BertBlacksnake

Independent Strategic Analysis of the North Pacific and High North committed to advancing American interests through the unblinking eye of rigorous logic.

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

@AmericaRecharge Larry, Curley and Mo.

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

@mikefuchs typically naive oversimplification pointedly ignores the inconvenient truth, and doesn’t mention Bab el-Mandeb at all.

Fuchs’s case: the US presence failed to keep Hormuz open, so leave. His reassurance: “Iran and the Gulf states share an interest in keeping energy flowing.” He indicts Washington for failing to deter Iran, then nominates Iranian self-interest as the replacement. That isn’t retrenchment. It’s a hostage explaining that his captor is reasonable.

The shrug:

“There is no guarantee that new arrangements would be better.” Fuchs’s own words about the Gulf security order he wants to dismantle. He prices the status quo to the dollar, the casualty, and the displaced person — then hands over the alternative untested and unpriced. Rigor for the thing he opposes, faith for the thing he proposes.

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

@0DonaldTrumpJrQ https://t.co/dfeShu9Lcq

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

@0DonaldTrumpJrQ Ukraine’s SBU blew up a sanctioned oligarch and his girlfriend in Monaco—kid got maimed too—then whacked their own operative back in Kyiv. And some of you want to hand these clowns EU membership? I don’t think so. That’s like giving the arsonist the keys to the fire station.

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

IISS notes Japan’s intelligence reforms are the most sweeping since 1945, and that Tokyo will need to manage public opinion carefully as it proceeds. Fair point. Though if the reaction to Japan’s defense budget is any guide, the public opinion Tokyo should really be worried about isn’t in Tokyo.

It’s in Beijing. And Beijing is not being quiet about it.

We wrote about exactly that fury this morning, what it reveals, and the one thing Japan still needs to build before its rearmament fully lands: https://t.co/yEPxiQOpYU

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

Here’s 21 things.
Number one, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, who basically invented the modern psychological novel. Number two, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, who rewired what orchestral music could do. Number three, the Ballets Russes under Diaghilev, which reshaped Western dance and stagecraft. Number four, Kandinsky and the Russian avant-garde, a huge chunk of the roots of abstract art. Number five, Chekhov, who quietly rewrote the rules of theater and the short story. Number six, Mendeleev’s periodic table, which is on the wall of every chemistry classroom on Earth. Number seven, Pavlov’s conditioned response, foundational to psychology. Number eight, Lobachevsky’s non-Euclidean geometry, which opened the door to relativity down the line. Number nine, Sputnik, which kicked off the entire space race. Number ten, Gagarin, first human in orbit. Number eleven, the AK-47, like it or not, the most ubiquitous weapon on the planet. Number twelve, the T-34 tank, arguably the design that won World War Two on the Eastern Front. Number thirteen, chess dominance, generations of world champions. Number fourteen, vodka, self-explanatory. Number fifteen, the Trans-Siberian Railway, an engineering flex nobody else attempted. Number sixteen, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich, more musical firepower. Number seventeen, the Bolshoi and Mariinsky ballet schools, still training the world’s best dancers. Number eighteen, Nabokov, who wrote some of the finest English prose of the twentieth century, and he was Russian. Number nineteen, Tetris, a genuinely global cultural artifact. Number twenty, the Trans-Neptunian discovery contributions and Russian astronomy more broadly. And number twenty one, sheer endurance and sacrifice in World War Two, without which the Western world would look very different.

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

@DrEliDavid Not rotors, but the governmental Falcon 6x Elbit Systems falcon eye. They’re unable to land in foggy weather now. The joke writes itself, but you’re playing fast and loose with the facts. Irish antisemitism is a thing, though, and you’re right to call it out.

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

@The_Japan_News Find something sensitive and squeeze. The reaction reveals more than the buildout does.

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

@Reuters North Korea’s outrage over Japan’s counterstrike capability is the clearest endorsement Tokyo’s white paper could ask for. When Pyongyang calls you a threat, you’re doing something right. — North Pacific Sentinel

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

DefensePolitics @Diplomat_APAC @IPDefenseForum

https://t.co/wt7yc5x7bd

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

New essay: “The Samurai Sword and the Mirror” — why Beijing’s fury over Japanese rearmament reveals more about China’s own anxieties than about Tokyo’s ambitions.

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

BACKDOOR TO THE KREMLIN’S TREASURY https://t.co/PooPpCU3if

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

https://t.co/JHoNMhgW5l

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

A three-hundred-meter ship turns around and sails backwards through two meters of Arctic ice.

It funds Russia’s war.
It passes fifty-one miles from Alaska.
And almost nobody is watching.

Our founding essay, one month in. 🧵👇

@ArcticInstitute @gCaptain @johnkonrad

#Arctic #LNG #NorthernSeaRoute #FreedomOfNavigation

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

French spies. Ukrainian corruption. And the West’s favorite fairy tale.
THE MAIDEN IN THE TOWER is live.
https://t.co/eUSUBQGg2x

@BillKristol @War_Mapper @Jkylebass @IntelCrab @EliotACohen
#Geopolitics #Ukraine #Intelligence

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

THE MAIDEN IN THE TOWER https://t.co/P0sZgjbe23

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

Bajoghli and Nasr write of a remade Islamic Republic forging a new social contract with its people, one confident enough to consolidate its gains at home and abroad. Perhaps. But contracts are tested at the moment of breach, and Tehran’s answer to its own citizens came in January, when security forces turned automatic weapons on unarmed protesters. Estimates of the dead range from the thousands documented by Amnesty International to as many as forty three thousand, according to the International Centre for Human Rights’ review of images, video, and internal health-system sources. Whichever figure history settles on, the method is not in dispute, families were made to pay for the bullets that killed their children. That is not the sign of a regime that has found a new grand strategy. It is the oldest strategy a dying autocracy has, and dressing it up in the language of generational renewal does not change what it is.

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

The Dragon’s Missing Ore https://t.co/4QalhYIRss
China’s rare earth’s monopoly might just have an Achilles heel.

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

Rare Earths https://t.co/4QalhYIRss

[BertBlacksnake @NPSentinel]

@realBrandonGill I think we’ve seen a future President.