Ian Welsh

Sean-Paul Kelley

On June 29, 2025

Just a quick word that my friend and ex-boss Sean-Paul Kelley is posting fairly often now. Sean-Paul founded the (now defunct) Agonist blog back in the day, which was very important during the Iraq War. He also gave me my first salaried blogging job as the managing editor of the Agonist. (I received some money for writing at BOPNews, but only some.)

I’m pleased to have him here. Do take the time to read the author byline above posts so you know if it’s him or me. Because almost all writing here has been mine and the blog is titled “Ian Welsh” people often assume all posts are from me. Sean-Paul’s more of an old school blogger than I am. Remember that guest posters are invited in part to give different takes than I would and I don’t pre-approve their posts, unless they’re very infrequent or new.

(Those who remember Mandos will get this. Out of a hundred Mandos posts, I might have agreed with one.) That said, Sean-Paul and I agree about most things.

Open Thread

By Ian Welsh

On June 28, 2025

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts. No vax/anti-vax this week.

Reducing Suffering

By Ian Welsh

On June 27, 2025

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As a Canadian, the issue of people removing snow from the sidewalk is a big deal. Some years ago, I lived near a house where they never removed the snow. It piled up until it was almost four feet high, and some partial thaws meant that underneath all that snow was ice. Every time I had to walk in that direction I cursed the owners (there was an SUV that came and went, so I knew it wasn’t uninhabited). One time, I did slip, and I was furious, even though the pain of the fall was minor.

Thing is, I don’t enjoy being furious or upset. Oh, a little anger is sometimes nice enough, but overall it’s an unpleasant feeling unless you’ve been having even worse emotions like fear, despair, powerlessness, or self-pity.

This is what Buddha called the second arrow. If you’ve been shot by an arrow, you’re in pain. If you’re upset that you’ve been shot by an arrow, you’re adding additional suffering.

Let’s run through three scenarios. Imagine each of them briefly, as if they happened to you:

1) You turn a corner and trip over a fallen branch, falling. You’re a little hurt (abraded hands), but basically okay. How upset are you?

2) You slip on some ice someone was supposed to clean up and fall. You’re a little hurt, but basically okay. How upset are you?

3) You’re walking down the street, and someone sticks out their leg and trips you, then laughs at you. You fall, but catch yourself. While a little hurt, you’re basically okay. How upset are you?

If you’re a normal person either #2 (negligence) or #3 (active malevolence) upsets you more. Probably, it’s the asshole who tripped you. (You might also get upset at the branch and kick it, swear at it, or enjoy breaking it, but hopefully not.)

The point here is that being upset makes your suffering worse. It also doesn’t deal with whatever caused the problem. Picking up the branch you tripped over, getting the city to fine the person not shoveling their snow, and either calling the cops or in times and places where it’s allowed, beating the hell out of the guy who tripped you might make sure there are no repeats.

You can do any of those things without being upset, through cold, clear calculation. If you don’t remove the branch, you or someone else could trip over it again. If you don’t convince the homeowner to shovel the snow, same thing. If you don’t make the tripper decide tripping people is a bad idea, he’ll do it again.

Much of why we get upset is that we have expectations about how other people should behave or even how the world should be. (How dare that branch trip you up!) Then, we think that if someone hurts us, we should get upset.

But, again, being upset doesn’t hurt the other person (though a display of anger might make a difference if you can make them scared of you) and doesn’t get them to change their behaviour. Indeed, in the case of the tripper, they want you to be upset. Your anger is part of their reward, just like how online trolls are trying to make you angry.

Being upset does hurt you, though. It makes your suffering worse.

But if you believe you should be upset, you will be.

So the first step is to ask yourself: What benefit there is to being upset? Do this all the time when something makes you upset, just ask yourself, “Does this help? Do I like feeling this?” Maybe you do (usually in the case of anger), but most of the time, the honest answer is gong to be no.

Over time, if you keep doing this, you’ll be upset less and less. You’ll change the reflex.

We add suffering to almost everything. If you get a bad headache and are upset because it “isn’t fair,” that adds suffering to the headache. If you get upset at yourself for doing something stupid, that adds suffering. I used to be like that; I stopped when I realized that, after decades of being harsh with myself, my behaviour hadn’t changed. In other words, being upset when I made a mistake wasn’t reducing the number of mistakes, it was just making me unhappy. (When I did stop being too self-critical, mistakes decreased somewhat, ironically.)

Buddha’s Second Arrow is the low-lying fruit, the easiest way to reduce your suffering — suffering which doesn’t help you deal with whatever issues you face. When you’re cool and calm, you’re more likely to fix whatever the problem is — if it can be fixed — faster and more competently than you are upset.

Pull out the second arrow.

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The Term Toxic Masculinity Is Nothing But a Gratuitous Insult to Men

By Sean Paul Kelley

On June 27, 2025

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Only a woman with solid feminist bona fides can makethis argument in the modern US. The high-tech economy has leveled the playing field between men and women. This is a great development. But the argument ignores, as does the Democratic party in general, a larger reality: blue-collar men. White-collar men are now indoctrinated in high school and college how to behave around women. But blue-collar men are not. And there are more of them than white-collar Ivy Leaguers. Give the video a watch. It’s refreshing.

On a similar note, about American culture in general, this woman makes a very trenchant critique about us: “A culture that believes in nothing and tolerates everything is doomed.”

The War in Ukraine Enters A New Phase

By Sean Paul Kelley

On June 26, 2025

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The Russo-Ukrainian War of 2021-present has entered a new phase. In the wake of the Ukraine’s hybrid/asymmetric attack on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet (a.k.a., Operation Spiderweb), Russia is getting its revenge in the smartest way possible. Russia has begun a massive, month-long air/missile/drone campaign that is systematically attacking command and control centers all over the country. The latest was a Russian X-22 missile attack on a former drilling rig disguised as a seaborne command and control center. A Tu-22M3 Backfire bomber launched the X-22 cruise missile where it reached Mach 4 and then dove into the command center and obliterated it. There are dozens of videos out now on reputable sites indicating this campaign is ongoing and will continue.

Couple that withpolling data coming out of the Ukraine where 73.2 percent of Ukrainians polled believe the conflict should end along the current line of control, and it just gets worse.

This is very, very bad news for Ukraine. This might not be the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the middle.

The site for reasonably unbiased updates is Military TV. But, viewer beware, this is uncensored warfare.

UPDATE: At the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, which I watched in Russian — the translators often miss subtle points. Putin was talking about how Russia always respected Ukraine’s right to independence, and he gave an enormous amount of context in his answers, but, when it came to discussing Russia’s army moving into new regions in relation to Ukraine’s independence, he did so in the Russian past perfect aspect. Russian verbs have tense. But they also have aspect, meaning is an action fully completed, or temporarily or ongoing, etc. Putins use of the past perfect aspect signifies to me two things: 1) Putin has come around to the necessity of destroying the Zelensky regime, and the will of the Ukrainian people, and; 2) Following on logically, peace will not be negotiated; it willl be dictated, and there is fuck all Ukraine can do now except suffer for the deceitful sins of the West.

UPDATE 2: Medvedev just announced that Ukraine will not be allowed to enter the EU. At one time, Russia was fine with Ukrainian EU membership — so long as it remained militarily neutral, like Austria. In Medvedev owns words (apologies in advance for the terrible translation): “Brussels today is a real enemy of Russia. In such a distorted form, the European Union is no less a threat to us than the North Atlantic Alliance. Therefore, the complacent slogan, “Join anywhere but NATO” must be adjusted. Thus, the so-called Ukraine in the EU is a danger for our country. There are two ways to stop this danger: A) Either the EU itself must realize that it does not need the Kiev quasi-state, in principle, or a certainly preferable; B) There is simply no one to join the EU.”

Medvedev is always the one who lets the trial balloon loose, so it is only a matter of time until Putin makes options A and B into official Russian policy.

Does Zohran Mamdani Matter?

By Ian Welsh

On June 26, 2025

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So, Democratic Socialist (ie. has politics a 70s liberal would have agreed with, but is less racist) Zohran Mamdani has won the nomination as the Democratic candidate for New York City Mayor.

The best analysis I’ve read of this is definitely from Matt Stoller. He says this win helps define this as a “system-defining election,” that is, an attempt to not just to change who runs a system, but how that system is run. Read the article.

I’ll point out here that there have been a few such attempts. Stoller writes about Lamont’s challenge to Lieberman, in which Lamont won the primary, then Lieberman won the election. It’s similar to what will be tried here: The oligarchical part of the Democratic party will align behind another candidate, possibly even the Republican one. Those who don’t will try to co-opt Mamdani, and turn him into a centrist left-winger.

Mamdani is more radical than Sanders; he isn’t a Zionist, for example. But he’s basically suggesting policies than no Democrat during the 50s, 60s, and even into the 70s would have found extraordinary.

What Stoller calls system-defining elections, I call sub-ideological revolutions. FDR changed the form of capitalism practiced in the US, so did Carter and Reagan. Mamdani, for all the screams from rich operatives like Larry Summers and various oligarchs, isn’t a radical — any more than FDR was. He doesn’t want to switch to economic Communism (i.e., worker ownership of the means of production or Soviet-style central control), say, or a single-party state. He wants real changes in how capitalism is practiced, and some changes to who has power in Democracy.

Sanders’ runs in 2016 and 2020 were an attempt at a sub-ideological revolution, or, system-defining elections. This is why Obama intervened and lined everyone up behind Biden, a nearly unprecedented step.

Likewise, Corbyn represented such an attempt, except Corybn got further, winning the Labour leadership. It’s not an accident that (and we have receipts, so don’t argue) Labour operatives actually sabotaged him in two elections to ensure a Conservative win. They wanted the old ideology/system to keep running more than they wanted their party to win. And once Corbyn was removed, his successor, Starmer, purged the party of the democratic socialist left. Once in power, Starmer doubled down on austerity and politics no different in substance, but actually more punitive, than those followed by the Conservative party.

The Reform Party in the UK is now coming on hard.

Be clear that sub-ideological transitions/system changes can be bad. Neoliberalism was a bad change. In the UK, if Reform sets the new system/ideological norm, it will be awful.

This is one reason why I said that Corbyn was the UK’s last chance: If the left failed, the right would then get its shot, and what the right wants to do is beyond awful.

It’s why Germany is beyond hosed: Doubling down on military Keynesianism (which won’t work in a corrupt, neoliberal system), while cutting social welfare will simply lead to the new-right getting into power. Their policies will make most people worse off, not better.

As for Mamdani, he’s a good sign. The fact that men, as well as the youngs, went for him is also excellent, because it shows that men and youngsters aren’t really “right-wing” in any way that matters. Yet. What they want is change. If they are offered good change, they’ll take it. However, they’re so desperate that if all that’s on the menu is shitty change, or the status quo, they’ll take shitty change.

This was obviously going to happen. I wrote years ago that we wouldn’t see real change until the mid-2020s, at the earliest, because it required generational change as well.

Mamdani tells us that what sort of change will finally win in the US is not yet decided. It doesn’t have to be MAGA stupidity and meanness.

So if you want something better in the US, if you want a chance at a New New Deal, get behind Mamdani and people like him — hard.

There still remains a question of whether Mamdani can deliver, even if he is elected. Will he be be co-opted? Will he run into opposition from enemies so powerful he either can’t overcome them? Or will he use them as a rallying call? Is he competent enough to create and run a new system like the one he’s suggesting?

This is a chance because, if Mamdani wins and then improves New Yorker’s lives, he’ll be copied. And if you’re in a position to do something to improve the chance of this happening and then working, I suggest you do so.

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Losing Our Asian Allies – And Fast

By Sean Paul Kelley

On June 25, 2025

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Ian in his last post mentioned that our Asian allies are slipping away from us. While we pretend to strategically re-orient the Japanese are engaging in massive rearmament begun by Abe and being continued by the current government. Japan has lost confidence in the American security umbrella because of the deceit we’ve displayed in foreign relations. The Koreans? I lived in Korea. They’re simply apoplectic. Some are even at the point where they are willing to consider a loose confederation with the north, an entente of sorts so the South has the protection of the North’s nuclear umbrella and the North gains goods and services from the South.

This is simply unheard of. When I talked to one of my former students who now works in the foreign ministry and he told me this I was gobsmacked.

Ian’s correct. For 400 years the balance of payments from the rest of the world went to the Littoral seapower states. For the last 50 years the balance of payments has been reversed. All that gold is going back home. In one generation the United States has squandered all the goodwill and wealth it received during WWI and WWII. China in the last 50 years has lifted more people out of poverty than the rest of the world did during all of recorded history. Chew on that stat for a moment.

I will be visiting China and South Korea to do a 20 year retrospective tour and a 30 year retrospective tour on the former and the latter. I don’t know what to expect, but I remember China 20 years ago and being blown away.

The USA is in deep strategic shit. For 200+ years our power has been based on our complete hegemony of this hemisphere. For 75 of the last 100 years our main strategic goal has been the prevention of one power or an alliance of powers attaining hegemonic power over the Eurasian landmass. In the last six years we’ve abandoned that VITAL national interest for what? We’ve driven Russia into the arms of China. India lost all confidence in us. Now East Asia has.

If a single power or coalition of powers dominate the Eurasian landmass our two oceans will not protect us.

It appears I might have been wrong about the Israeli-Iran pissing contest being the opening act of WWIII. Good. What it really feels like is the first Balkan War in 1912. The calculus is being made in Beijing. And Tokyo. And Seoul. And Taipei. We lack the ability to protect our allies conventionally. And no one wants nukes.

I don’t have any smart quip to conclude with except a Spanish expletive, “la puebla es jodida.”

You get the idea.

The Middle East Is Hastening Ukraine’s Fall & The End of the European Era

By Ian Welsh

On June 25, 2025

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The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole

Rarely spoken of is the effects of the Middle Eastern wars on Ukraine. For a long time, Ukraine got everything it wanted, but since Oct 7th, it has been #2, or worse, on America’s priority list. Mossad has a great deal of influence in America, just short of control, almost certainly due to a sickening collection of videos and pictures, and Israel has received the first cut off everything it needed: most especially of interceptor missiles.

Even so, the reason that Israel and the US called for a ceasefire and Iran did not (though it accepted one) is that Israel was less than a week from running out of air defense missiles, and as best I can tell, the US could only have supplied about another 7-10 days worth.

What this means for Ukraine is simple enough, they’re being absolutely hammered by Russian missiles and bombs. They don’t have enough air defense, they don’t have enough missiles for the air defense, and there is no reasonable prospect of re-stocking. The West’s larder is empty.

The tempo of Russia advances continues to increase. It’s still slow, but it’s at least eight times as fast as it was a year ago, and as Ukraine runs out of men, weapons and ammunition (Western shortages go far beyond air defense), plus as morale continues to plummet in Ukrainian armed forces, the prospect of “big arrow” warfare grows closer.

As I’ve said before I expect that period will arrive next year. The fighting age male population is decimated, those willing to fight are or will be mostly dead, and Russia will win the war decisively, taking whatever they want to. The only danger of this not happening is Putin accepting a peace offer before that: like Khameini, he is very cautious, doesn’t like war and wants it over. If Zelensky ever gets his head on straight, or is replaced, he’s likely to accept a peace deal much short of what can be accomplished by arms and an unconditional surrender.

This will be a HUGE loss for the West. The first war they have decisively lost on the battlefield in generations. There will be no concealing it, and the inability to ramp up production of weapon systems and munitions will leave the collective West so weak that no one will be able to believe they could win a conventional war against China, or even Russia.

It will, psychologically, be the end of Western hegemony. For almost 400 years the West has been dominant, and since Industrial Revolution, overwhelmingly dominant.

That era is almost over. The economic aftershocks will be huge: the end of American dollar hegemony is likely within five years, ten at the most and the entire world except, perhaps, Canada, the US and Europe, will re-orient to China. The US will even lose South Korea and Japan as reliable allies, indeed, it arguably already has (more on that another time.)

This is a literal epochal period. The “nothing ever happens” fools are missing that this is the end of a literal era: the era of European supremacy (the US is just a European settler state and Britain’s successor.)

The new era will be multipolar only if China wants it to be. They are approaching “America after WWII” levels of industrial and technological power. However, for at time, they will probably allow a multipolar world, as they are smart enough not to want to be a superpower or “world cop.”

Normally this would cycle to a superpower period, but environmental issues are likely to short-circuit normal macro-geopolitical cycles. Everyone will wind up in survival mode, and the question will be who manages this best. Whoever does will lead the next cycle, which will occur long after most or all of us are dead.

So, as best you can, you may as well be interested. You are living in truly interesting times, which come around only every half millenia or so.

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