It's been awhile

I have not been hitting my weekly goal of updates...

So it’s been over a month since my last update, so clearly I’m not doing a good job hitting my weekly update goal here. I am somewhat keeping up with my daily writing - if anyone wants to read my fairly dreadful attempt at a pulp fiction adventure it’s puttering along here: https://www.booksie.com/660628-the-lost-revelation, but that’s not what folks are looking for here. So on to the grab bag of random thoughts, here’s what I’m going to cover this week:

• HIMARS in Ukraine

• Italian Parliamentary Hijinks

HIMARS in Ukraine

So the United States has been supplying Ukraine with a fairly small number of HIMARS (HIgh-Mobility Artillery Rocket System) in the past couple of months and it appears to have had a material effect on the battlefield. HIMARS has longer-range than the systems that Ukraine had been operating and its mobility gives it the ability to “shoot and scoot”, making it less vulnerable to counterfire. There has been considerable reporting that HIMARS appears to be changing the balance of forces when it comes to long-range fires on the battlefield.

I say appears because their introduction may have coincided with the Russian capture of their near-term objectives in Donetsk/Luhansk (Severodonetsk and its environs) and an operational pause as Russia determines what to do next. However, there is evidence that HIMARS’ range and mobility is causing problems for the Russians. Even the Institute for the Study of War notes that Russian artillery fire has slacked off, “which strongly suggests that HIMARS are having a continued impact on Russian artillery capabilities”.

I think we’ll have a better understanding of how much impact HIMARS will have in the next few weeks, as it appears that the focus of fighting is shifting to a Ukrainian counteroffensive near Kherson. I am concerned that the administration’s slow delivery of these systems will deny Ukraine the mass of firepower needed to conduct a significant offensive, which will give Russia time to dig-in and wait for winter to stop operations and potentially fragment Western support (given the likely dire shortage of natural gas many European nations will be facing).

As of Friday, the administration had sent 16 systems to Ukraine, though the reporting on this has been vague (it is somewhat unclear if this means 16 vehicles or 16 batteries, I suspect it is the latter but it is hard to tell from media coverage). In either case, relative to the dozens of artillery systems already deployed (and lost) by Ukraine, it’s not entirely clear what 16 systems would be able to do on anything beyond a tactical level. I really hope we’re not delivering additional packets of systems into the winter after the critical moment has passed.

Draghi Out in Italy

For much of my life, particularly when I was in school, the Italian government was the punch line for unstable parliamentary systems. From 1945 to 1994, the average life of an Italian government was 11 months. However, following a constitutional referendum, the rate of change has slowed (though there have still been something like 14 prime ministers in the intervening 30 years). Indeed, the past twenty years have only seen 9 different PMs (8 if you lump together Belusconi’s two different tenures). So the fall of Mario Draghi is less newsworthy than one might think, however, the parties next in line are concerning, and probably worth discussing.

The past couple weeks have seen the national coalition ruling Italy fall apart. Mario Draghi, a technocrat, was governing a broad coalition with support from the 5 Star Movement (post-ideological populism founded by a comedian), Lega (rightwing populists), Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (plutocrat promotion vehicle), and the more centrist parties. It’s worth noting that this combination has no real rationale to exist, other than to avoid a governmental financing crisis - most of these organizations have clearly conflicting objectives. Indeed, a decade ago, the idea of the 5 Star Party or Lega being in power would have been shocking. However, the concern now is that these populist parties are now tarred with being part of a deeply unpopular government and vulnerable to a challenge from an even more right-wing party - Brothers of Italy.

Now, you may be thinking ‘Brothers of Italy’ sounds kinda, uh, fascist - and You’d be right. Fratelli d’Italia has connections back to Mussolini’s organization and, indeed, his granddaughter was elected under its banner to the Rome city council. The current party’s head, Giorgia Meloni, is dismissive of the connections to Mussolini, but clearly supports a platform that is decidedly populist, though she has vocally supported Ukraine following the Russian invasion, unlike others in the Italian right. Even with all this, polls seem to indicate Brothers of Italy would be favored to win a plurality in the next parliament.

I am not an expert in Italian politics, so I can’t judge the accuracy of the polls or the potential policy implications of an extremely rightwing party winning election, but as part of the general trend towards nationalist populism in the Western world this is not surprising. Coalition governments and centrist governments in Europe and in the United States over the past twenty years have failed consistently and spectacularly in managing to address the concerns of a significant portion of the population - whether a plurality or a majority, it is sizeable enough to have a disproportionate impact on politics.

As wages have stagnated and rural and exurban areas have steadily emptied out into ghost towns, political and business elites increasingly clustered in megacities have utterly failed to offer any attempt to stem the tide, preaching fiscal austerity. While most governments enacted major stimulus following COVID, that barely papered over the painful conditions prior and has immediately run into massive issues with inflations, supply bottlenecks, and declining purchasing power.

One can advocate for solutions to this from the right or the left - I’m not going to insert my own - but it is very clear that what has been tried has at best been perceived to have failed. And it is only reasonable for people who feel neglected and abandoned by centrist, establishment parties to go looking for leaders who will speak for them and try to address their concerns. One of my big concerns with grand coalitions is that they can easily empower extremist entities because the only opposition is by definition outside the mainstream and if people sour on the coalition, that inevitably is where they will turn.