and hopefully exhaust any barbarian invasions until a Roman field army could arrive. The shift away from Preclusive Defense however, along with the ensuing abandonment of most of the empire’s border provinces, is usually seen then as a desperate move on part of the Romans.


Luttwak, Historians, and the Charge of Anachronism

Despite seminal like work and an undisputable command of both military and national strategy, Luttwak’s views and depictions of Roman grand strategy are generally not accepted in academia. The most frequent charge of all, from both critics and published historians, is of course the charge of anachronism.

The charge is indeed accurate and compelling. For instance, there was no planning staff at the head of the Roman army. There was no formal demarcation of the Roman border. There were no “scientific frontiers” complete with imperial recognition for natural boundaries. Uniformed systems of defenses across all Roman theaters, along with identical roles for army units, cannot be found. Roman garrisons and military buildings equally served a civil and transportation function as well as defense. There were no strategy documents, accurate world maps, a general staff, or defensive whitepapers carried over from Augustus to Tiberius or Nerva to Trajan. And there never was any ridiculous 20^th century notion of escalation theory, mobile defense, or defense-in-depth in the minds, plans, expansionist policies, and ad hoc decisions of the emperors.

Whatever grand strategies Luttwak thus found in his rigorous survey of the Roman Empire, they were not Roman strategies. Too many inconsistencies in both narrative and archaeological evidence disproves of the notion that any imperial plan or strategic vision —short of ideological expansion and the personal security of the emperor— ever carried over from one emperor to the other. And if sustainable economics and cost saving goals were really the concern of all charged with imperial strategy, then one should also address Rome’s political economy, which, far from balancing most government and economic systems with ends, ways, and means, stumbled on falteringly and unwittingly into ever increasingly expansionist policies and expenses until finally, the whole system collapsed. The need to extract surplus economic resources from the conquered territories to support the growing mechanisms of state —and the ridiculous cost of the Roman army— culminated in a redistributive exchange system that operated on a massive scale, and its size and expense defies normal economic logic. Underwriting the costs of the logistics, the Roman army, and infrastructure requirements, along with the economic greed of the elite, were of course costly government expenditures and subsidies.


Was there ever a Roman Grand Strategy?

If important parts of Luttwak’s thesis, such as defense-in depth, preclusive defense, and the client state system, cannot be supported by the available evidence, did the Roman Empire then ever have a grand strategy? Can strategic purpose not be derived from the long-term positioning of the legions? How then did the Romans deal with constant threats from Parthia and the Germanic tribes for the long term? And how do historians even begin to account for the remarkable efficiency of the Roman army. Can only 28 to 30 odd some legions really begin to guard and defend the entirety of the Roman Empire without strategy, resource allocation, and economy of force? And isn’t strategy practiced and learned intuitively anyway?

As wrong and imperfect as his thesis is, Luttwak does do for historians what they and their reductionist methods failed to do for themselves. It takes a generalist and systems approach to recognize the strategic environment and all its individual actors, and by avoiding specialization and a rigid selection of historical methods, Luttwak takes into account the entirety of the Roman world and all its security challenges. Yet this satellite view of Rome’s geography and security problems leaves Luttwak knowing more than the Romans ever did. In the Roman world, strategy, planning, and long-term systems thinking were in their infancy, not even close to the level of sophistication of a modern general staff, but present and far above their peers nonetheless. In his book, Luttwak shows how the Romans acted and responded intelligently to different problems, creating complex systems, allocating resources, establishing goals, and executing strategies and plans for provincial security. At their best, the Romans even combined military effectiveness with political astuteness. But Luttwak gives the Romans too much credit when he identifies consistent grand strategy narratives and not more precise regional-military strategies used to maintain order and maximize efficiencies in the various provinces. Rome, after all, was sustained through its incredible military commanded by military governors in administrative districts. The emperor decided where to put the legions and how many to allocate, but that was mainly it. Individual mandatas issued to Roman governors took over from there, followed by each governor’s own response and management style to specific regional challenges (of the areas he controlled). A permanent military presence (arguably without a peer competitor) is all that strategically carried over from one emperor to the next, and from there each Roman emperor generated his own policies and established his own priorities. However, without clear lines of succession, imperial policies as a whole remained largely immune to the possible benefits of strategic thought and long-term planning.

In end, perhaps the most important step still left unconcluded between Luttawk and historians then, is not what the Romans were able to do or achieve for the long-term, but the entire notion and importance of grand strategy.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Obligatory reminder that the causal relationship doesn't have to go the way one expects it to go. In this example I do not believe that Stalin and Trotsky had a falling out over their own ideological opinions in so much as their need to diverge and set themselves apart was quite much driven by their rivalry, which in turn was simply driven by hunger for power. It is, depending on time and oversimplified, true that Trotsky took the internationalism a bit further than Stalin did and did try to present himself as a purer version of a communist, but those political differences, whilst used as an excuse, most certainly cannot have been the cause for that. We all know that people are perfectly able to sit down and settle things peacefully if it serves their interests. Stalin and Trotsky weren't able to do this as their primary interest was to be the top dog, once Lenin's illness and death had created a vacuum.

And as has happened in practically every revolution before and after, people who are perfectly able to kill people for one reason, won't have a hard time finding reasons to kill their former allies as well.

The revolution ended up eating Trotsky rather than Stalin, but it could have gone the other way, and in that case the outcome would have differed little. Stalin's earnest push for less anti-Russianism (nationalism is quite the misnomer here) and less repression of religion came only in 1941, and then for well known existential reasons. And the internationalist version of communism had already failed at Warszaw. Both turning points were, if we disregard the incompetence of both Trotsky and Stalin in handling these, outside of their control. We can see the same pattern repeat with Khrushchev and Bresznew both attempting to once more set themselves apart from their predecessor. We can also see the same pattern in e.g. the French revolution, Chinese revolution, as well as many others. It wasn't ideology that caused Louis XVI, Danton and Robespierre to lose their heads. The hunger for power of the latter did it. The same power hunger that also expressed itself in the totalitarian mindset that saw people as mere playthings to be commanded what to think and what to speak.
Modern day Ukrainian propaganda detected.

First of all, absolutely no one refers to Russia past the 17th century (at the latest) as "Muscovite", apart from Ukrainian nationalists who want to lay sole claim to what is a shared history. "Little Russia" = Malorossiya referred to only one half of modern day Ukraine and not to white Russia. Nor was it a diminuitive as implied by you. Your quote of the "great Russian people" as simply referring to modern day Russians is likewise wrong. Russians, White Russians and Ukrainians (literally meaning "at the border") were by the Russian empire and the Soviet Union alike regarded as having the same heritage, the "Rus'". The term "velikaya Rus'" (whilst also having a second meaning as Russia proper, which by the Soviet time was already falling out of disuse) in the context mentioned by you as well as in other Soviet texts refers to all three combined, not to just one of them. E.g. in the 1944 Soviet Anthem the line "Сплотила навеки Великая Русь" states that the great Rus (Russia+Ukraine+Belarus) have united forever.

Secondly, even though Korenisatsiya had cooled down slightly, it's completely bonkers to speak of any favouritism towards the Russians.

Here's some homework for you: Go through the list of the leaders of the Soviet Union post Stalin and count those with Ukrainian origins, and count those with non-minority Russian origins.

Then tell me how that could happen if the apparatus had been dominated by ethnical Russians as presented by you.

Thirdly, ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union during the second world war had an experience not too dissimilar from the Japanese living in the US. One of my relatives got sent in and out of the Gulag thrice simply for being of German origin. But it cooled down practically immediately the moment the war ended, nor was the war on the Soviet side, some hysteria aside, ever waged as a Vernichtungskrieg against the German people as claimed by the increasingly desperate Nazis.

The "Mother Russia" part also displays some ignorance regarding the language. in Russian it's "Родина-мать" = "Birthland-Mother". This is explicitly non-ethnic and doesn't even refer to Russia by name. The birthland is also strongly related to the Russian tradition to, apart from culture and language, distinguishing people on location of birth rather than the origin of the parents. You're applying a Western European mindset to then make a claim that isn't supported at all.

The fact that the Russian federation even today features far more official languages than the entire European Union combined (never mind the hundreds of languages spoken by communities too small to be made official for an entire region) shows that for all the faults of the Soviet Union (of which there were a great many) - the one thing they didn't do in contrast to e.g. post-revolutionary France, was to force one ethnic suppremacist agenda on everyone.

[Lord Thesaurian]

The Second World War was not caused by capitalism. If anything, it was caused by the NSDAP’s desire to break away from systems of international finance, global trade and free enterprise, all of which were characterized as Jewish control mechanisms. The party attempted to achieve national self-sufficiency (autarky) via a centrally planned, Alexandrian scale conquest of eastern Europe, the purpose of which was to provide the Reich with agricultural and fuel security. Of particularly importance were the farmlands of Ukraine and the oil fields of the Caucuses (oddly, the NSDAP’s intention of perpetrating a comprehensive, state-sponsored theft of Ukrainian land largely mirrored Soviet policy from less than a decade prior which had resulted in the liquidation of the kulaks). Had the invasion been successful, Germany’s reliance on the western democracies would have been eliminated and the possibility of an effective blockade (as occurred in WW1) would have been prevented. Thus, the Reich could have become a global hegemon – the NSDAP’s ultimate objective.

The party’s alliance with the industrialists was one of convenience, not ideology (as is plainly evidenced by Nazi theory dating back to the early 1920’s). Here is a brief video on that. The initial purpose of the alignment was to resist the internal communist threat, but later the Nazis viewed it as the most expedient route to rapid militarization (in a manner not dissimilar to Lenin’s use of the NEP to protect the Bolsheviks takeover). The purpose of industrial sales was never to satisfy the interests of the corporate elite; it was an act of short-termism intended to maximize the rearmament effort. Even so, by 1944-45, the German war machine had been almost entirely nationalized.

On the point about American companies, it is overwhelmingly the case that they assisted in the defeat of fascism, both via their involvement with the US and British militaries and the lend-lease program to the USSR which supplied the Russians with millions of tons of modern equipment, including tanks, trucks and planes. The claim that American companies were “involved in the running and supplying of the death camps” is mostly misleading, particularly given that the liquidation of the Jewish people was not known about outside of the Reich until the final weeks of the war. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that state/government involvement in the Holocaust and other atrocities of the war (including by the USSR) was far more substantial than anything perpetrated by corporations.

[Sir Adrian]

The heart of the issue is that the Ottoman empire decided to forcibly relocate at least a million and a half during a time of (as admitted already) widespread famine, pestilence and war. In such a period, and under such parameters, the forced relocation would definitively mean a high casualty rate. The Armenian side calls this genocide. The Turkish side calls this a botched operation. PointofView takes the latter stance. Of course he doesn't deny that a number of Armenians died; but he denies how many, and why and by whose fault. PointofView argues the Armenians died under the same conditions the Muslim subjects of the Empire did - dismissing the fact that the former were forcibly relocated during such events, while the latter were not. Unless he means to insinuate the Armenians died from the same causes the Mohammedans did.

Whether the Ottoman officials acted with the deliberate intention of killing (as many of) these people during the relocation is just the 'why' of the debate. In lawyer talk, it's establishing intent. That's why those who deny the genocide claim raise the 'military necessity' argument for their relocation. And that's why the Armenian scholars and those who see a genocide point to the routes taken, and call them 'death marches'. EDIT: However, the intent to do harm is proven ipso facto by the relocation, since the Ottoman officials proceeded with relocating 1.5 million people regardless of the cost to human lives - if the Ottoman government wanted to protect lives, it would police and even repress the villages with garrisons, not use its resources to relocate hundreds of thousands. Moreover, they wouldn't do it in the midst of a war. Relocations are still deadly for the peoples being relocated, if uncontrolled and unaided; just look at Pakistan and India during the de-colonization period.

@Nebaki, the tribunals at Istanbul (before they were relocated to Malta) tried and hanged people, correct? Unless you mean to say they weren't hanged for this, which I would like to read how and why.

And further, if we agreed it wasn't a genocide, could we at least agree it was ethnic cleansing? It ticks all the boxes for that one, too. Let's say we exaggerate. It is plausible, and dismissing a lot of arguments it could be fair to be said. But in no case can we claim that the Ottoman empire committed no crime whatsoever.