Monthly Archives: December 2024

Sleepwalking into WWI, and WWIII

Leave a reply

A remarkable book by Christopher Clark on WWI posits that WWI was an accident, entered into, by sleepwalk. That is, it was not brought on by the elaborate plan of an evil aggressor, Germany or Britain, acting for dominance or economic gain, but rather that many individuals precipitated the deadly conflict through a series of ever-more dangerous, unplanned steps. The great diplomats went on vacation following the June 28, 1914 assassination, and each minor actor felt a need to push for a previous status quo, emboldened by the certainty that nothing bad would happen, since none of the last acts had caused any serious harm, at least not to them. There was, in Clark’s view, a general numbness caused by earlier wars: in China and Russia, in Serbia and Albania, and by Italy’s invasion of Africa, and the fact that there had not been a major, deadly conflict since the Crimean war. In this environment, one nation shoving another was seen as normal conflict until a war broke out that killed millions and toppled four empires: the Russian, Austrian, German, and Ottoman.

Princip shoots Count Ferdinand, June 28, 914. Getty Immage.

Clark points out, too that the Serbs, the folks who started the war, benefited from it. They escaped from imperial control by Austria and from The Ottoman Empire. Self determination was the motivation for the assassination, and it worked too, for the Czechs, Croats, Poles, and communists. In just a few years, the former group got their own countries, and the communists took Russia, something that no one saw coming in June, 1914.

The key sleep-walk steps to war were as follows: In response to the assassination, and a decade of earlier insults, Austria-Hungary, demanded harsh cocessions from Serbia that Serbia found unacceptable. Austria Hungary, backed by Germany and Italy, declared war on Serbia. Russia then mobilized its troops for war with Germany, so Germany declared war on Russia. France, an ally of Russia, then mobilized for war with Germany, so on August 2 – 3, Germany declared war on France and invaded Luxembourg and Belgium. Why Luxembourg and Belgium — because they would not allow free transport of German troupes to attack France. This forced Great Britain to declare war on Germany, which, finally, on August 6, brought Austria-Hungary to declared war on Russia, and effectively on the rest of the Allies. Over the next few years, we (the US) were dragged in along with Japan, on our side.

What a mess, but I fear we may be sleepwalking to the same, grim altercation via our wars in Ukraine and Syria. As at the beginning of WWI, there are two big power alliances: NATO including The US and most of Europe, versus a BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, Iran, China, and South Africa, along with a few minor others. The alliances are now three years into a proxy war in Ukraine, and another one in Syria. So far the declared combatants are Russia vs Ukraine, and Turkey vs Syria, but both sides keeps harassing the other at a higher and higher pace. So far, the sleep-walk steps were that Russia invaded Crimea, in response to some insult, and then attempted to take Kiev. The NATO alliance responded provided limited weapons to Ukraine. But, as these proved insufficient, we (NATO) provided greater and more deadly weapons, plus some volunteer troops. Meanwhile Russia’s BRICS allies are selling drones and missiles into the conflict in return for Russian gold, wheat, and raw materials. One of us, perhaps Ukraine, then cut the RussianGerman gas pipeline, while China seems to have cut important communications cables in the Baltic Sea.

North Korea began sending troops to fight on the Russian side, while Biden sent long-range missiles to be used against Russia. They’re for strikes deep into Russian territory, logistic centers, train depots, food stores, airports, etc. Putin has threatened a nuclear response, but has done nothing so far beyond sending long range, hypersonic missiles against civilian targets and the Ukraine power grid. He’s lost some 600,000 Russians, so he has reason to be upset. Ukraine has lost some 400,000, and is demanding total victory.

The fight has spread to Syria and Iran. Syria and Iran have been attacking Israel for years with the support of Russia by way of Hezbollah jihadists. Recently Israel took out a major fraction of the Hezbollah leadership. Some jihadists (Sunni) seems to have gone back to Syria to remove Assad, Syria’s Shia president for life. They were helped in this by Turkey, another rSunni Moslem country. Assad has lost control of most of Syria, except for a sliver on the coast where the Russian bases are. The rebel leader, Abu Mohammed al Jolani, once a member of ISIS under Abu Baghdadi, renamed the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, proclaiming to be a progressive Moslem. Not everyone is convinced of his moderation, and today, Syria is divided into seven (or more) control zones, shown on the map below.

On the legal and PR front, we’ve called Russian president Putin a madman and war criminal for trying to overthrow the legitimate government in Ukraine, while we support Turkey’s efforts to overthrow Assad. At the same time, we both applaud and condemn Israeli President Netanyahu for attacking Syria in the south, and we (the US) have taken it upon ourselves to attack ISIS (ISIL) camps in central Syria too. This would put us at war with Syria, and perhaps with Turkey. Our allies, the Kurds, are being attacked by our allies the Turks, and our rebel ally, al Jolani, is still someone we call a terrorist.

Concerning Israel, we (Biden, Shumer) along with the International Criminal court, have called for the arrest and imprisonment of Israel’s PM Netanyahu while cheering Israel’s efforts for a Jolani, and against Assad. The Druze, allies of Israel (and us?) seem to be at war with al Jolani. Meanwhile, Russia is trying to make peace with al Jolani, to secure their military bases in the red sliver on the map above, and Iran (Shia) has reached out to al Jolani (Sunni) in an effort to join with him in a war against Israel. It’s not quite tipped into world war, but it could.

The best possible peace maker might be the new, incoming president, Trump, but the outgoing president has done his best to tie his hands, branding him as a felon and seditionist European leaders like Macron might be peacemakers, but his government has fallen, and the government of Germany, nearly so; the economy of Germany is hurting, limiting any practical help they could provide. Iran and Russia might be peacemakers but they are involved in the fighting, and under sanction. Thus, there’s no clear path to peace, or even for a peace maker. Will we dial back the drama before it’s WWIII, or sleep-march forward hoping that someone blinks and gives us the total victory that we think we deserve.

Robert Buxbaum, December 10, 2024

Bendy hockey sticks, and my, half-bendy version.

2 Replies

Hockey sticks have gotten bendier in recent years, with an extreme example shown below: Alex Ovechkin getting about 3″ of bend using a 100# stiffness stick. Bending the stick allows a player to get more power out of wrist shots by increasing the throw distance of the puck. There is also some speed advantage to the spring energy stored in the stick — quite a lot in Mr Ovechkin’s case.

Alexander Ovechkin takes a wrist shot using a bendy stick.

A 100# stiffness stick takes 100 pounds of force in the middle to get 1″ of bend. That Ovechkin gets 3″ of bend with his 100# stick suggests that he shoots with some 300 lbs of force, an insane amount IMHO. Most players use a lot less force, but even so a bendy stick should help them score goals.

There is something that bothers me about the design of Alex Ovechkin’s stick though, something that I think I could improve. You’ll notice that the upper half of his stick bends as much as the lower half. This upper-bend does not help the shot, and it takes work-energy. The energy in that half of the bend is wasted energy, and its release might even hurt the shooter by putting sudden spring-stress on his wrist. To correct for this, I designed my own stick, shown below, with an aim to have no (or minimal) upper bend. The modification involved starting with a very bendy stick, then covering most of the upper half with fiberglass cloth.

I got ahold of a junior stick, 56″ long with 60# flex, and added a 6″ extension to the top. Doing this made the stick longer, 62″ long (adult length) and even more bendy. One 1″ of flex requires less force on a longer stick. I estimate that, by lengthening the stick, I reduced it to about 44#. Flex is inversely proportional to length cubed. I then sanded the upper part of the stick, and wrapped 6 oz” fiberglass cloth (6 oz) 2-3 wraps around the upper part as shown, holding it tight with tape at top and bottom when I was done. I then applied epoxy squeezing it through the cloth so that the composite was nearly transparent, and so the epoxy filled the holes. This added about 15g, about 1/2 oz to the weight. Transparency suggested that the epoxy had penetrated the cloth and bonded to the stick below, though the lack of total transparency suggests that the bond could have been better with a less viscous epoxy. Once the epoxy had mostly set, I took the tape off, and stripped the excess fiberglass so that the result looked more professional. I left 23″ of fiberglass wrap as shown. The fiberglass looks like hockey tape.

Assuming I did the gluing right, this hockey stick should have almost all of the spring below the shooter’s lower hand. I have not measured the flex, but my target was about 80 lbs, with improved durability and the new lower center of bend. In theory, more energy should get into the puck. It’s a gift for my son, and we’ll see how it works in a month or so.

Robert Buxbaum, December 5, 2024.