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Jun 16, 2020

So, a lot of new followers. Welcome! I mostly use this space to nerd out a bunch about ancient history, military history, or both. I also have a blog where I do mostly that thing, but more so: acoup.blog I also occasionally opine on geopolitics/nat-sec Cheers!

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I don't edit Wikipedia - I have enough writing commitments these days - but if someone wants to fix the Wiki article, I'll bring receipts. Or, for the most part you could just read

@DrMichaelJTayl1

"Tactical Reform in the Late R. Republic" Historia 68 (2019).

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The Wikipedia article on the 'Marian reforms' is so intensely awful and out of date that I am pulling this blog over and we're talking about how the Marian reforms aren't a thing that actually happened this week.

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I make no claims to omni-expertise. I do the ancient Mediterranean, I do military history, and also I play more video games than I ought. The rest is all on you guys.

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Well, I guess now we can go back to submarine discourse or virus discourse or legal discourse or some other sort of discourse where I have no relevant expertise. Y'all have fun with that.

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Wayne E. Lee

@MilHist_Lee

18h

Piling on! 😆

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Dr. Jonathan Abel

@HistorianAbel

18h

Modern warfare is all about states and state armies, they said. The age of the mercenary is obsolete, they said. We shouldn’t study pre-modern warfare; it has nothing to teach us, they said. #twitterstorians

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That does not mean further fragmentation and decentralization is a given here, of course - states sometimes *re*-centralize (see: Diocletian). But if Prigozhin is seen as a winner here - or even a survivor - it alters the interest calculations of a lot of actors.

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And of course as private armies of that sort proliferate, they draw resources away from the central army, forced to rely more and more for security on maintaining favorable relationships with warlords. Shades of the fifth century in the Western Roman Empire.

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I find students often struggle to understand how centralized power in post-Roman Europe could fragment so badly. But ask yourself: if you are a Russian oligarch right now, what lesson did you just learn about the value of having your own private army?

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And finally - ::taps the sign::

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Jun 23

This is your regular reminder that the fog of ::checks notes:: coups...is deep and no one really knows what is happening in ::checks notes again:: Moscow? and we won't know for some time.

twitter.com/BretDevereaux/…

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And while we can hope that the chaos here might lead to a faster Ukrainian victory, it may well not - it may simply spread the destruction over large parts of Russia as well. Poetic justice, perhaps, but I will not rejoice over civilian deaths anywhere.

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That said, I would resist the urge to root for any of these guys. Putin, Shoigu, Gerasimov and Prigozhin are all complicit in war crimes and atrocities, they all intend to carry on Russia's stupid, wasteful war in Ukraine.

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Outcomes are uncertain, but I suppose we can say with some confidence that Putin joins the long, long list of rulers who crippled or destroyed themselves by thinking that all they needed was a good, short, decisive war in order to solidify their rule and galvanize their country.

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Gabriel Baker

@GabrielDBaker

21h

I'm going to go out on a limb and say they probably *don't* have a Hamilcar Barca to save the day.

So this is an aristocratic coup to free the Tsar from his evil advisors. Not exactly a new idea. We think the modern world is so different... until it isn't, I suppose.

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max seddon

@maxseddon

Replying to @maxseddon and @AndrKolesnikov

First sighting of Prigozhin, in a video posted by a Wagner channel. It says he's in the Rostov army HQ "negotiating" with deputy defense minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. "We want [Gerasimov] and Shoigu. Until they're here, we'll stay, block off Rostov, and head to Moscow," he says."

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B. A. Friedman

@BA_Friedman

Jun 23

Mercenaries being unreliable, eh?

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And also please remember:

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Jun 23

This is your regular reminder that the fog of ::checks notes:: coups...is deep and no one really knows what is happening in ::checks notes again:: Moscow? and we won't know for some time.

twitter.com/BretDevereaux/…

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Take from that comparison what you will.

Just when I thought the Russian army couldn't surprise with even more incompetence, they go and apparently lose a major city...to themselves. One of the reasons the Roman Empire survived the 3rd cent. crisis is Roman generals prioritized external threats over internal ones.

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Liveuamap

@Liveuamap

Wagner soldiers in central Rostov liveuamap.com/en/2023/24-jun

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