Ukraine could face defeat in 2024. Here's how that might look - Frank Gardner BBC

Uma possibilidade bem real, dada a falta de apoio militar e econômico do Ocidente e de suas hesitações em atacar a Rússia diretamente, ou de estrangulá-la economicamente de forma mais efetiva. (PRA)

Ukraine could face defeat in 2024. Here's how that might look

By Frank Gardner

BBC security correspondent, April 12, 2024

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68778338

The former commander of the UK's Joint Forces Command has warned that Ukraine could face defeat by Russia in 2024.

General Sir Richard Barrons has told the BBC there is "a serious risk" of Ukraine losing the war this year. 

The reason, he says, is "because Ukraine may come to feel it can't win".

"And when it gets to that point, why will people want to fight and die any longer, just to defend the indefensible?"

Ukraine is not yet at that point. 

But its forces are running critically low on ammunition, troops and air defences. Its much-heralded counter-offensive last year failed to dislodge the Russians from ground they had seized and now Moscow is gearing up for a summer offensive. 

So what will that look like and what are its likely strategic objectives?

"The shape of the Russian offensive that's going to come is pretty clear," says Gen Barrons. 

"We are seeing Russia batter away at the front line, employing a five-to-one advantage in artillery, ammunition, and a surplus of people reinforced by the use of newish weapons."

These include the FAB glide bomb, an adapted Soviet-era "dumb bomb" fitted with fins, GPS guidance and 1500kg of high explosive, that is wreaking havoc on Ukrainian defences.

"At some point this summer," says Gen Barrons, "we expect to see a major Russian offensive, with the intent of doing more than smash forward with small gains to perhaps try and break through the Ukrainian lines. 

"And if that happens we would run the risk of Russian forces breaking through and then exploiting into areas of Ukraine where the Ukrainian armed forces cannot stop them."

But where? 

Last year the Russians knew exactly where Ukraine was likely to attack - from the direction of Zaporizhzhia south towards the Sea of Azov. They planned accordingly and successfully blunted Ukraine's advance. 

Now the boot is on the other foot as Russia masses its troops and keeps Kyiv guessing where it is going to attack next.

"One of the challenges the Ukrainians have," says Dr Jack Watling, senior research fellow in land warfare at the Whitehall thinktank the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), "is that the Russians can choose where they commit their forces. 

"It's a very long front line and the Ukrainians need to be able to defend all of it."

Which, of course, they cannot.

"The Ukrainian military will lose ground," says Dr Watling. "The question is: how much and which population centres are going to be affected?"

It is quite possible that Russia's General Staff have yet to go firm on which direction to designate as their main effort. But it is possible to broadly break down their various options into three broad locations.

Kharkiv

"Kharkiv," says Dr Watling, "is certainly vulnerable."

As Ukraine's second city, situated perilously close to the Russian border, Kharkiv is a tempting goal for Moscow. 

It is currently being pummelled daily with Russian missile strikes, with Ukraine unable to field sufficient air defences to ward off the lethal mix of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles aimed in its direction. 

"I think the offensive this year will have breaking out of the Donbas as its first objective," adds Gen Barrons, "and their eye will be on Kharkiv which is 29km [18 miles] or so from the Russian border, a major prize."

Could Ukraine still function as a viable entity if Kharkiv were to fall? Yes, say analysts, but it would be a catastrophic blow to both its morale and its economy.

The Donbas

The area of eastern Ukraine known collectively as the Donbas has been at war since 2014, when Moscow-backed separatists declared themselves "people's republics". 

In 2022 Russia illegally annexed the two Donbas oblasts, or provinces, of Donetsk and Luhansk. This is where most of the fighting on land has been taking place over the past 18 months. 

Ukraine has, controversially, expended enormous efforts, in both manpower and resources, in trying to hold on to first the town of Bakhmut, and then Avdiivka. 

It has lost both, as well as some of its best fighting troops, in the attempt.  

Kyiv has countered that its resistance has inflicted disproportionately high casualties on the Russians. 

That is true, with the battlefield in these places being dubbed "the meat grinder". 

But Moscow has plenty more troops to throw into the fight - and Ukraine does not.

The Commander of US Forces in Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, has warned that unless the US rushes significantly more weapons and ammunition to Ukraine then its forces will be outgunned on the battlefield by ten to one.

Mass matters. The Russian army's tactics, leadership and equipment may be inferior to Ukraine's, but it has such superiority in numbers, especially artillery, that if it does nothing else this year, its default option will be to keep pushing Ukraine's forces back in a westward direction, taking village after village.

Zaporizhzhia

This, too, is a tempting prize for Moscow. 

The southern Ukrainian city of more than 700,000 (in peacetime) sits dangerously close to the Russian front lines.

It is also something of a thorn in Russia's side given that it is the capital of an oblast of the same name that Russia has illegally annexed, and yet the city is still living freely in Ukrainian hands.

But the formidable defences that Russia built south of Zaporizhzhia last year, in the correct expectation of a Ukrainian attack, would now complicate a Russian advance from there. 

The so-called Surovikin Line, consisting of triple layers of defences, is laced with the largest, most densely packed minefield in the world. Russia could partially dismantle this but its preparations would probably be detected. 

Russia's strategic objective this year may not even be territorial. It could simply be to crush Ukraine's fighting spirit and convince its Western backers that this war is a lost cause. 

Dr Jack Watling believes the Russian objective is "to try to generate a sense of hopelessness". 

"This [Russian] offensive will not decisively end the conflict, irrespective of how it goes for either side," he says.

Gen Barrons is also sceptical that, despite the dire situation Ukraine now finds itself in, Russia will automatically drive home its advantage with a decisive advance. 

"I think the most likely outcome is that Russia will have made gains, but will not have managed to break through. 

"It will not have forces that are big enough or good enough to punch all the way through to the river [Dnipro]... but the war will have turned in Russia's favour."

One thing is certain: Russia's President Vladimir Putin has no intention of giving up on his assault on Ukraine. 

He is like a poker player gambling all his chips on a win. He is counting on the West failing to supply Ukraine with the sufficient means to defend itself. 

Despite all the Nato summits, all the conferences and all the stirring speeches, there is a chance he may be right. 

Russia is sure to lose in Ukraine, reckons a Chinese expert on Russia - The Economist

O fato deste professor da Universidade de Beijing ter publicado este artigo na Economist indica que Xi Jinping está revisando sua "amizade sem limites" com a Rússia de Putin, tendo em vista os custos implícitos para a China desse apoio à aventura militar do tirano de Moscou. Esse chinês deve ter sido autorizado pelo PCC na divulgação de sua análise, cujos argumentos partilho amplamente. (PRA) 

Russia is sure to lose in Ukraine, reckons a Chinese expert on Russia

Feng Yujun says the war has strained Sino-Russian relations

Original: The Economist

https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2024/04/11/russia-is-sure-to-lose-in-ukraine-reckons-a-chinese-expert-on-russia

THE WAR between Russia and Ukraine has been catastrophic for both countries. With neither side enjoying an overwhelming advantage and their political positions completely at odds, the fighting is unlikely to end soon. One thing is clear, though: the conflict is a post-cold-war watershed that will have a profound, lasting global impact.

Four main factors will influence the course of the war. The first is the level of resistance and national unity shown by Ukrainians, which has until now been extraordinary. The second is international support for Ukraine, which, though recently falling short of the country’s expectations, remains broad.

The third factor is the nature of modern warfare, a contest that turns on a combination of industrial might and command, control, communications and intelligence systems. One reason Russia has struggled in this war is that it is yet to recover from the dramatic deindustrialisation it suffered after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The final factor is information. When it comes to decision-making, Vladimir Putin is trapped in an information cocoon, thanks to his having been in power so long. The Russian president and his national-security team lack access to accurate intelligence. The system they operate lacks an efficient mechanism for correcting errors. Their Ukrainian counterparts are more flexible and effective.

In combination, these four factors make Russia’s eventual defeat inevitable. In time it will be forced to withdraw from all occupied Ukrainian territories, including Crimea. Its nuclear capability is no guarantee of success. Didn’t a nuclear-armed America withdraw from Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan?

Though the war has been hugely costly for Ukraine, the strength and unity of its resistance has shattered the myth that Russia is militarily invincible. Ukraine may yet rise from the ashes. When the war ends, it can look forward to the possibility of joining the European Union and NATO.

The war is a turning-point for Russia. It has consigned Mr Putin’s regime to broad international isolation. He has also had to deal with difficult domestic political undercurrents, from the rebellion by the mercenaries of the Wagner Group and other pockets of the military—for instance in Belgorod—to ethnic tensions in several Russian regions and the recent terrorist attack in Moscow. These show that political risk in Russia is very high. Mr Putin may recently have been re-elected, but he faces all kinds of possible black-swan events.

Adding to the risks confronting Mr Putin, the war has convinced more and more former Soviet republics that Russia’s imperial ambition threatens their independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. Increasingly aware that a Russian victory is out of the question, these states are distancing themselves from Moscow in different ways, from forging economic-development policies that are less dependent on Russia to pursuing more balanced foreign policies. As a result, prospects for the Eurasian integration that Russia advocates have dimmed.

The war, meanwhile, has made Europe wake up to the enormous threat that Russia’s military aggression poses to the continent’s security and the international order, bringing post-cold-war EU-Russia detente to an end. Many European countries have given up their illusions about Mr Putin’s Russia.

At the same time, the war has jolted NATO out of what Emmanuel Macron, the French president, called its “brain-dead” state. With most NATO countries increasing their military spending, the alliance’s forward military deployment in eastern Europe has been greatly shored up. The addition of Sweden and Finland to NATO highlights Mr Putin’s inability to use the war to prevent the alliance’s expansion.

The war will also help to reshape the UN Security Council. It has highlighted the body’s inability to effectively assume its responsibility of maintaining world peace and regional security owing to the abuse of veto power by some permanent members. This has riled the international community, increasing the chances that reform of the Security Council will speed up. Germany, Japan, India and other countries are likely to become permanent members and the five current permanent members may lose their veto power. Without reform, the paralysis that has become the hallmark of the Security Council will lead the world to an even more dangerous place.

China’s relations with Russia are not fixed, and they have been affected by the events of the past two years. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has just visited Beijing, where he and his Chinese counterpart once again emphasised the close ties between their countries. But the trip appears to have been more diplomatic effort by Russia to show it is not alone than genuine love-in. Shrewd observers note that China’s stance towards Russia has reverted from the “no limits” stance of early 2022, before the war, to the traditional principles of “non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-targeting of third parties”.

Although China has not joined Western sanctions against Russia, it has not systematically violated them. It is true that China imported more than 100m tonnes of Russian oil in 2023, but that is not a great deal more than it was buying annually before the war. If China stops importing Russian oil and instead buys from elsewhere, it will undoubtedly push up international oil prices, putting huge pressure on the world economy.

Since the war began China has conducted two rounds of diplomatic mediation. Success has proved elusive but no one should doubt China’s desire to end this cruel war through negotiations. That wish shows that China and Russia are very different countries. Russia is seeking to subvert the existing international and regional order by means of war, whereas China wants to resolve disputes peacefully.

With Russia still attacking Ukrainian military positions, critical infrastructure and cities, and possibly willing to escalate further, the chances of a Korea-style armistice look remote. In the absence of a fundamental change in Russia’s political system and ideology, the conflict could become frozen. That would only allow Russia to continue to launch new wars after a respite, putting the world in even greater danger.■

Feng Yujun is a professor at Peking University.

Dica de (re)leitura : 'A fábula das abelhas', de Bernard Mandeville

 Dica de (re)leitura : 'A fábula das abelhas', de Bernard Mandeville

Enviado por Mauricio David 

Clássico de Bernard Mandeville

Destaco como recomendação da semana a reedição do livro de Bernard Mandeville: A fábula das abelhas: ou ou vícios privados, benefícios públicos. A obra da sátira britânica do século XVIII desencadeou uma grande controvérsia social ao rejeitar uma visão positiva da natureza humana e argumentar pela necessidade do vício como fundamento de uma economia capitalista emergente. 

O filósofo, médico, economista, político e satirista, Bernard de Mandeville nasceu em Rotterdam, Países Baixos, passou a maior parte de sua vida na Inglaterra e escreveu quase todos os seus trabalhos em inglês. Sua obra magna, A fábula das abelhas, causou forte impacto no século XVIII, suscitando ataques e elogios, e contribuiu fortemente para lançar as bases da chamada ciência da natureza humana. 

Com tradução de Bruno Costa Simões, o texto de Mandeville causou escândalo na época e recobre uma contribuição decisiva ao pensamento das Luzes, segundo Pedro Paulo Pimenta, que assina as orelhas da obra. Em um tom de fábula, o autor passeia pela questão dos defeitos e corrupções apontados em diversas profissões para, a seguir, examinar de que forma esses “vícios, de cada pessoa em particular, por uma hábil destreza, são postos a serviço da grandiosidade e da felicidade mundana de todos”.

“[O]s que examinam a natureza do homem, dispensando a arte e a educação, podem observar que aquilo que o torna um animal sociável consiste não no seu desejo de companhia, bondade, piedade, afabilidade e outras encantos de bela aparência, mas sim no fato de que as suas qualidades mais vis e odiosas são as aptidões mais necessárias para ajustá-lo nas maiores e, conforme anda o mundo, nas mais felizes e prósperas sociedades”, escreve Mandeville. 

Segundo Pedro Paulo Pimenta, a leitura de A fábula das abelhas, hoje mais pertinente do que nunca, pode servir, entre outras coisas, para atenuar nossa ingenuidade em relação a valores que a nossa época costuma tomar como definitivos, mas que, como todos os valores, são impostos por quem tem interesse e força para torná-los correntes.

China continues to dominate an expanded BRICS - Alicia Garcia-Herrero (East Asia Forum)

China continues to dominate an expanded BRICS

Alicia Garcia-Herrero

Bruegel

East Asia Forum, April 12, 2024

https://eastasiaforum.org/2024/04/12/china-continues-to-dominate-an-expanded-brics/

China’s economic size and increasing assertiveness in foreign policy give it a dominant position in BRICS, which is reflected in intra-bloc trade flows and in the bloc’s foreign policy positions. The future of BRICS is uncertain given its heavy dependence on China’s economic future and the deteriorating sentiment towards China among its members. India’s fast growth and increasing geopolitical heft also pose a challenge for the continuation of BRICS as a China-centric grouping.

The origins of BRICS — a bloc comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and, as of 2024, new members Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates — can be traced back to a 2001 publication by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill titled ‘Building Better Global Economic BRICs’. O’Neill argued that Brazil, Russia, India and China were poised to play an increasingly significant role in the global economy.

His prediction was that by 2050, these countries would collectively account for 40 per cent of the world’s economic output. In reality, from 2012 to 2022 China alone has accounted for around a quarter of global GDP growth, and the BRICS countries together contributed over 45 per cent.

BRIC was officially launched in 2009 and was renamed BRICS in 2010 when South Africa joined the group. Since then, trade relations have clearly grown, but in a very unbalanced manner.

Most of the growth in trade has been China-centric, with the contribution from the rest of BRICS remaining quite flatuntil recently. The recent increase is mostly explained by India, which has experienced an acceleration in economic growth. BRICS members are increasingly intertwined with China as far as trade is concerned, but the remaining members have very few ties among themselves. Bilateral trade between BRICS members other than China remains extremely low.

China’s sheer economic size — five times greater than India’s — and China’s increasing assertiveness in foreign policy explain China’s dominance of BRICS. BRICS countries have increasingly similar positions to China at the United Nations. This is not only the case for issues within China’s sphere, such as Xinjiang-related resolutions, but also more global issues such as resolutions on the invasion of Ukraine and the Israel–Palestine crisis.

The only exception on Ukraine has been Brazil, which voted in line with the West in March 2022. But Brazil’s diplomatic stance on Ukraine has become much more blurred since then and its position has fully aligned with China’s on the conflict in Gaza.

China has been the leading proponent of expanding BRICS to BRICS+. The main reason for expansion was to make BRICS more representative of the developing world and give it a stronger voice on the global stage.

But the six countries invited to join — which has become five after Argentina’s withdrawal — are quite heterogenous. Some are net creditors (such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), while others are net debtors and in a very weak financial position. Half of them are large exporters of fossil fuels (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran). Ethiopia and Egypt stand out as members from Africa, a continent that has become increasingly important for China’s and India’s foreign policy.

The questions that arise are what BRICS can achieve with such a heterogeneous group of members, and whether it will be able to maintain its objectives after expansion.

The group has called for comprehensive reform of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to make the institutions more representative, accountable and effective in addressing global challenges. BRICS has also consistently advocated for comprehensive reform of the United Nations, arguing that its current structure with five permanent members holding veto power does not represent the interests of all member states.

One increasingly important objective of BRICS is to become the new platform for developing countries to voice their concerns and interests. The international financial architecture is an area where members’ positions can clearly be aligned. BRICS promotes the use of local currencies in trade between its member states, especially in trade with China, as well as supporting rules-based, open and transparent global trade. The expansion of its membership evidently supports this objective.

The actual impact of BRICS expansion will depend on several factors, including the group’s ability to overcome its internal challenges and the response of the West. Still, the smooth expansion is a clear sign that the global balance of power is shifting and that developing countries are playing an increasingly important role in global affairs.

How BRICS will fare over time depends on several factors. First and foremost is how China’s power evolves. There is increasing consensus that China’s long-term growth will continue to decelerate, which will reduce the opportunities that the Chinese market has to offer for BRICS members and others. A second important factor is how BRICS members and their populations come to perceive China.

The heterogeneity of BRICS is not only economic but also political. The elephant in the room is India, which finds itself in an increasingly uncomfortable position in groupings that are dominated by China. Still, the group’s diversity and its members’ respective comparative advantages could turn out to be a boon not only for China but also for India.

BRICS, which started as a primarily economic initiative to mark the transfer of economic power to the emerging world, has grown into an important geopolitical grouping. China’s centrality and the diversity of its members present both challenges and opportunities.

The future of the grouping is uncertain, given its heavy economic dependence on China and the deteriorating sentiment towards China among its members. India’s fast growth and increasing geopolitical heft create additional challenges for the continuation of a China-centric BRICS.

Alicia Garcia-Herrero is Senior Research Fellow at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel and Adjunct Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

A version of this article was first published here in EconPol Forum.

https://doi.org/10.59425/eabc.1712959200

Depois das bombas na Ucrânia, Putin tenta interferir nas eleições comunitárias europeias (Foreign Policy)

Kremlin Propaganda Campaign 

Foreign Policy, April 12, 2024

Belgium launched an investigation late Thursday into alleged Russian interference in the European Parliament’s upcoming continentwide elections, slated for June 6 through 9. On Friday, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said Brussels’s intelligence service confirmed the existence of a pro-Russian network trying to influence Europe’s vote and undermine its backing for Kyiv. “Weakened European support for Ukraine serves Russia on the battlefield, and that is the real aim of what has been uncovered in the last weeks,” De Croo said.

Among the allegations, Brussels accused Moscow of offering money to European Parliament members to promote Kremlin propaganda. Czech intelligence suggested that the Prague-based Voice of Europe news site had been funded by Russia to pay parliamentarians from Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Poland to make pro-Russian statements.

A Politico investigation found that 16 European Union lawmakers appeared on Voice of Europe, all of them far-right politicians. “If it is a war of civilization, well, I hope the civilization in Ukraine will lose,” Dutch far-right politician Marcel de Graaff said last October during a Voice of Europe-organized debate. Czech authorities sanctioned two of the agency’s executives last month, including Russian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, a longtime friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s.

“The objectives of Moscow are very clear,” De Croo said. “The objective is to help elect more pro-Russian candidates to the European Parliament and to reinforce a certain pro-Russian narrative in that institution.” The Kremlin has not publicly commented on the allegations.

Russia has long been at the center of alleged interference campaigns across the West. Last month, Latvia’s security service began criminal proceedings against EU lawmaker Tatjana Zdanoka after Russian, Nordic, and Baltic news outlets accused her in January of being a Russian agent since at least 2004. And in the United States, Russian-backed operatives hacked and released Democratic emails as part of a Putin-ordered campaign to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of then-candidate Donald Trump. U.S. intelligence suggests that Putin also authorized influence operations in 2020 to undermine confidence in the U.S. voting system, exacerbate social divisions, and disparage then-candidate Joe Biden in favor of Trump.

“This is a global phenomenon,” said a U.S. intelligence assessmenton Russian influence efforts that was released to more than 100 countries last October. Putin has since dismissed these findings.

O Brasil participará da próxima Cúpula Global sobre a paz na Ucrânia ?

 Provavelmente sim, mas vai reclamar que a Rússia não foi convidada. Essa é a lógica da diplomacia lulopetista: o Estado agressor precisa ser convidado para expor suas “legitimas preocupações de segurança”, ou seja, de agressão, como já lamentou em uma das conferências precedentes o preclaro assessor especial do presidente Lula para assuntos internacionais, Celso Amorim. O lulopetismo diplomático é, em tudo e por tudo, um aliado objetivo do Estado terrorista putinesco, e até tem orgulho do que considera uma ação de mediação entre contendores, que são considerados partes iguais num conflito. Não tenho lembrança de tal degradação dos padrões diplomáticos brasileiros em algum momento da história pregressa de nossa política externa.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Brasília, 12 de abril de 2024

Cúpula Global sobre Paz na Ucrânia

“Macron: France to participate in global peace summit in June.

France will participate in the next edition of the global summit dedicated to peace in Ukraine, the country's president Emmanuel Macron confirmed on April 12.

The Swiss government confirmed on April 10 that it would host the global peace summit on Russia's war against Ukraine in June at the Burgenstock resort in the canton of Nidwalden.”

Japan Notes - JORDAN SCHNEIDER (China Talk)

 

Japan Notes

Zen, samurai, art deco war criminals and industrial policy. Are we headed for a JapanTalk rebrand? 

JORDAN SCHNEIDER APR 12

READ IN APP

I recently spent two weeks in Japan. I deeply enjoyed again being on the steep part of a regional learning curve like when I first moved to China.

What follows are notes from my travel and reading. We start off with some semis, then get into Kyoto eating, Zen Buddhism, “the way of the samurai,” and even some Shibuya-kei.

Tokyo

You know what’s fun? Visiting an East Asian country where government officials are allowed to talk to you! Emailing everyone with a go.jpaccount who reads ChinaTalk yielded up some fascinating conversations on economic security and US-Japan-China relations.

Speaking of which … METI is back in the game! It’s one thing to follow the global trend of subsidizing fabs from established players like TSMC and Micron. But they’ve also got a true moonshot in Rapidus, a government-incubated logic firm that bagged $4 billion in subsidies. They’re building a fab in the middle of nowhere in Hokkaido and have a partnership with IBM promising 2nm chips by 2027.

How did METI decide this was a good idea? I asked a Nikkei reporter who wrote a book on how semiconductors how METI decides which chip firms get subidies. His answer: “Honestly, it’s a black box. I really have no idea.” Stay tuned for a Rapidus appearance on ChinaTalk to explain themselves!

Kazuto Suzuki, Tokyo University Professor and METI advisor, hit a more wistful tone.

Jordan Schneider: It hasn't been this fun to work at METI in 40 years, right? 

Kazuto Suzuki: I don’t know if Japanese bureaucrats are “excited,” because now they have a whole bunch of really hard work to do. They were happy to do that during 1960s and 70s because they saw their work translate into the growth of Japanese economy. But now, preventing economic coercion from China is going to be expensive, which is necessary, but less exciting. 

The problem is that in Kumamoto, we are paying the checks to the TSMC, not a Japanese company. We are just inviting the TSMC for the better sake of the security of supply. So that's a totally different story.

I wandered into a gorgeous palace built in the 1930s by a prince who, after living in Paris for a few years, fell in love with Art Deco and decided to blend it with Japanese architecture. But who was this Prince Asaka, husband of the Meiji Emperor’s twelfth daughter? No plaque told me anything more than that he served in the Imperial Army. Enters Wikipedia: turns out he was the Japanese commander on the scene during the Nanjing Massacre, the one who issued the order to “kill all captives.” He was saved from prosecution after the war due to MacArthur’s decision to give all Imperial family members immunity. He lived until 1981, spending most of his time playing golf.

nice house for a war criminal

Are batting cages better for stress relief and focusing the mind than zazen meditation?

Non-alcoholic drinks, it seems, are an even bigger trend in Japan than the US — lots of subway ads and prominent supermarket placement. I even tried a non-alcoholic highball which needs more R&D love than the 0% beers.

The US Embassy in Japan has a nicer recording studio than the Pentagon. But unlike the Pentagon, they make you check your laptop at the subway station around the corner.

Said Noah Smith: “Chinese modern culture, once you get past the language barrier, is basically America. For Japan, you get France.”

Kyoto

The “top” temples have lost all their charm from the crowds, but just one tier down and you could completely lose yourself. I would pay the price of an Apple Vision Pro if it had an immersive view letting me spend all day wandering through the Diatoku-ji Temple complex. After all, Zen was Steve Jobs’s thing. Someone even wrote a whole manga about Jobs and Zen.

He reread Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind several times, and made the intersection of elements of Asian spiritualism and his business and commercial life a regular subject of the conversations he and Brilliant enjoyed throughout his life. For years, he arranged for a Zen Buddhist monk by the name of Kobun Chino Otogawa to meet with him once a week at his office to counsel him on how to balance his spiritual sense with his business goals.

Not sure I’ve ever eaten better than this week in Kyoto. To find spots, I went down the top ranked restaurants on Tabelog, Japan’s Yelp, then found reservation-making options on Google Maps, JPNEAZY, or the hotel concierge.

Kaiseki restaurants where you’re served course by course at a counter (think omakase sushi but not all sushi) allow the restaurant to control far more of your experience in a counter-seating where you’re facing the chef than what you get with table service in the West. Your focus is much less on your dining partner, and going with more than three people really doesn’t work if you’re intending to socialize at all. You’re really having dinner with the chef and their assistants, and their vibe will rub off on you. I’ll remember the jolly chubby apprentice slicing sashimi and the serious chef in his sixties wearing Sun Yat Sen–style glasses as long as will any particular bite.

But speaking of bites, pufferfish high is real and it messes you up. A minute after eating it my face was tingling, I felt euphoric, and could barely put a sentence together.

Books

Heian Literature

Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book, A court lady’s daily whims and life observations completed in 1002, is just gold. Let’s take excerpts from her ‘Hateful Things’ chapter, a delightful list of first world Heian court problems:

The closest thing I’ve read to it is Baldassare Castiglione’s sixteenth century The Book of the Courtier, which also gives you a peak into a lost era of court life. But The Pillow Book is better. Shonagon gives fewer fucks and doesn’t have this wistful downer quality to Castiglione, asense that his way of life was coming to a close. It’s such a head trip to read about this completely sexually liberated woman from a millennium ago. The Christian guilt blowback that writing something like this would spin up in the pre-Renaissance era takes a lot of fun out of early memoirs.

I listened to the first 200 pages of Dennis Washburn’s Tale of Genji on Audible. The translation felt dead, as though I was reading some B-rate palace drama fanfic, with the poems and descriptions doing nothing for me. I started on the Royall Tyler version, which felt almost like a Landmark Edition. Arthur Waley, a self-taught British Jew who never went to Asia whom I first came across for his Journey to the West, has a lovely (if not the most literal) translation I’m looking forward to exploring.

These books made me thankful I can at least encounter Shakespeare directly.

Zen

The best intro I found was Zen: The Authentic Gate by Yamada Koun. He did a decent job trying to explain some fundamental concepts and I appreciated how he wove in some poetry and sutras to his narrative. 

I still didn’t really understand after he tried to explain…

Take that Andy from Headspace

Meditating is nice and relaxing, but what turned me off philosophically to Zen was this Dōgen anecdote. From Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsuro’s Shamon Dogen:

Sorry not sorry, I think there’s purpose in things!

Another on the same theme.

That said, I really do respect Dōgen. He was a true iconoclast, in Heschel’s words to describe the Hebrew prophets, an “assaulter of the mind” whose words were a “scream in the night.”

While he may not have been trying to redeem all mankind, I don’t buy that he didn’t care about anything. If he really was so enlightened and detached from worldly concerns, why wouldn’t he just have lived as a solo recluse and disappeared from history? Instead, he spent his life beefing with all the other sects about the correct way to be Buddhist. He cared so deeply that monks got it right that he felt compelled to leave us thousands of pages of essays, poems and lectures.

Dōgen painted a gripping vision of a deeply stripped-down practice that centers zazen wall-staring and koan-contemplating. But of course, nothing stays pure. Skipping forward eight hundred years, Zen at War is a deeply damning portrayal of how Buddhism was leveraged over the arc of Imperial Japan as an ideological support to militarism. Koun, who seemed very zenned out in his book at least, had a dark WWII. 

Here’s all Koun said about the war in his book:

It’s hard to take a guy who was adjacent to slave driving too seriously if all he can say about WWII in his core book of philosophy is that it led to a loss of morals in Japan.

I recently reread Frederick Douglass’ first autobiography, and some of the stuff in Zen at War reminded me of this famous excerpt. 

Bushidō

Alongside some Zen reading I spent a little time with Samurai stuff. A decade ago I read Bushidō: Soul of Japan, a 1899 book written by a Japanese Christian that became an international bestseller. It felt a little fishy, as if designed to appeal to a teenager with its rough edges clearly sanded away, but it was intriguing enough to dive deeper in.

I followed it up this trip with Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hakagure. This is an early-eighteenth-century collection of aphorisms written by a samurai who was bummed out by the new era of peace. In Tsunetomo’s father’s era, when your daimyō died as a loyal samurai, you committed seppuku to accompany him to the afterlife. In 1662, however, the Shogun outlawed that practice — so, forbidden to commit seppuku, he became a monk and had his collection of sayings whining about how soft Japan had gotten written down by one of his friends. This book was — rightly — forgotten for 200 years before it got rediscovered in the twentieth century by some military personnel who wanted to inculcate a death wish in a new generation of soldiers. It did have this gem, though, which was the most honest thing:

The 2014 academic press book Inventing the Way of the Samurai made all this bushido stuff make sense: it’s a version of industrial era national myth building just like what was happening in the rest of the world! In fact, it’s downstream of idealized knightly virtues that gained steam in England in the 18th and 19th centuries. 

I did read one book by an actual samurai. The Life-Giving Sword, written by the Shogun’s sword-teacher in 1632, has a cool premise but didn’t end up giving me all that much. That said I liked this excerpt.

Over 150 years, Japan was a society went from tolerating this…

To banning samurai carrying around swords during the Meiji Revolution and today banning guns.

Speaking of rudeness-killing, another Frederick Douglass parallel passage:

More to come, I didn’t even get to the breathtaking book Mitsui: Three Centuries of Japanese Business and its fascinating reflections on the nature of capitalism, the interaction between money and power, the interaction between right wing radicals and capital, and how political violence can warp a body politic.