Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, July 26, 2025
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22 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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A couple days ago, I was driving from Warsaw to Vilnius. Because of reasons (the rental car’s navigation software was trying to send me through Belarus), I ended up seeing quite a bit of eastern Poland’s countryside.
Which, for the most part, looked rather more prosperous than, e.g., rural Iowa or Nebraska – despite suffering a devastating war, Nazi occupation, and 40+ years of communism.
@drj:
I am anxious to get into central and eastern Europe, terra incognita for me, aside from a few days in Moscow. One of our reasons for our planned move to Portugal is that we’ll be within 4 hours of all of Europe, as well as Morocco and Tunisia.
In the long history of counterinsurgency, across many countries, I can think of no example of when prosecuting the war required starving the population.
@Kingdaddy:
There’s a persistent and I would argue a-historical belief that you can win a war by crushing civilian morale. The Blitz being a prime example. Didn’t work. Also didn’t work for terrorists in any number of situations where the intent was to shatter civilian morale. See: 9/11.
I don’t know if the terms are still in use but in targeting it used to be counter-force vs. counter-value – are we bombing the enemy’s soldiers and instruments of war, or are we slaughtering civilians. Ukraine targets Russian supply lines and weapons stores, and Russia blows up apartment buildings. As weapons become more precise the trend has been toward counter-force. Thus Israel didn’t need to carpet bomb Teheran to take out IRGC commanders, it killed them in targeted bombings.
But in Gaza Israel has evidently decided on both precise attacks and mass starvation, counter-force and counter-value. On top of being brutal, inhumane and contemptible, it doesn’t seem to be working. The thing that makes me queasy is that the more likely to be effective tactics are expulsion and extermination. If there was a place to push the Gazan population I suspect we’d already be at the expulsion point.
@Michael Reynolds:
The Blitz was penny-ante compared to what we and the Brits did to Germany, without crushing civilian morale in any way that affected their war effort. The Germans, of course, employed news suppression and propaganda. Would the Brits have done the same, had they felt it necessary? Unanswerable.
@drj:
The Polish economy is a prime example of the benefits of EU membership.
As is much of central/eastern Europe.
In 1990 the Polish GDP per capita was on a par with Iran.
Now it’s closing fast on Japan.
Combine a well educated population with large scale markets, and availability of capital, light the touch-paper, and stand back.
But not just “free markets”: the EU agricultural transition policies, as in France and Spain etc have transformed former sinks of peasant farming rural poverty to prosperity, at the same time as general growth has absorbed the labour made redundant by agricultural modernisation.
The transormation wrought on rural Europe by the EU is enormous.
As in your case, simply driving through it and comparing it with either the 1980’s, or the 1940’s, depending, shows how effective it has been.
@Kingdaddy:
Perhaps not counter-insurgency, but I can think of numerous examples of starvation being applied as a method of war.
The British counter-insurgergency campaigns in South Africa, and Malaya, did not aim exactly at starvation. But did make control of food supply and distribution an important aspect of operations.
Nice piece by Tim Taylor on Trump’s ongoing effort to get rid of Jerome Powell. He adds some background numbers so that when you hear Trump/MAGA comments (lies) you will context to know why they are wrong. Among them, Trump supporters have complained about the large increase in Fed staffing since 2012. In context, the Fed had many more workers in the 90s as part of their job was to verify the paper checks written in the US. As paper checks became less used they needed fewer staff. However, as the result of bills passed by Congress the Fed need to more actively monitor the banking system so the number of employees increased.
He also notes that Bessent and some of those named as possible replacements for Powell are advocating for a new relationship between the Treasury Department and the Fed. What that amounts to is that the Fed and Treasury should work together to carry out the policy dictated by POTUS. So much for an independent Fed.
https://conversableeconomist.com/2025/07/22/trying-to-soften-up-the-federal-reserve/
Steve
@steve222:
Central banks subject to direct political control do not have a very good record.
Hence the twitchiness of the markets when this is mooted.
@steve222:
I recall reading years ago that the Fed operated what would have been the worlds third or fourth largest Air Force. Out of sight and out of mind the night sky was crisscrossed by Fed chartered aging twin engine cargo planes with young pilots trying to build hours to get into the major airlines. All carrying cancelled checks all over the country.
On a cheery note, happy birthday to Dame Helen Mirren!
@drj:
Poland… Not that I’ve been there, but my take from the online street-view games is that it’s a country with tidy and well-maintained public spaces, and generally well-kept residences. Although the residences, urban and rural, are almost universally surrounded by gated masonry walls and/or metal fences.
After yesterday’s meeting between the administration’s Deputy AG and Ghislaine Maxwell, her attorney spoke to the press and said that she answered every single question asked of her, and that she answered those questions honestly. He said she was asked about “everything.”
Yeah, sure.
He also said “this was the first opportunity she’s ever been given to answer questions about what happened,” which, as everyone knows, is complete bullsh*t.
@Eusebio:
Reportedly she dropped about “100 names” in her conversation. We can expect some to be selectably leaked in the coming weeks. Does the felon really believe that when he pardons or commutes Maxwell’s sentence, the quid pro quo won’t be noticed? And will the MAGAts buy it? The whole elite, child sexual abuse belief predates their attachment to the felon.
He may be thinking the quid pro quo will be less noticeable, or won’t even matter, if the clemency is announced on November 8, 2028.
@Eusebio: I don’t think she would be cooperating (probably restricted to fingering Demoncrats and QAnon targets) for promises of clemency in over 3 years from an octogenarian who likely has congestive heart failure*.
I expect something a lot sooner.
Were already at Trump answering questions about a pardon with “I haven’t really thought about it, but I absolutely have the power to do so if I wanted to”
*: chronic veinous insufficiency usually comes with one of a number of big comorbidities. Chronic Penis Insufficiency, on the other hand…
@Gustopher: “I expect something a lot sooner.”
You may be right. But he really, really does not want a Democratic House for his last two (scheduled) years, so perhaps he’s planning to fulfill his side of the Corrupt Bargain with a clemency announcement on November 4, 2026.
@JohnSF: “Central banks subject to direct political control do not have a very good record.
Hence the twitchiness of the markets when this is mooted.”
IMHO, that’s why SCOTUS refused to let Trump fire Powell; they understood how fast Trump Fed appointees could trash the economy.
@Barry_D:..that’s why SCOTUS refused to let Trump fire Powell;..
Which Supreme Court case was that? I must have missed it.
@Kingdaddy:
Simple answer: Israel isn’t fighting a counterinsurgency. There’s no hearts and minds, no good Palestinians Israel has been cultivating. The West Bank isn’t ruled by Hamas, but Israel isn’t trying to promote a good Palestinian cause. No, they’re slaughtering Palestinians and taking their land there as well. They don’t care.
To fight a counterinsurgency you have to have brave people. The real Green Berets, the actual TE Lawrences, people who are curious about others and admire them. Israel and its American supporters are braindead. They aren’t brave. They’re content to hunt down doctors, journalists, poets and their families with drones. They blow up their homes, issue pathological press releases about their deeds, and call it a day. Another victory against Hamas and its human shields. The IDF snipes kids but its filled with pussies who won’t go into the tunnels to fight. Israel is a piece of deranged shit, and you can’t rally your opponents to your cause if you are that obscene. The people who produce videos showing the IDF screaming at itself not to kill innocent starving Palestinians trying to get food for forty-five seconds as proof of their goodwill is not a country that can wage a counterinsurgency. It’s a genocidal shithole, and who, except for the admirers of such a place, can support that?
When corporate techbro snark makes no sense
TL;DR: If your lowest fare is labelled expensive and described as “higher prices mandated by the city,” you’re doing something wrong.
A Baluchi rebel group appears to be exchanging fire with Iranian government forces.