u/3andfro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13THGGoO5N8

Glenn Diesen interviews Royal Navy Commodore Steve Jermy, who commanded warships in the 5th Destroyer Squadron and Britain's Fleet Air Arm. He served in the Falklands War and in the Adriatic for the Bosnian and Kosovo campaigns, then retired after an operational tour, in 2007, as Strategy Director in the British Embassy in Afghanistan. He is the author of the book: "Strategy for Action: Using Force Wisely in the 21st Century."

The comments are not favorable to the US or NATO.

(Apologies for the extraneous words in the title, which as we know, can't be edited once posted. Lesson learned about embedded code in copying titles.)

Reflections from el gato malo as Americans celebrate, with varying degrees of understanding, the experiment in human governance structure that began officially on this day 250 years ago: the american story: a republic if you can keep it Excerpts below:

>...the world had no more resources 3,000 years ago than it has today and yet life has moved from “nasty, brutish and short” to “long, luxurious, and kind” to degrees unimaginable to our far forebears. and that is the story of human capital, of insight and growth, of innovation in technology, in societal development, and of the instantiation of institutions and ideas conducive to human flourishing and to manifesting destinies.

>these things do not happen of their own accord, they are the imposition of will and of design upon the world.

>and they must be cared for.

>the gravest and most suicidal error that a civilization can commit is to become too accustomed to the plenty and safety and progress that results from such cultivations and elevations of human capital and to mistake them for a state of nature, to forget that this is the rare exception and not the base state.

>left uncorrected, such a misapprehension is invariably fatal and no humanity, however talented or robust, can reach its potential amidst such foundational undermining.

>this is the vigilance of flourishing and here, at the turn of the american 250, this is the lesson we must internalize: the winds beneath our wings are not guaranteed....

>the voluntary agreement to step outside the war of all against all and to respect the (negative) rights of others to life, and liberty, and property, to freedom of speech and association that in return one’s own rights shall be respected is a choice and one that must be made daily, hourly, over and over. the civilization it underpins is nothing more (but nothing less) than the ongoing volitional non-defection in an endless many-sided iterative prisoner’s dilemma, a high equilibrium achievable by (and only by) people of sufficiently low time preference that they may withhold from damaging and stealing from their fellows because they know that no one instance of smash and grab is worth the breakage of the system that makes their plenty and safety possible and pleasant....

>the price of the sanctity of your home and speech is the respect for the sanctity of the homes and utterances of others. [highlighted in original]

>it sounds easy.

>it’s not....

I don't agree with everything he writes on this topic, but much of it I find worth a read today.