Radio War Nerd EP #360 — It Was The War-st of Times (2022 in Review)
Recorded: December 20, 2022
The War Nerd & Ames look back on the year in wars that was 2022, and consider how a failed regime-change movement in Belarus influenced Putin's cockamamie Ukraine war plan.
Total time: 1:39:51
Comments (37)
Love the music, is this available for streaming/purchase?
That track is on the compilation "F is for Flakes" available on bandcamp here - https://fisforflakes.bandcamp.com/album/f-is-for-flakes
The Burns memo outlines the reasons for the Ukraine conflict perfectly. It’s been an escalating matter ever since at least 2008. No need for psychoanalysis of Putin. The rant on Belarus was very insightful in that regard!
Wait so Ukrainians, upon hearing that one of their heroines was Judophobic, dropped her from popularity and political office? Sounds more enlightened than some southern states here in the US.....
The Westerners who'd made an official hero of Nadia Savchenko dropped her, they were her main base of support. I haven't heard of a Ukrainian politician ever suffering a ratings drop after saying something disparaging towards Jews, and most of them have, including Yulia Tymoshenko (but not as far as I know Zelensky, which would be weird of course, though he did have some well-known extreme-righties in his government). As for Nadia Savchenko, she was jailed by Poroshenko for allegedly trying to stage some kind of fascist coup, which was probably more of an intra-fascist setup than anything else.
mark sounds like how i feel 😂😂
Thank you Mark & John to yet another great year! An entire episode on the military budget sounds promising.
A neocon I am not, but I have been relatively correct on Ukraine all along due to the news that I read. I took President Putin at his word and continue to do so. There have been no surprises.
Wait is the civil war series over? What about *a battle only i am interested in*?
@Hexagon Truth I'm also in that tiny minority of fans who think sometimes the hosts' hot emotions regarding NATO and mainstream media can at times warp the commentary. However, you can't deny that the podcast has more facts than unsubstantiated opinions, and covers lots of material that is at more of an emotional/historical remove from the current discourse
@Henry Ermer they seem to have catlike intelligence
Mark why don't you interview Fred W.
So glad to hear the sea gull admiration on the podcast. They're beautiful animals. While they don't seem to be as bright as other birds, when you watch them fly and drop food items to catch them before they hit the ground it's hard not to think that's a type of intelligence
Kudos for John and Mark’s work in 2022, especially with this ep. Mark’s analysis of the Byelorussian connection to Putin’s invasion plans was illuminating, and I also appreciated the reference to the Wartorn documentary. If I had it in me to chip in $100/mo for this show and it’s contributions, I would.
Want an actually worthwhile wwi movie? Crosses of Wood (Les croix des bois) -1932. French movie made with (and largely by) real veterans at a time when it was still very, very raw. As if to scream “this is what it was like, you stupid sons of bitches” to all future generations. The level of detail is astonishing, as if to make everyone who had been there concede it was at least fair. A scene where a German counterattack gradually comes into view as it bobs up and down across artillery blasted terrain seems straight out of a survivor’s literal nightmares. You start to appreciate what it was like to face weapons (with a dry twig of a human body) that were capable of continuously transforming the very terrain around you. It’s was on the criterion channel a while back. Westfront 1918 was a German movie made around the same time (~1930), also very good. Never knew these two films even existed. They are just incredible, not just for the time they were made but still today.
i'm sorry but when has anyone, anywhere referred to ukraine as anything like a "jeffersonian democracy"? i've never heard this even from the most goofy, die-hard neocon outlets. quite the opposite — every summary/explainer article i read in the spring put out by the usual suspects went out of its way to characterize their government as deeply flawed and corrupt. certainly haven't seen anything like it in any e.g. official government communications either. it's difficult to take your arguments seriously when your rhetoric is so gratuitously wrapped up in this sort of sarcastic strawman hyperbole.
Ames and Dolan aren't trying to 'argue' anything with anyone. They're not in debate club...
Whether it's because they suck at fighting or because the Ukrainians have a larger army, I think Russia's reliance on defense and attrition makes sense, at least for now. Pretty funny to hear NYT claim this whole thing is a loss just because the Kiev rush failed when these guys have been saying Russia was out of ammo once a week every week and were genuinely confused when Russia sent multiple waves of drones and missiles at Ukraine.
German TV is calling the Serbian president a "mini-Putin" so that goes to show whose side they're on if the shit hits the fan.
I don't know if he's a mini-Putin, but Vučić is really ugly.
I think the largest development not really explored on the podcast is the development of a viable economic order alternative to the US dominated hegemony - a decline of economic power largely due to the the US's own stupidity. Editorializing aside, India, Russia, China, Japan to some degree, other BRICS countries, etc - we're starting to see china's belt and road initiatives take shape and my guess is that they and India will become such huge markets it will pull people into their orbits US hegemony or not
Doubtful. India and China still need the U.S. as their customer to buy all the crap they make. Despite the trappings of communism they drape themselves in, the PRC is not a viable alternative to U.S. hegemony. They don't want to organize society any differently than it is now, they just want to take the U.S.'s place as the king of shit mountain. They can't, because frankly the world is already suffering ecological disaster with the U.S. being the way it is. If Chinese people lived like Americans do, it would only hasten environmental armageddon because there's more of them. People seem to have just given up thinking about climate change by and large, but it's the completely gigantic elephant in the room, slowly growing ever larger and crushing all of us against the walls. Speaking of India, the Indian subcontinent hosts several nuclear-armed countries that are all suffering disproportionately due to climate change while there's already massive sectarian tension throughout the region. India won't have much chance to take over the world or whatever after the entire subcontinent is incinerated by a nuclear exchange between, say, India and Pakistan over increasingly scarce food and water.
personally I think the biggest screwup this year is that John thinks Trieste is better than Montreal but whatever, can't get them all of em right
I would like to echo an earlier sentiment about how transfixing Mark’s analysis was in this episode. In a world not made by the demiurge this is what NPR would sound like. Thanks for another great year of RWN!
I have asked for this before but with a Marcos back in power in the Phillipines can we get a show on the longest running communist insurgency in the world? Someone in the FB group recently screened a film in NYC that is a gonzo style documentary about a filam hanging out with the guerilla in the jungle. Really really inspiring stuff and doesn't flinch at all from what they are up against. Was released just before the pandemic. Or alternatively another episode about the Filipino-American war? The previous episode was not bad don't get me wrong but it didn't deal much with the actual war. So many fascinating things alongside just atrocities. I'd love to know more about how the US worked with local governments against the nationalist forces or to know more about wooden armor, the revolver, "kill everyone over 10" etc.
i second this! also, if you can find the name of that doc I would be super interested
Crappy Poo Year everyone…..
the Civil War series was fantastic this year! looking forwards to more installments
Yes. Please do a "defense" budget episode. Be sure to mention the intelligence budget as well, it's part of the same program.
You guys should be really proud of the job you did this year. I learned a lot and enjoyed it immensely (to the extent that one can, of course).
Gulls can be pretty terrifying. A guy told me once that the larger species can bite your fingers off. Some beaches will use falconers to ward them off so they stop bothering beach goers.
True. There was a video on the internet during the pandemic of a famished (because few tourists hence less garbage) of a Roman gull catching and eating a rat.
Mark's narrative re Belarus was the most productive and satisfying 30-45 minutes of podcast listening I experienced in 2022. And then the promise of an analysis of the trillion-plus-dollar military budget... for which I was typing out a request for in the comments! Much gratitude for all your work and hopes for a better 2023: May your show be nothing more than antiquarian curios someday... "Remember when people used to do war stuff?"
Thanks. I tried to keep it simple and keep out some of the names, like the name of the Gazprom banker (Viktor Babariko) that the Kremlin backed to replace Lukashenko in 2020 who was subsequently jailed by Lukashenko... but I worry that nevertheless it might still sound a bit convoluted.
Will say about those who called the Russian invasion... Many of them constantly say Russia will invade every thing.
Not sure what the situation is like in Rochester, but I hope Mark and his family are keeping well.
Nothing like Buffalo. Elliot saw me standing on the driveway shaking my fist at the clouds, and tucked tail like Snagglepus.