I think so as well, these people are largely insulated from the underlying material reality, they have no direct experience in things like manufacturing or managing supply chains. They’re used to simply being able to talk their way out of problems, and they’re applying their lived experience to a situation where the problem is rooted in material conditions they’re not equipped to understand.
I completely agree, although I think that unreality goes deeper than that even. The main point of the article - and a trend I’ve noticed since the advent of the war on terror that has only intensified in the last ten years or so - is that Western states have essentially entirely given up on even the concept of diplomacy. They’ve drank the KOOL aid of their own propaganda so thoroughly that they cannot see others as actors with actual material interests.
Years ago I posted here referencing an old but interesting interview with a top diplomat about how the combination of propaganda think-tank culture was completely killing diplomatic services, which has since been made worse by cut budgets and awful job satisfaction with most of the actually capable diplomats fleeing the profession.
So now you have a situation where there are basically no (or at least few) actual diplomats but instead the ‘diplomatic’ advisers to these politicians are just as dogmatically self-propagandised as the leaders themselves, if not worse.
Yup, that’s very much spot on. The unipolar moment killed the ability to do diplomacy in the west because there was no need for it anymore when you could just dictate to others from a barrel of a gun. All of a sudden, the west now finds that they’re not able to do this with Russia and they have no idea how to approach this because there are no actual diplomats to be found in any western government, and the leadership still can’t accept the fact that they will have to do genuine diplomacy and compromises to end the conflict.
I think so as well, these people are largely insulated from the underlying material reality, they have no direct experience in things like manufacturing or managing supply chains. They’re used to simply being able to talk their way out of problems, and they’re applying their lived experience to a situation where the problem is rooted in material conditions they’re not equipped to understand.
I completely agree, although I think that unreality goes deeper than that even. The main point of the article - and a trend I’ve noticed since the advent of the war on terror that has only intensified in the last ten years or so - is that Western states have essentially entirely given up on even the concept of diplomacy. They’ve drank the KOOL aid of their own propaganda so thoroughly that they cannot see others as actors with actual material interests.
Years ago I posted here referencing an old but interesting interview with a top diplomat about how the combination of propaganda think-tank culture was completely killing diplomatic services, which has since been made worse by cut budgets and awful job satisfaction with most of the actually capable diplomats fleeing the profession.
So now you have a situation where there are basically no (or at least few) actual diplomats but instead the ‘diplomatic’ advisers to these politicians are just as dogmatically self-propagandised as the leaders themselves, if not worse.
Yup, that’s very much spot on. The unipolar moment killed the ability to do diplomacy in the west because there was no need for it anymore when you could just dictate to others from a barrel of a gun. All of a sudden, the west now finds that they’re not able to do this with Russia and they have no idea how to approach this because there are no actual diplomats to be found in any western government, and the leadership still can’t accept the fact that they will have to do genuine diplomacy and compromises to end the conflict.