Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Since I wrote about NATO and international politics yesterday with Sweden's bid to join NATO moving forward, a few months after Finland's bid to join moved forward, it's been in the news that Ukraine is pressing its case again to join NATO. During the NATO summit in Vilnius this week world leaders have paid lots of lip service to supporting Ukraine's defense. Some, like the US, have already put action behind their words with billions of dollars of material support, while other nations have talked big but then found bureaucratic excuses not to follow through. When it comes to NATO membership, all the talk remains positive— but as a future thing, not now. Why later?

Well, under the principle that you can't insure a burning building, NATO is a mutual-defense alliance, and Ukraine is currently in an active state of war with Russia. To admit Ukraine to NATO now would be to commit all 31 of the current NATO members to a military conflict with Russia. That sure seems unwise, doesn't it?

The thing is, maybe not. Imagine what Russia would do if suddenly 31 other countries, with significant armies and massive economies, said, "Hey, you want a piece of Ukraine? You've got to come through all of us." They would stop the war. ...Well, if they were rational, and concerned with self preservation, they would stop. Like when Khrushchev backed off during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. But it took real guts on Kennedy's part to force that confrontation. It's not clear than any NATO member country today has such guts. So instead we'll wait until Russia is finishing wrecking as much of Ukraine as it can, and then consider admitting whatever's left. If anything is left.

Turkey today ratified Finland's petition to join NATO. The vote in Turkish parliament, which was hardly a sure thing, now goes to president Tayyip Erdogan, who has signaled he will sign it. Erdogan's approval was also hardly a sure thing. He demanded, and won, a few concessions from Finland as a condition of the vote. Turkey is the last of 30 NATO member countries to approve Finland's petition. Finland may officially be inducted at the next NATO member meeting in July. Example news coverage: Reuters article 30 Mar 2023.

This may sound like wonky, unimportant international news, so let me put it in context. It's about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

1. One of Russia's stated goals for invading Ukraine was to prevent a country on its border (i.e., Ukraine) from joining NATO.


2. Russia's invasion prompted more countries to want to join Russia; principally Sweden and Finland.


3. Finland joining NATO greatly increases the Russia's border with NATO members. See map below.


4. Own goal: Russia.

Prior to Russia's invasion in 2022 the country had very little border with NATO states. There was a bit with Estonia and Latvia. Counting in Kaliningrad, it shares a bit of border with Lithuania and Poland. And if you consider Belarus basically part of Russia (it has basically a sock-puppet government) it has more border with Lithuania and Poland.

One of Russia's stated goals/justifications for invading Ukraine in 2022 was to limit its border with NATO. Russia contended (i) Ukraine was going to join NATO, (ii) NATO represents a military threat to Russia, and therefore (iii) it had to annex Ukraine to keep NATO further away.

Claim (i) was false. Ukraine did not want to join NATO— though it started talking about it more seriously as Russia built up for the invasion. Claim (iii) is ridiculous logic as if Russia did annex Ukraine it would add borders with NATO member states Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland.

...Not that any of this would justify invasion even if it were true, but it didn't even make sense. And now Russia has achieved the opposite of its stated goal. Finland and Sweden, which were content being outside of NATO prior to 2022, petitioned to join. Now with Finland's membership imminent (Sweden's is still blocked on approval from Turkey) there soon will be hundreds of new miles of NATO member countries on Russia's border. Russia's aggression provoked the opposite of one of its stated goals.

In my previous blog about the HBO series Chernobyl I wrote about "The Cost of Lies, The Futility of Truth". Scientist Valery Legasov led the Soviet delegation at a UN IAEA conference held in Vienna in August 1986. As I noted previously Legasov shaded the truth. He not only left out of his report the fact of design flaws in the design of the Soviet RBMK 1000 reactor, of which there were at least a dozen other copies still running, but denied it repeatedly when asked by international scientists and journalists. When the facts of this came out a few years later the IAEA rewrote its report, holding design flaws rather than operator error the chief cause of the explosion. Yet despite his dishonesty he was lauded as a hero at the time by the world.

How was it that he was praised so much while misleading the world?



Understand that expectations for honesty from the USSR were low. Remember, the Soviets weren't even going to admit the reactor blew up in the first place. It was spewing as much radiation as the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki every 12 hours, and they didn't want to tell anyone. They only admitted it 2½ days later after a nuclear power plant in Sweden over 600 miles away detected the radiation.

Interesting aside: As I understand it, an alarm at the Swedish Forsmark plant was triggered when radiation was detected on a plant employee's shoe. The employee was arriving at the plant, though; so authorities knew the radiation source was outside the plant.

And even once the Soviets admitted something happened at Chernobyl they downplayed it. They said only that "an accident occurred" that "damaged" one of the reactors. The rest of the world only understood how bad it was from measuring the radioactive fallout across Western and Northern Europe and from observing the site & activity around it through spy satellites and other forms of secret intelligence.

Plus, when the Soviets did acknowledge a problem at Chernobyl, they followed their brief & vague description with a whataboutism screed criticizing Three Mile Island and other nuclear accidents in Western countries. This approach of deny, distract, counterattack was a standard technique of Soviet propaganda. Back in the late '80s and early 90s books on communication styles referred to them as "Soviet-style negotiation". If these techniques seem familiar now it's because Donald Trump has used them publicly pretty much every day since he announced his first run for the presidency in 2015.

So yeah, Legasov was more forthcoming than expected at Vienna— but still didn't say anything other countries hadn't already figured out. Western European nations were measuring radiation in their own countries. Scientists could extrapolate from that how bad the situation must be. And spy satellites confirmed additional details. Legasov's presentation was remarkable primarily that he didn't deny the obvious facts. But still it made him unpopular with many of his peers & many government officials back home.

People who remember that era in Soviet relations might say, "Well, wasn't there Glasnost going on?" Although General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev mentioned glasnost (literally, "openness") when he became chief executive in 1985 it wasn't until 1986— specifically after August 1986— that he spoke of it as actual policy direction. It's believed that it was through seeing the handling of the Chernobyl cleanup and communication with the world community that Gorbachev recognized it was crucial to do to preserve the country's remaining power.

1:23:45 is not just a series of consecutive numbers. It is a time that will live in infamy. It is the hour (and minute and second) of the morning on April 26, 1986 when reactor #4 at the Chernobyl power plant in the former USSR exploded. It is also the title of episode 1 of Chernobyl, a 5-part HBO miniseries we binged last Friday.



Episode 1 begins with the main character of docudrama, scientist Valery Legasov, who had been appointed to lead scientific aspects of the cleanup and containment of the nuclear accident. It is 2 years after the explosion. Legasov is recording memoirs on audio tape about the true culprits of the disaster. "What is the cost of lies?" he asks rhetorically. He rails against the culture of lying, and knowingly repeating lies, when it's more politically expedient than acknowledging hard truths.

Though this opening scene takes place in 1988 there's an obvious parable for today, 34 years later. Lies, and whole political regimes that depend on constant lying, are very much a part of 2022, from modern day Russia with its absurd propaganda attempting to justify its invasion of Ukraine, to the US itself, where former president Donald Trump, other Republican leaders, and propagandist personalities on Fox News promote conspiracy theories daily.

Just over a week ago Merriam-Webster named gaslighting its Word of the Year. Gaslighting very much describes how Soviet officials began suppressing facts about Chernobyl beginning seconds after it occurred. It also describes what's happening politically in the US for several years. When Trump says things like, "Don't believe what the media is telling you; they're 'fake news'" that's gaslighting.

So, what is the cost of lies? As concerns Chernobyl, it was the explosion that blew up reactor #4, spewing radiation and radioactive material in greater quantities than the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was an accident that killed untold thousands, injured possibly hundreds of thousands, and put literal millions at risk.

As concerns the US, one cost of lies in the insurrection on January 6, 2021. It's chilling to note, though, that the miniseries wasn't talking specifically about that. The show aired in 2019, over a year before the insurrection. The show's opening soliloquy warns us about what could happen. Now some of it already has.

Update: keep reading: 1:23:45. Lies & Heroic Sacrifice.

When I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday I went to my hotel before the afternoon portion of the trade show. This trip I'm staying at the Conrad hotel, in the ResortsWorld casino complex. It's on the Strip. Surprisingly I found a really good for it when I booked several weeks ago. Usually all the big Strip hotels are $500/night during this trade show.

Conrad is part of Hilton Hotels, so I actually checked in electronically while at the airport waiting for my flight. I picked out a room on the 57th floor.



This is the highest room I've ever had in a hotel. Most hotels don't build above about 40 floors, even in dense super-cities like New York and Tokyo. And this one has 66 floors.

I picked such a high room for the views. "Will I be able to see all the way to Los Angeles?" I mused as I headed to Vegas. "Will I be able to see Russia from my window?"

Alas, the views on Monday afternoon were gross, with the sun in the south shining through my window, washing everything out in a winter afternoon haze. The dirt on the outside of the window didn't help, either.

I did enjoy a nicer view in the evening after getting back from the show and dinner with my team:



Also this morning, when I (ugh) woke up before dawn and got to enjoy the sunrise from the 57th floor:



One drawback to the 57th floor— other than that the elevators take a while— is that it's too high. I'm higher than just about everything. Those 1980s era Strip mega-hotels, the Mirage and Caesar's Palace, look small from up here.

Also, no, the 57th floor isn't high enough to see Russia from my window. Nor even Los Angeles.

Gas prices are rising as Russia's war in Ukraine has raised concerns about supply problems. Many nations have responded with sanctions on Russia, and some oil companies are suspending operations in/with Russia. In just one week oil increased from $96.xx per barrel to $115. Closer to my own pocketbook, when I went to fill up gas in my car today I found that prices at the pump had increased $0.70/gallon since Monday. That's more than a 15% increase. I wish I'd gassed up Thursday when the increase was only $.30.

UPDATE: Gas prices rose 5 cents later in the day Saturday and another 5 cents Sunday morning. As of Sunday they're now 80 cents/gallon higher than 6 days earlier.

UPDATE 2: No, I'm not driving to the gas station twice a day just to check prices. All comparisons here are for the nearest Costco gas station. Gas prices are displayed in Costco's app. I've been checking the app periodically out of curiosity.

UPDATE 3: Prices rose yet again on Monday afternoon, though this time by only 4 cents. Still, that's 84 cents/gallon in 7 days, an increase of 20% in one week.

President Biden today is catching a lot of heat for, basically, speaking plainly about the situation with Russia massing troops on Ukraine's border.

He made apparently two missteps in public comments. One, that he thinks it likely Russia will invade Ukraine. Two, that the US and EU will respond strongly to a "major" incursion— implying, by omission, that a minor incursion would be tolerated.

(1) is a statement that I think anybody who's paying attention to the situation would have to agree is true. Putin has been building toward this for years with actions out in the open— including, not least of all, actually invading Ukraine in 2014 and annexing Crimea, which Russia still holds. In recent months he's set up all the same conditions all over again, plus has apparently attacked Ukraine's civilian infrastructure via information warfare. Sadly this is a situation where plain talk freaks people out because only vapid happy talk, like "We're going to stop Putin," is deemed palatable.

(2) is an accurate statement of realpolitik. Again, not the vapid happy talk people have become conditioned to expect, but a sober assessment of what likely what will happen if/when (1) comes to pass. I mean, again, Russia annexing Crimea already happened 7 years ago. We've got experience to draw from, here. Western democracies deplored the military attack and enacted a bunch of sanctions, initially. In the ensuring months and years most removed those sanctions and resumed doing business with Russia whenever there was a nontrivial benefit to them in doing so. Plus, outside North America and the EU few nations if any cared enough even to impose ineffectual sanctions. People need to understand that currently there's no meaningful deterrent to Russian aggression.