Denial and doubling down in the Ukraine

How often have you seen someone refuse to admit to making a mistake and just make a mistake bigger?

The basic reason is to avoid losing face by admitting to making a mistake and instead do more of what wasn't working to reinforce the belief that it is the right thing to do.

With the media watching and much of the public undecided, doubling down is more common in politics than admitting and correcting a mistake.

 

Venture capitalists have a lot of experience with making judgement errors and taking subsequent action.

Risk is normal in VC due to the impossibility of accurately predicting the future.

A venture capitalist may decide to double down but normally will make a significant change in strategy or tactics, usually with some change in personnel.

 

With two-party politics admitting an error is just feeding the opposition with ammunition, so it is rarely done.

Instead, the error grows and persists as the politician refuses to take the hit for being wrong.

The doubling down tactic worked for long enough for G W Bush to get a second term, as he buried mistakes under more mistakes.

I'm not going to be partisan about this myself - the Biden Administration is heavily into doubling down.

 

In a one party system admitting a mistake might show weakness and ultimately lead to the downfall of that government.

 

It sounds like you are being super vague. In what way are you saying there is denial and doubling down in Ukraine? I'm a little unclear on your point.

 

Yep, it's definitely bull **** that Russia is doubling down on its fascism.

 

In Ukraine, Russia took the rational approach, and when the attempt to protect Donbas from shelling was matched by increased weapon supplies to Kyiv,
and after the US and UK terminated negotiations in Turkey in early April, a new strategy was started.

The priority of protecting infrastructure and minimizing damage was relaxed somewhat as the scope of the war increased at that time.

But even now the intensity of military action hasn't reached the level of 'Shock and Awe' at the official start of the war in Iraq, or in Raqqa later on.

 

The Biden Administration is just doubling down.

The War from our perspective has been: Kyiv defeats Russian forces, pushed them back to the border, but just needs another 300 million dollars worth of weapons to finish the job.

We have now been around that loop 16 times with no change in policy from this end. In fact, the weapons allocations keep growing.

Very true, this posting was necessary. I was going to post this earlier to back up the thread title but I got interrupted.

 

The media appears to be the one party, so that is what has happened here. You might argue that has happened there as well, but it isn't as obvious.

 

I've been reliably told by people who post incessantly about the war that Ukraine will have pushed Russia back to the pre war borders by the end of the year. 18 more days to go!

 

That is what you would expect on the basis that the U.S. has far higher military expenditure and 13 times the GDP of Russia, and including NATO the difference is a lot larger.

But the US has the same drawback as in each of the previous wars from Vietnam to the present of constantly lying to the public about everything.

 

Plus our wars don't generally make any sense anyway.

People said when we invaded Iraq that the CIA got it mixed up with Iran, because they couldn't tell the public the truth about the Iraq war.
And strategists have been saying we should unite with Russia and enter into conflict with China, ... well, it's too late to do that now.

I wonder what they'll be saying in ten years' time?

It will probably be down the memory hole with so many of our other wars.

 

Considering that the government cares more about this war than the ones we had with actual American military (based on money spent) you would think the Russians would be pushed back to the gates of Moscow by now.

 

I feel the same, it has been predicted so many times now and all that ever happens is Kyiv gets more weapons and kills more people in Eastern Ukraine and more Russians, and loses more of their own people.
Over the long-term people will begin to realize they've been lied to so if the war runs to like March, a Russian victory is pretty much certain.
I have to go to a meeting.

 

Lol...the public is certainly not "undecided" by the two biggest "mistakes" in recent events, namely trump's big lie bullshit and Putin's attack on Ukraine, regardless of all the disinformation from Russian bots.
Had trump acted like an adult and conceded his defeat and transferred power peacefully in 2020, he would be in the catbird's seat today going into 2024, and his handpicked candidates might have prevailed in the 2022 elections.
Now, he's a repulsive pariah facing multiple criminal charges and the dems scored a historic first in 2022 with the midterm election results.
And had Putin not tried to ape Hitler with his Ukraine power grab, he wouldn't be facing a failure in war and a rebellion at home.
And both of those idiots keep doubling down on their mistake.

 

Russia can end the war by leaving the Ukraine. If the Ukraine wants to keep fighting, we should keep giving them the means to take out Russians.

I wouldn't be on the Russians winning the war in the next few months.

 

@yangforward

i'm not saying someone will win in the spring, but i will say no one is "winning" this wunter.

what does winning even look like? there must be a trillion dollars (and years) of damaged infrastructure to fix before the ukrainians can be back to normal (or for the russians to move in for any useful purpose.) all of that assuming that the entire country does not become an extended chernobyl exclusion zone for the next millennium.

 

Then Vice President Biden allowed the situation to start with Victoria Nuland and the CIA arming and organizing the Maidan uprising in 2014. The situation was already unstable as Ukraine consisted of both Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking populations, the Russian mainly in the East and South, and the Ukrainian in the Center and West.

The 2014 Maidan uprising led to replacing the Russia-friendly government which a lot of the population did not want, with a Western-friendly government the other part of the population did not want.

The Russian part of the population was made third-class citizens and some predominately Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine broke away.

By this point it would be misleading to speak of 'the Ukraine' or 'helping the population of the Ukraine' since it was in a state of civil war as Western and Central Ukraine (Kyiv) fired the occasional shell into Donbas.

This went on for 8 years.

 

Then Biden sent lots more ammo and howitzers ot Kyiv and the shelling escallated.

Then the cavalry arrived in the form of Russian forces which fired back at the attacking howitzers.

So Kyiv wanted more mobile weapons and the US supplied them. So Kyiv continued attacking.

And the US has sent huge amounts of weapons to Kyiv.

 

The situation is getting worse as Biden has now declared he is willing to use nuclear weapons against conventional Russian forces.

 

Are you referring to Putin, GOP, American People, or Zelensky?

 

Biden is not the one who is trying to provoke nuclear war, it has been Putin threatening to use nuclear weapons.

 

We have done it many times before and so have other countries.

But the relevant doubling down in 2022 has been the US repeatedly supplying more and more weapons to Kyiv to use initially against the population of Eastern Ukraine, and then when Russia moved in to protect them, against the Russian military as well.

It seems really odd because many US strategists and Colonels and Generals and Henry Kissinger had far more sensible suggestions.

The most obvious would be to copy Czechoslovakia and split the country in two.

But no, Biden opted for war.

 

But Biden has not threatened the use of nuclear war or the use of nuclear weapons. What Biden has done is made sure Ukraine has the weaponry to defend itself and even offensive weapons that can strike deep into Russia. It is why Putin is now acknowledging the possibility of a peace deal in Ukraine, coupled with the sanctions we and the EU have placed.

Kissenger offered a peace deal to allow Russia to keep Crimea, Donbas, and one other region with Russian Seperatist, a Minsk 3.0 deal. But that was back in June or July of this year. The others are retired and the military does not make policy decisions. But the ones you are talking about are blabbing their mouth on Fox and other conservative websites in an effort to play more to Russia than anyone else, like what you are doing. But to the Ukrainians, no, they don't want to split their country into two.

 

Arms Control Association
Arms Control Today
April 2022 By Daryl G. Kimball

On March 28, the White House announced that it had transmitted to Congress the classified version of the National Defense Strategy (NDS).
...
Biden’s policy declares that the “fundamental role” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is to deter a nuclear attack, but will still leave open the option that nuclear weapons could be used in “extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners,” officials told ACT. According to a March 25 report by The Wall Street Journal, this might include nuclear use to deter enemy conventional, biological, chemical, and possibly cyberattacks.

- note that the 'no first use' clause has been omitted, and that is particularly poignant given that the war in Ukraine had been joined by Russia on Feb 24th.


And the nuclear weapon capable fighter bombers the US has close by and the nuclear weapons the US has in Germany.

And that the US has nuclear-capable missile launchers in Romania - designated as anti-missile systems but nonetheless able to launch nuclear-tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The U.S. has refused to allow Russia to inspect those launchers.

Nothing to prove the US is intending a first strike, but a great way to worry the Russians.