I’m less clued in on specifics there, but I do recall serious issues with Washington undermining our negotiating position on China and leaving us in the lurch with the cases Indian wetwork on Canadian soil.
The thing about Middle East policy is we don’t actually spend that much money planning around it and this guy was so powerful pretty much because he was the only person with any power in FP who cared.
Katharine Boyle couldn’t find Kyiv on a map in 2022, but she wants a Quisling in power more than anything now that she’s heard Warriors podcast about it.
I also think the Gizmo Cult is on board with this intellectual posture because their tools performed so poorly in the war.
They’re also broadly - especially at the main VCs - fascist, so defeating Ukraine and a Free Europe is essential to their project.
DoD didn’t ignore the Ukrainian War for Independence, it affirmatively decided to discard it.
Years ago my team at CNA did a review of the US use of proxies.
A pertinent finding: “Policymakers & the US military should restrict the use of proxies to irregular warfare activities against states or other nonstate armed groups & avoid any temptations to use them as surrogate conventional armies”
Turns out that opposing a war because you think good American soldiers shouldn’t be sent to die for foreigners isn’t the same as opposing a war on the basis of moral principle.
I know it’s shooting fish in a barrel at this point, but it’s still fucking ridiculous that people convinced themselves Mr. “Bomb the shit out of them and take their oil” is a dove
Our #ForeverCanadian movement just grew by 260,000 Albertan!
youtu.be/I1ieKwFlLZI
All it would have taken is one stray rocket and a perfectly-timed IADS malfunction and we'd have Iraq in Eurovision or something.
One example of this is the report discussing whether the renegotiated USMCA "should be replicated" based on its benefits and drawbacks for the domestic auto sector, ignoring how infuriating that entire process was for Canada and Mexico and what we gave up to get some more auto jobs in Michigan.
Also a grim foretaste of what was to come that the report occasionally mentions that "burden-sharing" with allies is important, that alliances have to be revived and deepened etc., but also assumes that allies will be cool with Western foreign policy being steered by employment prospects in Ohio.
Man, this piece is a perfect example of what's wrong with trying to do foreign policy for "the man on the street", because people simultaneously want the US to retain global leadership, promote democracy and stability etc., but also not pay anything to do it, etc. etc...
Oh what the fuck is this.
"Voters don't care about any of that, just focus on [insert kitchen table domestic issues]" may be right, but you do need to find someone who will treat it like an election winner anyway because the alternative is careerists playing with other peoples' lives for attaboys and think tank appointments.
The fact that McGurk's success continued despite changes in leadership and changes in approach to Iraq and the Middle East is such a sign of underlying rot. Everyone says foreign policy doesn't win elections, and they may be right, but the problem is that leaves the field open for guys like him.
"A U.S. diplomat who was in the embassy when McGurk arrived found his steady advance astonishing. “Brett only meets people who speak English. … There are like four people in the government who speak English. And somehow he’s now the person who should decide the fate of Iraq? How did this happen?”"
I FUCKING HATE THIS SHIT (AND THIS GUY)
This scathing article in New Lines is a pretty good summation of McGurk and his rotten legacy. “Brett only meets people who speak English. … There are like four people in the government who speak English. And somehow he’s now the person who should decide the fate of Iraq? How did this happen?”
the fact that McGurk keeps getting put on CNN and Colbert (along with Petraeus!) despite not actually understanding the area
Sometimes I'm reminded of it and I just have to take a second to sit with my head in my hands and think about it. Iraq, Syria, Iran, there is no US failure in the Middle East in the past 20 some years that doesn't at least have some of his DNA at the crime scene.
McGurk is a walking talking indictment of the entire US FP establishment. The fact that this absolute fucking moron (and I stand by that assessment) somehow continued to fall upward and remains an influential voice after the absolute debacle of his time as the "Maliki Whisperer" is... Staggering.
One of the most extraordinary things Cook recounts is the "beam method", where railway track would be laid in No Man's Land and carts containing thousands of gas cylinders hauled as close to German lines as possible before being detonated, to produce uninhabitable clouds up to 9000 yards in depth.
Gas used in saturation like that really is one of the most potent tools of the war, and you see Canadian and British officers likewise fretting about occupying low-lying ground precisely because gas barrages could make them into uninhabitable cauldrons.
Currie himself probably summed it up best, bluntly telling a horrified crowd during a speaking event that "We would have gassed the whole German army to death if we could."
Yeah, and the availability, or lack thereof of gas shells for German defensive fires played a part in their inability to stymie the wider advances of the Hundred Days, including straight up running out of mustard gas around Cambrai. Meanwhile the Canadian Corps laid on barrages of 50% phosgene.
So in 1918, a man who had survived St. Julien coming out of the line after a mustard gas attack might have assembled at a casualty clearing station, donned his Small Box Respirator, and filed in an orderly line through a covered trench full of the same chemical hate that traumatized the CEF in 1914.
There is also a twist so grim you'd think it was made up, where after months of dealing with the problem of uniforms and equipment contaminated by mustard gas which had to be burned or painstakingly cleaned, the cure was found to be... Chlorine gas, which in concentration neutralized it.
It's fascinating going from the aftermath, where CEF veterans are absolutely furious and a medical officer is calling for saturation gas attacks on German cities when the war is won to punish Germany for this crime, to gas being an essential part of any counterbattery or preparatory fireplan.
