BC WORLD
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

Let's talk about that "Longer Telegram" making the rounds...and why it's a

 First, to be clear, it IS NOT a telegram. It's a report. I mean, it has a flipping 11.5 page executive "summary"...
...a two page table of contents...
...and clocks in at 62 pages (minus the forward and executive summary) or 73 pages (if you include the executive summary).
Of course, the author of "The Longer Telegram" calls it a "telegram" because they want it to be directly and explicitly compared to George Kennan's 1946 "Long Telegram" about US policy towards the Soviet Union.

https://t.co/rHikkOYuoT
But Kennan's "Long Telegram" is called "The Long Telegram" because it was, in fact, a telegram.

Kennan is even apologetic about that fact, as he writes at the beginning, "I apologize in advance for this burdening of telegraphic channel"
Also, Kennan's "Long Telegram" was long for a telegram, but not as a report. It clocks in at 18.5 pages.
Second, the Kennan-obsession of "The Longer Telegram"'s author is also evident by the author choosing to be anonymous.
But here is a fun fact: Kennan put his NAME on the Long Telegram
The ANONYMOUS writing came a year later (July 1947), when Kennan expanded the telegram into a report that was then published in @ForeignAffairs under the title "The Sources of Soviet Conduct"

Oh, and it wasn't "Anonymous", it was "X"
For those keeping track, the FA article was 17 pages.
Third, I love bullet points & numbered lists. I really do (ask anyone who has served on a committee with me). But "The Longer Telegram" is just TOO much.

Nearly every page of the "Executive Summary" is a list.
It doesn't get much better in the report itself.

I mean, here's a page that makes the bold move of transitioning from a bullet point list to a number list....
...where the number list then goes on for several pages!
Now, it's true that Kennan used numbered/lettered lists in his telegram. But that's because it was...again...a TELEGRAM (it also had missing words in spots as is common with telegrams)

Even then, none of the lists had 17 (SEVENTEEN!) points!
Moreover, the FA article version (again, the one that was actually anonymous) had NO bullet points or numbered lists. Just prose and paragraphs (and section headings)
Fourth, let's move to substance. After all, all of the above is cosmetic and what really matters is the substance, right? Sure, but the substance doesn't make things better in this case.
Let's start by considering the substance of Kennan's telegram.

MOST of it is about the Soviet Union itself. Indeed, 4 of the telegram's 5 parts focus on the USSR.
The final part addresses how the US should respond given the telegram's description of the USSR and its policy.

The key point is that USSR typically backs down when confronted. Therefore, a show of strength & resolve should result in the US never having to actually use force
In the FA piece, Kennan called this approach "containment"
As for "The Longer Telegram"?

If you're playing buzz-phrase bingo, mark "Liberal International Order"
Oh, and OF COURSE the report has a reference to Sun Tzu. I'll admit this got a hard 🙄 from me
I will acknowledge that the Longer Telegram's goal of "keep China in the US order" is distinct from the Long Telegram's recommendation of "keep the Soviets outside the US order".
But this recommendation for US policy towards China is not new.

It's been said better (& more economically) elsewhere.

For example, see this @CarnegieEndow report by @MiraRappHooper, @Michael_S_Chase, Matake Kamiya, Shin Kawashima, & @Yuichi_Hosoya.

https://t.co/CqOnaq2Gp1
I'll admit that my assessment of this telegram/report/memo/doorstop is influenced by my own views on the future of US-China relations, which tend toward the "hawkish" side (as I wrote recently in @WarOnTheRocks)

https://t.co/zvonnh78IS
And I would of course defer to experts on China and Chinese foreign policy (though from what I've seen, they are also NOT IMPRESSED)

https://t.co/bdfGhpBFjL
But, overall, this report/telegram/whatever falls WAY short of it's aspiration of mimicking Kennan.

[END]

More from Paul Poast

Paul Poast
Paul Poast
@ProfPaulPoast
Why are civil-mil scholars upset about Austin Lloyd's nomination as the 28th Secretary of Defense?

Consider the nomination of the 3rd Secretary of Defense: George Marshall

[THREAD]


In 1950, Truman wanted to fire the second SecDef, Louis Johnson, and install George Marshall as Secretary of Defense.


There was a problem: when the Department of Defense was created in 1947, section 202 of the 1947 National Security Act (which created the DoD, then called "The National Military Establishment") would not allow recently retired officers to serve as SecDef

https://t.co/bWx4h1OFah


Marshall had only retired as a 5-star General in 1947


Of course, by 1950 Marshall had already served as Secretary of State and had proposed the "Marshall Plan" for the recovery of Europe
HISTORY
Paul Poast
Paul Poast
@ProfPaulPoast
After 4 years of Donald Trump, the US must "reassure" its allies.

That's what I'm reading/hearing lately, such as in this @nytimes piece. What do international relations scholars know about reassuring allies? Can it be done? Is it even

This passage from the article captures well the call for "reassurance": the US must convince its allies in Asia and Europe that the US would indeed use its nukes to protect them.


That's a tall order!

Indeed, such a tall order that it's been a major question explored by international relations scholars for a long time. A LONG TIME.

The topic was of keen debate in the 1950s, with Henry Kissinger writing a series of pieces on the topic, such as this 1956 @ForeignAffairs

The academic discussion picked up in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

This included Robert Schelling's paper in the first issue of the Journal of Conflict
BIDEN
Advertisement
Paul Poast
Paul Poast
@ProfPaulPoast
What's the "value" offered by international relations scholarship?

What does it mean to think about world events "like an international relations scholar"?

Trump's order to withdrawal 🇺🇸 troops from 🇸🇴 offers a useful

This event could be viewed from a variety of angles, from the "micro-level" on up.

International Relations scholars/analysts can and do use each of the following angles, though not all are strictly speaking taking an "International Relations angle".

Let's explore the angles.

The "country-expert" angle entails discussing the event by laying out the situation within Somalia, providing details on key figures involved and perhaps how the conflict has disrupted Somalia's internal governance and

The "Military/Security analyst" angle involves outlining the details of what US troops presently do in Somalia and how they carry out their mission (including equipment, mission, and tactics).

See this @ChathamHouse report by

The "Area Studies/Regional Expert" angle involves discussing the decision as an event that will impact the Horn of Africa or East Africa more
TRUMP
Paul Poast
Paul Poast
@ProfPaulPoast
Was the attack on the US Capitol an attempted coup?

Rather than debate that question here (or in another forum), I'm making it an assignment. Specifically, I'm asking my Quantitative Security students to determine if it belongs in our coup/attempted coup datasets.

[THREAD]

A core goal of this course is to introduce students to how Large-N data on violence and security are created.

We put WAY TOO much emphasis on estimators & software (Stata v R 🙄); not enough on the quality of the data going into the analysis.

First, what happened? @johncarey03755 offers a succinct

Second, I'll ask the students to read some of the recent pieces that say the event was NOT a coup attempt.

These include...

...detailed twitter threads by
GOVERNMENT
Paul Poast
Paul Poast
@ProfPaulPoast
Is it true that democracies don't go to war with each other?

Sort of. But I wouldn't base public policy on the finding.

Why? Let's turn to the data.

[THREAD]


The idea of a "Democratic Peace" is a widely held view that's been around for a long time.

By 1988, there already existed enough studies on the topic for Jack Levy to famously label Democratic Peace "an empirical law"


The earliest empirical work on the topic was the 1964 report by Dean Babst published in the "Wisconsin Sociologist"


Using the war participation data from Quincy Wright's "A Study of War", Babst produced the following two tables


The tables show that democracies were NOT on both sides (of course, Finland is awkward given that it fought WITH Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union).

Babst expanded his study beyond the World Wars in a 1972 paper in Industrial Research. He confirmed his finding.
GOVERNMENT

More from World

Olivier Blanchard
Olivier Blanchard
@ojblanchard1
Some quick reactions to the new lockdowns in Europe.

1. The degree of uncertainty is much higher than in the first wave. In the first wave, the (incorrect) belief was that the infection rate would quickly decrease and remain low thereafter.
WORLD
Heshmat Alavi
Heshmat Alavi
@HeshmatAlavi
THREAD

1)
#Iran’s regime has a network of apologists/lobbyists in the US influencing foreign policymakers.

Kaveh Afrasiabi was recently arrested for acting as an agent of #Iran's regime.
https://t.co/fJq6jRtBha

There are more.

cc: @TheJusticeDept
WORLD
Advertisement
Fidato
Fidato
@tequieremos
BJP is planning to undertake 'Rath Yatra' in Delhi's riot-affected areas to seek donations for Ram Temple on Feb 1. In 1990, L.K. Advani had launched Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya.

This thread covers the large scale killing which took place during the Yatra and it's impact.

Between April 1989 and April 1990, 262 people died in Gujarat, mostly were Muslims. In October 1990, days after Advani’s yatra began, 41 were killed in Ahmedabad. The same month, 52 were killed in Jaipur, 20 in Jodhpur, 33 in Lucknow, over 100 in Delhi, 37 in Assam,

[1]


18 in Patna and 165 in Hyderabad. Also in October, a pogrom against Muslims in Bhagalpur, Bihar, saw 960 killed in which 900 were Muslims. In November, 31 were killed in Agra, again mostly Muslim and 13 in Indore. In Dec, 60 were killed in Karnataka and 134 in Hyderabad.

[2]

Many parts of India remained tense for long periods of time. Between April and May 1990, three riots in Kanpur killed 30; between May and November 1991 more than 50 were killed in Varanasi. In May 1991, 26 including 24 Muslims were killed in Vadodara.

[3]

In October 1992, 44 were killed in Sitamarhi. On 6 December 1992, immediately after the Babri Masjid was destroyed, pogroms against Muslims broke out in Surat where 200 died, of whom some 95 per cent were Muslims. In Bhopal in December, 143 were killed.

[4]
WORLD , BLOOD YATRA
The Cosmist Insurrection, Inc. \u2122
The Cosmist Insurrecti...
@yungneocon
All the leftists in the comments like oh no prageru made a good point lol


Polls consistently show conservative support for nuclear energy. It also has high support among elites. The myth that it is unpopular in general isn’t true—although it is unpopular in almost every specific case where they need to site it

Article is old but yeah

This study finds that risk & benefit predict individual opinion the most, followed by the share of nuclear energy already extant, followed by ideology (conservatives support more)

This one finds that journalists attitude affect public perceptions, but that energy consultants, nuclear engineers, bureaucrats, and the military show the highest support for nuclear energy
WORLD
Ivor Cummins
Ivor Cummins
@FatEmperor
Thread on Scotland mortality reality, with lessons for the world.
Just got emailed the data:
"National Records of Scotland have just released all cause death statistics for January 2021: 6,429 deaths. This is somewhat above the average of the preceding 5 years."
1/x

"However, the figure for 2018 stands at 7,552. We tried to point out last year that, though the spike in excess deaths in April was real and alarming, it essentially amounted to a bad flu season landing at the wrong time of year.
2/x
WORLD

You May Also Like

Patrick McKenzie
Patrick McKenzie
@patio11
It’s underremarked upon that stablecoins accomplish basically all of the original design goals for Bitcoin qua a transactional mechanism (instant free value transfer anywhere), but that nobody cares about this because nobody ever cared about that part of the pitch.

“Why do people care about stablecoins then?”

A mix of “they encourage dollar-denominated liquidity in the cryptocurrency ecosystem and discourage withdrawal of the same” and “they’re good for money laundering.”

“But they make value transfer between exchanges much faster!”

This was a solved problem in traditional finance, too, mostly through the extension of credit. (It doesn’t matter how long settlement takes if there is sufficient trust to enable credit.)

The Bitcoin ecosystem is *positively allergic* to credit, so you have to call it a coin for them to accept it. And after you call it a coin they ignore everything the world has learned about credit, like risk management.

“Stablecoins aren’t credit!”

They’re pretty much exactly credit? A tether is a zero-coupon Bitfinex bond with a non-functioning call option. I
TECH
XVIII Airborne Corps\U0001f409
XVIII Airborne Corps🐉...
@18airbornecorps
1 of 16: WE ARE ALL JEWS HERE: THE STORY OF RODDIE EDMONDS

One of the most moving and relevant stories of the Battle of the Bulge, or any American Soldier in any war, is that of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a Knoxville, Tennessee native, who served with the 106th Infantry.


2 of 16:

Roddie was captured early on in the Battle of the Bulge, on December 19th, when Panzer forces plowed through his unit.

He, along with almost his entire regiment, was forced to surrender.


3 of 16:

The men were transported to the Stalag IX-A POW camp in Ziegenhain, Germany.

Roddie was the senior enlisted American Soldier at the site. As such, he was the conduit between all American Soldiers and their German captors.


4 of 16:

In late January, the camp’s commandant, Major Siegmann [pictured here], ordered Roddie, a Christian, to identify all Jewish Soldiers and order them to stand in formation by themselves the next day.

[Jewish Soldiers were a minority within American units]


5 of 16:

Throughout WWII, captured Jewish Soldiers were often tortured and then killed by their German captors.

In fact, Jewish Soldiers had been told to bury their dog tags before capture. The dog tag identified Jews with the letter “H” for Hebrew.
SOCIETY
Advertisement
Antonio Garc\xeda Mart\xednez
Antonio García Martíne...
@antoniogm
Ok, I'll hop on this Elizabeth Warren/Native American testing bandwagon (gently and non-politically).

I've been a @23andMe customer for a while, and have followed their ancestry updates closely.

All is more or less as expected....except for this bit about Native American.


The family is almost completely composed of Spanish peasants (from various regions) who emigrated, along with a massive wave in the late 19th-cent./early 20th-cent., to Cuba back when it was a booming economy (richer than Spain's) and worth emigrating to (Communism killed that).

Also, the native population of Cuba was annihilated early on---was the first place the Spanish colonized after all. Having a native background in Cuba would be like having the same in, say, Massachusetts, particularly if you're (say) mostly Irish. Just really, really unlikely.

(Note: the North African/Arab background is less mysterious. The Iberian peninsula was part of the Muslim world for centuries. It would be odd *not* to have some Arab/Middle Eastern background coming from Spain. Given the family is mostly from Northern Spain, it's small though.)

I have a Spanish passport, have been back to the ancestral villages in Spain, seen the church where my grandmother was baptized, my grandfather told me stories about growing up as the child of Spanish colonists in rural Cuba. The native bit just clashes with all the family lore.
ALL
Anu Satheesh \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Anu Satheesh 🇮🇳...
@AnuSatheesh5
Panniyur Sri Varahamurthy Temple Palakkad, Kerala
#KeralaTemples 🚩

Panniyur Sri Varahamurthy Temple is located in Pattambi Taluk of Palakkad District. This is believed to be the first temple in Kerala, where Prathishta was done by Parasurama

Story says that, Parashurama after


Creating Kerala was doing Tapasya here. But he was disturbed as the land faced turbulence. Parashurama sought Narada’s help, who advised him to pray to Vishnu. Parashurama started praying Maha Vishnu. Finally Maha Vishnu appeared and told to do Prathishta of his Varaha Avatar.


As Earth is saved in Varaha Avatar, this temple is famous to solve land related issues.

Many people conduct Bhoomi puja here, which is very special here. They bring sand from around the temple which is used for pooja and then has to be returned to the same spot 👇


from where it was taken.
It is also believed that Perumthachan, the legedary craftsman has abandoned his tools here.
Om Shri Varaha Murthaye Namah
🙏🕉🙏
ALL
Maurice Casey
Maurice Casey
@MauriceJCasey
I am reading through reams of late-1920s communist poetry and easily my favourite title so far is: "To a Lady who Rejected a Poem about Spring as a Petit-Bourgeois Deviation"

The last lines:
"So here's my hat into the air,
Three cheers for your amazing hair,
For coal mines, and for turbines, too,
For steel, the Comintern and you!"

A not exactly graceful (though possibly satirical) title: "Lines Disassociating Myself from Yessenin and Supporting the Otherwise Unfounded Legend that I am a Foremost Proletarian Writer"

An excerpt:
"Goodbye verses of Yessenin
Goodbye literary slop-
You are not the line of Lenin
You are not the line of WAPP

Never shall I moan a
simple lyric from the heart
I'll devote my new corona
to the proletarian art"

The poet was Joseph Freeman, who published much of his revolutionary verse in the New Masses, a stylish journal of the interwar American literary Left.
CULTURE