"A-strollin' down the Strand -"
-Poul Anderson, Satan's World IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 329-598 AT XV, p. 476.
I googled these lines of verse and found them only in - David Falkayn: Star Trader.
To return to Mirkheim, XI, although Coya had not traveled to Babur with the crew, we see her and David working together when analyzing data after Muddlin' Through has returned to Earth.
David: Although Baburute tech is modeled on Technic designs, certain transistors could not have been manufactured in a hydrogen atmosphere because hydrogen would have poisoned the semiconductors.
Coya: Produced off Babur, maybe on a satellite?
David: Maybe but there are other kinds of transistors that would not have required off-planet production. Also, a presumed containment field-strength regulator uses cupric oxide as a rectifier at high temperatures even though hydrogen reduces hot cupric acid to copper and water. The regulator is protected in an iron shell but hydrogen penetrates iron so this regulator needs regular replacement.
Coya: Haste leading to bad engineering?
David: But why didn't the oxygen-breathers helping the Baburites do a better job?
(Because they want to control the Baburites.)
Later:
David: It is not in the Baburites' interests to treat Polesotechnic League independents so badly.
Coya: Maybe you were detained by an overzealous official?
David: No. The Baburites are organized in overlapping Bands, not in hierarchies of individuals.
Coya: Might the Seven be in touch with Babur?
David: Possibly but they could easily have been kept in the dark about the Imperial Band's intentions.
(They were involved in those intentions.)
23 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
This is a good example of how Intelligence analysts work, trying to make sense of data about hostile or possibly unfriendly entities. Sometimes these analysts come near the mark, off the mark, or on the mark. The problem, however, is how often they can't be sure which analysis is correct. Which reminds me of Clausewitz's dictum about the "fog of war."
Ad astra! Sean
There's also the problem that the human mind instinctively -- subconsciously -- selects interpretations of new data which fit strongly held previous opinions. And will maintain them until, or sometimes even after, the evidence to the contrary becomes overwhelming.
Eg., in 1914 the French high command refused to believe that the Germans were swinging widely to the west in Belgium, essentially because they refused to believe that they were using their reserve units in the front line alongside active divisions.(*)
This was basically because the French military -didn't- use reserve formations like that, because in turn they were deeply committed to the propositions that (a) relentless attack begun immediately was the only way to victory, and (b) that only 'regular' units could do that.
Joffre began the war with an attack into Alsace-Lorraine, and then when he realized that the German right wing was strong, another attack into the "hinge" in the Ardennes which he thought must be weakly held because he underestimated the number of German divisions and corps in the field.
The result was a series of blind, reckless attacks against German formations equal in strength to the attackers, and better equipped and trained. That led to catastrophic defeats in meeting encounters, in which the French lost 250,000 dead in about one week and large segments of their army were shattered -- one division lost 10,000 of its 15,000 men in about two hours.
That nearly cost them the war; to Joffre's credit, he then discarded his preconceptions, accepted an accurate picture of German strength and intentions, and, at the very last possible moment, began the series of moves that lead to the "miracle of the Marne" and the end of Germany's hopes for a rapid victory.
There had been plenty of intelligence data in the years just before the war indicating both that the Germans were upgrading their reserve formations to operational use, and that they intended to swing wide through Belgium to outflank the French army and crush it against the frontier.
OTOH, there was just enough contradictory evidence that with "motivated reasoning" it was possible to deny it and they did; because admitting it would have been very personally, emotionally painful to the individuals concerned, and also to their institutional interests.
At least Joffre never became on of the (quite influential) French "ultra" school, who held that French commanders should simply ignore the enemy's intentions and movements, because they were going to impose their own will by the offensive "a la outrance" anyway.
(*) which contained many recent reservists, btw, in both armies; it wasn't an absolute distinction. The reserve -formations- were almost all reservists, including a lot of their officers.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I read this mini essay with keen interest. Yes, I should have mentioned as well the problem posed by leaders and their advisers clinging too hard to preferred preconceptions, using "motivated reasoning" to explain away facts/evidence contradicting those preconceptions. The SLOWNESS with which the French reluctantly adjusted to the actual facts near lost them the war.
How can general staffs and intelligence services guard against the dangers posed by clinging too hard and long to favored preconceptions?
Ad astra! Sean
Also climate change denial.
Paul: pretty much.
OTOH, it's also common for people who accept climate change to enthusiastically conscript it as a means to support pre-existing priorities, and as one more justification for doing things they wanted to do anyway.
Eg., people who dislike consumption and consumptionism often use climate change as a support for their neo-Puritanical dislike of appetite and desire for voluntary poverty.
This sort of thing is a universal human characteristic.
(I've met people of this type who react with distress when I point out that if renewable energy sources become cheaper than fossil fuels, which they just about have as of this date, then switching to them requires no 'renunciation' at all.)
Sean: it's a perennial problem which you can only guard against, but doing so effectively means running a perpetual campaign against human nature itself.
It's helpful to keep in mind that stupid people are often more objective, simply because they're not clever enough to come up with convincing rationalizations.
And that the clinically depressed are also often more objective about their own capacities and prospects.
So if something makes you feel good, or gives you a flash of "Aha! I knew it!"...
You should immediately start to doubt yourself and the 'good news' you just got.
In military planning, 'worst-possible-case' analysis is a tool used for this.
The problem is that the results are often -extremely- unpalatable.
Eg., if applied prior to 1914, the generals would have had to tell the politicians: "There's virtually no prospect of swift, decisive victory. But we need you to give us lots more money, so we can mitigate the prolonged agonizing struggle of brutal attrition that's coming."
Would you like to have to go tell the people that control your appropriations that?
The German generals in particular knew, and admitted often, that a long attritional struggle was likely if there was a general war.
And that Germany was unlikely to win such a conflict, and that the strain might well crack the social structure they wanted to defend.
But they directed their planning to a short swift decisive result because they thought it was absolutely essential, and committed the common human failing of thinking the "absolutely essental must be possible somehow".
Oh, and note the role of serendipity: in 1914, French planning often relegated 2nd-line reserve formations to things they considered not very important.
Eg., covering Paris and the extreme right of the French positions, where they believed the Germans were unlikely to attack.
But that meant that those formations of overage, undertrained and equipped reservists -were- there at the crucial point. And because (contrary to French theory) defending turned out to be the stronger form, they could face off the German attack formations, which were weakened by all the marching and fighting they'd done to get there anyway.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Your insightful comments here deserves more than one comment for me to adequately discuss.
I've heard of arrogant "environmentalists" of the kind you discussed here. And they disgusted me. Some of also seem to think it would be a good idea if most of the human race (except them, of course!) were killed off. I've heard of people like that who even aborted their children to lessen their "carbon footprint"! Bah!!!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Re the difficulty of maintaining objectivity vis a vis one's preferred views or hopes: I agree, but the effort has to be made.
Maybe only the clinically depressed should be intelligence chiefs or analysts? And I like that idea of using "Worst probable case" analysis as a check against against accepting too quickly one's preferred views or analyses.
As for your comments about 1914, I concluded that if Germany could not win a long attrition war, the best thing Berlin could have done was refuse to give that famous "blank check" to Austria-Hungary and done everything possible to defuse the Sarajevo Crisis. Second best, if war still broke out, would be not to invade Belgium (to keep out the UK) and stay strictly on the defensive with France, focusing on defeating Russia in the east.
Still, if it had not been for those overage, second rate, under equipped troops posted to the French right wing, there would have been no "miracle of the Marne." I recall reading of how von Moltke, as the news and implications of the stalling of the German attack sank in, he succumbed to despair and told the Kaiser, "Majesty, we have lost the war."
Ad astra! Sean
Using hindsight, it was possible for Germany to win the war - just not quickly. They could have stood on the defensive on the short western border, which was rugged and heavily fortified, and spent two years hammering the Russians. The Russians would have collapsed as they did in our history, and the French would have broken their own army attacking. It might well have taken only one year.
But the Germans underestimated the power of the defensive, and they overestimated the Russian ability to survive defeat by withdrawal. Which given what happened in 1905 was motivated reasoning. That strategy of falling back only works if the government can count on the people - whom have in 1914 they couldn’t.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I'm glad my alternative scenario interested you enough to think the Central Powers might have won by staying on the defensive in the west, and focusing on defeating Russia in the east. It might have taken only one year for that to work, or two years.
But the Germans did quickly grasp how strong the defensive can be, as was shown by the years long deadlock on the Western Front, despite France and the UK doing their best to break it. Also, I think you are underestimating Tsarist Russia's own strength. It did survive two and a half years of war with Germany and Austria, after all.
I've barely started reading Solzhenitsyn's massive novel MARCH 1917, but it seems plain the catastrophe of 1917 did not need to happen. An accumulation of small mistakes here or there, plus dangerous failures of nerve and will at other places, was really what brought down Tsarist Russia.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: but it wasn’t an accident that the Czar’s government was so error-prone. Nor that the Russian people weren’t as solidly behind the war effort as the British or Germans.
Also, it lasted as long as it did because the Germans didn’t focus on the Eastern Front most of the time. When the Germans did put in their main effort in the East, the results were catastrophic for the Russians — Gorlice-Tarnow, for instance.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I agree with you, as far as your argument goes. Where we seem to differ is over whether it was inevitable the Tsarist gov't would fall. On that I am more doubtful.
Ad astra and Merry Christmas! Sean
No, not inevitable. Probable, though.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That I can agree with, altho the catastrophe of the March Revolution might not have occurred if certain mistakes had not been made, accompanied by failures of nerve and will at just the wrong times and places. One that stuck in my mind being how the acting governor of Petrograd in March 1917 was not an experienced official knowledgeable about the city, but a sick man recovering from war wounds. A different and WELL man might have handled the initial disturbances far more competently!
One of the early chapters in MARCH 1917 focuses on Lenin, during his exile in Switzerland, highlighting his nasty personality, viciousness, sectarian quarrels with other socialists, etc. What a disaster he was to the world!
Merry Christmas! Sean
A thoroughly bad man, yes. And he put his mark on the Bolsheviks, who were proud of their contempt for “bourgeois morality”. Which as Orwell pointed out was Marxist jargon for “common decency”.
Kaor, Paul!
And that contempt Lenin and his Bolsheviks had for ordinary decency helped lead directly to the massacres, purges, and gulags which characterized the USSR.
Solzhenitsyn's massively researched LENIN IN ZURICH should disillusion anyone who reads it of the lingering, lying myth of the "noble Lenin."
Merry Christmas! Sean
Sean,
Having read Tony Cliff's books on Lenin but not recently, I will seek out a copy of LENIN IN ZURICH.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Oops! By sheer habit, I addressed you instead of Stirling in my comment immediately above. Which is a bit embarassing!
Compared to his other, and huge novels, Solzhenitsyn's LENIN IN ZURICH is comparatively short, "only" 309 pages in my hard back copy. I've had it since 1977, which makes me feel old!
Tsarist Russia should not be overlooked either. Two books I would recommend would be Edward Crankshaw's THE SHADOW OF THE WINTER PALACE (covering the period 1825-1914) and Robert K. Massie's NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA. The former is somewhat contemptuous of Nicholas II while the latter is not, so they should balance each other out.
Ad astra! Sean
There’s an anecdote from an English traveler on the Trans-Siberian in 1910. (He could speak Russian, btw.)
The train stopped at an isolated station east of Irkutsk, and the Englishman got off to stretch his legs.
The train engineer (driver) took the opportunity to do some maintenance, tightening loose parts and so forth. His assistant, who was drunk, followed him around giggling and undoing the repairs.
When the engineer realized this he knocked the man down and began kicking him and screaming curses and hitting him with an iron rod.
A soldier - even the smallest station had military guards - came over and began kicking him too, and hitting him with his rifle-butt. After the man was beaten to a groaning semi-conscious bleeding pulp, the soldier stepped back and said:
“By the way, brother, who is this son of a bitch and what are we beating him for?”
The Czars weren’t as bad as the Soviets, but both were very Russian.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
A grimly amusing story! I see frustrated competence (the engineer), bone headed and perversely deliberate incompetence (the drunken assistant), and pointless callousness (the soldier).
And all the faults to be found among the Russians were GROSSLY magnified by Lenin and Stalin.
Happy New Year! Sean
Kaor, Sean and Mr. Stirling!
I recall reading that Kaiser Wilhelm II had one of his brilliant strategic ideas: instead of invading France and Belgium according to plan, the German army would not start a war in the west, and if the French attacked, would maintain a defensive posture; Germany would fight the Russians, who were mobilizing against her, and were also backing Serbia, which was more or less responsible for assassinating the Hapsburg heir. Von Moltke managed to talk him out of it.
I am not as learned on these matters as at least one of my fellow frequent commenters on the blog, but it seems to me that this at least might have worked. The British might not have plunged into war with a less aggressive Germany, Belgium would have been neutral, and the French, if they attacked, would have been assaulting strong defensive positions with an inadequate army. The war could have ended with Serbia under Austria’s thumb, and Germany and perhaps Austria making territorial gains at Russia’s expense.
Bes5 Regards,
Nicholas
Kaor, Nicholas!
Thanks for commenting. If so, I think Wilhelm II had a flash of genuine strategic insight, such as what he was capable of in his shrewder moments. The scenario fleshed out here, if the Sarajevo crisis could not be defused, would have been arguably better for the world than what we actually got: a much longer, more devastating war, Lenin seizing power in Russia, an embittered Germany, and a shattered Austria-Hungary, etc.
In this alternate history the French could have invaded Belgium themselves, to outflank the German= border defenses, but I don't think Germamy would have found it unduly difficult to defend their Belgian border. And of course that would have caused trouble for France with the UK.
Regards! Sean
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