Giled Pallaeon

Support your local creamery instead of the pro-Russian ice cream guys who are also owned by a multinational company continuing to do business in Russia

Credit where due, this appropriately captures where all the brains in the Golden Trio were (in one head, with one brain cell shared by the other two)

Well as long as it shows up to Connections 2026 (and I’m not yanked away by a bullshit deliverable again)

Same question

It is frustrating when techbros assume the federal govt does things an inefficient way because civil servants must be stupid, as opposed to, because a law *requires* it be done that way.

We sometimes think it is stupid too, but unlike the DOGE boys, we don't have get out of jail free cards

The last tricky part is of course that the AVF has never actually faced sustained LSCO. Ukraine would suggest it's likely infeasible in any sort of protracted conflict (i.e. >3-6 months) to sustain ground operations without reinstating the draft, which has both operational and political issues.

On the policy side, something both Bret and other people have noted (I'll use the term The Atlantic prefers) is that you have a polity of chickenhawks. War is something that happens to someone else, even your side, so the willingness to use force skyrockets, especially for casual use.

If memory serves, something north of 70% of those currently in uniform have an immediate family member who also served, and the fraction is north of 90% for the officer corps. Spoiler, those fractions do not reverse for civilians knowing someone in the service.

The problems are exactly the same: you no longer have a military and a civilian population that overlap. More critical than losing access to the sorts of thinking and mindset that draftees can bring to their service (which does matter, see Ukraine), you do end up with a stratified warrior class.

People Win Wars: The PLA Enlisted Force, and Other Related Matters - War on the Rocks Editor’s Note: One of the authors of this article is protected with a pseudonym. Regular readers of War on the Rocks know that we allow this in only the

Of note, the PLA, particularly the PLAAF and the PLAN, have been leaning more and more into the career professionals for the jobs that matter, because they can actually still be useful after the years of training it takes to create them. See here: warontherocks.com/2020/07/peop...

across the world, but it's much easier to train and retain sufficient numbers of the specialists required for modern high tech warfare. Operating a rifle is one thing; operating the radars and fire control systems of a guided missile destroyer are another thing entirely.

To the benefits, you have two big ones. First, morale is a much more sustainable thing, as everyone "chose" to be there. (No I don't feel like entertaining arguments about what people were forced to sign up for or what they did. They're universally bad faith IME.) Second, and this is expanding...

@bretdevereaux.bsky.social references this both in the article you linked above and in his other works, but the core issue is that the AVF separates those that serve from everyone else. This has operational benefits but social costs that take a minute to be observable.

I’ve read most of his writing and probably this though I don’t recall it specifically.

The AVF is a weird thing where (imo) it’s the second order consequences that make everything go squirrelly.

National service of some kind is definitely an appealing policy, though I doubt it’s a panacea

The former laid the ground for the latter. How much anti-US propaganda is on TikTok and even most of the way to truthful? Sputnik is comical to an informed person, but are they the majority? (Were they ever, no probably not.) Both need fixing but for different reasons in different ways

That’s The Neat Part.jpeg

Fair enough. I don’t think the EU cares enough, and I’m very worried about India staying democratic but it’s a good goal.

That would be the excesses yes

How are those three deterring revanchist or expansionist powers? How are they convincing minor powers with adversaries in their near abroad to not arm up, and who is stepping in if deterrence fails?

Basically why should we let you white card out Moscow and Beijing (among many others)?

Stronger resolve than mine. I absolutely couldn’t and wouldn’t have passed that offer up in her shoes

I try. Hopefully it helps.

My success rate is abysmal, and also contingent on me wanting to engage (there was no point with that person). But educating the American public about its armed forces and what they actually do is an increasingly dominant passion of mine.

Hell, credit where credit is due, the current version doesn’t even actually say “fight wars”. The last version had (iirc) “deter, and if necessary fight and prevail” as its action clause.

I’ve defeated both, but that is about 98% luck and 2% stubbornness. You need to catch the person when they’re in an emotional state that allows an intellectual conversation.

And lord knows there are plenty of “‘MURICA!!1!” jackasses to make the latter opportunity easy to come by.

The handful of times I’ve encountered the reflexive “Military Bad” bit but actually drew out engagement, it’s almost always either oversimplification (“War bad”, true, “Militaries fight wars”, true, “Ergo military bad”, false) or it’s negative polarization based on a previous bad experience.

There's compelling arguments to wanting those things yourself for security independence reasons but the threat of Uncle Sam coming in with the steel chair was very real

I think it’s a mixture of both exposure to adversary propaganda and the (real) excesses of the U.S. and its allies, but no exposure to either the theory or the actual history of the world before the Pax Americana they don’t understand they live in and benefit from.

Something a lot of people tend to miss is that the first active verb for the DoD mission statement is always “deter”. Even the current admin only changed it to “Our mission is to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation's security.”