Are you under the impression that these peripheral countries aren't asking to join western organizations, but are instead coerced or brainwashed into doing so?
Or are you subscribing to the view point that national sovereignty should only exist for the Great Powers and everyone else should just get in line?
I've spent a lot of time in the former Soviet countries. I play sports over there so I talk with folks after games, meet families, etc.
They live in a world of fear. That fear is not of NATO.
I agree with most of this, and I really want to highlight that the 'no-fly zone' concept is something that can only come from a great power fighting a smaller power. A no-fly zone is, 'we're at war with you but we're so much more powerful that we're going to do it at minimal risk and there's nothing you can do about it.' The US can do that with Iraq and Libya and Kosovo and any number of small countries. I would have thought Russia could do it with Ukraine until last week. But for two major powers there's no such thing as a no-fly zone...there's just war. The internationally accepted step down from war is proxy war or armament, which is what we're doing. Maybe Russia is so weak it would adhere to the polite fiction of a 'no-fly zone', but I doubt it.
I think the phrase has rather morphed over the years. The original meaning (so far as my memory goes) stems for Bill Clinton's idea about how to prevent Serbia from assisting the Bosnian Serbs tear apart Bosnia and Herzegovnia in 1993 or so. It was his answer to the twin queries (1) What are you going to do about all this ethnic cleansing? and (2) Don't the Bosnians have the right to work out a civil war however they want, without interference?
Clinton was a born split-the-difference guy, of course, probably loved threesomes on Jeff's island paradise, so he came up with the idea that the justifiable thing to do was prevent Serbia from assisting the Bosnian Serbs through air power, and the deal he offered them was "You can keep your air force -- so long as you keep it within your borders, and don't fly it over Bosnia." A very different thing from just going in and blasting the hell out of Serbian air forces.
And this doesn't really seem relevant to Ukraine, except perhaps in the separatist regions, where you could argue there is a domestic civil war going on -- but even then, the separatists are *not* being assisted by the VVS anyway, so what's the point?
But yeah if you're just talking about suppressing somebody's aerial offensive and defensive assets, this is just 'establishing air superiority' and the phrase "no fly zone" seems weirdly inapt. Could be Zelensky's trying to suggest a form of Clintonian hair-splitting that would allow NATO to get directly involved while pretending to just be "allowing" Ukraine and Russia to work it out "fairly" using just ground assets. Or something like that, who knows? Why he thinks the lack of a solid *rationalization* is the big barrier to this happening is a mystery. Or maybe he's playing to a world audience, thinking the Europeans or Americans will be embarrassed at "not even" being willing to interdict Russian aerial bombardment. Although again who would be naive enough to uncritically accept that framing I dunno.
I don't think Zelensky really thinks NATO is going to impose a No Fly zone, but it's his job to investigate every possible avenue of support for his country. And a large part of the value of his entreaties is not the (minuscule) chance of actually getting NATO to take a huge jump up the escalation ladder, but the propaganda / information-warfare value, casting Ukraine further in the light of noble victimhood, drumming up public support, etc.
"maybe he's playing to a world audience, thinking the Europeans or Americans will be embarrassed at "not even" being willing to interdict Russian aerial bombardment. Although again who would be naive enough to uncritically accept that framing I dunno."
"WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) - A broad bipartisan majority of Americans think the United States should stop buying Russian oil and gas and work with NATO to set up "no-fly zones" to protect Ukraine from Russian air strikes, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Friday."
Later in the same article:
"It was not clear if respondents who supported a no-fly zone were fully aware of the risk of conflict, and majorities opposed the idea of sending American troops to Ukraine or conducting air strikes to support the Ukrainian army."
Having interacted with a number of civilians about this, it seems they genuinely do not understand that a no fly zone means shooting down planes and air-war. They seem to think of it as some kind of abstract international law instrument which somehow-magically- stops people from flying. I think the most charitable explanation is that they haven't thought that hard about it.
Yes, it almost sounds like it's an ICAO policy that one could somehow invoke that would cause air travel, including hostile military aviation, to be suspended in a region, or to become clearly recognized as a war crime, or something something something.
Quite right. One of the drawbacks of the professionalization of the military is that far fewer people than at any point in history have any direct experience informing their opinion about military operations.
> Although again who would be naive enough to uncritically accept that framing I dunno.
Been avoiding Twitter this last month? ;)
I have seen far too many people, some of whom I used to respect the mental prowess of, speaking positively of the idea of a US NFZ over Ukraine. And who will. Just. Not. Listen.
"Imposing a No Fly Zone" is kinda like fighting a little kid by keeping your palm on their forehead and them at arms length while they flail at you. Harder to do with an adult bear.
>Two persons close to the Russia-Ukraine negotiations (including back channel talks) tell me Russia proposed (1) Zelensky remains pro forma president but Russia appoints Boiko as PM, (2) Ukraine recognizes L/DNR and Crimea, (3) No NATO. Ze told them emphatically no.
Boyko was the Putin proxy candidate in the last election, getting 11% of the vote in 2019. Though I suspect that number would be vastly lower now.
Yeap, I often see 2 and 3 mentioned as a reasonable compromise, but they also asked to change Ukraine's constitution to specifically nerf Zelensky.
Also to note that negotiations are complicated by a complete lack of trust in Russia - they broke both the recent Minsk accords, and also the treaty they signed when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons, which says very clearly they'll respect Ukraine's borders at the time. Hard to get more untrustworthy than that.
I saw a claim elsewhere that another part of the demands was that Ukraine reduce its military to 60k people max. Which would be extremely foolish to agree to since Russia is demonstrably untrustworthy and would doubtless attack again when the situation is more in his favor. If either of these secret side conditions is true, it would be stupid for Ukraine the deal since it amounts to surrender to conquest.
That was a day one demand, that as far as I can tell, was taken off the table when it was clearly a non starter. I'm also 90% sure Putin wants the entirety of the Donbas region independent, not just the part that Putin had before the war.
I think Ukraine should only take the deal if they get back something that can be an assurance that this is unlikely to happen again. My first thought was the return of their nuclear weapons, which is probably unrealistic, but they should get something that helps guarantee the deal will be preserved.
It's hard to see what kind of assurance Russia could give that would make a difference to Ukraine, given their history of lying and breaking past deals.
Formal acquiescence to Ukraine joining NATO would work.
And, as Aristides said, handing over a hundred working nukes would work (nb: one of the big reasons Ukraine handed the nukes over in the first place was that they were locked with codes the Ukrainians didn't have).
It was asked what kind of assurance Russia could give that Ukraine would accept. I'm pretty sure Ukraine would accept either of those as being genuine insofar as Russia would be putting a gun to its own head in case of betrayal.
It's not going to *happen*, but it satisfies the condition asked for.
Put a UN force in along a demilitarised zone. Any invasion would then authorise fully sanctioned war against Russia. Then Ukraine agrees to not join NATO.
Russia did not withdraw their heavy weapons, so Ukraine could not implement Minsk-2. We've all now seen what happens when Russia agrees to "humanitarian corridors" so I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt on anything.
Pull-out of all heavy weapons *by both sides* to equal distance with the aim of creation of a security zone on minimum 50 kilometres (31 mi) apart for artillery of 100mm calibre or more, and a security zone of 70 kilometres (43 mi) for multiple rocket launchers (MRLS) and 140 kilometres (87 mi) for MLRS Tornado-S, Uragan, Smerch, and Tochka U tactical missile systems:
*for Ukrainian troops*, from actual line of contact;
*for armed formations of particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine*, from the contact line in accordance with the Minsk Memorandum as of 19 September 2014
The pullout of the above-mentioned heavy weapons must start no later than the second day after the start of the ceasefire and finish within 14 days.
This process will be assisted by OSCE with the support of the Trilateral Contact Group.
It doesn't actually obligate Russia to do anything.
The Donetsk and Luhansk separatist forces are supported by Russia, directed by Russia, and to some extent _are_ Russia (they've had at least special ops forces In there for years)
What was the problem with point 11 of Minsk-2? Why Ukraine couldn’t implement it?
Quoting from Wikipedia:
11. Constitutional reform in Ukraine, with a new constitution to come into effect by the end of 2015, the key element of which is decentralisation (taking into account peculiarities of particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, agreed with representatives of these districts), and also approval of permanent legislation on the special status of particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in accordance with the measures spelt out in the attached footnote, by the end of 2015.
My understanding is that current Ukraine elites didn’t (and don’t) want any Russian influence, and so they sabotaged any political guarantees to separatists / Russian proxies, and Russia in turn was wary to withdraw heavy weapons - since without them, Donetsk / Luhansk (population 3.5m) would be very vulnerable to military action from Ukraine (population 40m, army trained and armed by NATO).
They chose not to implement it because Russia refused to implement their side of the agreement. If Russia is not even going to honor the ceasefire, why the heck would they go forward with constitutional reform? How could they sell that to their electorate? "We got nothing, and in return we made huge constitutional changes". OK. They only agreed to it in return for a ceasefire that didn't happen. Traditionally when the other party is in breach of a contract, you are released from your obligation to perform your side of the agreement.
Well, the contention is that Russia _did_ implement a ceasefire (and then got nothing in return).
Both Minsk-1 and Minsk-2 were signed after Ukraine military suffered major (some say - catastrophic) defeats, and there was a very real risk of Russian forces advancing to Kiev.
"My understanding is that current Ukraine elites didn’t (and don’t) want any Russian influence"
Your understanding is weak.
NO Ukrainian wants any Russian influence in Ukraine.
Look up Holodomor if you don't understand why
Look at the current fighting if you're unclear on exactly how much Ukrainians don't want to be dominated by Putin, or Russia.
But my previous statement really wasn't strong enough:
No sane person wants to be under Russian influence. Russia is a land for whose entire existence it's been a cesspool of political and economic corruption. Until that changes, it needs to be kept locked up in the smallest possible place
Exactly this kind of statements I cite when people ask me why Russia could be afraid of NATO/USA.
It is quite easy to portray someone as paranoid, when you first threaten him, and than only look at his reaction.
I do not know a single thing Russia has done in the last 30 years, NATO/USA has not done worse before in this period. This does not give Russia the right to do so, but this does take the right from any Westerner to point to Russia as a evil.
*I* didn't violate anything, and the United States had long claimed that the Budapest Memorandum was not binding when it sought to sanction Byelorus in violation of that Memorandum.
Meanwhile, if you want bad faith, look to the promises that NATO would not expand to the East.
Amazing that Putin managed to offer that Ukraine almost completely capitulates, while spreading news that he'd offered to walk away with almost nothing. This seems typical of Russia's negotiation style (see also: repeatedly agreeing to temporary ceasefires so that civilians can evacuate, and then breaking the ceasefires when civilians attempt to evacuate every time). I'll be similarly skeptical next time Russia says anything about their war policy.
I think "completely capitulates" would involve reinstalling Yanukovych or equivalent as president and disbanding their armed forces. These demands aren't anything close to that.
One possible compromise would be for Ukraine to agree to accept the results of a referendum, run by a neutral party, in Crimea and the secessionist areas. Russia wins in the Crimea, probably in the parts of eastern Ukraine they have long controlled, perhaps not if their claim is for all of Donbas. At the point when that agreement was made both sides could claim it as a victory for them, and they are just respecting democracy.
Ukraine yes, but I don't think Russia would accept elections where it doesn't count the votes.
I was talking with friends about this, and Germany would have been the best neutral party. We joked that if China is organizing, they'll also be winning the elections even if they're not on the ballot.
But yes, that would really be the just decision in this case. Unfortunately I doubt it's going to happen.
What about the Ukraine being split in half? Basically Russia gaining the eastern half, and Ukraine keeping the Western half? I guess the Ukrainians would never agree to this, but still...
Keep in mind Russia has practiced ethnic cleansing in the occupied areas of Luhansk/Donetsk. The people there now are not the same people who were there 8 years ago. Should Israel conduct a referendum in the settlements and then decide whether to annex the settlement areas based on that referendum?
I would argue that most of it was due to the ongoing conflict, and general lack of rule if law (and not ethnicity). A lot of people prefer not to live in a war zone, if they have an alternative...
"In the statelets, secret police and “loyal” residents monitor every word, phone call and text message.
Dissidents or businessmen who refuse to “donate” their assets to the “needs of the People’s Republic” have been thrown in “cellars”, or dozens of makeshift concentration camps, without trial.
“It looks like the 1930s in the Soviet Union, a classic gulag,” Stanislav Aseyev, a publicist who was kidnapped in 2017 in Donetsk and was sentenced by a separatist “court” to 15 years in jail for “espionage”, told Al Jazeera.
For almost two years, he was incarcerated and tortured in these “cellars” until separatists swapped him and dozens of other prisoners in 2017.
Thousands of others were tortured and abused in the “cellars”, according to rights groups and witnesses.
“The cellars where prisoners are held in Donetsk, and the widespread use of torture, are among the most obvious human rights issues,” said Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog group.
These tendencies have gone hand in hand with economic degradation.
The living standards are “many times, if not dozens of times worse than in pre-war 2013”
...
Thousands of Russian volunteers flocked to Donetsk and Luhansk to aid separatist militias.
“Putin will come and restore order here,” one of their supporters, a rotund minibus driver named Valerii, told this reporter in April 2014 in Donetsk.
But four months later, after the separatists tried to confiscate his minibus, he locked his apartment, loaded the bus with his most valuable belongings, and left for Kyiv."
I read the entire article. Forcing 2-3 million ethnic Ukrainians (out of a population of 6-7 million) to flee by torturing them and confiscating their stuff is ethnic cleansing
A good solution might be for Zelensky to go to "prison" as Risto Ryti did for Finnland. Putin gets to claim domestIcally that he removed the Jewish drugy nazi and Zelensky gets the full Pablo Escobar treatment, with plenty of furloughs, gets his chosen successor elected with a discrete hint or two, and no risk to fuck up in everyday politics.
I think the peace agreement needs to be a formal, tripartite agreement between NATO, Ukraine, and Russia. Ukraine is formally declared as neutral and not eligible for NATO as well as being a nuclear weapons free zone, Russia agrees to allow the residents of the Donetsk/Luhansk to have an internationally supervised referendum on being independent/joining Russia/staying in Ukraine and to not send in any troops into Ukraine to back any government, etc.
And yeah, we really need to not do the idiotic No Fly Zone idea. Thankfully, Russia made it clear recently that they'd consider it an act of war by any country that did it. I'm not worried that Biden is going to cave on that - the guy held firm on Afghanistan withdrawal even with a big chunk of the national security press and "Blob" railing against him over it, and so far the US has done exactly what we threatened to do before Russia invaded (sanctions, arms to the Ukrainians, etc).
I have a hard time seeing how the Ukrainians will ever trust Russia to abide to a promise not to invade again. I think any peace agreement would have to involve trustworthy allies, and be effectively something like NATO in all but name. (i.e. troop tripwires, like South Korea.)
I've been listening to residents in Odessa on Twitter spaces and telegrams. Even the political groups and factions that were built around being pro Russia are now building sandbags in the streets. They feel betrayed. Burning with anger at Russia.
If it would be like NATO in all but name, then it would be recognized as such, and would mean that Russia lost the war (by definition - stated objective for the war was not achieved). But then the question of trust would be moot - there will be military guarantees instead.
The question of trust comes up only if Ukraine is losing - and then it is a balancing act between more fighting (and deaths) and giving up something…
My worry is all this does is postpone the invasion for 5 years. Right now Ukraine has international support and is causing Russia to suffer major loses. If Russia ever sees am opening where one of those is not true, why wouldn't they just do it again. At a minimum, they will get more of Ukraine.
To take Scott's metaphor, Crimea was the Alusian Islands, now they are asking for Alaska, what will they ask for next? It is better to not surrender unless something changes that make it substantially less likely this will happen again. Transfer of Russian military assets? I'm not sure what, it will take, but Ukraine might be better off in an Afghanistan like 20 year conflict that they win instead of becoming puppet state slowly over repeated attacks with peace agreements in the middle.
Give Ukraine part of Russia's nuclear arsenal. Ukraine gave its nukes to Russia back in the early 90's, in exchange for a pledge to respect its borders. Now Russia has violated that pledge, so Ukraine should get the nukes back in exchange.
Of course. Perhaps someone else, like the United States or France, could loan Ukraine some nukes in exchange for their right to compensation from the Russian arsenal...
... though that's also a nonstarter, for almost as obvious reasons.
Even setting up the parameters of a referendum like that is rather complicated in the wake of a war like this. Some towns in the Ukrainian-controlled parts of Donbas simply don't exist anymore; should the separatists win because of self-determination if everyone who would have opposed them is already dead?
The same concerns apply to Crimea in a way, although it's farther in the past -- Crimea is so very Russian because the Soviets deported the Crimean Tatars in 1944 and settled Russians in their place. We shouldn't want ethnic cleansing to be a way to weaponize self-determination.
I don't have any solutions here, just pointing out problems upon problems.
I mean he, like any invader, obviously does, because he needs at least some people and factions onside. That's why he has provided multiple. That's why no country ever doesn't. Wars that are openly about conquest, wealth etc. simply do not happen any more.
Right. And an important faction to have onside is the military itself, which will have morale problems very shortly if it doesn't believe in the cause.
I'm also trying to think, even when wars of conquest were common, how often they were ever presented purely as wars of conquest: "We want that land so we're going to take it." Maybe the Mongols did this?
As opposed to "I am the rightful ruler of this place, as is well-known according to all the best sources, not the imposter who currently holds sway here, and I'm merely reclaiming what has been robbed from me."
Or "[ENEMY NATION] has engaged in repeated abuses and injustices, and we have waged a war to rightfully punish them, and now to compensate us for our trouble (and perhaps to discourage it from ever happening again) we ask for nothing more than a few measly pieces of land. Or perhaps we'll subjugate them entirely, but purely as an act of self-defense."
Yeah, but there's a lot more flavor to it than that. You don't really get the sense that Homer thinks Paris was a scoundrel; Philip of Makedon seems to have named his famous son after him.
There was a (long) period of time when a successful war was very clearly an advantageous adventure. Take over some foreign land and tax them. You didn't need much to sell that.
Unfortunately (or I guess fortunately) that isn't true any more.
The Romans did basically this in Europe (less so in Asia and Africa since there were peer opponents there). "Veni, Vidi, Vici", and all.
Colonialists did this in parts of what became their empires (not everywhere - there were provocations of a sort for a lot of the wars, and obviously the Aztecs provided all sorts of moral imperatives - but parts).
I'm not that far into the history of Rome podcast, but thus far at least, most Roman conquest in Italy was rationalized as being in response to a threat posed to allied cities by the Etruscans or the Latins or Samnites, etc. I was surprised actually, given their reputation as ruthless conquerers, the pains Roman politicians took to convince themselves that they weren't the aggressors.
Yes. The same is true in Caesar's conquest of Gaul. In practice it was a very aggressive war and we're left with little doubt as to his true intentions, but he nonetheless waited for a casus belli in order to present it as essentially a series of defensive actions on behalf of allied Gallic tribes.
You don't have to go that far back: The Nazis in Germany did exactly that, they basically sayed: "We need more space to the east, to give to our settlers and feed our great homeland. The slavic hordes that live there now are anyway not using it properly."
It's true that Hitler wrote Mein Kampf and that the pursuit of Lebensraum was both a popular idea in Nazi circles and official Nazi policy in the form of Generalplan Ost, but it wasn't given as a reason for the war, on the occasion of either Fall Weiss or Barbarossa. Those speeches of Hitler's are available and well worth reading.
When it came to public consumption, I think the Nazis normally referenced Lebensraum obliquely, and almost never as a primary motive for the war. Aside from Mein Kampf itself, I'm not aware of any Nazi propaganda where something like Generalplan Ost was laid out for broad popular consumption as a laudable goal.
Even Hitler made one up: the Nazis were nominally "protecting ethnic Germans in Poland." Apparently literally no one thinks "because I feel like it" is an acceptable reason for war anymore.
Super duper quick note on the university that banned Dostoevsky: 1) it was a lecture series, not a class, 2) the official notice said it was postponed, not outright banned, 3) they've since reversed the decision.
I'd seen a lot of stuff around the internet about a university supposedly banning the books, which I didn't think captured the situation properly once I looked into it. If there's reason to be angry at something, it should be based on accurate information.
I think your lecture series/class criticism is fair. They are pretty similar. In my defense, I was pretty tired when I wrote this comment. :p
However, I think comparing me saying the series was postponed to rounding up Jewish people inflates the issue. There's a big difference what the Nazis did and not teaching a class on a writer because he was Russian. On the other hand, I can understand your line of thought that this could be a test before they move to larger things.
Saying a University "banned the study of Author X" implies that a decision was made with the *purpose* of *prohibiting* *all* study of X. If, in reality, a class about X was temporarily postponed, that does not require, nor even imply, any intent to limit the study of X- I had classes canceled/rescheduled simply because of scheduling conflicts, classes I was *required* to take to graduate- a postponment of a lecture series, class, whatever, does not imply that anyone in the University find the *content* of the class objectionable. So it's a huge difference between what happened and the claim that "studying Dostoevsky was banned"
Absolutely unnecessary comparison to the holocaust. You otherwise make reasonable points, but making a slippery slope argument does not require equating the holocaust to removing a single book from a single lecture series.
Related to the jingoism section: lots of western businesses have taken action against Russia beyond what government sanctions called for. So western unity against Russia has gone beyond "being very pro-Ukraine on Reddit"!
A lot of business transactions are based on mutual trust. Someone needs to either ship the goods or pay first. And when Russia starts doing the whole invasion thing, its far less likely that you'll be able to count on the Russian government guaranteeing contract provisions. So at the very least you need to account for the additional risk. And that's before you have to worry about the human cost of having business assets in Russia who might be harmed.
Also when your bank and the computer network it uses for wire transfers are placing economic sanctions against Russia and Russian companies in a way that changes day by day.
Got to note that any company trying to fully exit Russia right now will have their properties seized through fast-track bankruptcy procedure; that's why many companies close their business venues but still pay salaries of their workers which avoids this particular outcome.
"Is it imprudent? It’s a risk, but at least it was taken in the defense of real principles, which is better than most of the imprudent things we do."
1. Sure the argument that this is in defence of real principles is better than normal, but on the other side of the ledger the risk of blowing up the world is much higher than normal. As has been pointed out now, when critics as diverse as Kissinger, Chomsky & Mearsheimer are all saying "this might blow up the world", it's probably genuinely dangerous. Prior to all this happening, there appeared to be something of an intellectual consensus around the idea that NATO expansion eastwards is dangerous -by intellectuals left, right and centre- *among everyone except the people who actually got to make the decision*.
To turn the rhetoric around, we had the option to say "too bad, too sad, but great power politics mean that Ukraine is Putin's toy". We've done much, much more ruthless things than that, and this one would have been for a brilliant cause- in the service of not blowing up the world, as opposed to many of the ruthless things we do, which are in the service of enriching very wealthy people.
2. Also, to mutilate a phrase from law "one who appeals to principles must have clean hands". The argument the west is justified in some kind of deontic sense is limited by the fact that, as best I can tell, the west funded and encouraged literal Nazis knowingly at several points during this process, including during the "Revolution of Dignity".
On the topic of the culture war elements in this new cold war, I really think we need to clamp down on this frame [Based Russia versus Woke West]- it's both ridiculous and dangerous. I discussed it a little here:
Apparently even Trump now makes jokes at Russia's expense. You can't be based if you're too weak, and wokeism evidently hasn't yet caused the West to collapse. Would be interesting to see which anti-woke symbol would be adopted next.
I don't think that "decadence" is a good model for the concern about "wokeness".
The historical model for "wokeness" is one in which a multi-ethnic society living at peace is gradually riven apart by hate-mongers from the less privileged group. That's a pattern which has been repeated quite a few times in history.
I would agree with that. In harder times we worry about getting enough food, or invading foreign armies, and don't have time to worry about even major systemic discrimination, let alone "microaggressions."
I agree that if you look at it from the right angle wokeness is a kind of decadence. Why should that be relevant to the question "what effects will wokeness have on our economy and political institutions"?
What properties of decadence cause it to never precipitate societal collapse? Does wokeness have those properties? Does calling it "emotional decadence" interact with any of those properties?
I think a better model is the Cultural Revolution, in which the currently dominant faction of the elites weaponizes the masses with hate against other factions, thus consolidating their power by eliminating threats to it, but also resulting in atrocities by one faction of the masses against other factions.
Of course, at that level of abstraction, it merely sounds like warfare, and in the later stages the Cultural Revolution often was merely warfare; but there are other crucial similarities, like the demonization of privilege (converting envy from a mortal sin into a moral virtue and senseless suffering into the virtue of martyrs), the demonization of knowledge, symbolic mob violence (for example against statues), preference falsification spirals, mass censorship, and paranoia about treason taken to absurd heights.
This pattern is somewhat similar to underprivileged hatemongers exploiting ethnic fault lines, but not the same. I agree that it is completely unlike the martial decadence discussed in the Fremen Mirage.
I can, in fact, quote him *back at you* on this one. He never joins the dots *because that is not in his interest*, but try this on for size (italics replaced with asterisks):
>And we should note that nearly all of the blows which brought this system down were self-inflicted *by the Romans* who for their part never seem to have understood the marvelous thing they had created. The Crisis of the Third Century shattered the political unity of that market and disrupted the limited degree of public peace that created it. Rival emperors both before the crisis but increasingly in it also devalued the currency and extracted supplies directly in kind rather than in cash, leading to weakness in the currency system and a progressive *demonitization*(sic) of the economy. This free-fall was to a degree arrested in the fourth century by Diocletian and Constantine, but the top-heavy, bureaucratic administration they created was probably itself a drag on the economy; Diocletian’s currency meddling and price fixing were disasters and Constantine’s efforts to *actively reduce* labor mobility to aid in collecting taxes couldn’t have helped. That leads to the lower-but-still-elevated fourth century plateau: elevated by the continued existence of semi-unified market and the fact that at least the wars of rival emperors tended to be geographically limited and less destructive than the pre-Roman (or post-Roman) norm of endemic warfare. Finally, there is something to the notion that the state-run systems of extraction and redistribution – taxing the farmers in grain to be shipped to the soldiers – may have continued to encourage a degree of specialization and trade; the “crude but vigorous pump” *worked* to a degree to elevate living standards over the pre-modern agricultural norm.
>But that very cycle of usurpers and civil wars – and the decision of those rival emperors to (in Peter Brown’s phrasing, which I love), “bus in” ‘barbarian’ armies to fight each other – led to the slow but steady disintegration of that united political order, the shift to more and more endemic violence and the final collapse both of that semi-unified market and the “crude but vigorous pump” that had in part replaced it. Living standards thus declined back down to the pre-Roman Iron Age norm while at the same time the carrying capacity of the empire also declined down to that norm, leading to what must have been decades of brutal misery as food ran short, malnourished infants died before their time, cities shrank and the world grew poor.
[...]
>Instead, I think the stronger point here (and one Peter Brown – lest anyone think I think his work is without merit, which is far from the truth – and also many others make well) is that the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West – while it *was* a catastrophe for those people living at the time – was less a product of ‘hordes of barbarians’ coming over the frontier (who again, were mostly invited in by Roman leaders looking for advantage in their endless struggles with each other) and instead a product of actors *within* the political system, *within* the empire, tearing it apart out of the pursuit of their own interests, deceived by the assumption that something so old could never simply vanish…until it did. The consequences of their decisions and of their failure to recognize the fragility of the clockwork machine that suspended them above the poverty to come (and that it was already damaged) were great and terrible.
I'm not saying "don't read ACOUP". ACOUP covers a lot of ground interestingly and as far as I can tell Bret doesn't lie. But I read him with a careful eye and a critical mind, because he doesn't just write ACOUP to show off or to make money; he is - by his own admission - trying to manipulate public opinion.
Everyone does manipulation occasionally, but usually subconsciously and/or in limited/predictable domains (nobody's especially trustworthy when taking the stand at his own murder trial, etc.). "I write my blog in a way explicitly calculated to be enjoyable and maximise public respect for me so I can more effectively promote my politics" is a step beyond "everyone does it"; most politicians and cult leaders go that far, but people read them with heightened scrutiny too.
It hasn't caused military collapse because non-woke straight white men have technologically advanced our military so far. If America's defense depended on something akin to Ukraine and only liberals were available, things would be very different.
I was annoyed at everyone interpreting Trump's saying that Putin is smart as implying that he approved of the invasion. Now I'm waiting for Trump to announce that actually he was wrong — on the evidence of how the invasion is going, Putin was not smart.
...the problem with this is that Trump uses "smart" as an equivalent term for "is doing something I agree with" and "dumb" for "doing something I disagree with."
Except he literally says that the invasion is bad almost immediately after calling putin smart, the ACTUAL problem is that this is either all that got reported, or it got reported correctly but trump critics only saw the headlines and reacted to it.
"Apparently even Trump now makes jokes at Russia's expense. ". Apparent to whom? Trump made some comments which could be read as snark about Putin, but equally as snark about the weakness of the people he doesn't like in the West.
Applebaum, Frum, and others have long argued that the "blame it on NATO" idea is silly. NATO expansion eastward has been driven, from the start, by these countries asking for it in response to Russian bellicosity. I reject the notion that there was some kind of intellectual consensus here.
In any case, there is a very big difference between agreeing not to expand NATO eastward and agreeing that "Ukraine is Putin's toy." In fact, attempts to appease Putin have gone much the same way as attempts to appease Hitler: telling strongmen they can do as they like makes them feel empowered to do more. I would argue that what provoked Putin most was not NATO's eastward expansion, but rather the West's failure to punish Putin sufficiently in response to his actions in Georgia and Syria.
NATO expansion didn't actually pose much threat to Russia. NATO can launch nukes from subs in the ocean with or without countries in NATO, unlike during the cuban missile crisis (edit: sorry, they were invented in 1959, but I'm assuming — and open to being corrected — that they were not yet a major nuke carrier), and NATO had, at one time, 0 tanks in Europe. In Poland, they had a few hundred troops. It was not a major army amassing at Russia's borders. What Putin didn't like was Ukraine turning West economically and politically. The idea that it might theoretically one day join NATO is little more than a pretext.
Edit: epistemic status: political science PhD candidate, but really I am largely giving voice to Applebaum's objections here.
It's both, of course. Russia's neighbors (except Lukashenkostan) want to be in NATO, and the US wants to let them join. They're good as NATO members since they actually exceed the 2% GDP defense spending target: Ukraine is said to have spent over 4% of GDP on defense[1], Latvia 2.3%[2], Estonia 2.3%[3] and Lithuania 2.12%[4]. Gee I wonder why....
Georgia was basically the same case as Ukraine: First a massive influx of money from the US and EU promoting 'democracy', than a 'revolution' backed by the US/EU than the wish to join NATO almost put in their mouth.
Have a look at the Documentary 'Ukraine on Fire' from Oliver Stone. If you look from this angle, I can fully understand that Putin is afraid of NATO and of being next. The West did nothing to counter this concerns apart of saying Putin would be paranoid and crazy and NATO is only for defense. This last claim would be much easier to believe if someone could wipe my memory of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. Who tells that NATO doesn't suddenly have to protect the Russians from Putin?
For me looking from outside seeing the US and NATO very selectively policing the World is very unsettling or even disgusting.
Err... US operations are not the same as NATO operations. Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded by the US and "partners", not NATO. I think Russia had more military operations in Syria than the US did. Not familiar with Libya.
A nice, safe, status-quo point of view, very sensible. Reminds me of any number of thoughtful "detente" essays I read in the 70s arguing a policy of indefinite accommodation.
But I personally find it a a little too Neville Chamberlain for my tastes, and I prefer Reagan's reformulation of the problem, id est, no we don't *have* to accept paying the Danegeld indefinitely. We can win, and they can lose, and that should be our priority goal.
The US and Europe combined easily have the economic might to drive Russia into ruin -- I'll note in passing that Germany alone has twice the GDP of Russia, and even Poland has 25% of it. And the Ukrainians want a lot more than mere honor at this point -- not with dead children lying on the road. They want to kick Putin's teeth in and see blood. I'm perfectly comfortable with helping them do that, and I think it can be done -- just as it was done in the 80s to the USSR -- without resorting to an exchange of ICBMs. But you do need to keep your eye on the ball, and you need to not start rationalizing horrible things as just some kind of existential tax bill that it's prudent to fork out indefinitely. It's OK as a temporary strategy, but as an end goal in itself -- nah.
In short, because a west that includes Ukraine is bigger (and therefore stronger) than one that doesn't, and the West needs to be strong because otherwise China might end up ruling the world (and turning it into a big concentration camp).
Reagan's approach only worked because the USSR was on the brink of collapse at the time and couldn't call his bluff. Even then, it nearly led to a full-blown nuclear war on a number of occasions, as the Soviets struggled to tell "normal" levels of US bellicosity from pretexts for invasion/attach. Reagan basically Alzheimered his way into gambling with the entire planet, and only lucked out thanks to the prudence and carefulness of his enemy (as well as the bravery and stoicism of a few lower-downs like Petrov). That is not a model to emulate when the fate of millions of people is on the line.
Additionally; the approach that the US took to Russia after the collapse of the USSR (ie: treating it like a conquered enemy) was a huge part of why Putin got into power in the first place, and a big reason why there's a revanchist movement to "restore" a national pride that got bruised.
A strategy which treats another country as an eternal enemy creates an eternal enemy, which then creates the pretext for treating them as impossible to reason or compromise with. Your approach is a guarantee that, at some point, someone will push the button and end civilization.
Yeah none of that matches my memory at all, and (1) I lived through it as an adult, and (2) I paid very close attention, since the Cold War and the threat of nuclear fire dominated my childhood. Inasmuch as you have not adduced any specific detail to illustrate your assertions, I think a simple statement of 180 degree disagreement is sufficient response.
Your memory as a person who has lived in the US all your life? Or in a country in the West? Or in a third-world (in the original sense) country? As some sort of globe trotting ubermensch? Or as someone who spend part of their childhood in the USSR?
Because from your response I'm guessing the former, and that makes me think you're a goldfish disagreeing on life outside the bowl (full disclosure: we're all goldfish, our bowls are just different).
There are many more recent takes on the history of the Cold War and the Soviet Union that you could refer to if you wanted to try to get some of that perspective, almost none of which support a rah-rah version of Reagan singlehandedly winning it by being more aggressive and daring than the weak-kneed leaders who came before him.
In fact I have lived both in the United States and in my youth in a Warsaw Pact nation[1], which I mention just to confound your assumptions, even though I think it is entirely irrelevant to the point. I don't need to have personally been to the Moon to thoroughly understand the Apollo program.
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[1] Too long ago to remember more than curse word or two in Russian, however.
That's fair enough - my assumptions are now confounded. In the spirit of reciprocation: I'm an ex-third-worlder, so my governing mode of analysis is "a pox on both your houses".
You'll note I said I paid close attention. I'm well aware of the close calls. That happens when you play for high stakes and for keeps. Nothing is without risk, but winning is winning.
Which would be a good reason not to play for high stages and for keeps. The fact that you accept the risk of mutual destruction as 'just what happens' as a consequence of your approach immediately disqualifies it from consideration.
Allowing a return to the status quo ante could reduce the chance of the most imminent nuclear war without being the path that maximally reduces the risk of all future nuclear wars.
If we can perpetually make that arbitrage, then that is actually fine, just run from one crisis to the next. I can see the intuitive appeal of wanting to escape the local minimum though.
EDIT: I should have first stressed that I agree with you we should prioritize immediate paths to peace. It's a view that is both powerfully true and yet gets insufficient real estate.
Moscow seems to be iterating a similar strategy though, and I'm mostly exasperated at how we might best disrupt these cycles. If you see that exasperation and conclude that I am just not very nuclear risk avoidant, then I just want to very gently suggest that there might be a better way to model my views. (Also some people may just be highly nuclear risk tolerant, ok, probably so, maybe I'm protesting too much on that group's behalf.)
I'm gonna say something that's turbo heretical as a liberal. What percent nuclear risk is worth to you, to push Russia so far that it *completely* collapses and we can just take their nukes away?
I would have previously said that leaving Russia with nukes was net safer, but Putin has done a lot to change this decision, and, I mean, Russia allowed Putin, so. That time that my country allowed a mass murderer, our country got split in two for forty years and we permanently gave up any right to build nuclear weapons. Putin is not Hitler, but with a finite chance of nuclear war times the population of the world, it is not difficult to beat the deaths of WW2.
I think a lot of the unity of the EU against Putin is that we were pretty comfortable for thirty years not having to worry about being nuked, and if we can fuck Putin up enough that he really really remembers to not try this again, we can hopefully go back to that. I think that's why I'm less worried about being nuked - not having to worry about being nuked is itself my red line.
Come. Military people are not stupid, even if they have a mindset that is foreign to you. They have generally and genuinely worked very hard to ensure that one head injury or one case of dementia -- or one mechanical failure -- can't cause disaster. As far as stewardship goes, all the militaries of the nuclear powers -- and I include the Russians as well as the Americans, French, and British -- have done a really superb job these past 75 years making sure there have been and can be no horrible accidents.
Given the major screw-ups we see elsewhere in our technological society -- everything from Bhopal to the lastest zero-day hack on Windows -- they really deserve major honor for this achievement, especially considering it stands in inherent tension with their mandate to be able to use nuclear weapons at a moment's notice, and the fact that civilians only pay intermiitent attention to the problem at all.
My apologies for assuming otherwise. And yes, individuals are fallible. That's why you build in checks and balances, right? You can build a very, very reliable system out of individual parts that have much lower levels of reliability.
Carl: I normally love what you write in the comments. I haven't super liked the Reaganite stuff in this thread. But this comment... hear hear! The militaries of the world deserve credit beyond credit for holding the reigns on nuclear war and doing a great job making it unlikely.
The problem is "it only takes one head injury or one case of dementia to change the whole game" is fully general. No matter how you structure the nuclear weapons policy, or the nuclear weapons considerations, or the nuclear weapons relationships, or the nuclear weapons control, at the extreme *it might only take one defector* to use the nuclear weapons.
Per what Carl said, given this fact, it's extremely laudable that someone has ensured no such defector for 75 years.
That seems very unlikely. The USSR collapsed in 91, and the structures of the military didn't completely collapse along with it; their strategic nuclear weapons didn't go away or become US possessions. Is there a good reason to think things would be different now?
The reality of the 1991 Russian military situation was that only a direct invasion by a powerful enemy (US or NATO or both) would be cause to use nuclear weapons. Because none of these countries wanted to invade Russia, it was a complete non-issue. Adding to that the inability of Russia to offensively use their military (and thereby hold nukes in reserve to deter other nuclear powers from interfering) and it made very little to no difference whether they had nukes or not.
With Putin being willing to use his military offensively, there is now reason to be concerned that they have nukes, which did not exist then.
Through various treaties and attrition, the Russian nuclear stockpile has come down considerably since 1991, from ~30,000 to ~4000 warheads. It's still quite a lot of megatonnage, of course.
Would it be possible to hack the codes and thus prevent a nuclear launch? I mean, the systems for launching the nukes have to be connected to the net somehow, right?...
Almost certainly not. "The nuclear codes" are confirmation codes given to people so they know the orders are coming from someone authorized to give them, they aren't something that has to be input on the physical missiles/bombs before they can be used. (Think about it this way, if they had to be input on a piece of electronics, that safeguard could be bypassed by a sufficiently technically sophisticated attacker with plenty of time).
PALs are a thing actually. You don't just need plenty of time, you need plenty of warheads before you successfully disarm one. You also need plenty of technically sophisticated soldiers, because the ones who make the unsuccessful attempts all die in the process.
*Disarming* a nuke that you have in your possession is easy with or without the PAL; PALs are designed so they can't be removed without breaking the weapon, but if you want to disarm it then that's a success.
Systems like this are airgapped - that is, they're not connected to anything. This means that hacking them requires a physical connection.
Stuxnet, for instance (the US's cyberattack on Iranian enrichment centrifuges, which broke them by spinning them too fast) wasn't an Internet-based attack; a CIA agent physically went into their enrichment plants and stuck a USB key with the malware into the computers running the centrifuges.
If you have agents inside all enemy nuclear silos and all enemy ballistic-missile submarines, then certainly you can prevent your enemy from launching nuclear missiles (you barely even need the cyberattack at that point). However, "nuclear silo operator" and "nuclear submarine crew" are subject to the strictest background checks known - both because a hostile agent could degrade nuclear deterrence, but also because a couple of lunatics could start WWIII on their own (I say "a couple" because most nuclear launch systems require two people to operate).
Yeah, Stuxnet infected every USB flash drive it could find that looked like it was going anywhere near Iran, in hopes that eventually someone would use the same flash drive to store his music playlist and the software patch for the microcontrollers that he had to download off his home internet because the boss was paranoid about airgapping everything.
It is emphatically not liberal to think your country is the one with the right to allow or disallow nuclear weapons. It is illiberal to the point that you should consider whether you have in general been a liberal *in principle* or just in service of some issues.
The point is not equality at all. The point is believing that that kind of superiority has blowback far in excess of whatever problems you think you're solving.
See also: classical liberals' problem with woke stuff. At a certain point it's throwing around so much out of touch power that it causes a generation of backlash.
We're in this mess in great part *because* the west acted like it had the right to control post Soviet Eastern Europe instead of inviting anything like equal partnership and genuinely beneficial support for Russia to become a healthy post Communist state.
> west acted like it had the right to control post Soviet Eastern Europe
It didn't. No Western nation pressured any former Soviet vassal to join the EU or NATO – quite the opposite, they all came of their own volition. Also, I must have missed the part where NATO urged Ukraine to join them, and Ukraine had to push back against their unwanted advances.
> instead of inviting anything like equal partnership and genuinely beneficial support for Russia to become a healthy post Communist state
But we did. Russia is/was an important trading partner to the EU, and to Germany in particular. The hope was always that this partnership would be so beneficial and dear to Russia that it would suppress its imperalistic ambitions, and look at where it got us.
>The point is not equality at all. The point is believing that that kind of superiority has blowback far in excess of whatever problems you think you're solving.
What blowback could possibly be worse than nuclear war, exactly?
>See also: classical liberals' problem with woke stuff. At a certain point it's throwing around so much out of touch power that it causes a generation of backlash.
Who are these non-nuclear powers making us deal with blowback that we can't handle it? None of what's happening in Russia is an example because Russia has nukes. Same with China. The two countries with pose us with the greatest problems are nuclear powers and have been for 60 years or more. Iran? Well, Iran with nukes is a hell of a lot scarier than Iran now. Countries are either managable now and would be unmanageable if/when they got nukes, or they're causing problems but already have nukes.
Again, what on earth is this blowback that's worse than a nuclear attack?
>We're in this mess in great part *because* the west acted like it had the right to control post Soviet Eastern Europe
What on EARTH are you talking about? We don't control anything. Eastern Europeans are in NATO....because they WANT to be in NATO, because they never want to live under oppressive Russian rule ever again.
We're in this mess because Putin is an irredentist, and he knew that NATO membership for neighboring states means he doesn't get to invade them or otherwise bully and intimidate them.
Like, how the HELL are you trying to defend liberalism while claiming that it is rightful to launch of bloody war of aggression to claim territory based on the idea that these countries....wanted to become liberal and be integrated with liberal Europe?
Ja. I'm emphasizing how far away from liberalism that that feels to me. Less "heretical christian" and more "you might be a Satanist"
(Clarification: I do not mean your position is as bad as Christianity paints Satanism to be. Far from it. Just that it's much further down the line from orthodoxy than mere heresy)
It's possibly defensible? I think if I go full liberal, then the fact that Russia converted from a democracy to an illiberal autocracy with a captive media implies that this is the wish of (some fraction of) the Russian people, and if we are to hold that wish as valid, destroying Russia and taking its nukes may be a necessary part of the implementation of this wish. Something like "okay, Germany, you can have fascism and all the Hitler you want, we're just gonna make sure you don't build concentration camps and start invading Poland." It's, like all political debates, GPL vs BSD - do we behave liberally or do we maximize liberalism, even with illiberal means? To behave liberally is to say "well, Russia is invading Ukraine. That sucks. Nothing we can do about it though." To attempt to maximize liberalism is to invade Iraq to bring democracy - or, in this case, destroy Russia because Putin has WMDs. (Being nuked tends to be against people's values.) It certainly seems antithetical to liberalism-as-practiced, at least, but even a country-scale liberalism, like what Scott proposed here, has to deal with the fact that if the Russians can choose Putin, the Ukrainians ought to be able to choose Zelensky. One of them will inevitably have their preferences violated, and inaction is not obviously preferable.
My actual take is that the measures taken so far, supporting and arming Ukraine and cutting off all trade with Russia and isolating it, are far short of the line that Russia itself has crossed, and if in implementing these means we can get Russia to collapse, or at least destroy its ability to make war entirely - so much the better? Red lines are based on actions, not outcomes.
The Russians are no more acting offensively as a nuclear power than the US in Iraq. The US didn’t use nukes there. If Putin was cornered however, if armies marched on Russia then he would be happy to blow the world up.
Like a lot of Europeans (including in my country which is supposedly neutral) there’s a lot of gung ho people who won’t fight and who will never fight but want a world war. All you Germans can do is what exactly? No militarisation for decades and now “we” are going to take out Russia.
Putin iaht going anywhere. He would win a free election in Russia now.
Are you implying that the answer is "zero" ? How is that different from saying "Russia can have anything it wants (except maybe for New York and such)" ?
If we're talking about relative to the current situation, we might have a much higher risk budget than expected.
People keep talking about nuclear war as if it's Total War. US had _atomic artillery_ at some point. Very low yield, very small. Nukes can be used in tactical contexts, and right now that's by far the most likely scenario.
Putin's utility function is not to cause the greatest harm possible. That's a cartoon villain. The real function is pretty complex, but definitely correlated with "getting out of Ukraine a winner". If things go badly for him in a conventional war, one option he always has is using tactical nukes to flatten UA military in half a day, then come out and say that he did it to end the war fast and save civilian lives. After all, that's exactly what Americans used nukes for.
All done very civilized, calling the NATO counterparts a few hours before to warn them that it's going to be a very local use of nuclear weapons.
He may risk being a pariah, but he'll be a winning pariah. Again, complex utility function.
Having underestimated the Ukrainian resistance and the Western response, he might not want to go for the trifecta in assuming that a limited breaking of the 76 year nuclear taboo definitely won't escalate.
We already have people generally considered sober and responsible calling for NATO shooting at Russian planes. I'm guessing that's nothing to the breadth of both voters and leaders demanding to do *something* in response to Putin nuking Ukraine, both out of moral outrage and to deter that becoming the norm.
And then we have the question of whether whatever NATO decides is a proportionate response is seen by Putin as a new offense, rinse and repeat, till everyone climbs down or we do World War III.
I don't know that the Ukrainian forces present any good targets for tactical nukes. Generally you use those against massed armor, an airbase, missile installation, et cetera. Something big and slow moving. My impression is that the Ukrainians are using small-unit and ambush tactics, so not presenting very useful targets for battlefield nukes.
Strategic nuclear weapons are another story, of course. He could always nuke Kiev as sort of a "we really mean it" kind of thing. I don't actually think the US would open a general nuclear war in response, but on the other hand, it's hard to see Russia not being World Enemy #1 from that point on, for decades. Even the Chinese would back away, I think.
Yeah, that's exactly my point. Strategic weapons, no matter the target, are a cartoon villain reaction. And so far everything is consistent with the Russians really caring about collateral damage.
My point was just to avoid making the mistake of nuclear weapons = strategic weapons = very unlikely. This gives a 0.1% chance of them being used.
There is also tactical weapons, which are used in a very different scenario, which is also low probability but probably over 1%. That's what I mean by the risk being actually significantly higher than expected.
If Russia will be allowed to conquer Ukraine on the basis that is too risky to escalate (due to nukes), the next step will be for every country that feels threatened by nuclear power (start with South Korea and Taiwan) and.... every country being governed by a potential or actual dictator (start with Turkey, Mjanma), will put a lot of effort into acquiring nuclear weapons. That will lead to proliferation, opening a Pandora Box that will increase the risk of nuclear war immensely. That is the crucial risk here.
My take on Iran has always been that of course they're trying to acquire nuclear weapons, as they'd have to be stupid not to. As things are going, that impression will only be reinforced.
I mean, yes, but that's been in motion for a long time already - see North Korea, Iran. The US's response to the first attack on Ukraine in 2014, the treatment of Gaddafi (who notably surrendered his WMDs some years prior - would the US have risked attacking him if he hadn't?), and various other events have shown promises to be worth very little, and threat of mass destruction to be a sure-fire defence.
So long as Putin's in power he's always going to be saying to the west "do what I want or nukes", which is the sort of thing that starts a nuclear exchange. It's also the sort of thing that would make mid-tier states decide they want nukes for their own security (countries such as Poland, Iran, Taiwan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc), and more nuclear-armed states means nuclear war is more likely.
So if we want to reduce the risk of nuclear war we also ought to want to remove Putin from power. This can best be done by economic and military pressure on Russia and making it known that anyone who removes him thereby gets automatic immunity to any war crimes trials that may happen.
Putin, if he stays in power, is likely to turn Russia into a larger version of North Korea, a regime that has survived 2 changes of leader. Thus, a Putinist Russia could easily survive Putin by decades, and all that time it will be making nuclear war more likely.
So I don't think that economic pressure on the Russian economy necessarily makes nuclear war more likely; if it gets rid of Putin (as it well might), it does the opposite.
We Putin is even more popular with Russians, so it doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere. Nor is Russia going to surrender its bombs. Nor will there ever be another pro western leader like Yeltsin. Last time that happened the place was looted.
Maybe there won't be another pro-Western leader in Russia. I think there probably will, you disagree.
But so long as Russia is run by Putin (or someone like him) the West is very likely to be united, determined and vigilant against him, with high defence spending, and serious economic sanctions against Russia.
Have You listened to any of his speeches? I heard quite some and before 2022 there was no hint in this direction. Can you show me any example prior to 2022?
Putin was even thinking about joining NATO in the beginning.
The main thing he clear about from the beginning is, that he is not ready to surrender and subordinate Russia to the USA. This i totally can understand. If this is an offense to you, you are the classical villain who is obsessed with ruling the world.
Well, it seems like a guy who doesn't even let his closest advisors get within 10 meters of him, because he's afraid of COVID and/or he's afraid for his physical safety, isn't someone who's likely to pull the nuclear trigger. Putin said he has put his nuclear forces on highest alert, but US Intelligence hasn't seen any sign of this. We're only at Defcon 4 right now. So, yes, I'd be in favor of pushing the envelop a little further.
I think Scott's formulation about lines in the sand is pretty much exactly right. And *given that*, the West should be able to unambiguously "win" this conflict, without crossing such lines. For example, even if Ukraine's government falls, setting up a government in exile and a persistent insurgency seems likely to result in a Russian retreat in some number of years, followed by a big PR victory. If, in the meantime, a bunch of nearby countries join NATO, and Russia's economy is in shambles, and they remain an international pariah... That'd count as a win, in my book. I.e., it would firmly establish to the world that the age of territorial expansion wars is over.
Maybe this increases the chance of nuclear war slightly, despite the lack of line-crossing. And maybe I'm being a bad rationalist by not multiplying that increased chance by the resulting human suffering and saying "nope, too high a price, let Russia keep their pride". But at an emotional level, it feels really important to send the message: territorial expansion wars are not tolerated in the modern age. If you try it, your country will suffer, and you will not get to keep your pride.
You can love Reagan or hate him, that's a separate issue; but we have several historical examples when "peace in our time" spectacularly failed to work. So, yes, appeasement is unlikely to work on Putin, either (although admittedly it can delay him a little).
From many quarters, there's such a strong assumption that he's going to make unlimited territory grabs. That's the old WW2 hangover talking, and hasn't proved demonstrably true of basically anyone since Hitler. In particular, Putin has a very open and well defined series of ideal territory objectives (basically the USSR minus the stans, and maybe small chunks of the Warsaw Pact), we have a very open and well defined Don't Fuck With It line (literally NATO), the intersection is the Baltics, probably off Putin's list in his own lifetime, or last priority, and there isn't *evidence* to think his goals will cross our line, or reason to think we gain anything by taking forward steps before it happens.
Chamberlain was right (delayed a war he couldn't win and that had no public support anyway, while rearming and preparing to win the actual war when it did come). Reagan was mostly wrong (USSR fell apart due to internal reasons that pretty much nothing to do with him).
Why would you care though? Why not see this as a conflict on the other side of the world of little relevance to the US. The USSR was a peer threat, Russia is - by your own argument - not. It’s not a military threat to Europe. It proves that everyday it can’t take Kyiv or fly it’s planes.
China will be a threat in the future. So even if you believe in American supremacy why would this regional conflict the US is not involved in, be something that you want not just to end but to outright win?. The Ukraine isn’t in NATO, and thus for someone in Texas this isn’t some kind of existential crisis at all, no more than 19C Russian imperialism was. I doubt if it was even noticed (although of course the British got very Jingoistic about it - literally - but they were an Empire).
I don't care about it THAT much -- I'm not planning on enlisting in the Ukrainian Foreign Legion -- and to some extent yes I do regard it as somebody else's problem. I'm deeply unimpressed that the Russians started a war they couldn't quickly win, and are resorting to huffing and puffing about their strategic nuclear weapons -- although the laughable performance of the VVS so far is making me wonder if any of those weapons actually still work right, and whether if Putin pushes The Big Red Button they wouldn't just go splort in the silos -- and I doubt I'm the only one wondering that, I bet the Chinese are wondering it also.
I'm also unimpressed that the Ukrainians managed to convey by their actions up to this point to the Russians that a war might work. It's not like they don't have a very long history with Russia, and the nature of Russia is some big mystery to them. Why they couldn't figure out some combination of accommodation and making themselves obviously militarily indigestible, and are now reduced to begging for rescue from strangers, I cannot fathom. Both countries strike me as suffering from incompetent leadership in the recent past.
That's why I would not favor outright war, or anything approaching it. A no-fly zone is a no-go option for me. But am I OK with using some economic power to beat the hell out of Putin for being an asshole and making the price of gas rise 20% on me, not to mention hurting a bunch of perfectly innocent little girls in Ukraine? Absolutely. I'm sorry that this will hurt Russian people, who are smart and reasonable folks so far as I can tell, but at some time or other they (the Russians) *do* need to get their shit together and realize they *can* be held responsible for what crazy Uncle Vlad does on the world stage, and is this the guy they really want leading them? Stop shrugging your shoulders and saying Shit Happens, go change things. Use the present Ukrainians as an inspiring example.
I'm not necessarily impressed with the future Chinese threat. They have some serious problems turning potential into actual, mostly that they're run by communists, who are kleptocratic morons and destroy everything they touch. I'm not sure even the ingenuity and workaholic habits of the Chinese everyman can compensate for that. My impression is that if the US is to fall to second behind the Chinese, it will only be because we (the US) cut our own throats by losing those aspects of liberty, clear-sightedness, and entrepreneurship that made us #1 in the first place. It could happen. When you look at all this bullshit about people's feelings and saddling the competent with the costs of making the incompetent more comfortable, one worries. But we'll see. Heretofore, as Churchill (I think) said, the Americans have always ended up doing the right thing, if only after trying every possible alternative first.
Sure, but Putin is the reason for the sanctions, so I blame him as the first mover here. I will definitely concede that the Biden Administration is praising God for Vladimir Putin, as providing the Democrats with a first-class squirrel on which to blame inflation this November, and that I also hold against Putin.
I am unconvinced by any argument that Socialism With A Human Face, or even a Confucian Face, works better than a straight-up dictatorship of the proletariat. The core of the problem isn't ideology, or wickedness, or power corrupting, but just insufficient information for *any* centralized authority to run an economy efficiently. You have to be an intellectual, or a Marxist ideologue, to not understand that by the year AD 2022.
Yes, I agree we (Americans) have a problem with our capitalists. I take this quite seriously, and if I have to vote for Trump 2024 to do something about it, I will grit my teeth and do so. I'm hopeful that greed and disgust with the aims of the currently dominant intellectual aristocracy might take that chalice away from me, but we'll see.
>Why [Ukraine] couldn't figure out some combination of accommodation and making themselves obviously militarily indigestible, and are now reduced to begging for rescue from strangers, I cannot fathom.
This costs money that Ukraine didn’t have and the West wouldn’t have provided.
Also Putin’s yes-men would still have not communicated the indigestibility to him. The state of the Russian army _on paper_ exceeded anything Ukraine could ever amass, and nobody wanted to be the one to admit most of the military budget had in fact been embezzled.
I'm too sleepy to write out better thoughts. I just want to say I find it utterly unbelievable that if Ukraine had announced "We promise not join NATO" Russia would have done anything different here, beyond tweaking language. And I'm surprised that this seems to be a semi consensus.
I'm wondering why the NATO excuse has any traction at all for Russia. It's my understanding (and if I'm wrong, fill me in), that the Soviet Union was one of the main reasons for NATO existing. Since the Soviet Union no longer exists, why should Putin be afraid of NATO, unless he has designs on NATO territory? Have any NATO members done or said anything that could remotely be interpreted as aggressive intentions towards post-Soviet Russia?
To be honest, I think it's an excuse by Russia. It's almost commendable how deceptive it is, that's how well the agitprop is done.
You see, that assurance, "NATO will not move one inch to the east" revolved around Germany before their reunification and when the Soviet Union actually existed. Western powers coaxed a cash strapped Soviet Union that East Germany would not have any US military bases (or any for that matter) on it when they pulled their military out of there. To this very day, you can look at a map and see that former East Germany still has no military bases on it.
Russia lied. It's not true the United States and NATO stabbed them in the back.
Ah, I see what you're saying. At the time the USSR and Warsaw Pact existed. They were already bordering NATO. There literally was no 'east' the quote can refer to except East Germany.
But yeah, there was never a formal agreement against NATO expansion, and the idea that NATO must honor a verbal backroom "understanding" from 30 years ago is ... just a way to distract everyone from the fact that Ukraine wasn't about to join NATO anyway.
I do want to apologize, I didn't mean to misinform. After rereading in greater detail the New Yorker article on Russia's NATO assurance, it's a lot more nuanced than the way I depicted it. Apparently the assurances went beyond just Germany.
Still, I think the United States' actions contributed a VERY miniscule part towards the Ukraine invasion in contrast to Russia's hurt national pride, stoaked by their leaders, that played a much larger role. In my interpretation of the assurances offered, there was an implict understanding that it was dependent on the Soviet Union as an entity existing. Because it does not, the United States has no moral obligation (with the exception of realpoltik considerations) to abide by their assurances.
In the universe where the USSR falls, and the new Russia wasn't invading or Belarus-ify-ing neighboring countries, NATO would probably be considered obsolete, without a real purpose, yeah.
If Putin is deposed, the west shouldn't make the same mistakes we made in 1991. Instead we should seek to turn Russia from being an enemy into being a friend -- a new Marshall Plan, and possible future membership of EU and NATO.
This would also have the advantage of making it extremely unlikely that China would try anything with Taiwan.
It would be nice to see Russia become a happier country. But the main obstacle to that is Russia itself.
The main reason for poverty (outside of Moscow and a few more big cities) is that most of the country's wealth is concentrated in hands of a few oligarchs; Putin being the first among them. Whatever financial help you would give to Russia, most of it would end up in Putin's pockets. And then Putin would blame you for not giving enough. Because Putin always blames someone else.
The main reason for unpopularity is that Russia just fucking can't give up on the idea of having colonies; and all countries around are well aware of it. Great Britain doesn't have colonies anymore. Neither does France. People complain about European Union, but when UK decides to leave, everyone is like "yeah, whatever, don't let the door hit you on your way out". But Russia must fight to keep Chechens in (what is the point? other than "because we can"), and occupy parts of the surrounding countries under the pretext of "some Russian speaking people live here, therefore it's ours". Why are so many countries next to Russia trying to join NATO, and the luckier ones already did? -- Did Canada also try so hard to be allowed to join Warsaw Pact? No, it didn't have a reason to do so. Somehow USA is okay with Canada just existing. How many countries that have a border with Russia can say the same thing?
(inb4 "but Americans also...", yeah, sure, true. But there are at least *some* countries that can coexist with USA peacefully. Can any of the former Warsaw Pact countries say the same about Russia?)
And why does Russia need to have *more* nukes than USA? After already having enough to destroy the entire planet, isn't it just a completely unnecessary burden on your economy to produce more?
All that I said above, is Russia's own fault. USA didn't tell Putin to put half of Russia's money into his own pockets. USA didn't tell Putin to spend the other half on building useless nukes. USA didn't tell Putin to keep fighting everyone around *unless* they join NATO.
I try to imagine a happier universe, where Russia is something like maybe France, only poorer. An ancient country basking in its former glory, but mostly ignored by everyone else; but also left in peace. Able to give up its former colonies; able to stop fighting its neighbors. Having a healthy economy where the corruption does not keep ruining the entire country. Having nukes, but never mentioning them, because there is no reason to. A reasonable level of democracy.
I would be happy to live in such universe. So would probably be most Russians. However, one guy in Russia would be really unhappy for that to happen, because it would mean that he can't have a personal empire anymore. Sadly, it is his opinion that decides what actually happens to Russia.
> The main reason for poverty (outside of Moscow and a few more big cities) is that most of the country's wealth is concentrated in hands of a few oligarchs
True. (Of course similar things could be said about the USA)
> Whatever financial help you would give to Russia, most of it would end up in Putin's pockets.
No. I'm imagining a scenario where Putin is dead or on trial at the ICC. He has no power.
>The main reason for unpopularity is that Russia just fucking can't give up on the idea of having colonies; and all countries around are well aware of it.
Putin might want colonies; but does the average Moscovite?
> Did Canada also try so hard to be allowed to join Warsaw Pact? No, it didn't have a reason to do so. Somehow USA is okay with Canada just existing. How many countries that have a border with Russia can say the same thing?
Exactly.
> one guy in Russia would be really unhappy for that to happen
That one guy needs a bullet in the head. Then things will be better.
>Putin might want colonies; but does the average Moscovite?
Absolutely. Being told all your life that you live in the greatest country ever, which used to be even greatester before “the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”, does that to you.
> I'm imagining a scenario where Putin is dead or on trial at the ICC.
Then, the next oligarch in the line.
Looking at Germany and Japan (after WW2) as success stories, it seems to me that an inevitable part of transition to a western democracy is... well, occupation... at least until you establish some democratic institutions and make them work; then you can leave.
Otherwise, the old institutions will create something similar to the old situation. The people who created the original problems, they still have they jobs, they know each other, they keep their habits.
But you cannot do the same thing to Russia. So, I don't see it optimistically. Whoever is the most powerful person in FSB will probably take over after Putin's death, accept some foreign help, do something democratic for a while... until one day it will seem certain that he would lose the next election, and then he will likely prioritize his political survival over the country's future.
Perhaps our only hope is that *all* people in FSB are incompetent, because Putin already eliminated all the competent ones, as potential threats to himself?
Besides inviting all those former Warsaw Pact members into the club? By not dissolving the second the USSR fell? Perhaps by not letting Russia into NATO (although accounts vary on how genuine that attempt was)? Or by meddling in what the Russians see as their own back yard by sponsoring the colour revolutions? Or by directly meddling in (the former) Yugoslavia?
If I was a Russian statesman, the situation after the fall of the USSR would seem a lot like doing something impossibly magnanimous (peacefully dissolving an empire built on the back of what you consider to be endless war by foreign powers) only to be isolated, punished, belittled and encircled by my 'former' opponents for decades in response. The period from the 1990s to the early 2000s was an unprecedented time in history to bring the traditional outside power of Europe into the fold, and instead the Western powers simply reverted to treating them like the Russian Empire instead of the Soviet one.
This is not, I should emphasise, to say that their position is the correct one or that other countries should have uncritically treated the Russians with kid gloves or something. Just that their own history and experiences coloured things in a way that makes their own logic and rhetoric seem impenetrable.
I do not dispute that Russian officials see, at least in their public pronouncements, dissolution of the Soviet Union as an act of impossible Russian magnanimity, but it is important to point out that that is not, in fact, why was Soviet Union dissolved. In the end of the 80s, USSR was totally bankrupt both financially and intellectually, and facing rebellions left and right.
Its dissolution was forced, not granted by the Russian government as some selfless gift to the world.
Oh absolutely - again, I'm not saying that what people think is the objective truth. Just that this is the sort of mindset and logic which then justifies all that follows in their own eyes.
Frankly, I think that this particular justification is mainly a piece of Russian propaganda, aimed at both Western audiences and domestic Russian audience, not something Putin truly believes. He was there, he knows what happened.
I agree with you re: US sponsoring color revolutions, though. That is what really terrifies Russian regime.
The Warsaw Pact members *wanted* to join NATO because they wanted to ensure that they would never be under the control of Moscow again. The Warsaw Pact wasn't voluntary in the first place.
No it wasn't, and I imagine that Poland et al were only too happy to remove themselves from the clutches of the evil empire (even if that meant effectively becoming a buffer state for Western NATO nations instead).
Exactly. Which just shows that US and Western European culture is superior to the one promoted by Russia, despite all talks of "Slavic Brotherhood" ...
The whole "pan-Slavism" idea is just an euphemism for being Russia's vassals. I haven't seen a single proponent of this idea saying that we should e.g. help Ukrainian refugees because they are fellow Slavs. It is always about how other Slavic nations should support and serve Russians.
(If I wanted to be a racist, technically, Ukrainians are more pure-blooded Slavs than Russians. Not that I care either way. I am just pointing out the obvious hypocrisy.)
I don't know...I thought the Czechs started it in the 19th century? Wasn't it during the Habsburg empire, when the Czechs felt subjugated, and thus Pan-Slavism evolved form that?
44 y. living in Russia, last time I heard a word about "Slavic Brotherhood" was 1999, Serbia high time. Its totally irrelevant to current political agendas and cultural narratives.
Yep, irrelevant in Russia. Meanwhile in Slovakia, Russian propaganda never stops talking about it. I guess, thanks for confirmation that this brotherhood is supposed to be completely one-sided.
As an example, in the recently compiled list of Russian propaganda sources in Slovakia, here are the ones with the keyword "Slavic" (or "brotherhood") --- "Televízia Slovan", "BRAT za BRATA", "Slovanské noviny", "Slavica – slovanský spolok", "Jednota Slovanov", "Tajné dejiny Slovienov - Slovanov a Arijcov, našich slávnych predkov", "Slovanské bratstvo", "Slovanská duše - Славянская душа", "Bratia Slovania", "Slovanské ženy - matky proti vojne", "Slovanska unia", "Somslovan .sk", "Sloviensko", "Большая Славия, Sláva Rodu Slovanskému", "Spoločnosť pre rozvoj slovanskej vzájomnosti", "Slovanský svet - Славянский мир - Slovenski svet - Słowiański świat".
NATO were in a position to treat Russia vastly worse than they actually did. The fact that they didn't should be evidence to everyone that fears of NATO using ukraine to launch an invasion of Russia are totally absurd.
Well why was the US afraid of communism to the extent that it warred with other countries? Like the Cold War, this seems to be mainly about protecting and projecting opposing spheres of influence. They see the Western sphere as increasingly knocking on their door. And it does seem reasonable to wonder why we were knocking on their door so much in the first place (although of course it becomes more reasonable the more aggressive they get, in an apparent vicious cycle).
Er...because of what happened to Eastern Europe at the close of the Second World War? It may be cold ancient history these days, but in 1945 people were pretty dang outraged that after spilling oceans of blood to lift the Nazi boot off the neck of Poland, say, we just let the Soviet boot take its place -- to no great improvement. Not to mention the Berlin Crises of 1948 and 1961, Hungary 1956, the Prague Spring, and so on. It did not take a *great* deal of imagination to think that Western Europe -- at the very least the remainder of Germany -- was in quite serious jeopardy from Stalin's intentions circa 1950. It's certainly possible the Americans could have shrugged their shoulders anyway and said "hey, not my problem" -- but AFTER fighting all the way from Omaha Beach to Berlin? That would've been quite an about-face.
Is that how they teach history in Poland? "Войско польско Берлин брало, а радяньско помогало". Somehow it happened to be Soviet blood spilled the most to free the Eastern Europe from Nazis.
I suggest (1) that had more to do with a lack of equipment and Stalin's indifference to the suffering of his own people, and (2) it was certainly not for the purpose of liberating Eastern Europe, but of dismantling the German state. You have only to look at the ravagement of East Germany afterward. And shall we just mention Katyn? The Poles were (and are) under no illusions about the purpose of the Red Army when it swept from east to west across them. Nor were the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Romanians, et cetera.
Of course Eastern European countries should be thankful that the common Soviet man freed them from the Nazi's. But c'mon, you're saying Poles are distorting history by teaching that they also suffered tremendously under the Soviets? You do realize that literally all other Eastern European countries have these exact same grievances: Czechoslovakia, Baltics, Romania, Hungary, etc? You can be assured it's not some grand conspiracy by talking to practically any non-Russian Eastern European. The Soviets presided over immense poverty and authoritarianism in those countries. Poland used to be half the GDP per capita that Russia had in 1990, and now Poles make 50% more GDP per capita than Russians. This is really what Ukraine wants. To break free from this crazy 20th century KGB-Kleptocratic apparatus so that they can prosper economically like the rest of the world.
Oh, GDP per capita, my favorite matter. Lets have an example:
Belarus 2000 - 1200$ 2010 - 6033$ 2020 - 6434$
Ukraine 2000 - 658$ 2010 - 3078$ 2020 - 3724$
Doesn't look like Ukraine prospers.
on "authoritarianism"
You should read "Everything was forever, until it was no more : the last Soviet generation" by Yurchak, Alexei, because i believe you have very little idea what are you talking about.
The USSR first allied with the Nazis to conquer Poland, fought the Nazis only after the Nazis double crossed them and invaded. They stopped their military outside of Warsaw and waited until the Nazis had destroyed the Warsaw rising — and refused to allow airdrops of weapons to the Poles. They then massacred large number of Poles in Katyn forest.
Almost accurate, except that Katyń massacre (and other similar ones, like Miednoje where my great-grandfather was murdered) took part earlier. Though other similar massacres were happening also after war and during later parts of the war.
Resulting in a really weird situation of Nazi Germany discovering, publicizing and complaining about human rights violation.
(They reached and discovered massacre sites after invading their ally, USSR)
Bullshit. Warsaw uprising was half-baked hasty operation launched by government in exile, totally uncoordinated with Soviets, who have hard times breaking German resistance in Poland.
> Somehow it happened to be Soviet blood spilled the most to free the Eastern Europe from Nazis.
What happened? Incompetent leadership that started the entire thing by cooperating with Nazis to start the war to spread its murderous regime. And then ignored human costs through entire war.
And communist oppression was a bit better than nazi one, though still included genocide, mass murder and thorough oppression.
Also, red army looted, raped, oppressed and murdered through Poland, and communist regime installed itself so benefits from regime change (not going to call it "liberation") were not very high.
> s that how they teach history in Poland? "Войско польско Берлин брало, а радяньско помогало"
Fortunately, Russian is now longer mandatory. Google translate gives
> The Polish army took Berlin, and the Radians helped
what is really confusing so I am unable to comment on it.
Though I assure you that noone claims that Berlin was conquered primarily by Polish army.
I occasionally say that, if you want to compare the Soviets to the Nazis, remember that there are still Germans in what used to be East Germany. The Soviets bled and died on an enormous scale to push back a revanchist Germany (that they themselves had a hand in propping up in the beginning, but that's another story), and presumably were not massively enthusiastic about simply repeating the feat a few decades later when the capitalist powers of the world had another go at stamping the worker's paradise out (for reference, see: Civil War, Russian). Hence the Warsaw Pact, buffer zones, a race to get the bomb, outrage over US missiles in Turkey, Cuban missile crisis et al. That they treated the places they rolled over to create these buffer zones like occupiers and conquerors is pretty historically par for the course (not that that excuses anything to our modern sensibilities). It was what the US did with its former enemies that was fantastically ahistorical, and a model that I'm ashamed to say very few (including the US itself) have followed since. It's something that would have helped the Russians themselves immensely in the 90s.
That's not a very convincing defense. The majority of previously German regions east of the Elbe is actually devoid of Germans precisely because the Soviets expelled or killed the Germans who remained there after the war, or exiled them to Kazhakstan.
Right, but we aren't talking about 1950. We are talking about today. The Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore, and no one is in jeopardy from Stalin's intentions.
So, again: why were we knocking on Russia's door so much?
One of the funniest takes (which IIRC, forms the historical foundation that "Red Plenty" then historical fictions all over) is that a lot of concern about Communism was because it looked like it might actually work. Socialism, after all, seemed to have built rich, productive, peaceful societies in Europe. So what if the masses threw off their shackles, ate the rich, embraced being a global proletarian dictatorship, and were then even more rich and productive than capitalist nations? You kind of had to strangle the concept at the source, lest it spread and eventually play out in your own home. And damn if the post-soviet era hasn't been a relentless crusade to stamp out even the memory that the USSR accomplished anything other than hunger and gulags.
Of course, realistic hindsight still shows that the real USSR was more or less a polite fiction maintained by enormous waste and suffering - capable of impressive feats but increasingly tottering, creaky, dysfunctional and hypocritical as the years went on. But then, the above critics might content, that that's also looking very true of our present global, free-trade oligarcho-capitalist moment as well...
Most Soviet republics like Ukraine, Russia, what was then Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, and so on, were poor compared to rich countries like the US and the prewar UK, but they were much richer materially during the height of the USSR (the 01950s to 01970s) than they had been pre-USSR, and also much richer than they would be for many years after the Soviet collapse. It's not that Communism is a good system; it's just not literally the worst system ever invented, usually. Both Tsarist autocracy via secret police and the utterly corrupt kleptocracy that replaced Communism in most countries were worse, both in terms of material scarcity and in terms of misery and oppression.
Some of these countries, like Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, still have not recovered to their pre-collapse state, and this war has likely ensured that they will not do so for decades.
I was under the impression Ukraine (and a few other SSRs) economically benefitted from being in the Soviet Union because they were essentially protected from outside competition (at the expense of the the rest of the USSR), rather than because communism worked for them. Also, I doubt that the Tsarist regime was worse than the Soviets. This commonly cited paper makes the case formally: https://www.nber.org/papers/w19425. I readily admit, it gets a bit technical and I'm not sure I understand all of it myself.
I interpreted that line as relying heavily on the "seemed" - regardless of reality, the Soviets were good at putting out propaganda *saying* that they were rich and productive and peaceful, and there were huge swathes of the West that believed them.
Fun fact. Eastern Europe did better under post war communism than western societies under neoliberalism. Dating neoliberalism to about 1980 and “doing better” to wages and not just GDP. However of course the post war solution in the West was even better.
If you're genuinely comparing what happens under communism to what's happening in present day countries under capitalism, I have to conclude that you don't know what you're talking about. Please make some comparison grounded in facts to make your point
He’s talking economically. Can we compare growth in east Germany 1950-1970 (the peak) favourably to western capitalism? Yes. It trounces western economic growth right now.
But you can't compare the two at all. It's like trying to see if a teenager who started taking meth feels better than a 45 year old mid career professional.
> And damn if the post-soviet era hasn't been a relentless crusade to stamp out even the memory that the USSR accomplished anything other than hunger and gulags.
For example?
The thing is, the few technological successes the USSR could muster came at the expense of even basic personal conveniences (allegedly, they built their first toilet paper factory in 1968 – though I can't find a reliable source for this right now). Their early lead in the space race vanished after a couple of years, because they weren't able to spend the vast amount of resources needed to keep up with the US.
Praising the accomplishments of the USSR is a bit like praising North Korea for being able to develop probably-nuclear almost-ICBMs, while Germany seemingly hasn't been able to do so in the past 70 years.
Broadly, because all Communist (technically socialist, but we'll stick with the terminology sold to the rubes) governments inherently destroy people. The US is built on the idea of individual equality and self-determination, and this permeates the ethos of the nation. Communist governments can only exist by force in single-party states. The fear of the spread is that they would continue to use military power until they conquered the world.
Cynically, because US investors can't buy mining concessions, buy land to turn it into a banana plantation, or set up a McDonalds in a Communist country; Communism insists that the means of production be owned by "the people", which is to say, the state, and to this end expropriates foreign investors' holdings without compensation, as Germany and France have recently done with the yachts of Russian citizens.
More charitably, because leaders of not-yet-Communist countries, including the US and its allies, didn't want to end up like King Zog I or, especially, Louis XVI, Victoriano Huerta, and Tsar Nicholas; and elites in not-yet-Communist countries didn't want to end up like the Cuban exiles or the Russian kulaks.
Moreover, Communism, like Liberalism, is explicitly a worldwide movement; it proposes universally applicable remedies for universal ills, and explicitly urges international cooperation to put them in place. My Communist stepgrandmother in the US had posters of Trotsky and Zapata up in her house and traveled to other countries for political purposes, and it is of course well known that Soviet and Maoist groups sent extensive support to their comrades abroad, including in the US. The idea of a Communist revolution in the US seems absurd only in retrospect.
I've always felt that communist regime's paranoia brought the facade down ever time.
A capitalist equivalent of an apparatchik who lived in the USSR publicly evangelizing for capitalism and protesting the establishment, say also traveling to nearby communist-aligned countries and supporting clandestine efforts there against the communists, well that person would not be a free man/woman very long.
For some reason these workers' paradises were always terrified that the words of those who disagreed with them would ruin the paradise. Which makes no sense. If I'm living in heaven, why I am I afraid of someone telling me the grass is greener over here?
I was wondering this myself. A really profound answer is found in a document called the Long Telegram, which was written by a US foreign service guy named Kennan when the Cold War started. Read the whole thing, as it's short and goes into a ton of other stuff I never learned in school either:
TL;DR Communism was always known to be a "red" herring (hahaha) for the paranoid imperialism of the Russian leadership, which goes back hundreds of years. Ie, Communist leaders knew on some level that their implementation of it was unworkable (or not True Communism, or however you want to argue it), but they used this as an excuse to continue to expand Russian borders.
When looked at in this slightly abstract way, what Russia is trying to do in Ukraine today makes sense, as does the thrust of Russian empire-building and imperial repression since Ivan the Terrible.
I like this way of looking at things because it creates a very powerful mental defense against the bad kind of Russian "whataboutism" of many kinds.
Kennan also critiques the US in several very constructive ways. Go ahead, read the whole thing, you'll see :)
I think it's rational for Putin to be afraid of NATO. It does have a history of bombing dictators out of their homes and into rebels arms that did not pose an obvious threat. See Libya. But I also agree that is not the main reason for the war. They wanted Ukraine to be Belarus 2, and thought it would be simple
Yeah, I guess so. I mean, another reason might be the industrial capacity of Ukraine? But overall, it seems to be about protecting Russia's sphere of influence...
I watched that video of the Mearsheimer lecture that people posted elsewhere in this thread, and his argument, as I recall, is that NATO is a US ventriloquist dummy, and US foreign policy these days is driven by democracy promotion. Needless to say, if you're an autocrat like Putin, whose hold on power might be more tenuous than commonly believed, you have reason not to want western democracy-promotion pushing further eastward, because if Ukrainians get used to democratic elections, sooner or later average Russians are going to think that they're entitled to democratic elections, too, and you could wind up like Muammar Gaddafi or Hosni Mubarak.
I come here with a simple request: If anyone can cast doubt that my assertions are wrong. In my world view, I view the United States as a flawed power, but never annexed (at least within recent memory) a country unlike what Russia has done to Ukraine. I'm a critic of the United States flouting international law, I think the Iraq and Afghanistan war as it currently transpired shouldn't have happened, that America should have gotten approval by the UN security council instead of running roughshod of them, but still believe the United States' motivations weren't primarily driven by imperial conquest or done out of material interests such as oil. (Instead I believe it was a result of foreign policy democracy promotion gone awry from neocons and converging interests by businesses/the military.)
Am I wrong? That Russia's invasion of Ukraine isn't comparable to the United States (still very wrong) invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan? And is Russia being punished unequivocally for something America themselves did?
> What is the difference between annexation, and invading, then installing a puppet government, then leaving? Morally there's almost no difference, that's for sure.
In all the wars I can remember the US doesn't install a puppet government, it makes a good-faith attempt to get a proper democracy up and running. That's the difference.
Probably the most obvious counter-example would be the US backing the coup against Diem in South Vietnam. Who wasn't exactly democratic, but he was much less of a puppet than the endless string of weaker military leaders who followed him.
But while I'm ordinarily prepared to spend all day criticizing the powers that rule the US, I'm not going to equate the US with Russia here. I do think there's an important moral difference, which is that:
1. The Iraq invasion was provoked (by Saddam's non-compliance on WMD inspections), which the world broadly acknowledged, even if it didn't agree with the solution.
and
2. The US put forth a strong effort to rally global support for its invasion.
I've listened to what Russians say about this war, and my biggest gripe is that even if everything they are saying is legitimate, that Ukraine basically terrorized the Donbas, Putin should have tried to justify his actions before the world. He should have gone before the UN. He should have issued an ultimatum. This seems like not just good moral sense, but good political sense. Instead he lied until the final moment and then invaded suddenly.
The introduction to the US Declaration of Independence contains the words "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation". And what I see here is that Putin, in his actions, did not show a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.
I think thread OP is thinking of the past 30 years and isn't thinking of things like deposing the Shah in Iran.
But maybe the past 30 years is a good place to start from since that's the end of the Cold War? I can get why Russia wouldn't want to start from that point in time, though.
A valid point, though the problem is I can't think of anyone else besides the US making a serious attempt to replace a sovereign government after the end of the Cold War, until perhaps now. But I guess that's the point.
I do think it makes sense to distinguish between helping bankroll a coup without troops present (a la Iran) and outright puppeting a country you have either invaded or been invited into (or in the case of the Warsaw Pact, "liberated" and never left). Which is to say, it's less objectionable to persuade someone by bribing him than by holding a gun to his head, and you have more control over the details in the latter situation.
Supporting coups exists along a spectrum, from doing all the legwork and paying all the bills, to just signaling to the coup plotters that you'll recognize them and send aid dollars their way if they succeed. From that point of view, there's little doubt the US contributed to Euromaidan somewhere along that spectrum. But that doesn't make invasion a proportionate response.
But even if it were, this would merely be a continuation of the status quo: Saddam Hussein wasn't exactly in office thanks to free and fair elections, nor were the Taliban.
>That means they literally force a country to have a president no one voted for.
They didn't vote for the previous leader either. But the intention was precisely that they would be able to have stuff like elections at all after regime change had occurred. And pro-western puppets are a hell of a lot different than pro-Russian puppets. Being a pro-western "puppet" is mostly stuff like don't fund terrorists, don't commit genocide etc. Pro-russian puppets are basically ruling their country for the benefit of Russia, like using the country as a launch pad for a war of aggression aimed at annexing a neighbor.
In my view the US may be considered to be one of the less hateful and oppressive hegemonic powers in history, but that's also a really low bar to clear.
The US spent the 90s up until the present completely unconstrained in the exercise of power, or their ability to justify it to themselves, and it seems to have warped the view of people inside the country to a remarkable degree. Remember: in an era where it had effectively won the war to be the sole power on earth, the United States never drew down its arms or restrained its ambitions. Instead it indulged in wars of choice across the planet that it would have excoriated others for making.
For instance; it's fascinating to me that the justification for invading a country that had literally nothing to do with the ostensible casus belli of the time (Iraq) was then justified on the basis of "well Saddam was a bad dude and we brought democracy to the Middle East so the world should really be thanking us for the suffering of our veterans". That's frankly insane, and would rightly be considered so if anyone else did it. Can you imagine if China invaded Israel and justified it on the basis of "well they weren't communist, so the real tragedy is that so many of our precious sons died to bring them into the light of socialist revolution."
Can you imagine any other power killing something like 1-3% of the population of a randomly-chosen country (by their own count, not that of an unbiased third party or the country that they attacked) and then walking away thinking they did them a favour? And then having most of the important bits of the world shrug their shoulders and mumble a bit because that country is too big and important to even tell off about it? We see even an inkling of that in other nations (cough Uyghurs cough) and rightfully become furious at the injustice of it all.
So yeah, the Russian invasion of the Ukraine is absolutely comparable to that of the US invading Iraq, and in a just world the US would have been punished in some way for it (let alone been allowed to walk away and consider itself the victim).
But international politics isn't the study of a just world, it's a study of power and (mostly unintended) consequences. And right now the US (and the West in general) has the power to punish Russia for something that should absolutely be punished in a peaceful, liberal, rules-based international order (your views may vary on how important any of the aforegoing are). Let's just hope that that power is used carefully, as events like this have a habit of leading to new conflicts later down the line.
Part of the reason this mattered to me, is I wanted to think of Russian sanctions as unequivocally good. After reading what you wrote, I think I was mistaken in believing democracy as an unalloyed good, that the means to achieve it change its overall ethics.
Firstly, is democracy a 'perfect' or 'least flawed' form of government? I think debatable. China's government has always been 'undemocratic' and they've been able to lift more people out of poverty than any other government in the history of humanity (albeit having inflicted upon the population many horrors before they got their act together in the '80s). Secondly, was that the actual intention for the invasion of Iraq - to introduce democracy - because there are plenty of other nondemocratic states out there? Thirdly and most importantly, does it matter if the intention was good if the strategy and execution was so flawed, and the results so horrendous? You know the saying, hell is paved with good intentions.
"Democracy" is no single thing. At best, it's an abstraction that approximately maps onto "uniformly devolved power". There are countless number of ways to devolve power, but most people seem to assume that elections are the only legitimate mechanism for devolution and therefore that democracy *can* be reduced to a single thing: the presence of ("free" and "fair") elections. Only in this distorted and oversimplified framework can you even pose the question "is democracy [i.e., elections] the 'least flawed' form of government?"--for the same reason that you can't rank order the complex numbers, namely, because the problem has too many dimensions to fit on a number line.
Here's a better definition of democracy that dodges all this semantic quibbling: democracy is whatever happens when ALL the people inside some border are armed to the teeth (with weapons that exist in the Squared Regime of Lanchester's Laws, i.e., with guns). Because physical, violent power increases quadratically with coalition size within such a border, it is impossible for a majority to be stably exploited (although it remains possible for the majority to stably exploit some minority population). I am aware of no other "system" that can even match such a guarantee.
The success of the Chinese regime is unstable. They are still coasting on the magnanimity and wisdom of their Philosopher King, Deng Shou Ping (and Xi is no Deng).
And the invasion of Iraq did not even try to "introduce democracy", at least in the way I have defined democracy. So that entire line of questioning is ill-posed.
I do agree that China's government is very effective and possibly even efficient at accomplishing their goals, which for the moment align pretty well with those of Chinese citizens, but do they really deserve credit for lifting the masses out of poverty when they essentially emerged from agrarianism (some might call it self imposed agrarianism), fresh faced and flush with laborers, into a world starving for cheap labor and ready to utilize them? In other words, "communist" China bootstrapped its success from the largess of the already existing capitalists. Not that capitalizing on the situation isn't deserving of praise.
I think you can believe in democracy as an unalloyed good, but if so then the US has a fairly terrible track record on that front as well.
I personally think that sanctions are ironically much better at propping up autocratic regimes than toppling them, as the pressure centralises economic power and makes the public angry at an outside force "ruining" their country rather than getting them to see their leaders as the problem.
On the other hand; if you want to topple a regime, the best way (traditionally, anyway) is to find the discontented elite wannabes that are sitting just under the upmost rungs of power and start feeding them resources. Unfortunately, this too tends to result in... well... unintended consequences.
Really, the best play for the West if they want to hurt the Russians (for some reason) would be to keep doing what they're doing now: feeding intel, money and arms into Ukraine and making financial life hard for Russian elites. Even better, they should be fast-tracking ways to wean themselves off of Russian gas.
Nuclear power might be a good way to — particularly for Germany — to extricate themselves from Russian oil dependency.
And yeah, sanctions don't have the most sterling track records (they have a tendency to fail).
Ultimately I just don't want to see Russia undermine the ideals of international law, to embolden other countries to follow suit. As bad as the United States actions were, it'd be even more catastrophic to see a cresendo effect occur and invading countries is normalized.
Thankfully, I think the strong condemnation the world over might have forestalled that possibility. (At least I hope so.) Still I wish we were in a better position to criticize and practiced what we preached.
If it's any consolation, the moment of uni-polar madness seems to be fading, and the US is again closer to being a first power among equals. I just wish that it could have gotten there on the back of a peaceful overseeing of world trade, and a well-earned transition away from a permanent war footing, instead of the role it did historically take.
Goodness knows that it did less in the way of imperial horror than Europe did in it's time - but again, that's a bar so low that it's scraping the bottom of the sea floor.
Well...imagine if Germany actually had nuclear weapons. Maybe the German foreign policy would be quite a bit more assertive then...on the other hand, France isn't that assertive either...
> I think you can believe in democracy as an unalloyed good, but if so then the US has a fairly terrible track record on that front as well
I don't think that's fair. In the time that the US has existed, the world has gone from three-ish democracies to about a hundred, and the US played a role in pushing a lot of those down that pathway in one way or another.
I agree that sanctions historically are a poor means of toppling autocratic regimes. However, the aim here does not appear to be "overthrow Putin" but "make it increasingly difficult to continue the war effort in Ukraine"
I dont know that we have a lot of models for how well sanctions work for that purpose.
Given the Russian army has clearly underperformed relative to expectations and has suffered from logistical issues, it may turn out sanctions will indeed hinder its operational efficiency.
Like, in theory, Putin could raly and mobilize even more military force against Ukraine. When your economic system is barely functioing, that kind f mobilization and force projection may become much more difficult.
Democracy is an unalloyed good the way a hammer is. It may be the best tool for the job, but the goal is rarely to use a hammer, it's to get the *job done*.
A democratic republic was set up in the US, not because of its inherent Goodness, but as a way to ensure liberty. And much as was warned of in-advance, the people would rather vote for Bread and Circuses than maintain liberty.
That wasn't actually the reason we went to war with Iraq in the 2000s, which was, more properly considered, something like "Iraq was violating the terms of the cease-fire we had negotiated through the UN, and France, which was buying oil at under-market-prices in violation of UN trade agreements from Iraq, was using its security veto to prevent the UN from enforcing any stricter international responses against Iraq for violating the ceasefire".
Well, certainly it is much better to be a neighbour country of the US than of Russia (and probably China)…I mean, Canada didn't join the Iraq War, but the US didn't invade Canada or anything...
> Remember: in an era where it had effectively won the war to be the sole power on earth, the United States never drew down its arms or restrained its ambitions. Instead it indulged in wars of choice across the planet that it would have excoriated others for making
Okay, and in a time of such power that they could have annexed virtually any sq metre of earth that they wanted, they didn't. Would ANY meaningful non-western power have done the same
>"well Saddam was a bad dude and we brought democracy to the Middle East so the world should really be thanking us for the suffering of our veterans"
That wasn't the justification at all. Are you really this ignorant or are you being dishonest?
First of all, we need to stop using past wrongs (especially wrongs between unrelated parties) to in any way, shape , or form, attempt to diminish the wrongs of the present.
If you want to haul Bush Jr to the Hague you can hold that position and still universally denounce Putin and his war.
In fact, to hold that position and not want to do everything possible to stop Putin seems incredibly hypocritical.
An honest compare and contrast of Iraq II vs Ukraine can be had, but only after the starting point of unequivocal condemnation and demand for cessation of all violence today in Ukraine.
Not within living memory, no, but the US annexed a big chunk of Mexico in 1848, Hawaii in 1898, the Phillipines in 1899, and the creation of the Canal Zone in 1903 was pretty shady from a pure respect of sovereignty point of view.
But I suspect from Putin's point of view, the direct comparison would be to the American Civil War: Eleven states seceded by all appearances fair and square from the Union, and unmistakably strongly and sincerely (given e.g. the 11,000 boys in gray who fed the carrion birds at Shiloh) wished to form an independent country, and yet the (remaining) United States did not let them -- indeed, invaded their newborn country, burned its buildings to the ground, and slaughtered several hundred thousand very sincere enthusiasts for Confederate independence.
What would President Lincoln have thought if the Powers of Europe in 1861 had decided that he was being a rat bastard for not allowing the South to peacefully leave? If the Royal Navy, for example, had imposed a "no sail" zone off the coast of the southern States to nix any Union blockade of Southern ports? I would guess that's how Putin sees it, because he seems to genuinely feel like Ukraine is inherently part of a Union as "indissoluble" as the North decided our Union was in 1861.
I'm actually not sure how much anyone outside of the US thinks about the US Civil War. Where I come from it's seen as this weird American obsession (in much the same way that we have our own weird historical obsessions), but nobody uses it as a point of reference for anything.
Has Putin mentioned historical parallels there? I'd be genuinely interested in if/how the Russians incorporate the US Civil War into their own understanding of history.
How many people nowadays remember/know that the US actually deployed troops to support the "white" Russians during the Russian civil war between the whites and the Bolsheviks?
Not many. I daresay many Americans don't even learn there *was* a Russian Civil War, or that the Bolsheviks did not *begin* the Revolution. Russia just kind of jumps from Tsarist to Communist in October of 1917 without any kind of important transitional events.
I mean...unless you were a big fan of "Doctor Zhivago" (either the book or the justifiably famous David Lean film).
Really? That's...odd. I don't think you can understand the United States without understanding the Civil War. It would be like trying to understand France without understanding the French Revolution, or Germany without understanding the Thirty Years War. It's a pivotal moment, where we switch from Jeffersonian agrarian republic to superpower-in-waiting.
It's also the most important exception to the American principle of self-determination: we're all for it, except...under some circumstances, and that "except" has been a major challenge for anyone else trying to understand American foreign policy since 1890 or so. If the Germans had understood it better at Paris Peace Conference in 1919, or Ho Chi Minh had understood it better after Dien Bien Phu, history might've been at least a bit different. Oddly enough, I get the feeling that the Taiwanese understand it very well, and have been very skilled at keeping on the right side of it.
I have no idea if Putin has mentioned any such historical parallel. I'd be a little surprised, reaching all the way back to 19th century history to make arguments is sort of a nerdy thing to do, and isn't his self-image more cowboy than nerd?
Nobody understands the United States, or France, or Germany. Hell, I don't understand the block I live on; half the people that live on it are people I wouldn't even recognize, much less be able to tell you what their marital conflicts are.
Somehow US isn't a symbolic center of Russian Thought Empire. You might be surprised but there is no such thing as American Revolution in Russian school curriculum, only American Struggle for Independence.
Note- Actually, South Carolina seceded. It wasn't until Federal troops refused to abandon Fort Sumter, which lead to direct combat between the South Carolina Militia and the US armed forces, that the other states seceeded. Granted those states didnt recognize the election of Lincoln, but they didnt all secede simultaneously- it was the action at Fort Sumter which showed them the US would not acknowledge the right of succession which lead to them actually seceeding.
> never annexed (at least within recent memory) a country
Iraq and Afghanistan technically may not be annexations, but I do not really see a point in such distinctions.
> And is Russia being punished unequivocally for something America themselves did?
Even if it is - so what? It is nice to start somewhere and keep raising our standards.
Slavery is not officially allowed anywhere (or at least everyone pretends that it is not slavery), would be nice to do the same with invasions that are blatant power grabs.
that "pretends" distinction seems moot at times, i.e. the uighurs for example, who everyone realizes are being used as an industrial slave labor force- those that havent been outright killed
You are making assumptions: USA invaded Iraq clearly for its oil, and because Saddam Hussein threatened to sell its oil in euros, which undermines the firm grip USA has in the petrodollar system.
What USA did is worse, Hussein allowed inspectors to check that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so he gave absolutely no excuse for USA to invade, and they did it anyway. Zelenskyy didn't give anything to Russia, so he gave all the excuses.
I personally only got about 100 bbl or so, so I feel totally ripped off. Plus the stuff is a real pain to store, and I worry about the fire hazard a little.
Yes, that's true. Certainly in its "neighbourhood", the US did not...I mean, even Cuba has not been annexed by the US, though I am sure if the US had overthrown the regime in the 90s there, the Russians or Chinese would not have intervened.
Why bother? All the Cubans we want have already moved to Florida.
That's actually the US secret, honestly. We just get all the best people from elsewhere to move here and become Americans, and then we don't need to annex anything.
Cheaper cigars and beachfront property. More widely available Cuban cuisine. Godfather Part II has a somewhat more realistic ending. The benefits are innumerable, really.
I mean, any 2 things can be compared, but I'd argue more justification for US v. Iraq and US v. Afghanistan than there is for RU v. Ukraine (though to be clear, Afghanistan is the only one I'd argue was actually justified - my issue with that one is execution, not the decision to go in).
If you're looking for more on US imperial history, I'd recommend "How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States." I'd still say that as great powers go we rate better than most in terms of conquests from a historic perspective, but we also do have our skeletons (the West, Puerto Rico, the Phillipines, Cuba, etc). It's also true that by the time we really hit great power status, the *methods* of global dominance had changed a lot, so its hard (and... kinda pointless?) to try to apples-to-apples our "sins" with those of others.
This war is much more personal for me. Not personally involved but people all around me who have lost property in Ukraine, who are trying to get out their relatives from war zones etc.
I understand Scott's concern about WW3 but he also doesn't realize how the world has changed since then. Russia is not the same as the USSR (speaking about favours). Ukraine is as much a former USSR than Russia. This war is really not about NATO but about racism (this should be the correct term) at the highest level. Putin simply hates Ukrainians for introducing impurities to his Russian world.
I don't think that Putin needs to save a face. I read Russians on vk.com, some of them people who are my good acquaintances I have known for years are now completely brainwashed by accepting everything that Putin tells them. They will not dishonour him even if loses the war. It may only increase their conviction that the west and not Putin is evil.
I'm not sure what change you think is relevant. Russia still has nukes; a war between Russia and NATO could escalate into nuclear war.
Putin talks about race to his base and about NATO expansionism to the rest of the world; I don't know if one is the reality and the other is propaganda, or if they both contribute to his worldview.
NATO is a defensive treaty. Its not credible that NATO expansion threatens Russia. Unless Russia's goals are to expand and incorporate territories around them.
Are you suggesting a conspiracy underlying NATO that means that when one country chooses to attack, all countries must attack? If a true conspiracy was underfoot - why announce any sort of alliance at all?
It doesn't work this way. NATO is existential threat to Russia, and this is how it works since first wave of extention. Read or listen to John Mearsheimer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U87J7I7Om_4
I don't see how anyone could think NATO is an existential threat to Russia. Nobody is the least bit interested in actually invading Russia.
Do Russians honestly think that the West is champing at the bit to invade their cold dreary wasteland? I think we'd all much rather go back to ignoring the fact that it exists, like Mongolia or Kazakhstan.
Well, they better hurry up then. NATO was formed in 1949. That's 73 years and counting of being an existential "threat" without ever a single soldier setting foot on Russian soil, nor a bullet being fired eastward. What in heck are they *waiting* for, do you suppose?
So… I listened to the video you posted here, and the thing it is totally devoid of is any explanation of *why* expansion of NATO is “an existential threat to Russia.” He just quotes that the Russians have been *saying* that they view NATO as an existential threat and taking that assertion at face value. And I don’t think that assertion holds up to scrutiny.
Let’s take a parallel hypothetical – a mutual defense alliance between China and Mexico where each agrees to defend the other if attacked. Hell, let's even say that China starts providing non-nuclear arms to Mexico and training its military in their use.
Is the US global position made less secure by that? Absolutely.
Would the US object to such an arrangement? Of course. Economic sanctions probably already in the mail.
But is the *very existence* of the United States in danger because of that arrangement? That sounds more like a bellicose diplomatic hyperbole. I mean, I'm sure we'd *say* it, but I don't believe it one bit as an accurate threat appraisal.
And does the mere threat of such an alliance justify invading Mexico to annex parts of it, create satellite states, and/or initiate a regime change at gun point? Come on now.
It seems like (a) great powers want spheres of influence and are wont to hyperbolize the "threat" to themselves in order to recast aggressive responses to people in that sphere of influence behaving in ways contrary to the great powers' interest, and (b) certain people are just taking the Russian exaggeration on expansion of NATO as an "existential threat" at face value - which is useful for Russia but doesn't seem to me to be accurate to the actual threat level.
I mean, what number would you really put the delta on the chances of Russia *ceasing to exist* between (a) a fact pattern where Ukraine is in NATO, and (b) a fact pattern where Ukraine is not in NATO?
What do you think the change would be in the actual percent chance that NATO countries would invade Russia, risking a nuclear holocaust, through a NATO-member Ukraine?
I'm sure that delta is nonzero, but I'd hardly even call it measurable. If Russian doesn't want countries to join NATO, maybe it should stop making its neighbors feel threatened enough to want to join NATO.
It's only existential because that's the narrative the Russian regime wants to believe in...if Russia agreed to get rid of its Nukes, then NATO would not have to be so belligerent towards Russia...
1. "Threat" refers to capability, not intent, and NATO's capabilities are considerable.
2. Contextually, it matters less what NATO's real intentions are, vs what Putin and/or other Russian leadership believe they are, or might be. If the Cold War was still going strong and somehow Mexico joined the Warsaw Pact, would it be unreasonable for the US to get nervous even if it was "only a defensive alliance"?
3. Even assuming a defense-only treaty, that still leaves the possibility of an (even accidental) conflict unexpectedly escalating from a single member state to all of NATO. Isn't that sort of thing how World War I started?
If you accept that 3 point framework, though, it can justify pretty much any act of aggression, in response to pretty much any interstate cooperation not involving you.
“Threat refers to capability, and US/Canada/Mexico capabilities are considerable”
“Contextually, it matters less what their real intensions are, vs what the CCCP believes them to be”
“Even assuming an economic-only treaty, that still leaves open the possibility of an (even accidental) conflict unexpectedly escalating from a single member state to pull in all 3 nations given their aligned interests”
“And that’s why the US/Canada/Mexico should have known better then to form NAFTA. The Chinese invasion of Tijuana really should have been expected.”
It’s basically the worst interpretation of “stand your ground” laws, only applied to state actors with standing armies and atomic arsenals. The international community can and should expect it’s members to react *proportionally* to the *reasonable* perception of the threats they face, not just take vague invocations of grave danger at face value. And when nations overreact I think it’s cause for their peers to reprimand and sanction them, not to buy into some gaslighting “you made me do this” view of the universe the aggressor may spout.
And I think part of applying that analysis to the Ukraine situation is asking the reasonable question “just how threatened, actually, is Russia if Ukraine were to join NATO? What are the actual odds that NATO attacks Russia, and how much do they increase if Ukraine joins?”
It seems to me that if you consider that question, the answers fall somewhere between zero and exceedingly little. I mean, what are the odds that the US or another NATO member would *want* dance with nuclear fire by attacking Russia? And then even if they did what are the odds that other members of the alliance would want to go along with it? And with the US nuclear capabilities being what they are, how much incrementally worse does Ukraine make things?
I think if you consider how small all those numbers are, it makes it clear that this isn't about Russia defending itself against any kind of existential threat posed by NATO or Ukraine in NATO. Russia doesn't have to go along with that analysis, but it doesn't mean we have to just agree that they're acting reasonably here or that "NATO made them do it."
Thank you. The people saying "lol it's only defensive therefore your argument is invalid" were being way too trite, but you put in the work to show it.
It is absolutely credible that Putin (and many other Russians) believe that NATO expansion threatens Russia. And if the ICBMs start flying, "but the people who launched them were *objectively wrong about facts*!" is not going to matter one bit. If you want to convince people with ICBMs not to launch them, you have to address their perceptions, not some underlying reality they mistakenly disbelieve.
I dare call it "NPC problem". Westerners tend to believe they are the only Player Characters on Earth, while others are Non Player Characters, driven by underlying game rules.
I know where are you coming and I totally agree with you on the possible dangers. I also think that NATO instead of providing no-fly zone, tries to provide tools for Ukrainians to eliminate Russian air superiority.
The issue I see here is that no one can see Ukraine clearly winning and it will lead to prolonged resistance which will cause more and more destruction and deaths both civilian and military. We see that accepting Russian terms as satisfactory outcome.
Unfortunately it is not so. Ukraine is a very poor and failed post-Soviet country that has not been able to make much progress over many years. Remaining neutral as it is will only make its situation worse. Will make it even more vulnerable to further Russian provocations. From Russia's point of view Belarus is a neutral country and they want to see Ukraine in the same status. The war from Ukraine's point of view is exactly about not becoming like Belarus. Putin asking them to remain neutral actually means for Ukraine to capitulate. I don't believe they will ever agree to this and entertaining this idea actually means boosting Putin.
We need to prove Putin wrong. Cut off the gas to Europe if necessary economically. It will be terrible but at least it won't be a kinetic war because Putin himself threatened to do the same (or rather intimidated or called the west bluff).
I am afraid that there is a limit on discomfort that Americans and Western Europeans are willing to endure for Ukraine, and it is much much lower than "going to war with Russia". If there are sufficiently severe economic disruptions, calls will grow to throw Ukraine under the bus and agree with Belarus-like solution.
So I agree with Scott - best course for action for Ukrainian leadership seems to me to pursue similar status as Austria (imho better analogy than oft cited Finland and definitely not Belarus). No foreign troops on their territory, internationally guaranteed neutrality, not in NATO, but in EU.
US already announced that they will stop buying oil from Russia (it was a single digit percentage anyway). For the EU it is harder but nevertheless there are plans to greatly reduce its dependence on Russia's gas. (e.g., https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/08/energy/gas-russia-europe/index.html, Germany entertains the idea to keep old nuclear power stations operative etc.)
Many said that the west will never cut off Russia from SWIFT and they did. Not fully because of necessity to buy gas but with less dependence on Russian gas, even full ban is not out of cards later.
Ukraine cannot be Austria because Austria is already in Europe – culturally, geographically, economically. Ukraine needs to develop first.
In fact, key Russian institutions like Sberbank are still in SWIFT, although perhaps they will be cut off later.
But my main point is that if sanctions will prove visibly economically disruptive for the West, it will be difficult to sustain them after the initial shock will wear off. And prices of gasoline in EU right know are spiking, although there is no EU oil embargo (yet?), very visible reminder of the costs of sanctions policy to voters.
Re Austria, it was granted neutrality in 1955. I think that it was still quite poor country at that time, somewhat like Ukraine now. But I have not looked at any statistics, so perhaps that is wrong.
If the war does not end soon, the shock will be long lasting. For Eastern Europe Ukraine is not some country on the other side of the globe, it is right there with Ukrainian refugees arriving and constant reminder that it could be us.
The only difficult country is Germany. We will see what happens but Germany politicians supporting Russia is a disgrace.
> No foreign troops on their territory, internationally guaranteed neutrality, not in NATO, but in EU.
That matches my total-amateur thoughts. Basic goal is that Ukraine is safe from future Russian invasion (EU is also a defensive pact) but can't support NATO action against Russia. Russia can save face by claiming this is all they really wanted anyway.
So the line in the sand you're implying is "Russia cannot attack a NATO member". What about the rest? Putin has showed he's willing to conquer basically anything he deems conquerable, so we'll just do the same (and we gave him no reason to believe otherwise) when he'll invade Moldavia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan? And after all that, he or his successor, aggrandized by all his successes, won't he be reinforced in his belief that NATO is easily scared by nuclear threat, and so try his hand at some ex-russian possession?
You're left hoping Russia will lose or decline enough in the meantime.
Even if you think nuclear war is such a big concern that suppresses everything else, the only right question isn't just asking what is p(nuclear war | NATO in Ukraine), but comparing it to p(nuclear war | NOT NATO in Ukraine), and at least to me it's not obvious at all how the calculation resolves.
Russia cannot attack a NATO member, without going to war with NATO. Russia cannot attack anyone *else*, without NATO (or at least the US) providing arms and intelligence to whoever they are attacking. And vice versa, mostly. These rules have been long established and understood, and we can be reasonably confident that Russia isn't planning to go to war with NATO just because NATO sends arms to Ukraine.
And, yes, predictably he'll go to war with Moldova, Georgia, etc, etc, if he thinks it to his advantage. If we want to stop that, we need to either invite those countries to join NATO, or we need to convince Russia that it can at best win bloody expensive pyrrhic victories against countries that are being armed by NATO. The Ukrainians seem quite willing to help us out with Plan B.
Agree with everything. Just wanted to note a couple of things.
If Russia attacks a (non-nuclear) NATO member, some members may defect, but basically the only important thing is that US doesn't, to which I give very low probability.
In this invasion Russia miscalculated badly the level of resistance Ukrainians would oppose, so they invested accordingly a relatively weak force. They may adapt. It may look counter-intuitive, but your reasoning (with which I agree) implies that the worse Ukraine loses, the better a direct intervention becomes.
Ukraine is a much harder bone to chew then other countries Russia may decide to invade.
If you think its a lie, quote the parts you disagree with and provide counter evidence. Don't just assert another user is a liar. I don't know if NoPie is correct or not, but sneering and name calling makes me think you don't have any facts or data to bring to the table.
>>This war is really not about NATO but about racism (this should be the correct term) at the highest level. Putin simply hates Ukrainians for introducing impurities to his Russian world.
You know, this is a kind of "Jews kill Christian infants to make matzo" nonsence, so inconsievable that I can't even think for the counter-argument, except "No, Putin doesn't hate Ukrainians at all"
If you're going to persist in sneering at him, I'm not sure why you're doing it as a reply to me.
I'm letting you know I would prefer you have a conversation with him instead of just assuming everyone agrees with you. I'm not sure if there is a racism component in the Russian invasion, and would have been interested in seeing it refuted with evidence instead of scoffing. If you can't think of a counter argument, I would have preferred you let me forgotten about you rather than continue to reply with the thing I'd like to see less of.
Look. I reported your comment for moderation, which is my responsibility as a community member. I probably won't reply to you further unless your future comments add more value than they have so far.
Russian armies will leave Ukraine, but Putin will tell his subjects that he actually won the war, and the rest of the world promises not to contradict him publicly. Everyone wins!
In fact, it is the UN usage and most precise to describe generally when one group of people hate another group for some trivial difference, such as skin colour or ethnicity.
A good tactical summary and analysis of the first few days of the invasion, and the assumptions Russia seemed to have. I'm linking to 24 minutes in when Michael Kofman begins speaking:
1- Ukraine signed an agreement with Russia, USA and (I think) UK back in the day that says in exchange for indefinite respect to their borders and sovereignty they give up their nukes that carried over from USSR. Back then they were like 3rd biggest nuclear power. Russia’s not honoring that and West’s not defending that by not putting boots on the ground shows to all middle powers that are anxious about their sovereignty to Just Go For Nukes. It shows how correct it is for Iran and North Korea to try to obtain nukes and it shows it’s their rightful right. Also if some other countries like South Korea, Australia, Turkey, Poland should obtain them as well. Basically if you can afford it and there’s a real threat to your sovereignty nukes are the most cost effective way of protecting yourself since when you’re the one with nukes everybody suddenly starts to walk on eggshells around you.
2- The peace proposal Russia made (if I’m not mistaken) includes the demilitarization of Ukraine which means they’ll just annex it altogether in a couple of years. That’s unacceptable.
3- Russia will not and cannot counter a if you fly we’ll shoot down zone with strategic nukes because it’s a losing game for them. West isn’t afraid of that but using it as an excuse so they don’t fight against a real Air Force. West hasn’t once fought against a serious country with a serious Air Force since WW2. I’m not saying they’re afraid of losing because they’ll handily win. I’m saying they’re afraid of seemingly being invincible. This airplane shot down 100 without getting shot down once, and this other one 200 with getting shot down only twice or whatever. Well it was against Serbia and Iraq and Yemen and Syria and whatnot. West is afraid of tarnishing their invincible reputation. Turkey is the only NATO country to have fired a shot in anger against a Russian airplane. I would’ve liked to see USA to have a go at it but the risk of some expensive programs losing some face is more important to them than showing to everyone going non-nuclear / not going nuclear is a viable thing to do. One doesn’t need to base squadrons in Ukraine to achieve this, range from bases in Poland etc is enough. Shoot BVR missiles from afar. Fly AWACS planes on NATO soil they’ll see far enough to give radar support. Do other stuff that me as a civilian cannot think of. But it’s all risking the reputation of very expensive programs that made a lot of people Very Important so they cannot do it. Turkey is the only NATO member have fired a shot in anger against a Russian airplane. I would’ve liked to see USA to have a go at it but the risk of some expensive programs losing some face is more important to them than showing to everyone going non-nuclear / not going nuclear is a viable thing to do. One doesn’t need to base squadrons in Ukraine to achieve this, range from bases in Poland etc is enough. Shoot BVR missiles from afar. Fly AWACS planes on NATO soil they’ll see far enough to give radar support. Do other stuff that me as a civilian cannot think of. But it’s all risking the reputation of very expensive programs that made a lot of people Very Important so they cannot do it.
Unless I am mistaken you have left out part of the story on the Ukraine Russia deal. In particular, Ukraine made a bunch of additional promises in that deal which they have arguably not honoured. My understanding is that they promised to steer clear of NATO. Thus Russia will argue their promise not to invade is void.
The promise Ukraine made was to ratify START and join the NPT, and give up their nuclear weapons, which they did. The text of the Budapest Memorandum is available here:
For what it's worth, Wikipedia asserts that Putin's point of view is that in view of the 2014 Maidan Revolution, the "Ukraine" of the Budapent Memorandum ceased to exist, and a brand new "Ukraine" was born -- one with which Russia had signed no agreements.
Okay, I stand very much corrected, my memory must have been faulty. I had thought Putin's pretexts here were a little stronger than that, but this does seem pretty close to a straight forward breach of the agreement with only a paper thin defence.
I might know the agreement wrongly, or misunderstand recent developments but Ukraine didn’t apply or get invited to NATO to void that, a Finland-like arrangement should’ve worked but Putin/Russian-Collective-Unconscious sees Russia as the patron of all East Slavs if not all Slavs.
So your numbering system is... esoteric and redundant, and makes it hard to comment on your points. Regardless:
1-1 and 2-1: The US already taught the world this lesson via Libya and North Korea. I don't think that proving the rule by glassing most of Europe and big chunks of North America is going to un-teach them.
1-2 and 2-2: Agreed, but that's bargaining for you. Presumably it's intended to get watered down to "Ukraine can have an army so long as it's not a strategic threat and no NATO/UN boots touch the ground".
1-3 and 2-3: NATO is already doing the AWACS trick, which is part of the reason that the Ukrainians have been doing as well as they have. They're already bending the rules as far as it is possible to bend them without just saying "fuck it" and putting aircraft or SAMs up. Which, again, the Russians can only respond to by trying to spike NATO assets or bomb NATO bases. This is a paved path to "limited", "tactical" thermonuclear war.
Possible quibble (hard to quickly find definitive clarification): I doubt the Russian tactical nukes are fusion based, so they'd be "merely" nuclear, not thermonuclear.
They're very likely fusion-boosted. You get a lot more bang for the mass, which is pretty important for a small warhead. Plus by dialing in how much D/T gas you inject, you can alter the yield in the field, which is quite handy -- although I do not know if the Russians are interested in such frills.
From memory the Soviets put about as much work into miniaturising boosted fission devices as the US did, and has a similarly gnarly arsenal of nuclear surprises in that regard (including backpack nukes, dial-a-yield bombs, nuclear artillery, tactical rockets and so on). Russia, like the US, also has a doctrine which allows for "limited" tactical nuclear warfare - although goodness knows if they've trained for it recently.
Oh my god I’m sorry I wrote the comment in between sleeps and edited on my phone so I must’ve copied double or so. I think I corrected it now.
1- There still needs to be a line in the sand to make a case to countries that are nuclear or want to go nuclear. Or they should stop getting angry to Iran, NK or hypothetical others that want to be sure they’re not the next Ukraine or Libya.
2- I agree if Russia agrees but I feel like they just offered something unacceptable so they go on with invasion but claim they sued for peace and west is the aggressor.
3- that’s a good thing if we’re already doing that but I’m not sure if that’ll be enough. My point was, even if there’s no escalation and NATO manages a no fly zone, albeit with an expected amount of lost aircraft USAF/NATO/Military-Industrial-Complex will consider itself lost. The air of invincibility of the material and the organization will be irreversibly lost. I believe this is why USA/NATO decides against a no fly zone rather than risk of escalation.
1 - Again, too late. The Iraqis getting smart-bombed even as they protested the ridiculous yellow-cake allegations should have been a warning. The Iranians still getting bombed every now and then (and their generals getting droned) was incentive. And Gaddafi getting sat on a bayonet was proof. The US let this cat out of the bag, and trying to slap Russia over broken promises to Ukraine won't put it back in. If I was in charge of a country, I would at least be looking at my options for setting up a 5-year run to nuclear capability almost regardless of my relationship with the rest of the world.
2- That's definitely part of it. The unfulfillable ultimatum has a long and proud history of allowing cads to start wars (especially world wars).
3 - I disagree, in as much as "our equipment = the best" didn't prevent the US (and about 100 other countries) from selling all their best stuff to the Saudis, who then piss it away on failing to bomb their neighbour into submission.
On another note, I think that AWACs shenanigans and information sharing from NATO intelligence assets do highlight just how awful the Russians and Chinese are as allies. I mean, if NATO can do all of this for the Ukrainians, then why hell can't Iran get advance warning and untouchable radar support the next time Israel decides to zap one of their facilities or conduct a pre-emptive decapitation strike?
The Russians and Chinese have proven themselves to be the worst, most transactional sort of countries to deal with, and as a result I think a lot of other nations are souring on them as strategic partners even where their interests would otherwise align.
1- You have a point there, and the last sentence is exactly my sentiments. Maybe even less than 5 years, more like Japan "being one screwdriver's turn" from the bomb.
3- I partly agree, I think nobody in their right minds look at Saudis and say oh those F15s are crap, they say Saudi Air Force as an organization is crap. Israeli Air Force or USAF has that air of invincibility to them.
About the other note, I agree. My great-grandmother who had to flee from Crimea from Russians a century or so ago used to say in Tatar "Game of Rus is egregious, if they fart that lances your skull". Transactional to deal with and ruthless.
> Russia’s not honoring that and West’s not defending that by not putting boots on the ground shows to all middle powers that are anxious about their sovereignty to Just Go For Nukes.
While I agree with the indirect consequences, there is a caveat here that people keep getting wrong about this. The Budapest Memorandum was about respecting Ukraine's sovereignty and not invading/annexing it, which the west followed and Russia did not. The west was never agreeing to put its own troops to defend Ukraine from whatever threat like a NATO agreement would, it was about not invading it.
My point was about the indirect consequences, the agreement doesn't put any responsibility on West to protect Ukraine, but not doing so gives a wrong message to future countries that could've signed a similar agreement.
Re: 1. You are referring to the Budapest Memorandum, which, among other things, included provisions that the US would not sanction Ukraine or Byelorus after they gave up the nuclear weapons on their territory.
The US had long claimed the memorandum to be non-binding whent hey wanted to sanction Byelorus.
There's the principle of proportional reaction or something, Russia could've sanctioned Ukraine all they wanted but they instead started an invasion it's not comparable. Being a nuclear country or not isn't a factor in getting sanctioned but it's a factor in getting invaded.
It's one of the things fascinating me about this. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say the fact Zelenskyy knows how to handle Narrative is why his country is not currently Belarus 2.
You might add to your definition of 'Pax Americana': Print a few billion dollars as an indirect tax on all Americans; Resettle the victims to Arkansas.
I'm really shocked that you are still promoting Anatoly Karlin on this blog. He has consistently shown that he believes Russian state media which for one, is denying that there is clearly a war going on, alongside a bunch of other easily verifiable lies. I think that as a popular blogger, you have a little bit more of an obligation than saying that something may be Russian propaganda, but it is funny nonetheless. Is there anything really funny about what Russia is doing in Ukraine? I would hope not, based on my judgement of your character from reading the blog. I really think you should not promote him in the future.
On his blog, he also actively supports rhetoric that the war is the West's fault and that "All the blood is on their hands." NATO is a defensive treaty. Russia's claims that Ukraine joining would result in a security threat for them is not credible. I'm not for active censorship - but there is also a point where a source becomes untrustworthy, and the responsible thing to do is to not promote that source. I think Anatoly has crossed that line.
Is the tweet linked important in any way to "understanding how the enemy is thinking"? Does it identify key thought processes that authority figures on the other side may be having that help us outmaneuver them (or hopefully beat them)? I don't see how this tweet does that. And in the previous post Anatoly was promoted as getting a "B-" in predictions. That may lead to people to believe - "hey, this guy is kinda smart, I wonder what else he has to say." More generally, when I say "promoting" - I also mean signal boosting. Which just a neutral mention is enough to do that.
Also, I don't believe Karlin believes Russian state media. It would be mere ignorance. Much worse: I believe he is an opportunist who chooses which Russian TV media claims are useful to propagate.
True, its hard to read his true intentions. He tweeted that he believed the Russian claims of casualties (which is transparently ridiculously since they admitted no casualties the first few days). I think that he is a source/analyst that should be given no consideration (despite how he put predictions in % form)
I recall the free speech maximalist defense fielded during the NYT debacle was like this: to debate possibly uncouth opinions that might have some truth in them, one must be able the present the opposing view and engage with people who defend such opinions.
Which is all fine and reasonable.
So (1) where exactly is this debate about Karlin's views found on this blog? (2) And why won't we then debate Karlin's views? I observe only one party willing to present arguments about Karlin's opinion and just pushback against presenting such arguments: "giving us a Russian Nationalist's pointy of view" (Jack Wlson), " New York Times to come out against Slate Star Codex" (you).
This isn't about (de)platforming Karlin. His platforms for speech seem to be mainly Twitter and Substack. Note that I am not advocating that he be removed from either of those. That is what deplatforming would be, and in general I am not a fan of it. (probably only in favor when it would present a clear and present danger etc etc. Usual free speech stuff). But just because I agree its important for everyone has the ability to shout their thoughts into the internet, does not mean that it is important for everyone to engage.
Would the opinion be the same if the source was a notable anti-vaxxer that predicted some aspect of corona, was given a B- and then their anti-vaxxer meme was shared with the same disclaimer: "probably anti-vaxxer propaganda, but funny anyway"?
I would not be upset if Scott was talking about Anatoly with some sort of criticism. But in fact, he is getting mentioned with neutral-positive sentiment. First as a credible predictor, and second as a funny guy.
But perhaps the above is not relevant to your comment. My main point is that this is not about (de)platforming, which has to do with removing or providing platforms on which opinions can be shared. Not mentioning someone is not deplatforming them. And mentioning someone is not platforming them.
It's funny that on nearly every article Scott posts there are these commenters who claim to be shocked when Scott laughs at something the NYT set says is Not Funny or cites a source the NYT set says is Not Credible or condemns the latest cancellation campaign. I can't think of any other blog where this is the case. Many have commenters who disagree with the blogger, but they don't do this "OMG I'm shocked you don't share my worldview" thing.
What is the NYT set? Do you mean people that read the New York Times? I don't often read it, but I'm thinking you are implying something culturally. What that is, I'm not sure because you also seem to throw in terms like "Not Funny" and "Not Credible" that are also undefined - but I assume they have a meaning to you.
I plenty of times have read something that Scott writes that I don't agree with. We certainly don't have the same exact worldview, but I find good insights in his writing reliably - which is why I read it.
I find this particular instance to cause me to question whether or not Scott and I would disagree on something more fundamental. Or if the source is not being vetted as heavily as I would believe. If you are going to disagree with me, then fine. But if you want to discuss it you can address what I actually said, rather than some attempt to lump me in with a "NYT set" (which I can't really argue against because its a term you made up). You suggest that you can interpolate all of my other views (such as being in favor of cancellation campaigns) and therefore condemn me on that. In fact, I don't agree with many cancellations that have occurred, and am not trying to cancel anyone here.
I am not part of a hivemind. And I don't appreciate you ignoring my argument in this specific case in favor of insinuating that. If you actually don't value honest freedom of discussion and disagreement then why engage at all?
As to whether the West should sanction Russia, I'm undecided. I strongly suspect that come the 2022 elections all the realistic candidates I'll have the chance to vote for will be saying the same thing.
Sigh - this response isn't really worth my time but here we go:
1) The argument is not about whether it is funny or not, and if you think it is, then you have rather missed my main point.
2) Fantastic analysis here, really excellent. You really go above and beyond to contribute to the discussion here.
3) I never claimed that he repeats the Kremlin lines in all cases.
I have no interest in continuing a discussion with someone who isn't sure whether bombing civilians and committing war crimes is worth sanctioning a country for in order to show disapproval.
God forbid. This calls for nerves of steel, and regardless of any other qualities unfortunately Trump is a bit of a flake, can't keep his eye on the ball for very long before he spots a squirrel. Must be all that reality TV, you only need to focus for a maximum of 13 minutes between commercial breaks.
I have no idea who to recommend, though, I might have said Mitt Romney, who at least is intelligent, has a clear-eyed view, and steady nerves, but the man *cannot* connect with people to save his life, and that's a sine qua non. Nobody else on the American political stage seems to have very much bottom when it comes to war 'n' peace. We could hire Bibi Netanyahu as a consultant, maybe.
John Kerry, perhaps. Similar issues to Romney, but can probably connect to the people who matter. International diplomacy isn't the same as winning a presidential election.
Ugh no. Kerry has a pleasant enough demeanor, and endless patience, but he's stupid. I mean, genuinely low IQ. I remember him well when he embarassed Massachusetts by replacing the actually pretty darn smart Paul Tsongas. God knows where he'd be now without the Heinz money -- I'd give 2:1 odds Teresa runs that house anyway.
Trust me, you don't want Bibi. Guy's an empty fearmonger, basically an actually smart version of Trump - but just as much of a nerveless flake at the end of the day. I'd take Bennet as a strictly better version of him, and Benet's already on this (to whatever degree of good it might do, which I suspect isn't much since I don't see Putin backing down for anything).
I don't know...maybe Schroeder wouldn't be so bad after all...he has Putin's ear, and was a chancellor of Germany...of course, it would be better if the German Media had not declared him Persona non Grata...or what about Berlusconi? Similar to Schroeder, he was quite close to Putin, but doesn't seem as tainted...?
"December 2011: Trump praised Putin's "intelligence" and "no-nonsense way" in his book "Time to Get Tough."
"Putin has big plans for Russia. He wants to edge out its neighbors so that Russia can dominate oil supplies to all of Europe," Trump said. "I respect Putin and Russians but cannot believe our leader (Obama) allows them to get away with so much...Hats off to the Russians.""
Note how the only hint of condemnation of Russia, and it is a hint, is secondary to condemning the democrats.
Something very similar happenned in the 23 Feb interview
"by the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened."
You have to infer condemnation of the invasion from the self-praise.
He's using this as an opportunity to bash the democrats. Not because he's freindly with Putin, but because it serves his interests to blame his actions on [Trump's] political opponents. The political opportunism explains it perfectly, no conspiracy between Trump and Putin is explanatorily necessary.
>You have to infer condemnation of the invasion from the self-praise.
Now you're simply lying
“The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling,” he told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, on Saturday night. “It’s an outrage and an atrocity that should never have been allowed to occur.
"As far as I understand it, the offer is: Ukraine declares neutrality, and recognizes Crimea as Russian and Donetsk/Luhansk as independent. Russia gives up and goes home."
I don't think this is the Russia's current demand, unless it has changed.
More importantly, it certainly was not the extent of Russia's demands before invasion. Their initial demands of Ukraine included ban of some offensive weapons (I don't recall the details, not sure if they ever provided them) and full implementation of Minsk II (a bit tall order when the Russian backed separatists were not eager to hold the ceasefire, and the Minsk II is extremely unfavorable to Ukraine). Before the invasion, as Putin amassed troops on the border, Putin escalated his demands. The final round included complete demilitarization, complete denazification (whatever Putin means by it -- common interpretation is "purge of Ukrainian leadership"), stop an alleged genocide in Donetsk (very difficult to implement, because Western observers have not witnessed any), and bunch of other demands from EU and NATO.
You have to read between lines. They demand neutrality from Ukraine which in practice means to keep it subjugated under Russia. That's really all what Russia wants but it is not what Ukrainians want. They clearly see that their only chance of development is becoming the EU member. The process will demand dealing with corruption, reorganization of their institutions. For Scott not seeing this and doubting that they can become the EU member country is frustrating.
Something I've not seen mentioned enough is that this is also a war for long term Russian influence. Putin wins = directly subordinated or annexed Ukraine, but also a more solid grip on Belarus, likely regime change in Moldova, extra influence in Romanian politics, and continued mingling in European politics.
Putin loses - their politics will turn internal for a while, and they'll have to reorient efforts to keep the Russian Federation in one piece, work hard not to lose client states and work hard to destabilize Ukraine and sabotage its entering EU. Not much resources left for stuff beyond that, which means Europe gets a decade of peace from Russian interference. Plus a better integrated Ukraine as a bonus.
This being a sliding scale, of course. And the peace terms are what puts the pointer on the scale.
I think this is more true of the PR and economic wars than the war for territory, and that these are only tangentially linked (with the first two looking very good for the West, and the last still up in the air). I don't think that whether or not Ukraine eg recognizes Russia's right to Crimea will have much effect on the influence war, given how badly the PR and economic wars are going for them.
I'll admit I don't have first hand knowledge here, it's just something which "everybody knows" in the countries in the region: Russia also plays on a field which is none of PR, economic or territorial. Let's call it "people in their pocket". The modern and vastly expanded version of a criminal organization. That's the kind of limited resources I'm talking about.
As an example, there were political changes in the past half year in Romania which made no sense whatsoever (the president abruptly supported a wide coalition that included the party he loudly vilified for years), but now make a lot of sense if you consider them part of cleaning house in preparation for nearby war with Russia. The deal was likely some form of: you get to be part of the government and control easy-to-steal funds, but you park or exclude the people known to be under Moscow's influence.
You listed "Georgia" in the list of the "next time"places that people want to invade, but won't because of the pax americana's enforcement actions against Russia "this time".
...except that Russia already invaded Georgia in 2008, and got exactly what they wanted from that action. Georgia had been actively courting western powers and pushing for NATO membership. Russia ensured that in response it It lost territory, lost lives, and received a warning that if it didn't stop trying to join NATO the next thing it lost would be its existence as an independent state. Georgia got the message, and so did NATO members. While they have continued economic and military cooperation on a more limited scale the talk of actively pursuing membership dropped. Of course, now that Ukraine has demonstrated to Georgia that they're in danger anyway, they are asking for EU and NATO membership again because they believe they have nothing to lose.
Either way, it seems odd to put a country that in fact DID get attacked on your list of countries that are protected. Even odder when you consider that it was the Russian success (from their perspective) in Georgia that led to them planning and executing the grab of Crimea and backing separatist movements in Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine.
Perhaps "this time" the response will be strong enough to deter a "next time". But this will be the third time in the past 15 years, so I am not particularly hopeful unless sanctions extend rather longer and are more severe than I expect. If Russia IS deterred, I think it will be by the bloody nose they get from the Ukrainians being far more willing to fight than they had counted on, and the weaknesses revealed in their military, not by the western response.
It's not clear to me that "providing fighter aircraft", as long as they're piloted by Ukrainian pilots, is the same sort of escalation or proxy war norm violation as the others described. As far as I know the North Koreans and North Vietnamese flew Soviet-supplied planes.
(In Korea there were even Soviet pilots, though they at least made a vague attempt to keep that fact a secret at the time.)
So supplying Ukraine with Polish MiGs (if it can be negotiated) seems as cricket as other arms supplies. Not risk free, but not in the same class as shooting down Russians ourselves.
The zone gets a little grayer if some officially Ukrainian pilots turn out to be volunteers from NATO countries, or if the donations go from planes Ukrainians could plausibly be flying with existing experience to, say, their suddenly being able to handle F-16s.
(I'm not sure where providing that sort of training falls if the war lasts long enough. There were certainly opponents in our 20th century proxy wars who'd studied in Moscow.)
The question of how to get the planes from Poland into Ukraine is an interesting one, though. If they fly them over and then transfer ownership then it means you've got Polish fighters entering the war zone, which is an escalation. But if you transfer ownership and then fly them over then you've got Ukranian fighters operating out of Poland, which is an escalation.
I think it was this sort of logic which led to a weird arrangement in WW2 prior to US joining the war; American planes were manufactured, flown to the Canadian border, landed, pushed across the border, then transferred to the RAF and flown to Britain.
You fly them to Romania and load them onto a barge, tow it out into the Black Sea, then have helicopters evacuate the entire crew from an outbreak of COVID, since they weren't wearing masks, the dummies. Moments later a squadron of Ukrainian pilots enjoying one final boat ride before returning from leave stumble across the abandoned barge and *steal* it, the ratfinks. Very regrettable. An award of $50,000 is solemnly posted for information leading to their arrest.
Soviet-aligned powers presumably got their MiGs without similar issues proving insurmountable, though I don't know enough details to know if it presented a problem requiring a comparable fig leaf.
While we haven't had to dust it off for a while, there probably is an unavoidable element of brinksmanship. But supplying weapons across borders is such a time-honored element of superpower proxy wars that it's hard to see it being impossible to find a way to work it.
Do the same thing they did with the Ukrainian plane which landed abroad: strip it of weapons and then fly it back to Ukraine where it can be rearmed. An unarmed plane can't be launching attacks.
Ferry flights of military aircraft are generally not considered a belligerent attack. Though I have heard of cases where the airplanes were towed across an international border just to be extra-safe. If we have to do that, there seem to be some flat grassy areas of the Polish-Ukrainian border, and the MiG-29 has grass-field capability. Also some highways that would make useful runways, but they're probably clogged with refugees.
Yep, on moral grounds Putin is just his usual lying hypocritical weasel self. Plenty of Americans pilots died in the sights of Soviet aircraft. But this isn't really a moral issue, the line is kind of measured by how hysterical the party drawing it seems to be getting. The Americans were never going to consider Soviet hardware in Vietnam an existential threat, because losing in Vietnam was just never that big a deal, LBJ's fever dreams notwithstanding (and with due acknowledgement of the shamefully supreme price paid by 58,220 souls for nothing much). But it *looks* like for Putin having NATO planes over Ukraine *is* that big a deal, something he sees as existential, and that's how the line is negotiated, more or less. I dunno why it *is* that big a deal -- the comparison to the Cuban Missile Crisis is inapt, it's not any easier to fly a nuclear-capable F-16 to Moscow from Kiev than it is from Warsaw -- but that seems to be how he sees it.
Ha ha that's smart. And it totally serves that idiot Blinken right for his embarrassing babble about the hypothetical transfer of fighters from Poland to the Ukraine. How I wish we (meaning the United States) had a less incompetent Secretary of State. But I salute the Poles for an excellent piece of diplomatic judo there.
Well, yeah, it's surprisingly harsh for the Poles. But we (the US) totally deserved it, after failing to coordinate *with them* before the initial idiotic speculation by Blinken.
Seriously, if we had a President who was on top of things, Blinken's ass would be grass for that. It's a major fuckup, and extremely easy to avoid. I don't know what his (Blinken's) problem is, his history certainly doesn't suggest idiocy. Maybe he had a stroke or something.
That was a sensible thing since the official Syrian government wanted the Russian air force and not the Western ones. Here the official Ukrainian government doesn’t wants the Russian Air Force. It’s the complete opposite.
I'm on board with almost all of this so don't have much to add. Except this part struck me -
"Russia has miscalculated, they know they’ve miscalculated, and the best ending for everyone is for them to leave in a way that sort of preserves what’s left of their honor"
One of the glaring features of this fiasco for me is the fact that Vladimir Putin is responsible for it. The miscalculation wasn't by 'Russia' or the Russian people, it was by a single individual, however common it is to anthropomorphise a country or a government or a people.
My point is more general than saying let's blame that very bad man Mr Putin. It is to observe that when one individual gains ultimate power, it's always a very real possibility that he'll be driven mad by it (if he wasn't already) and enormous catastrophes will ensue.
Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao etc etc. None of them could have caused the deaths and destruction that they did if they hadn't achieved megalomaniac power.
I could be wrong of course. The Swiss could have one of their periodic referendums and vote to start bombing Lichtenstein. But I think the odds are against it.
There are many lessons here that Scott has ably described. But for me the most instructive is the picture of Putin at one end of a table with the nearest other human being 40 feet away. That's the problem right there. Not even Putin the individual, just the structure that permits, if not encourages, all that follows. Power has the very real potential to poison.
I think Tolkein wrote a longish book making just this point.
"Other times it was almost incomprehensible: we’ll debate what happened with Iraq II forever."
It's not incomprehensible if you stick to realpolitik instead of rhetoric.
1) Iraq I was because it was in pretty much nobody's interest to to let Saddam Hussein control the less-expensive-to-extract half of the world's proven oil reserves. Whether Kuwait was inside or outside Iraq really wasn't a matter of intense interest to the US or anybody else; rather, the US and pretty much everybody else wanted an outcome where Hussein could not use military force to control the oil of the whole Arabian Peninsula.
2) In the end, the ground phase of Desert Storm was a failure, because Saddam Hussein and his regime survived (against the expectations of the Bush I administration that it would be shattered by a civil war), complete with the chance to rebuild his military to threaten the Arabian Peninsula again. The US had to, in practice, indefinitely extend Desert Shield and the air phase of Desert Storm (garrisoning Saudi Arabia and enforcing the no-fly zones) to indefinitely contain Hussein.
3) Containing Hussein became untenable because the US presence in Saudi Arabia provoked an escalating series of terrorist attacks by Arab Muslims who saw it as a desecration. The Khobar Towers, the US embassies in Africa, and the USS Cole culminated in 9/11. Remaining in Saudi Arabia would continue to provoke similar attacks, because plenty of Arab Muslims agreed with Osama bin Laden about that desecration enough to do something about it. A US withdrawal from Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, would end the ongoing offense.
4) But simply pulling out would end the containment. The logical move for the US accordingly seemed to be to repeat the Desert Storm ground invasion, and this time not stop until the Hussein regime was indisputably destroyed. WMD programs and democracy were advanced as excuses in public for the same reason Iraq being an aggressor was advanced to justify the first invasion of Iraq; because US and world public opinion won't tolerate a simple explanation of "The invasion is in our interest, so we're launching one".
(4a - The huge difference in international support between Iraq I and Iraq II is that many countries that saw it in their interest to not let Hussein dominate the Arabian Peninsula didn't have any particular interest in taking domestic PR hits in the interest of easing US efforts to resolve its Saudi garrison difficulty by invading Iraq.)
5) The US invaded Iraq, disbanded the Iraqi government and army, and went ahead and declared "Mission Accomplished". Unfortunately, it couldn't immediately go home (leaving just a few advisors in Baghdad), because Hussein himself managed to hide in a spider hole. There was an ongoing risk that if the US withdrew, he'd manage to wind up on top again, and the whole problem would start over.
6) Between when the US wanted to withdraw and when Saddam Hussein would up in custody (December), the civil war that was an entirely expected result of shattering the Hussein regime (even desired, since it would put off the date a stable regime in Iraq could threaten the Arabian Peninsula) broke out. With fighting going on before US troops left, there was no way compatible with American public opinion to simply declare victory and go home, like would have happened Hussein been killed in the same fight his sons died in. This public opinion is why the major Democratic candidates for President talked about a Pottery Barn rule.
7) Every hour the US was in Iraq from the point of Hussein's capture onward, including Obama sending troops back in after he withdrew them, accordingly was the US administration of the day trying to figure out how to leave without the American people perceiving it as a defeat and punishing the party of whomever was President.
Very well put. I hadn't been able to make the connection why Iraq was related to 9/11 response. Sure, I understand (but don't condone) lashing out after you've been attacked like that, but why at Iraq when they didn't have anything to do with it?
If someone else could find anything wrong with this I'd be much obliged. It seems to make sense from the hidden geopolitical perspective, and only barely more justified to me. (still doesn't warrant an invasion, even when you couldn't foresee the chaos and death that would ensue, that we know of now)
Counterpoint: after 9/11, Bush wanted to "end Islamic Terrorism". Part of the way you do that is by showing that you are a superior force. Part of the way you do that is be showing people that there is an alternative to that way of life, and part of the way you do that is militarily crushing them.
All of these points suggest an Iraq invasion.
In this hypothetical world, Saddam is toppled and the US sets up a democratic Iraqi government. This stops the (indirect) support for Palestinian terrorists and the substantially-wrong but honestly-believed nuclear program. It also serves as a shining city on a hill model of what a modern democratic Arab/Islamic state can look like. And the limited military action required, both against Saddam as well as possible terrorists flocking to kill Americans, occurs on about the best-possible terrain for the US military to operate. Oh, and Iraq has significant oil, meaning that the newly-formed non-corrupt government would be able to generate sufficient hard cash to pay for the resources it would need to build new institutions.
In the end, it all worked out, albeit very messily and expensively. Islamic terrorism has been (touch wood) basically defeated.
The "flypaper strategy" worked. Young dumb Muslims with an interest in jihad wound up flocking to shoot at American tanks in Mosul rather than shopping malls in Omaha. When they killed people they mostly just killed other Muslims.
At this point the terrorist recruitment pipeline has dried up, because it's no longer possible to convince a dumb young potential jihadi that one more terrorist attack will actually achieve anything.
This is totally wrong and totally immoral. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and yet you are supporting a fly paper strategy, that is that the Iraqis should deal with the consequences of mass terrorism so you don’t.
This is a incredible cruel and inhumane logic. And it is far from the reality how people work.
1) Being able to build up a working civil society after a invasion is a illusion. What civil society needs most is trust and people feeling save. A population traumatized by a war is basically the opposite.
2) Even if you have this illusion, contaminating the territory with depleted uranium projectiles and bombing cities is not a good basis for founding a new state, especially without the real plan to clean up the mess afterwards.
3) Imagine you are a young Muslim, thinking that the US is desecrating your holy lands and threatening your brothers in faith. Than you see this power invading another Muslim country for no reason. Dos this hold you from joining a terrorist group, because they are a enemy too strong? Or does this show you that the preachers of terror are right, that this power is pure evil and has to be fought with all means even if this means sacrificing your live?
4) Even if it worked, is an invasion that definitely kills many thousand people worth it to prevent a few potential terrorist attacks? If you think this, you are a racist that doesn't count all lives equal.
5) had 'carpet-bombing' them made anything better?
To bring this to a personal level people usually understand better:
Imaging i think you are are thread to my friends but I'm tired of being on guard to protect them and they are being annoyed of me guarding them. So decide to beat you up to solve this problem. What you're just saying is, i should have shot you right away because you still don't like me and didn't turn into the nice guy i wished you to be.
>4) Even if it worked, is an invasion that definitely kills many thousand people worth it to prevent a few potential terrorist attacks? If you think this, you are a racist that doesn't count all lives equal.
Oh give me a break. This literally describes the overwhelming majority of people on earth other than white liberals. If you don't see this, then you're probably a liberal who is high on their own supply.
I'm not even defending it, but acting like valuing one's countrymen over foreigners is some kind of abberation points to an incredible level of obliviousness.
I know that most people would value the own countrymen over foreigners. This is human as you would protect your family over the lives of others. I don't want to judge anybody about thinking so in the small scale or at the kitchen table.
But this is different:
- this is not about some almost equal numbers, but the invasion killed 10000 to 30000. Any military official should be able to estimate this especially as there was a the same scenario before with similar numbers.
- This decision was taken by political and military experts. They shout know what they are doing and keep a cool head, not act by vague feelings.
- This is the West that always fights for human rights, freedom and democracy. They should do better than what you expect from 'human nature'
- This discussion is on a forum of rational people seriosly talking about altruism. Reading here somebody saying "We should have just carpet-bombed them." Just blew my mind. I had expected this from some right wing military fan, but not here.
He probably isn't serious about carpet-bombing, but juxtaposing the hopeful projections against the bleak reality that unfolded, wryly implying the outcome to have been so bad that "we [might as well have] just carpet-bombed them" because the amount of damage and suffering caused wouldn't have been worse, while having the advantage of speed.
> 4a - The huge difference in international support between Iraq I and Iraq II is that many countries that saw it in their interest to not let Hussein dominate the Arabian Peninsula didn't have any particular interest in taking domestic PR hits in the interest of easing US efforts to resolve its Saudi garrison difficulty by invading Iraq.
There was no huge difference. Iraq War 2 had more coalition partners who contributed a larger share of the total deployed soldiers than 1. What there was was a highly publicized campaign of opposition by france (who was sanction busting) and germany (whose chancellor was on the take from russia) that in the end accomplished relatively little.
I'm confused as to why Iraq posed such a threat. Was it really any stronger than Saudi Arabia or Iran or Syria or Israel or Pakistan? Or was it just more militarized?
Perhaps the west knew how dangerous he is because they built him up and armed him, or perhaps they knew that they would face mo relevant resistance and can show off tow great their military is. I don't know, but i just can't think of any legit reason to invade any country far away, that is not even remotely threatening you.
I'm not a foreign affairs maven, so take this with a grain of salt. But I don't think Iraq was less of a threat than Iran. On the contrary, I suspect that if Iraq's military had been stronger, if it had *actually* had nuclear weapons that could have hit the United States, say, that the US would have been more cautious to act, not less.
When making a reasonably short comment on a complex issue, there's a lot of need for simplification for both rhetorical and practical reasons. The pure-realpolitik perspective I used above is never the full truth about anything in public affairs, but used as a model for analysis it can illuminate things that would otherwise remain obscure (while, of course, obscuring other things).
Public choice theory is also a model. The argument in that link is that it is more explanatory and makes fewer errors in the same amount of space.
There's no department of realpolitik, and the US doesn't know what it wants. There are analysts and diplomats and military officers and politicians who all specialize in different things related to threat or democratization or human rights or economics and each tug in slightly different directions.
Economic analysts are generally not kleptocratic or zero sum. Military analysts are not expansionists or intolerant of any slight. Democracy advocates know that imposing it through force is a contradiction and lowers its chance of success.
Everyone looking for the cause is going to be disappointed, because there are eighteen ways to avoid intervention and if you are being invaded you have somehow created a very interdisciplinary posse of enemies across the foreign policy establishment.
If you want to reduce the system to a single thing--you should not--it was that Saddam was effectively lobbying the international community to end sanctions while still being a total psychopath. Gulf II was much more about the failure of the policy toolkit in the 90s than anything that happened later, and the best evidence for this is the bipartisan political support for regime change taking root well before the year 2000, well before the NIE.
I'm not really sure about this. The US still has lots of military deployed in the Middle East and yet not in Iraq, instead it was shifted to Kuwait (army), Bahrain (navy), and, most significantly, Qatar (air force), with approximately 10,000 troops in each country. This shift from Saudi Arabia to Qatar started happening in the late 90s after Qatar paid a billion dollars to construct a major new air base to tempt the Americans there. The move was completed shortly after the invasion of Iraq.
Therefore I believe the primary consideration was cost savings (Qatar subsidises the base to this day) while avoiding provoking attacks was only secondary. (Side note: Trump based some troops in Saudi Arabia, albeit only a few air defence units; Biden has since recalled them.)
The real (primary) reason for invading Iraq? I think it's still fairly close to what you put forward: they wanted to make Iraq a friendly country where they could centrally locate US military forces to more effectively control and react to the security situation of the Mid East.
The problem was they drank their own kool-aid and thought toppling a brutal dictator and instituting democracy would actually achieve this. Since then they have learnt their lesson and now primarily base troops in friendly dictatorships (in the Mid East theatre).
I'm not sure I follow 4a. If Saddam was not a threat to SA then why do you need garrison positions? If he was, why didn't you get the old coalition back together?
The implication I read from the post is "he was, but the French and Germans defected in order to free-ride on the US dealing with Hussein, and they had greater room to do this compared to Gulf War 1 because the US was already committed to Desert Shield and was the one suffering reprisals".
(Not saying I necessarily believe this, but that's what I read from that post.)
Would love to read your analysis of US troops stationed in the EU and what happens when EU-nato is forced to increase spending on defense and perhaps provide the room for the US to leave.
Let's stipulate, for the sake of discussion, that this is an accurate description of the realpolitik factors that went into the second invasion of Iraq.
The description simply presupposes that it was a proper goal for the U.S. to determine control of the the world's proven oil reserves and to undertake the large-scale invasion of a foreign country to enforce that determination.
I mean "proper" here in a strategic sense, not a moral one. In other words, even if we bracket morality and stick to realpolitik, the above account fails to show that the second invasion of Iraq actually "made sense" in serving U.S. interests.
I think you bring up some very interesting points regarding the prosecution of the conflict in Iraq II and the importance of Hussein avoiding capture / death in the initial phases. I have long subscribed to the theory that the Saudi basing issue was a critical contributor to the decision to invade. However, I think that your thesis could be strengthened through consideration / incorporation of a few points:
1. You seem to attribute the decision to end the ongoing no fly zones / address Saudi basing issues to a US strategy to mitigate risks of future terrorist attacks. Have you considered what role the Saudi government played in that decision? I think there is a reasonably strong case to be made that after 9/11, the Saudi's saw that basing Operation Desert Shield in SA along with the optics of helping enforce sanctions against a fellow Arab nation were becoming untenable for them politically. I think it is reasonably likely that, post 9/11, the Saudi's essentially told the US that their support for desert shield was ending, and that, rather than US assessment of the risk of terrorist attacks was the precipitating factor.
2. Logistically, it would have been difficult to maintain the northern no fly zone without access to Saudi bases and most other nations in the region would have been hesitant to host US forces maintaining the northern NFZ for reasons analogous to the Saudi's.
3. The northern NFZ was put in place due to protect the Kurds after the US tried to foment the Civil War you alluded to and then left them out to dry. If the northern no fly zone collapses, Hussein slaughters the Kurds and Bush II is stained with the same (or worse) betrayal of the Kurds that his father was.
4. Bin Laden's stated goal for his terror attacks was to get the US out of Saudi. If the US withdraws from SA(even if it is at the behest of the Saudi government and they try and reconfigure the NFZ from some other bases), then OBL declares victory and the US has major reputational issues on multiple fronts (Kurd betrayal, Hussein wins / US looks like a weak horse, US susceptible to terror demands). The US could not be seen to "give in" to the demands of terrorists and let an Arab strong man outlast them. Apropos of your points about the importance of Hussein avoiding capture, if OBL is captured / killed early on in Afghanistan, then the calculus for the US and Saudi Arabia are likely quite different with regards to Iraq.
As a non American I have to question the idea that Afghanistan was understandable. Granted I formed this opinion at the ages of about 10-14 but my impression was that the connection between the people who did 9/11 and Afghanistan was fairly tennuous, and that America's invasion looked a lot like a bully punching someone who happned to be there when were angry.
Or kill them all themselves and send us the heads as proof. That would've worked for me, and would've saved on the cost of guards, transport, food for the prisoners, et cetera.
Nah, the invasion was pretty justified. America demanded from Taliban to give up Al-Qaeda, Taliban said no. However, staying there for 20 years for quarter-hearted "nation-building" was pure hubris, terrible for pretty much everyone. Just a pure retaliatory "shock and awe" response would've ended up being much more humane, and made America's point clearer too.
This is easy to say with the benefit of hindsight.
At the time we genuinely thought that we could go in (to both Iraq and Afghanistan), take out the existing (terrible) government, hold an election, have someone sensible elected, and that would be that. It worked in Germany, it worked in Japan. But for various reasons it didn't work in Afghanistan. (It seems to have eventually worked okay for now in Iraq, but it took a lot more work than expected.)
I'm not sure that intelligence and those who had access to it really thought that, but such a package was surely easier to sell to the electorate. Also, ISIS was about as direct a consequence of Iraq II as consequences get, and glossing over it as "eventually okay" seems a bit much.
As for Germany and Japan, my impression is that America fully committed there, mainly due to Cold War considerations. If it had extended anything close to a similar committment to Russia after the collapse of USSR, the word would've likely looked much different today. But of course, with the Evil Empire defeated, the history was over, and who gives a fuck about the losers.
The US tried to help mold Russia into its own image in the 1990s, but it turned out so poorly that it was indistinguishable from sabotage.
Last I studied this topic, the consensus on economic development aid is that it barely ever helps, but an exception probably exists for the Marshall Plan, when you have human capital and institutions in place and the issue is just that your infrastructure and capital goods have been destroyed. But this was not the situation in 1990s Russia: the biggest problem was with precisely those human factors, and throwing money at it wouldn't make the problem go away.
This is not about morality, it's about economic organization. The German economy was doing fine except for the part where the factories got bombed, and providing the means to build new factories put the economy well on the path to recovery. The Soviet economy was a basket case due to failures of central planning and corruption, and providing new factories to mismanage and embezzle didn't help at all.
I don't think you need the benefit of post-2001 hindsight to know that was a risky proposition. The decision was made not to occupy Iraq proper during Desert Storm in 1991 because wiser men could foresee that the benefits of occupation didn't exceed the costs.
And Afghanistan very much didn't start, and wasn't presented to the public, as a nation-building project, and on that basis it had extremely broad support. We thought we could just go into Afghanistan, destroy Al Qaeda and kill/capture Bin Laden, more or less hand the country to the Northern Alliance (which at least had the nucleus of a functioning government and army), and get out. Remember that it wasn't a large-scale invasion like Iraq -- the build-up was very quick, the US provided air power but it had fewer troops on the ground than those defending Kabul Airport in the last days of the 2021 withdrawal.
Iraq was very different, it was always about nation-building, entirely disposing of Saddam's regime and invoking a total revolution in Iraqi society. There were no local allies on the ground to speak of. It was a very large invasion, the build-up took a long time, while that was happening the whole matter was debated extensively within the US and internationally, with lots of dissent, some of it ill-informed, but some of it making the exact same points that had been made at the time of Desert Storm about why it was a bad idea.
I also remember the decision to leave Hussein in place, because it would've "fractured the coalition." I'm not sure that was really accurate, but it was the argument.
There was also the promise offered to the rebels inside to support them, which led to them being wiped out when they believed us.
My memory is the US wanted to signal that it would be supportive of a palace coup that cleanly replaced Saddam with a regular Arab despot (back to my point on coups), but it was too subtle and the Kurds and Shiites thought it meant the US would provide them with material support for an armed revolution.
The fact is, at least some people who were responsible for it just didn't want it to work, because a perpetual war was simply more beneficial to them. Perhaps it started with a few bad apples, but by the end of the 20 year debacle, pretty much everyone in positions of power in Afghanistan, local government and occupying forces alike, was either irredeemably corrupt or frustrated to the point of having given up trying to fix anything. Iraq at least had oil wells worth defending, demanding some sort of actual order on the ground, Afghanistan's economy was essentially designed around the continued existence of Taliban and the money that could be funneled to "fight" them.
You are probably thinking of Iraq, which never had any discernable connection to 9/11 aside from cheering it. The connection to Afghanistan from 9/11 was crystal clear: the Taliban had given sanctuary to al-Qaeda after they were ejected from Saudi Arabia and Sudan. After 9/11 the US asked the Taliban to extradite Osama bin Laden, and they refused.
Of course, hanging around for another 20 years trying to build a modern nation in Afghanistan was, to be as charitable as possible, exceedingly misguided.
I’m definitely not thinking of Iraq, I’m remembering arguments like “Osama is Saudi not an Afghan” which obviously doesn’t seem too persuasive now, but I’m trying to talk about how people view American military adventures rather than whether they were justified. Certainly I can say that New Zealand teenagers of my acquaintance tended to take a fairly dim view of invading Afghanistan from the outset.
I can’t really remember which war my memories of the media environment refer to, but they lean towards America being seen as crazy though I definitely could be thinking of Iraq there.
The original of that line, "if you are not an X before you are twenty, you have no heart, if you are an X after you are thirty, you have no head," with a number of variants, apparently originated in France in the 19th century, with X, I think, Republican.
Good lines in the U.K. get attributed to Churchill, in the U.S., if not obviously impossible, to Lincoln.
Yeah I know, but to explain why it *isn't* actually Churchill where it starts requires a tedious amount of footnoting and I just decided to punt. Normally on the Internet you can count on someone coming along to "well actually" for you if it turns out to be important :)
Osama was a Saudi citizen by birth, but one who wanted to bring down both the Saudi and American governments(*) and had been chased out of Saudi Arabia for his troubles.
If someone finds out that e.g. Edward Snowden has been running an international terrorist conspiracy against Canada and Australia the past few years, I'd hope the Canucks and Aussies wouldn't think it appropriate to bomb the United States. That's about what we're talking about here.
* Not clear that bringing down the American government was a terminal goal, but lethally inconveniencing it was at least a critical instrumental goal on the way to getting rid of the House of Saud.
For Ukraine to formally accept that Crimea and the Eastern region that Russia controlled pre-war are no longer part of Ukraine isn't a concession in name only. It's a massive concession, for reasons connected to the importance of rules that you discuss elsewhere.
If Ukraine formally accepts that they're gone, it's much more likely that they won't ever be part of Ukraine again. That's bad for Ukraine, but it's also bad for everyone, because it means that Russia has arguably succeeded in getting what it wants by invading a peaceful neighbour.
The decision on what peace terms to accept is one for Ukraine to make. They're not part of NATO, we're not going to fight alongside them. But we shouldn't be encouraging them to accept terms that strengthen Putin and make it more likely that something like this happens again.
1. Would you please elaborate how "that's bad for Ukraine"?
2. Lets imagine you are right, then why Ukrainians shelled and bombed this particular part of Donbass for eight years? Ukraine is peaceful for neighbors but not for its own citizens, who's only crime is being hostages to separatists?
The answer to your question is that there is a militant faction that took up arms in defiance of their government, to secede. In the liberal rules based order, we rightly acknowledge that matters of sovereignty and where we draw the lines of polity need to be handled diplomatically and peacefully, because redrawing borders is one of the hottest beds of burgeoning conflict and destruction there is. Some people in Donetsk and Luhansk didn't do this, they simply got weapons and were egged on by Russia (for their own geopolitical goals) to cease being under the Ukrainian government. Ukraine is trying have sovereignty over their entire land. The same thing would happen if US states tried to secede, as we saw in the American Civil War.
Actually Russia have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khasavyurt_Accord when the first Chechen war went hairy. After the second one Chechens loose Chechia but got entire Russia. Now they are the most privileged region enjoying de-facto autonomy and gazillions of federal money.
It's actually worse than that. The war in Donbass was started by Igor Strelkov/Girkin (a Russian, from Russia, i.e. not from Donbass) and his 40-strong squad. He was also the head of DNR's military from April to August 2014. He's also quoted as saying "If our squad did not cross the border, at the end all would have been finished as in Kharkiv or Odessa. Practically, the flywheel of war which lasts until now was launched by our squad." The "Prime minister" of DNR for the same time period was Alexander Borodai, a friend of Strelkov, and also a Russian, from Russia. That war was not started by locals.
Agree, but strekovs just pushed a body that was already falling. There was none of his kind in Kharkov when the first blood were spilled around cityhall and lenin's monument.
I'm not sure what you mean. "The body" didn't fail in any other Ukrainian city. He himself said that the unrest would have died out if it wasn't for his squad. "The body" wasn't feeling particularly well, sure. But there's no evidence that it would have failed on its own if it wasn't for Strelkov/Borodai and the military support from Russia that they brought.
That might be true if they simply agree to cede the territory, but I think not if they agree to accept the results of a neutrally conducted referendum. Putin can't expect to win such a referendum in most of the places he might want to annex.
He can win a lot of those referenda if a large part of the population flees when he seizes the territory a few years before the referendum. In Crimea I don't think this was a big factor, but in Donetsk and Luhansk it seems to have been.
re: 3 3: A strong response right now isn’t just about Ukraine, it’s also about the next time.
"This is about Taiwan, Georgia, Iran, and all the other places that great powers want to invade but don’t."
Taiwan is under the protection of the US. The Ukraine never was. Georgia is too complicated for me to grasp quickly, but I'm unsure if Russia actually wants more than what they already have with South Ossetia? And as far as I understand, the threat to Iran would come from the United States itself? Did that not happen, because Russia threatened nuclear war? Pretty sure, this was just a lack of will on the American part. If the US wants to invade a country in the Middle East, they do it. Don't see why that would change either.
re 4: International norms may be annoying, but they’re all that stands between US and nuclear war, so we had better respect them
"No sane person thinks it’s worth risking nuclear war just to protect something as minor as the Aleutian Islands. But then the US gives Russia the Aleutians, and next year they ask for all of Alaska. And even Alaska isn’t really worth risking nuclear war over, so you give it to them, and then the next year…"
That's US territory. National Souvereignity is not an international norm. It's what a nation will always defend or it'll cease to exist. Maybe the Aleutian Islands could be traded away, but if Alaska is worth going to war for. This nebuluous concept of "international norms" is absolutely not "all what stands between us and nuclear war". That's just stupid. It is explicit defense treaties like NATO, that keep the peace. Or more implicit ones like the US has with Taiwan. And generally the threat of MAD. So far, I have not seen a convincing "it's about the next time"-argument.
Nor how protecting the Ukraine or sanctioning Russia is even of strategic benefit to the West.
Can someone make better arguments please or strengthen them?
Taiwan isn't under the protection of the US (see: Strategic Ambiguity). Russia has de facto control of Georgia.
It would be a significant escalation for Putin to attack a NATO country (probably, with their large Russian minorities, one of the Baltic States). But it was a series of significant escalations for him to invade part of Georgia, and then part of Ukraine, and then Ukraine. He seems increasingly unhinged. It isn't necessarily the case that the US would launch a nuclear war to protect the Baltic States, and Putin knows that. NATO isn't magic. Would Trump be prepared to use nuclear weapons if Putin annexed a small part of Lithuania? It seems unlikely. But possible. That uncertainty is a very dangerous thing in the context of nuclear war.
If Putin were to succeed in Ukraine, the chances of him annexing Russian speaking regions of the Baltic States would increase. That would increase the chances of nuclear war. Whether by more than they are increased by Western countries supplying the Ukrainian army, I don't know.
What's interesting is that when it comes to the possibility of fighting Russia, the US throws its hands up and says "nope, couldn't possibly risk all-out war between two nuclear superpowers, strict proxy war here".
But when it comes to Taiwan, the US says "yep, we totally _might_ intervene there".
Why the inconsistency? Firstly, fighting a proxy war over Taiwan is probably impossible because Taiwan is an island; the war will be fought and won with very large and very obvious warships and fighter jets, not with surreptitiously smuggled RPGs. Secondly, China is a nuclear power but not a very big nuclear power compared to Russia, with a couple of hundred nukes compared to five thousand.
Of course at this point, the Chinese will be noting this inconsistency and saying "well shit, how quickly can we build another five thousand nukes?"
China does have MIRVs, so they could actually destroy most major US metropolitan areas. Pretty sure, they have deterrent enough. An invasion of Taiwan would have fighting on the island and it could potentially be a very long slog.
China doesn't have enough MIRVs to destroy most major US metropolitan areas, and their strategic forces are somewhat vulnerable to counterforce attack. Their deterrence is adequate to protect against an unprovoked US attack, and probably adequate to protect against the US saying "leave Taiwan alone or we'll nuke you", but it's marginal at best for anything beyond that.
They can't count on rattling the nuclear saber to prevent the US from offering a conventional defense of Taiwan, because it's too likely that we would either call that bluff or raise them a preemptive counterforce attack against their strategic nuclear forces.
I guess, you could make the assumption that a US preemptive strike against their capabilities might be a viable option. At first glance for me though, you'd have to stack a lot optimistic assumptions to make this worthwhile. But I admit, I don't know too much about the topic or have a good overview of who has which kilo- and megatonnage available where and what each weapon can and cannot do. I will update from your presumed expertise against my underinformed intuition.
Out of curiosity:
How would you actually nuke a lot China's capability at once, without scaring Russia into firing theirs, thinking they're targeted? Call ahead and saying "trust me, bro", when they detect missile launches? Use stealth bombers to take out for every silo at once? Do you assume that it's possible to sink their submarines, before they can launch or do you just eat those shots (which would probably mean losing Washington, New York and [insert lots of important US cities])?
Meh. China hasn't even finished building those silos yet, they've only started, and it will be some time before they are ready. Even when they are, 400 silos aren't especially difficult to take out. Two or three 300kt warheads each, given modern CEP, and you're all set. It could readly be done by SLBMs alone and leave plenty of firepower in reserve.
So far as I know, the Chinese do not yet have intercontinental capacity on the few strategic subs they do have. And besides that, the USN is very *very* good at knowing where enemy ballistic subs are all the time, so I would expect they will never get a chance to fire one anyway before being sunk.
So yeah if the US *wanted* to do a first strike on China, it would work just fine. Be a rather miserable world afterward, though.
A Chinese silo carrying 6 to 10 warheads is only good for blowing great big craters in Inner Mongolia or wherever. They'd need actual missiles to destroy American cities with those warheads, and they don't have nor will they soon have 350-400 DF-41 missiles.
The number of missile silos the Chinese have, is not determined by the number of missiles China has. It is determined by the number of missiles the *US* has. Which is more than 350-400, but not by so comfortable a margin that we could easily destroy 400 Chinese silos to be sure of getting the ones that have Chinese missiles.
Well for one thing Taiwan is much more important economically. Taiwan is #8 in trade volume with the US at $115 billion, only a bit behind the UK (#7) and well ahead of the rest of the Eurozone excepting Germany (#5).
Taiwan is the single most important geostrategic location in the world because of its control on microelectronics. Far more important than Saudi Arabia.
I suspect Xi knows this but no other head of state does, not even Tsai. There's probably a nascent insurgency or two somewhere in the world that also knows it.
That said, while it's plausible none of these entities can take it (except Tsai, of course) any one of them can annihilate TSMC's fabs, thus denying them to their competition.
I think the Taiwanese are perfectly aware. If they weren't, the Covid supply-chain crisis must have by now.
I'm convinced Morris Chang (founder and former CEO of TSMC) is a Taiwanese patriot and TSMC's willful failure to diversify by building significant factories outside Taiwan (a small island vulnerable to earthquakes and typhoons, not just geopolitical risk) is motivated by the desire to make Taiwan too strategic to be abandoned by the US the way Afghanistan was.
I'd agree with its economic importance. I also think there's the fact that Taiwan has been in the US orbit for a long time now, dating back to a period before China had nuclear weapons, and the US has matched China's saber-rattling on it before, repeatedly sending the US Navy to the Taiwan Strait as far back as 1950. And there's also the fact Taiwan hasn't been part of a unified China since 1895.
Meanwhile, back when the US and USSR initially came to an understanding regarding MAD, Ukraine was joined to Russia, and this fact ended within living memory, with a tacit understanding that Ukraine belonged to Russia's "sphere of influence", without really ever hammering out what precisely that means.
From 01911 until 01979 the US formally recognized the ROC government as "China", and it held China's permanent seat in the UN Security Council until 01971; this despite the fact that the ROC government has exercised effective control over only Taiwan since 01949. Withdrawing diplomatic recognition from Taiwan (ROC) and extending it to PRC in 01979 is a significant diference in US-Taiwan relations between 01950 and today.
Yeah we called that one right. That, "strategic ambiguity," ANZUS and being best buddies with Korea and Japan have kept the peace in the Pacific for a very long time. For a bunch of ignorant roundeyes, we've done pretty well.
Not an expert on Georgia, but they are currently speeding up their EU application. That does not sound like "under de facto control of Russia" to me. Unless you mean "South Ossetia" specifically. Then sure, but whatever.
Ok, the Baltic states. Estonia has a Russian population of 5%. Not sure there is a meaningful cluster of them. I'll need a map... and a microscope. Latvia and Lithuania are at 25% Russians. Are they unhappy Russians, that want to secede and are they clustered? I don't really know. But whereas the Ukraine is a corrupt kleptocracy with weak institutions, those three countries are richer, better developed and EU members. So I doubt, there is a secessionist core of collaborators.
Ukraine is huge and Ukrainians can already understand Russian. Russian and Ukrainian are pretty similar. The Baltic languages are not, so they could not easily be integrated into a larger Russia. Ukraine is a pretty compelling target for Russia. It has an area four times and a population eight times of all the Baltic states combined. That population is culturally much more Russian. And whether even they can be as beautifully integrated as Putin imagines, is entirely doubtful.
All the Baltic states are part of NATO and the EU. I agree, that NATO isn't magic. But it's not "America's little precious darlings" either. The United Kingdom alone is perfectly capable of destroying every major Russian population center. France also has nuclear weapons. Not to mention that every member has some conventional army they could send. Unclear to me, why this would have to go nuclear immediately. US presidents might be all kinds of crazy, but I think you underestimate them, if you assume they'd panic-press shiny red buttons.
If the Russian model stands, all neighboring states with a Russian population need to forcibly evict that Russian population, or it will always be grounds for the Russian government to invade and annex.
Not addressing the bulk of the comments, but a quick note: Ukraine proved that smaller countries _can_ fight a defensive war against a larger opponent. They haven't proven they can win, but it may be enough. Until now if you weren't under somebody's protection you were considered a soft target, and there's little point in increasing defense's share of GDP other than meet treaty quotas.
But apparently it's significantly easier to fight a defensive war if well prepared, which means now it's different, now countries will start building their defense strategies To Win, and not to check a box in a list or to distribute some pork. This is a big change, and can make the world look differently.
I think we thought that small countries were pushovers because we've seen so many US wars in countries that were not only small but also decades behind in military technology and centuries behind in military doctrine.
Russia and Ukraine are basically peers, they're armed with largely the same weapons and seem to have a similar level of discipline and sophistication.
What occurs to me is that if you can actually get your military to fight, you can accomplish a lot. It seems that in a country like Iraq, the vast conscript army only offered token resistance at best, with only a few elite sections of it like the Republican Guard putting up a real fight.
Meanwhile it seems the bulk of Ukraine's military is fighting, and even though it's outgunned, it's not really outnumbered within its borders: its nominal strength was 245,000 active duty at the start of this.
Under the current state of affairs, modern armies are much smaller than those in the mid-20th century. So if you can actually get people to fight, it's not that difficult to outnumber an attacker within your own borders, even if their population is 5x yours, or more.
I think the Sino-Vietnamese War is probably also an interesting illustration, though both sides claimed victory. But it was at least a bloody and costly affair for China, despite its population outnumbering Vietnam's by almost 20x at that time.
> Russia and Ukraine are basically peers, they're armed with largely the same weapons
1) Russia has nukes
2) as far as air force dominating Ukrainian one (though performance here is so far an amusing shitshow, hopefully it will remain this way)
3) very significant dominance in artillery
4) better tanks
Overall Russia has clear advantage, though at least part of it existed only on paper. In communist Poland it was typical for army to have many "inventory units"[1], for example vehicles unable to drive or completely broken machine guns that were kept to boost reported inventory. I guess that tradition remains.
[1] "wyposażenie na sztukę" = "equipment for piece"
Agree with your list, and also find it interesting that Russia is holding back most of its advantages: no nukes, only a tiny part of its air force, much less artillery than expected. And tanks can be countered by modern RPGs.
All of these military advantages can be leveraged only with a substantial collateral damage. So far, it looks like the ratio of Ukrainian civillian to military casualties in this conflict is remarkably low. According to the UN, there were under 500 civillian deaths so far (as of 8th of March), and at least 1500 Ukrainian military. For comparison, when NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999, it took pride in "amazingly light" civilian casualties of 1500 vs under 1000 Serbian military casualties. On UN estimates, 69% of killed in Israel Gaza incursion in 2014 were civilians (52% on Israeli estimates.)
Of course, it does not mean that the concern for civilian casualties is what limits the use of bombers and artillery, but it is consistent with the stated goals.
True. Sometimes, when it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it really is a duck. Even if it's an enemy duck. They probably just avoid casualties.
Russia and Ukraine are playing in the same league. Russia's (on paper) equipment and power are significantly stronger than Ukraine's, but it's a matter of degrees. The US advantage in military technology compared to Iraq or Afghanistan is functionally a difference in kind. It's not just a matter of US tanks having thicker armor or US planes being faster.
The technology gap is vast enough that US can do things entirely impossible for Iraq to do. By comparison, other than Nukes, Russia's advantage is just that their machines are incrementally better at the same tasks. That's what it means to be technology peers in this respect.
Russia and the Ukraine have basically the same tanks, T-64s and T-72s including the ones where incremental upgrades were called "T-80", "T-84", and "T-90" to make it seem like they had something really new. I'm not seeing anything that would suggest the Russian variants are significantly better than the Ukrainian ones.
As for artillery, my sources say that as of 2019, Russia had 4,340 pieces of >100mm, compared to 1,770 for Ukraine, not counting warehoused reserves on both sides. A 2.5:1 advantage might count as "significant dominance", but the Russians can't afford to put their *entire* army into Ukraine.
> I don’t know what the visa situation is like now and it might be terrible.
It was terrible before COVID (e.g. if you're invited to a conference, you have to fly across the whole country to a single consulate that maybe has a chance of giving you a visa within less than a year), then there were admittedly mutual vaccine-related problems, now it's just impossible (e.g. many Green Card lottery winners from more than a year ago still can't get their visas). Maybe one could go to a USA consulate in a neighbouring country (Poland? Georgia?) and ask for a visa there, except, well, not right now.
My colleagues had submitted abstracts to a US conference. They now estimate their chances of getting a visa as <1%.
The "Stability-Instability Paradox": the notion that mutual vulnerability ("MAD") at the strategic nuclear level can actually make conflict more likely at lower rungs of the escalation ladder. Twitter Thread:
Haven’t tweet much on Ukraine crisis for multiple reasons. But developments in the last 24 hours are heartbreaking and a preview of great brutality I fear is coming. A few observations here on the nuclear & conventional dimensions. 1/
Putin’s pointed, not-veiled nuclear threats are really remarkable, signaling a willingness to turn to the country’s arsenal if the West interferes with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. /2
This is about the clearest evidence I have ever seen for the Stability-Instability Paradox: the notion that mutual vulnerability ("MAD") at the strategic nuclear level can actually make conflict more likely at lower rungs of the escalation ladder. /3
Deterrence theorists associated with the Nuclear Revolution often dismiss this idea, arguing that nuclear stalemate means both sides will avoid crises and conflicts out of the fear they could escalate. The result should be peace, stability, and less military competition. /4
Yet Putin’s behavior suggests that revisionist actors are not so inhibited and may instead use their strategic nuclear forces as a shield behind which they can pursue conventional aggression, knowing their nuclear threats may deter outside intervention. /5
Now of course, Ukraine is not a member of NATO, nor a U.S. treaty ally. But then neither is Taiwan. So if you think nuclear stalemate is going to keep the peace in the Strait, you would need to do some hard thinking about why it hasn’t kept the peace in Eastern Europe. /6
China, in fact, is developing the same types of forces that Putin references in his remarks: not only a survivable second-strike capability, but also theater nuclear forces suited for limited strikes for coercive escalation. Not a coincidence.
More broadly, as a student of military operations and foreign policy, it’s hard for me to see the Russian end game here either operationally or strategically, for reasons @jeffaedmonds and @KofmanMichael and others have identified.
Yes, at a tactical level Russia can steamroll Ukrainian regular forces, though I expect Ukraine can make this more costly than Russia has anticipated. Urban warfare is unkind to invaders, even strong ones. 8/ https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/1595.pdf
But beyond that, what is military endgame? Regime change and then puppet government? Difficulties of indefinitely occupying a nation of 41 million should be apparent after Soviet experiences with Warsaw Pact & Afghanistan, among others @dmedelstein
Russian invasion likely to provoke higher European defense spending, tighter NATO, deployment of NATO forces east, hostility with West. Ukraine was not headed for NATO membership any time soon, so a destabilizing invasion wasn’t necessary to forestall that perceived danger. 10/
At the strategic level, Russian invasion gives off big Schlieffen Plan energy. It is like committing suicide for fear of death, bringing about the very problems it is supposed to solve, and generating new ones like risks of inadvertent escalation. 11/11
I just watched some videos on russia subreddit and one video about Russian police arresting unruly protesters caught my eye. The commentary was that if western protesters had been so aggressive they would have been already shot by police. It's obviously propaganda because they wouldn't but I remember seeing police dealing with Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa and it is clear that Canadian police is much more professional and capable than Russian one. It is just a pity that its potential is used to support completely irrelevant and even harmful vaccine mandates. If all this energy was used for real issues we could have world peace in no time.
But it also means that we clearly overestimate Russia's military capabilities. Maybe the truth is that they are indeed as bad as they look like due to corruption and self-deceit?
*That* is the $50,000 question here. I can't even imagine the ways things will subtly (or maybe not so subtly) shift in the coming decades if the Russians have their asses totally handed to them militarily by the Ukrainians. *Everybody* up and down their border, from the Poles to the Romanians and the Kazakhs out east, is going to frown and say hmmm and start thinking.
Over the last few days I've been helping some of my friends to leave Russia. Fleeing to the US is a no-go, I don't know how to even begin there. Much more realistic is moving to Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and other neutral Asian countries that don't require visa from Russian citizens. You can settle there for a couple of months while applying a digital nomad visa to some European country.
A very important part of the process is opening a bank account outside of Russia. Reportedly you can easily do it at least in Georgia and Kazakhstan. I heard that in Georgia you need to sign a paper stating that you don't support the Russian invasion. This theoretically makes you criminally liable back in Russia under the recent laws, but it's unlikely that Georgia will share these declarations with Russia, so you are probably fine.
Once you have a bank account outside of Russia, you can still transfer some of your money from Russian bank accounts, as long as your bank is not disconnected from SWIFT. This transfer is limited to 5000 USD though. (You can also cross the borders with up to 10k in cash.) Visa & Mastercard are about to stop working tomorrow, so don't rely on them. You can probably use a UnionPay card if you have one.
I've used this list of digital nomad accepting countries: https://nomadgirl.co/countries-with-digital-nomad-visas/. Based on it, the easiest countries to immigrate to are Czech Republic and Portugal. Czech Republic requires a proof of ~6000 EUR in assets, Protugal requires a proof of ~700 EUR of stable income or ~17000 EUR in assets. It goes without saying, but you'll need to double-check the actual requirements in the official sources for any particular country that you want to move to.
If you are still in Russia, try getting apostille on your birth and marriage certificates and get a memo that you don't have criminal record. These documents are impossible to get outside of Russia and are required for getting long term visas or residence permits in many countries.
If you have questions or need any help (tickets, booking a place to stay etc.), reach out to me on Telegram at @eterevsky or email at oleg@eterevsky.com. Feel free to also reach out if you are a Ukrainian fleeing to Europe (the logistics there is completely different obviously).
Brain-drain might be the single most effective strategy long-term to nip future Russian aggression in the bud. Germany has stated it needs 400,000 workers to make up for soon to retire ones, it's a Western country with a high standard of living and relatively cheap real estate, specially in the East.
More details about immigrating to Czech Republic: https://citizenremote.com/visas/czech-republic/. Apparently you'll need to separately apply for a trade license and a long-term business visa.
Yes. Also other paperwork. I am not clear on details, but Russians should have competitive advantage, since our foreigners related bureaucracy is pretty Soviet in character.
Is India a reasonable alternative? I have the sense that programmers might be able to make a better living in India than in Georgia or Kazakhstan, and Russians might be subject to less racism in India than in China.
Are there countries where Bitcoin is a plausible alternative to SWIFT, Visa, and Mastercard?
India is definitely an option. I heard it's relatively easy to get a business visa there. At least one of my friends is considering doing this.
A lot of IT work nowadays is remote, so the actual place you will be staying is not that important. Georgia and Kazakhstan make sense at least as the first stops because Russian citizens don't need any kind of visa for a long-term stay. Also if your spouse or parent is moving with you and doesn't speak good English, they are easier since everyone speaks Russian.
I wouldn't consider China. It requires a visa for entry and you need to speak Chinese.
The problem with crypto is buying it in Russia. I don't know of any crypto exchanges located in Russia, so as a first step of buying bitcoins, you'll need to transfer money to an exchange outside of Russia, which makes it pointless.
On the peace deal Russia has offered: I think there's a good chance it's NOT just 'give up Crimea/Donetsk/Luhansk and don't join EU/Nato'. It also included 'Zelensky remains president, but Russia chooses a prime minister'.
Could be something the Russians will negotiate on, and maybe walk back from as time goes on, but I think if this is true it changes the flavour of the deal considerably. Russia isn't asking to slink away with a few bits of land; they want to permanently and powerfully influence Ukrainian politics so they can continue with their project of turning it back into a satellite state. It seems way less reasonable for Ukraine to agree to that.
I think it's pretty silly for those of us who aren't actually part of any negotiations to opine on what hypothetical deals the Ukranians should or should not be willing to make, especially given that Putin is known to be a bad-faith negotiator.
That's the major problem - where are the collaborators come from? I personally dont see the possibilities to buy out or coherse ukrainian bureaucracy into collaboration. There are some pro-Russian poilitcal figures in exile, but in the corrupt and toxic sludge of Ukrainian deep state just swallows them without a trace.
I’ve read some comments about Putin’s “long term strategy.” He’ll turn 70 in a few months. What would you say if you heard someone 70 talking about their long term career goals?
With a median life expectancy of 73 for men in Russia presumably Putin knows a lot of men his age who are already dead. How do folks think that plays into his planning and decision making?
I think this plays into the concept of "legacy". Which is absolutely something that ambitious men regularly turn to in their old age. What is he bequeathing to those who come after him? How will he be remembered, by Russians, in a few decades' time?
Right. My point is when Putin thinks about legacy, I don't think he cares one whit how he is remembered by the rest of the world -- only how he is remembered by the majority of Russians.
I don't read Putin's mind, i can only guess, judging his words and actions he enjoys the thought of being remembered a strong leader who led the nation through the perilous waters into a safe haven of "energy superpower"
That's the life expectancy at birth. I don't know where to find actuarial tables for Russia but in the US https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html male life expectancy at birth is 76 years but male life expectancy at age 70 is 15 more years, not 6. That's because at age 70 27% of men are already dead, pulling down the average, but if you're 70 and not dead yet, you're not one of them. Your chance of dying by 76 is only 16% if you're already 70, but 38% if you've just been born a boy.
(Relevant caveat in this case that these numbers are computed from current death rates, but how long you actually live will be determined by future death rates. If Putin launches a global thermonuclear war you can expect life expectancy to drop precipitously, especially in Russia, the US, and its allies. Inversely, if you live long enough to start backing up your connectome regularly, you might live millions or trillions of years. These figures do not take the probability of such events into account.)
My point was more that when you’re 70 a significant portion of your age cohort is already dead. That tends to focus the mind on how little useful time you have left.
What's your source for 73 years for men? That seems really high. Wikipedia has it at 68.2 in 2020, which seems more likely. (The same article says life expectancy for men at 60 is 16.8.)
Take alcohol, smoking, random crime, traffic accidents, and really bad healthcare out of equation, and he can expect to live a lot longer than the median, unless he is already sick with something very bad.
In any case, whatever we think about planning and decision making of someone who just started a bloody war against a non-aggressive country of 44 million is likely to have nothing to do with reality.
73 is for the average Russian man: poor, drinks lot of alcohol, got a hefty chance of using drugs, smoking and god knows what else.
As far as I remember, Putin barely drinks, don't smoke, exercise a lot, and is rather well off (not to mention being head of state, so it's not just him having a good doctor, but the state apparatus that tries to monitor him).
The Russian troops don't seem really all that into martial valor, at least not yet. Phrased more positively, they appear to be relatively humane and un-bloodthirsty. Further, the Russian domestic media strategy appears to be to spin Mr. Putin's war to the Russian public as a nearly bloodless "special military operation," showing little of the type of exciting combat footage we've seen from the Ukrainian side.
In general, Russians other than Putin don't seem all that interested in an old fashioned ground war in Europe. Perhaps human beings really are getting less warlike, as Steven Pinker suggested a decade ago?
Russian domestic media mostly showing Ukrainian artillery hiding in the residential area, or Ukrainian trooper hiding live grenade in a playground, or thousands of AKs distributed among random civilians, or para-Nazi militias shooting at cars with refugees.
But not much Call of Duty-style tank on tank action?
The Russian people don't seem very bellicose (at present). This seems mostly like Putin's whim and Russians are uneasy that his luck might have finally run out.
Well, I haven't seen any, but I only have a few minutes to watch TV at work, official
- read all - channels are mostly airing unspeakable horrors "Ukro-Nazis" doing to their own fellow citizens (they really do, I have reports from people in East Ukraine I know second-hand).
You made a really good guess - at least I'am feeling this way. Putinism has a long history of shitting owns pants.
Even if Putin thinks he has enough WMDs to not fear another Nuremberg, and even if Russia stops recognizing all international laws, preparing and waging aggressive wars is still explicitly banned by the Russia's own criminal code. (Which is why everyone expected the war, if it was to happen, to begin with a staged attack by the Ukrainians. Still not sure why it didn't happen.)
Ad donations, I suggest to consider giving money to People in Need, Czech humanitarian NGO with considerable experience in war situations (they were in Chechnya, Syria and similar places). Their english page for help to Ukraine is here: https://www.peopleinneed.net/people-in-need-continues-support-ukraine-8586gp.
The intro omits the single deadliest war, the one everyone forgets: the Second Congo War of 1998–2003, which killed 40,000 people *a month* for a total of 5.4 million if you include the victims of starvation and disease. I am as guilty as anyone, I consider myself well-informed on world affairs but while aware of the free-for-all conflict, I was oblivious to the scale of the carnage. Of course, those were black lives and it's now well-established those do not matter, even less than brown lives.
Oof. Yeah, that war was pretty horrific, and so is the indifference to it.
So far this war has been going on for 12 days (?) and has killed about 25000 people, working out to 63000 people per month. Hopefully the rate will slow down rather than accelerating.
“ Russia has miscalculated, they know they’ve miscalculated”
If metaculus is any guide, Russia is not the only one who miscalculated (see the odds of Russia taking Kyiv by April plummet). In fact, we don’t know for sure what Putin was thinking, so we may be projecting our own failure on him.
The take away is just to remember that “no plan survives contact with the enemy”. We should have similar concerns as far as our ability to even enforce a no fly zone.
I don't know that I agree with "EU has previously allowed members to join its economic community without joining the EU proper, and this would probably provide most of the relevant benefits to Ukraine without angering Russia." Having skimmed Putin's big essay on Ukraine, I think that having Ukraine tie its economy to the EU rather than Russia would be something he would very much have a beef with.
I guess the question is how much each is an excuse versus how much each is a reason. My sense is that the military threat is mostly an excuse and partially a reason while the economic integration is a more important reason but not something that can be used as an excuse.
Likely. The Ukrainian revolution (which angered Putin into invading parts of Ukraine in 2014) started when, in 2013, Yanukovich decided not to sign the EU Association Agreement (not EU membership proper).
Agree with much of this, especially regarding the no-fly-zone nonsense. Couple things which came to mind:
1) ‘liberal redditors getting mad on Twitter’ feels like an uncharitable illustration which downplays the remarkable display of unity and (dare I say) strength by liberal democracies.
2) I am not sure this conflict supports the concept of meaningfully superior ‘martial’ cultures. Russia seems to take pride in their macho outlook, but we may find out that boring nerdy planning and accountable power structures are more decisive war-winners than selecting Invincible Macho VdVs and right-clicking Kiev.
The people I know who fought in wars seem to emphasize the importance of initiative, leadership, coordination and intelligence, and they tend to get annoyed at the notion of inherently (genetically or culturally) superior soldiers. This is far outside my own expertise, admittedly.
Yes. Mood affiliation once again...I mean, the neo-reactionaries are funny...they want accelerationism, but also "traditional masculinity" and "traditional values"...maybe they don't go together so well?
It seems to me, with the change in military technology towards cyberwarfare and UAVs, the "nerds" will do better than the "jocks" in terms of being militarily successful...
>"This is what it looks like when a civilization that’s got strong and well-functioning norms against aggressive wars encounters one and launches an immune response."
I'm sorry what? The Iraq invasion, the Afghan invasion, the Libyan bombing and the Yugoslav bombing would seem to indicate otherwise. Not to mention the fact that countries have been financing the Saudi war machine and Israeli war machine for decades. I'm sorry Scott but you need to step outside your neoliberal foreign policy bubble.
> In this spirit, I hope they encourage Ukraine to consider Russia’s recent peace offer.
> As far as I understand it, the offer is: Ukraine declares neutrality, and recognizes Crimea as Russian and Donetsk/Luhansk as independent. Russia gives up and goes home.
The problem is that Russia has negative credibility.
In case of signing that Russia would renege on it and break it. Either they would never leave or attack again within 10 years. I would give 85% probability to that.
And at this point, sadly, "Russia promises to not invade" and similar should not be treated as serious in long term, and encouraging others to treat it seriously is a bad idea.
I am willing to bet money on that, as long as it is not requiring use of cryptocurrencies. I can also bet funny Manifold points, I got some from that broken Trump market.
I am also expecting that this relatively reasonably proposal is not what they proposed: I expect that they demanded at least one of following:
(1) purge of Ukrainian leadership
(2) installing their puppet(s) as rulers
(3) destruction of Ukrainian military
(4) stopping improvements to Ukrainian military
(5) forcing Ukrainian government to lie about what happened
Overall, I expect that Ukraine considered it but it was as fucked up and unreasonable as their previous public offers.
If anyone declares interest I can create Manifold markets for that (though I expect resolving that as N/A as Ukraine government is not dumb enough to fall for that, and Russia government would not offer such terms anyway)
Putin is oft compared to Hitler, but there is a better analogy:
But Gandalf said: ‘This is much to demand for the delivery of one servant: that your Master should receive in exchange what he must else fight many a war to gain! Or has the field of Gondor destroyed his hope in war, so that he falls to haggling? And if indeed we rated this prisoner so high, what surety have we that Sauron, the Base Master of Treachery, will keep his part? Where is this prisoner? Let him be brought forth and yielded to us, and then we will consider these demands.
It seemed then to Gandalf, intent, watching him as a man engaged in fencing with a deadly foe, that for the taking of a breath the Messenger was at a loss; yet swiftly he laughed again.
‘Do not bandy words in your insolence with the Mouth of Sauron!’ he cried. ‘Surety you crave! Sauron gives none. If you sue for his clemency you must first do his bidding. These are his terms. Take them or leave them!
(from Tolkien, "The Return of the King", chapter 10, "The Black Gate Opens".
(1) If I understand Fukuyama's position correctly, he was not saying that there would be no more wars. He was saying that the dominant ideology of 'liberal democracy + capitalism with a safety net' would never again face another ideology that could compete with it on a global scale. Once this ideology converts everyone, then there won't be any more wars. The 'Dictator Book Club' is a more effective argument against Fukuyama than this war.
(2) I agree that nuclear war is a much bigger issue than conventional war in Ukraine. But I'm surprised that you didn't address the question of whether you think that Ukraine can continue to hold out and whether the sanctions help then with this.
(3) A no fly zone would probably also requires destroying Russia air defenses so we can fly our planes there. Russia's surface-to-air capabilities are mostly located in Russia. The problem isn't just that we would be shooting down Russian aircraft (like Turkey has done once in Syria): we would also be shooting targets located on Russian soil.
(4) I have a different take on Russia's peace offer. They do seem to want all of the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. So it sounds to me like: please abandon your strong defensive positions in eastern Ukraine (which have mostly held so far), and give us a few months to fix our logistical problems.
(5) If you want to help victims of war in the most effective way possible, you should probably focus on the wars that nobody cares about instead of the wars that everybody cares about.
(3) is a great point that I have only seen a few people make. It drives me crazy that people are acting like we can declare a no-fly zone like Michael Scott declares bankruptcy (to borrow a phrase from Michael Kofman). You can say "we're not declaring war, we're just declaring a no-fly zone!" all you want, but if your policy predictably involves blowing up Russian soldiers on Russian territory...well, that's closer to a mustard seed than a fig leaf.
My real concern is that if we did that, and Putin kept it conventional, the Russian air force would lose badly and in relatively short order. So that creates an enormous incentive to escalate, e.g. "if you start enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, I'm going to start dropping tactical nukes on NATO airbases within X # kilometers of the border." If he's not going to give up, that would be a totally rational move to make.
“Fine, you can invade if the country is literally the Nazis, committing the literal Holocaust” - and then Putin says Ukraine is run by Nazis and genociding its people.
I have no good solution to this problem...
Why not just litigate the cases as they come up, and accept that there will be hard cases, and gradually work to push your failures out another std deviation?
I mean this in all good faith - this is indeed a very real problem. Also, this is genuinely one naive solution to this problem. Roll up our sleeves and just try. Is the flaw in the naive solution that, we are just really bad at this sort of thing, and adversaries are too good at finding loopholes to try to confront them? If this works 99.9% of the time, but is occasionally exploited, is it still that bad of a solution?
That was a surprising response! My model of your views here was off, sorry.
I thought you were saying solutions with some small error rate are not good solutions, that only perfect solutions are good solutions. But in hindsight that doesn't sound like you at all...
Maybe you're saying every case is a hard case, and per Quine or Gettier, we're always just one revelation away from realizing Zelenskyy is a secret Nazi, and after that, still just one revelation away from realizing we were lied to by the last piece of evidence, and he's actually the most anti-Nazi person among us all, iterated to radical skepticism?
That feels like a very poor model of you too. I'm very much publicly failing here in the hopes my error will be transparent and easily corrected.
To strawman Scott, I would say:
It's hard to perfectly define a weed, but that ontological quirk has not posed much of an issue during my actual gardening.
One can believe truth is a much harder problem than most people realize, acknowledge we will face edge cases, but then shrug and pick up your trowel.
(The alternative is to not pick up your trowel we have found this is not a dominant gardening strategy.)
That would be fun. But you are not strawman Scott!
Maybe this is ivermectin again, and the point is that hard cases dominate. (Do they? Or is availability heuristic pranking those of us who most like thinking about hard problems? Is this answerable, "ratio of cases that are hard," because what would even go in the denominator...)
I'll think more about your views here. I'd love any clarification, but you have a billion comments here, I already imposed, so I'll ruminate.
With reference to the "Bright Line" argument: Would it be useful to set up a prediction market for determining whether an invasion is "good" or not? Perhaps all countries in the UN could vote on whether the majority would vote "Yes" for annexation or "No". Unless there is universal consensus/collusion, the best strategy would be to vote for the "morally good" option, which humans are pretty good at figuring out unless they are motivated by personal gain.
“I hope they encourage Ukraine to consider Russia’s recent peace offer.”
Last time Western countries encouraged Czechoslovakia to accept a similar offer it did not work so well. What is the reason to think this time would be different?
An even will quickly make up for everybody, Putin will be pleased to take the Russian part of Ukraine as his failed blitzkrieg isn’t something to brag about. Transnistria & Gagauzia (yes, these are autonomous regions in Moldova) could get recognised by Russia while Moldova join the EU as it has strengthened ties with the west in the last years.
Nato would gain the western part of Ukraine and might draw new borders pushing further east.
At least some people argue it wasn't a plan of blitzkrieg because Putin thought that Ukraine could be taken without any serious resistance, and that that explains the early failures. When that didn't happen it turned into an attempted blitzkrieg without the needed logistic resources.
1. If Putin is irrational to the point of starting a nuclear war, and we don't want a nuclear war, we have to give him anything he asks by whatever pretext he gives. The details about NATO, Iraq, history etc are irrelevant, they could as easily have been aliens and spirits. And we're doomed anyway.
2. Putin could also be some sort of rational. What sort?
From what we know, he's not a religious fanatic, not an addict or esoteric fan.
He is a long-time KGB officer, and their modus operandi is well-known since
1930s, when they've given up the global permanent revolution and exploited the
same framework again and again.
The framework is:
- find a relatively weak/unstable/isolated democratic country
- create some underground spy network
- create a list of talking points to polarize/split the public and push those through diplomacy and local media
- if the convenient dictator wins, use him in your favor
- if not:
- do a false flag operation
- invade
- if it goes ok, install a puppet government
- if it fails, annex some territory, put it in gray zone and use to destabilize the rest of the country
- if this also fails, incorporate gray zone into your territory
Since then it was exploited in Finland, Bessarabia, Baltic countries, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, Georgia, etc.
And we can see that's exactly what happens here and we're being the public fed Putin's talking points, no?
Only if (we believe that) Putin is irrational to the point of starting a nuclear war over any little thing he might be denied, do we have to give him anything he asks. We don't believe he is that irrational, only that he might be irrational to start a nuclear war over a few particularly important issues.
So no, we don't have to give him anything he asks, which seems to undermine your logic here. But we should probably lean towards accepting his demands on the e.g. "hey please don't invade or bomb Russia" front, and similarly "don't send your armies into battle against my armies",
Perhaps I am being nitpicky, but there is one thing I would like to point out: NATO didn't ''expand''. It admitted Central European countries which seeked protection, because they correctly predicted that Russia would try to reestabilish it's sphere of influence over them once it regains strength to do so. We wanted to join Western institutions, we wanted it badly. For instance: only about 2% of Poles want Poland to leave NATO(poll from 2019).
Former Eastern European satellites with democratic histories flocked to NATO. The Central Asian republics run like autocracies joined CSTO to preserve their autocracies, as shown in Kazakhstan. The odd one out is Mongolia, which is both Asian and democratic despite being in a bad neighborhood squeezed between Russia and China (and with much of their historic territory annexed by China which is waging cultural genocide against Mongols there).
> Everyone can sanction Russia as much as they want, and it can win anyway.
Lol, no. It's already losing because of logistics, it's going to lose because of logistics harder, and at some point you end up with a 1984-esque war economy where your citizens have nothing because the resources go to a war that won't be resolved.
If they take Kiev they'll get killed by a regular army coordinated from Lviv. If they take Lviv they'll get killed by guerillas and IEDs.
I don't even know if there is a "next time". The current situation has a realistic chance of causing a regime change in Russia, at which point the sanctions would be lifted. The West is close to using every metaphorical nuclear option and leaving just the literal one.
I estimate "Ukraine will be occupied by Russia and everyone will get over it by next year" (to a similar extent everyone was over Chechnya) as ~20% likely, at most, so yes. The degree of the occupation failing and/or everyone not getting over it, is up for debate.
Regime change, what next? Demilitarizaion, giving up nukes, splitting into large amount of states where the largest state is 2-3 times smaller than Ukraine?
“in ‘62, it was the Russians who agreed to back down to prevent nuclear war. We owe them one, so this time it’s on us.”
In 1956 and 1968, when the Hungarian and Czech governments attempted to get some measure of independence from the USSR, the latter responded with full scale military invasion and arresting or executing local political leaders. The western countries decided not to interfere in the Soviet sphere of influence.
In 1962, the situation was reverse - Castro decided to ally with the USSR and turned Cuba into a communist dictatorship. The US and USSR compromised by letting Castro stay and in return for withdrawing the soviet missiles from Cuba the US withdrew its missile form Turkey and Italy.
Is “Russians who agreed to back down” a fair description of what happened?
It is not, no. It was a fair exchange. Khruschev specifically decided to base missiles in Cuba because of the Jupiter decision, and so in *fact* Khruschev got pretty much what he wanted, with the Kennedy Administration agreeing to remove the Jupiters and Khruschev agreeing to go no further with Cuba. I doubt K was thrilled about trusting the Cubans anyway.
What Khruschev *didn't* understand was the tremendous PR spin that would be put on it, that would make Kennedy out into some kind of hero who stared down the Soviets. (It probably helped the myth along that Kennedy got himself martyred the next year, instead of living to be covered in mud by Vietnam.) My impression is that even the Soviets themselves kind of bought the PR and this helped bring him down at home.
> Ukraine declares neutrality, and recognizes Crimea as Russian and Donetsk/Luhansk as independent. Russia gives up and goes home.
Putin wants to _demilitarize_ Ukraine. How do you think further negotiations with a bully who declared he's out for your blood will go, once you handed him your weapons? Ceding anything to Putin at this point is being terrible at game theory, even if it's a trivial thing.
Also, everyone, especially Ukrainians, knows Ukraine is a corrupt shithole because it's an ex-USSR republic. This is what being in Russia's orbit does to countries, this is not a matter of opinion, this is settled. They correctly reason that their only chance for a modern country is joining the Western bloc - that's what Soviet satellite states did and it worked magnificently. "Keep Ukraine neutral" is code for "keep Ukraine like Belarus with an extra dose of military vulnerability".
I rarely comment, but in this instance I MUST, because THIS quote left my jaw on the floor:
"Also, the last time this happened, in ‘62, it was the Russians who agreed to back down to prevent nuclear war. We owe them one, so this time it’s on us."
This leads me to ask, in all sincerity, "WHAT, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the F***???"
I can't even see the context into which this statement is hooked. It looks like a throwaway comment, but one possessed of the most staggering blitheness, which is not at all your usual MO, Scott.
My impression was the Cuban Missile Crisis ended when the Russians agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba to prevent nuclear war; am I getting something wrong?
Yeah, you're forgetting that the Kennedy Administration agreed to remove the Jupiter IRBMs from Turkey in exchange. Since that removal was pretty much Khruschev's entire goal in threatening to build missile sites in Cuba in the first place, a better overall assessment is that it was an equal exchange, with nobody doing anybody favors.
NATO agreed in 2008 that Ukraine "WILL become members of NATO" (emphasis mine). This is about as explicit a contradiction of the claim that NATO has no signs of interest in Ukraine joining as possible. They have continued to reaffirm this and still say it on their website
Biden reassured Zelenskiy 3 months ago, when he already knew invasion was an increasing probability, that the right to join NATO remained "in Ukraine's hands".
It is more than clear that the US and UK both wanted Ukraine in NATO even if other NATO members might have taken some persuading. NATO and Ukraine have both *explicitly* reaffirmed, over and over again, their desire to join together. The fact that there are obstacles does not mean that there is no serious chance it could have happened, or that there are "no" signs of willingness. Quite the opposite.
The most serious of the obstacles you allude to are Ukraine's border disputes in Crimea and Donbas. There was never any serious possibility of resolving these issues, so NATO is only willing to accept Ukraine as a member under conditions which cannot be fulfilled. It's accurate to say they've shown no signs of being willing to accept Ukraine.
Are you under the impression that Russia doesn't do the same thing?
Then surely Russia ought to expect the same back
Are you under the impression that these peripheral countries aren't asking to join western organizations, but are instead coerced or brainwashed into doing so?
Or are you subscribing to the view point that national sovereignty should only exist for the Great Powers and everyone else should just get in line?
I've spent a lot of time in the former Soviet countries. I play sports over there so I talk with folks after games, meet families, etc.
They live in a world of fear. That fear is not of NATO.
I agree with most of this, and I really want to highlight that the 'no-fly zone' concept is something that can only come from a great power fighting a smaller power. A no-fly zone is, 'we're at war with you but we're so much more powerful that we're going to do it at minimal risk and there's nothing you can do about it.' The US can do that with Iraq and Libya and Kosovo and any number of small countries. I would have thought Russia could do it with Ukraine until last week. But for two major powers there's no such thing as a no-fly zone...there's just war. The internationally accepted step down from war is proxy war or armament, which is what we're doing. Maybe Russia is so weak it would adhere to the polite fiction of a 'no-fly zone', but I doubt it.
I think the phrase has rather morphed over the years. The original meaning (so far as my memory goes) stems for Bill Clinton's idea about how to prevent Serbia from assisting the Bosnian Serbs tear apart Bosnia and Herzegovnia in 1993 or so. It was his answer to the twin queries (1) What are you going to do about all this ethnic cleansing? and (2) Don't the Bosnians have the right to work out a civil war however they want, without interference?
Clinton was a born split-the-difference guy, of course, probably loved threesomes on Jeff's island paradise, so he came up with the idea that the justifiable thing to do was prevent Serbia from assisting the Bosnian Serbs through air power, and the deal he offered them was "You can keep your air force -- so long as you keep it within your borders, and don't fly it over Bosnia." A very different thing from just going in and blasting the hell out of Serbian air forces.
And this doesn't really seem relevant to Ukraine, except perhaps in the separatist regions, where you could argue there is a domestic civil war going on -- but even then, the separatists are *not* being assisted by the VVS anyway, so what's the point?
But yeah if you're just talking about suppressing somebody's aerial offensive and defensive assets, this is just 'establishing air superiority' and the phrase "no fly zone" seems weirdly inapt. Could be Zelensky's trying to suggest a form of Clintonian hair-splitting that would allow NATO to get directly involved while pretending to just be "allowing" Ukraine and Russia to work it out "fairly" using just ground assets. Or something like that, who knows? Why he thinks the lack of a solid *rationalization* is the big barrier to this happening is a mystery. Or maybe he's playing to a world audience, thinking the Europeans or Americans will be embarrassed at "not even" being willing to interdict Russian aerial bombardment. Although again who would be naive enough to uncritically accept that framing I dunno.
The original No Fly Zone was over Iraq in 1991 immediately after the first Gulf War. The term was dusted off again in 1993 for Bosnia.
Oh yeah I remember that now. I think I got my Gulf Wars mixed up, I was thinking the Iraq version came after the Yugoslav.
I don't think Zelensky really thinks NATO is going to impose a No Fly zone, but it's his job to investigate every possible avenue of support for his country. And a large part of the value of his entreaties is not the (minuscule) chance of actually getting NATO to take a huge jump up the escalation ladder, but the propaganda / information-warfare value, casting Ukraine further in the light of noble victimhood, drumming up public support, etc.
"maybe he's playing to a world audience, thinking the Europeans or Americans will be embarrassed at "not even" being willing to interdict Russian aerial bombardment. Although again who would be naive enough to uncritically accept that framing I dunno."
From this article https://nevalleynews.org/16269/news/polls-show-many-americans-in-favor-of-no-fly-zone-but-most-do-not-fully-understand-the-ramifications-of-imposing-this-order/:
"WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) - A broad bipartisan majority of Americans think the United States should stop buying Russian oil and gas and work with NATO to set up "no-fly zones" to protect Ukraine from Russian air strikes, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Friday."
Later in the same article:
"It was not clear if respondents who supported a no-fly zone were fully aware of the risk of conflict, and majorities opposed the idea of sending American troops to Ukraine or conducting air strikes to support the Ukrainian army."
Having interacted with a number of civilians about this, it seems they genuinely do not understand that a no fly zone means shooting down planes and air-war. They seem to think of it as some kind of abstract international law instrument which somehow-magically- stops people from flying. I think the most charitable explanation is that they haven't thought that hard about it.
Yes, it almost sounds like it's an ICAO policy that one could somehow invoke that would cause air travel, including hostile military aviation, to be suspended in a region, or to become clearly recognized as a war crime, or something something something.
Good branding for the 1990s ones, I guess!
Quite right. One of the drawbacks of the professionalization of the military is that far fewer people than at any point in history have any direct experience informing their opinion about military operations.
> Although again who would be naive enough to uncritically accept that framing I dunno.
Been avoiding Twitter this last month? ;)
I have seen far too many people, some of whom I used to respect the mental prowess of, speaking positively of the idea of a US NFZ over Ukraine. And who will. Just. Not. Listen.
"Imposing a No Fly Zone" is kinda like fighting a little kid by keeping your palm on their forehead and them at arms length while they flail at you. Harder to do with an adult bear.
>Two persons close to the Russia-Ukraine negotiations (including back channel talks) tell me Russia proposed (1) Zelensky remains pro forma president but Russia appoints Boiko as PM, (2) Ukraine recognizes L/DNR and Crimea, (3) No NATO. Ze told them emphatically no.
Boyko was the Putin proxy candidate in the last election, getting 11% of the vote in 2019. Though I suspect that number would be vastly lower now.
(https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-real-russian-candidate-in-ukraine-s-presidential-race/)
https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500812687009267712
The latter two might work even if they're painful, but the former would never fly and Ukraine would be nuts to take that deal.
Yeap, I often see 2 and 3 mentioned as a reasonable compromise, but they also asked to change Ukraine's constitution to specifically nerf Zelensky.
Also to note that negotiations are complicated by a complete lack of trust in Russia - they broke both the recent Minsk accords, and also the treaty they signed when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons, which says very clearly they'll respect Ukraine's borders at the time. Hard to get more untrustworthy than that.
I saw a claim elsewhere that another part of the demands was that Ukraine reduce its military to 60k people max. Which would be extremely foolish to agree to since Russia is demonstrably untrustworthy and would doubtless attack again when the situation is more in his favor. If either of these secret side conditions is true, it would be stupid for Ukraine the deal since it amounts to surrender to conquest.
That was a day one demand, that as far as I can tell, was taken off the table when it was clearly a non starter. I'm also 90% sure Putin wants the entirety of the Donbas region independent, not just the part that Putin had before the war.
I think Ukraine should only take the deal if they get back something that can be an assurance that this is unlikely to happen again. My first thought was the return of their nuclear weapons, which is probably unrealistic, but they should get something that helps guarantee the deal will be preserved.
It's hard to see what kind of assurance Russia could give that would make a difference to Ukraine, given their history of lying and breaking past deals.
DMZ inside Russian territory.
You mean, inside Donbass? Presumably not inside actual Russia, because then Donetsk and Luhansk would be on the Ukraine side of the DMZ.
Formal acquiescence to Ukraine joining NATO would work.
And, as Aristides said, handing over a hundred working nukes would work (nb: one of the big reasons Ukraine handed the nukes over in the first place was that they were locked with codes the Ukrainians didn't have).
No that would end the world, silly boy.
It was asked what kind of assurance Russia could give that Ukraine would accept. I'm pretty sure Ukraine would accept either of those as being genuine insofar as Russia would be putting a gun to its own head in case of betrayal.
It's not going to *happen*, but it satisfies the condition asked for.
Put a UN force in along a demilitarised zone. Any invasion would then authorise fully sanctioned war against Russia. Then Ukraine agrees to not join NATO.
Keep in mind that Ukraine had eight years to implement Minsk-2.
And we are ones to talk about being "demonstrably untrustworthy".
Russia did not withdraw their heavy weapons, so Ukraine could not implement Minsk-2. We've all now seen what happens when Russia agrees to "humanitarian corridors" so I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt on anything.
The text reads as follows (emphases mine):
Pull-out of all heavy weapons *by both sides* to equal distance with the aim of creation of a security zone on minimum 50 kilometres (31 mi) apart for artillery of 100mm calibre or more, and a security zone of 70 kilometres (43 mi) for multiple rocket launchers (MRLS) and 140 kilometres (87 mi) for MLRS Tornado-S, Uragan, Smerch, and Tochka U tactical missile systems:
*for Ukrainian troops*, from actual line of contact;
*for armed formations of particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine*, from the contact line in accordance with the Minsk Memorandum as of 19 September 2014
The pullout of the above-mentioned heavy weapons must start no later than the second day after the start of the ceasefire and finish within 14 days.
This process will be assisted by OSCE with the support of the Trilateral Contact Group.
It doesn't actually obligate Russia to do anything.
Very funny? If we're playing the "Donetsk and Luhansk separatists aren't controlled by Russia" game then we have nothing to talk about.
The Donetsk and Luhansk separatist forces are supported by Russia, directed by Russia, and to some extent _are_ Russia (they've had at least special ops forces In there for years)
> It doesn't actually obligate Russia to do anything.
If you are claiming that Russia is not controlling/influencing/supporting "armed formations of" then you really should educate itself about situation.
(and that assumes that they should not be treated to be simply part of russian army)
I lived eight years in Ukraine. I know personally plenty of people from Donbass. They never saw a Russian soldier.
That said, if Minsk-2 meant to say "Russia" or impose obligations on Russia then they should have said so.
What was the problem with point 11 of Minsk-2? Why Ukraine couldn’t implement it?
Quoting from Wikipedia:
11. Constitutional reform in Ukraine, with a new constitution to come into effect by the end of 2015, the key element of which is decentralisation (taking into account peculiarities of particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, agreed with representatives of these districts), and also approval of permanent legislation on the special status of particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in accordance with the measures spelt out in the attached footnote, by the end of 2015.
My understanding is that current Ukraine elites didn’t (and don’t) want any Russian influence, and so they sabotaged any political guarantees to separatists / Russian proxies, and Russia in turn was wary to withdraw heavy weapons - since without them, Donetsk / Luhansk (population 3.5m) would be very vulnerable to military action from Ukraine (population 40m, army trained and armed by NATO).
They chose not to implement it because Russia refused to implement their side of the agreement. If Russia is not even going to honor the ceasefire, why the heck would they go forward with constitutional reform? How could they sell that to their electorate? "We got nothing, and in return we made huge constitutional changes". OK. They only agreed to it in return for a ceasefire that didn't happen. Traditionally when the other party is in breach of a contract, you are released from your obligation to perform your side of the agreement.
Well, the contention is that Russia _did_ implement a ceasefire (and then got nothing in return).
Both Minsk-1 and Minsk-2 were signed after Ukraine military suffered major (some say - catastrophic) defeats, and there was a very real risk of Russian forces advancing to Kiev.
"My understanding is that current Ukraine elites didn’t (and don’t) want any Russian influence"
Your understanding is weak.
NO Ukrainian wants any Russian influence in Ukraine.
Look up Holodomor if you don't understand why
Look at the current fighting if you're unclear on exactly how much Ukrainians don't want to be dominated by Putin, or Russia.
But my previous statement really wasn't strong enough:
No sane person wants to be under Russian influence. Russia is a land for whose entire existence it's been a cesspool of political and economic corruption. Until that changes, it needs to be kept locked up in the smallest possible place
Exactly this kind of statements I cite when people ask me why Russia could be afraid of NATO/USA.
It is quite easy to portray someone as paranoid, when you first threaten him, and than only look at his reaction.
I do not know a single thing Russia has done in the last 30 years, NATO/USA has not done worse before in this period. This does not give Russia the right to do so, but this does take the right from any Westerner to point to Russia as a evil.
"NO Ukrainian wants any Russian influence in Ukraine."
Do you mean that people who lived and still living in Crimea and Donbas are not Ukrainians then?
Also, if 'no influence' - why Ukraine didn't pay market prices for the natural gas starting 1991 or 2004 or 2010?
I've read on Holodomor, thank you.
You also seem to equate Russia with Putin, and call for the harshest possible collective punishment of entire population - am I getting it right?
Weird. All those years living in Ukraine and I met so many people who don't fit your generalization regarding "all Ukrainian people."
No true Ukrainian, is it?
You violated the 1994 agreement that caused Ukraine to give up their nukes when you invaded Crimea, Donbass, etc.
No one can ever be reasonable expected to honor ANY agreement with you, when you're currently in violation of an agreement you signed with them.
Sorry, but until Russia leaves every bit of 1994 Ukraine territory, there can be no "bad faith" on the Ukraine side, only on the Russian one
*I* didn't violate anything, and the United States had long claimed that the Budapest Memorandum was not binding when it sought to sanction Byelorus in violation of that Memorandum.
Meanwhile, if you want bad faith, look to the promises that NATO would not expand to the East.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early
Oh, well, that's easy.
"Misha there is in the Army on Monday, Dima is in the Army on Tuesday, Aleksi is in the Army on Wednesday, Zhenya is in the army on Thursday..."
Amazing that Putin managed to offer that Ukraine almost completely capitulates, while spreading news that he'd offered to walk away with almost nothing. This seems typical of Russia's negotiation style (see also: repeatedly agreeing to temporary ceasefires so that civilians can evacuate, and then breaking the ceasefires when civilians attempt to evacuate every time). I'll be similarly skeptical next time Russia says anything about their war policy.
I think "completely capitulates" would involve reinstalling Yanukovych or equivalent as president and disbanding their armed forces. These demands aren't anything close to that.
They requested that Zelensky become a figurehead only and a Russian-selected person becomes the executive.
That would indeed be a fairly complete capitulation.
One possible compromise would be for Ukraine to agree to accept the results of a referendum, run by a neutral party, in Crimea and the secessionist areas. Russia wins in the Crimea, probably in the parts of eastern Ukraine they have long controlled, perhaps not if their claim is for all of Donbas. At the point when that agreement was made both sides could claim it as a victory for them, and they are just respecting democracy.
Ukraine yes, but I don't think Russia would accept elections where it doesn't count the votes.
I was talking with friends about this, and Germany would have been the best neutral party. We joked that if China is organizing, they'll also be winning the elections even if they're not on the ballot.
But yes, that would really be the just decision in this case. Unfortunately I doubt it's going to happen.
What about the Ukraine being split in half? Basically Russia gaining the eastern half, and Ukraine keeping the Western half? I guess the Ukrainians would never agree to this, but still...
If things had gone Russia's way, perhaps we'd be thinking about that. But they haven't.
Yeah but Putin wants to escalate...so idk, maybe as a last resort before he goes completely nuclear...
If you reward terrorism, you get more terrorism.
The response to "Putin wants to escalate" is "Dear Russia, if you want very single one of your cities nuked, let Putin escalate. If not, don't."
Nobody would believe that for a second.
Keep in mind Russia has practiced ethnic cleansing in the occupied areas of Luhansk/Donetsk. The people there now are not the same people who were there 8 years ago. Should Israel conduct a referendum in the settlements and then decide whether to annex the settlement areas based on that referendum?
Actually, that sounds a bit unsubstantiated...maybe provide some reliable sources for this claim?
Plenty of proof out there if you care to look at all:
https://www.dw.com/en/donetsk-and-luhansk-in-ukraine-a-creeping-process-of-occupation/a-60878068
"Since the conflict broke out, millions of people have left the separatist areas."
I would argue that most of it was due to the ongoing conflict, and general lack of rule if law (and not ethnicity). A lot of people prefer not to live in a war zone, if they have an alternative...
Care to bring any evidence, or its the common wisdom again?
Another nice piece: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/22/what-are-donetsk-and-luhansk-ukraines-separatist-statelets
"In the statelets, secret police and “loyal” residents monitor every word, phone call and text message.
Dissidents or businessmen who refuse to “donate” their assets to the “needs of the People’s Republic” have been thrown in “cellars”, or dozens of makeshift concentration camps, without trial.
“It looks like the 1930s in the Soviet Union, a classic gulag,” Stanislav Aseyev, a publicist who was kidnapped in 2017 in Donetsk and was sentenced by a separatist “court” to 15 years in jail for “espionage”, told Al Jazeera.
For almost two years, he was incarcerated and tortured in these “cellars” until separatists swapped him and dozens of other prisoners in 2017.
Thousands of others were tortured and abused in the “cellars”, according to rights groups and witnesses.
“The cellars where prisoners are held in Donetsk, and the widespread use of torture, are among the most obvious human rights issues,” said Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog group.
These tendencies have gone hand in hand with economic degradation.
The living standards are “many times, if not dozens of times worse than in pre-war 2013”
...
Thousands of Russian volunteers flocked to Donetsk and Luhansk to aid separatist militias.
“Putin will come and restore order here,” one of their supporters, a rotund minibus driver named Valerii, told this reporter in April 2014 in Donetsk.
But four months later, after the separatists tried to confiscate his minibus, he locked his apartment, loaded the bus with his most valuable belongings, and left for Kyiv."
I believe you haven't read the article yourself, because it contains nothing like "ethnic cleansing"
Are you claiming you don't understand what "ethnic cleansing" is?
Because "making it miserable for people of a certain ethnicity until they leave" is pretty much the Platonic ideal of "ethnic cleansing"
I read the entire article. Forcing 2-3 million ethnic Ukrainians (out of a population of 6-7 million) to flee by torturing them and confiscating their stuff is ethnic cleansing
A good solution might be for Zelensky to go to "prison" as Risto Ryti did for Finnland. Putin gets to claim domestIcally that he removed the Jewish drugy nazi and Zelensky gets the full Pablo Escobar treatment, with plenty of furloughs, gets his chosen successor elected with a discrete hint or two, and no risk to fuck up in everyday politics.
I think the peace agreement needs to be a formal, tripartite agreement between NATO, Ukraine, and Russia. Ukraine is formally declared as neutral and not eligible for NATO as well as being a nuclear weapons free zone, Russia agrees to allow the residents of the Donetsk/Luhansk to have an internationally supervised referendum on being independent/joining Russia/staying in Ukraine and to not send in any troops into Ukraine to back any government, etc.
And yeah, we really need to not do the idiotic No Fly Zone idea. Thankfully, Russia made it clear recently that they'd consider it an act of war by any country that did it. I'm not worried that Biden is going to cave on that - the guy held firm on Afghanistan withdrawal even with a big chunk of the national security press and "Blob" railing against him over it, and so far the US has done exactly what we threatened to do before Russia invaded (sanctions, arms to the Ukrainians, etc).
I have a hard time seeing how the Ukrainians will ever trust Russia to abide to a promise not to invade again. I think any peace agreement would have to involve trustworthy allies, and be effectively something like NATO in all but name. (i.e. troop tripwires, like South Korea.)
I've been listening to residents in Odessa on Twitter spaces and telegrams. Even the political groups and factions that were built around being pro Russia are now building sandbags in the streets. They feel betrayed. Burning with anger at Russia.
If it would be like NATO in all but name, then it would be recognized as such, and would mean that Russia lost the war (by definition - stated objective for the war was not achieved). But then the question of trust would be moot - there will be military guarantees instead.
The question of trust comes up only if Ukraine is losing - and then it is a balancing act between more fighting (and deaths) and giving up something…
My worry is all this does is postpone the invasion for 5 years. Right now Ukraine has international support and is causing Russia to suffer major loses. If Russia ever sees am opening where one of those is not true, why wouldn't they just do it again. At a minimum, they will get more of Ukraine.
To take Scott's metaphor, Crimea was the Alusian Islands, now they are asking for Alaska, what will they ask for next? It is better to not surrender unless something changes that make it substantially less likely this will happen again. Transfer of Russian military assets? I'm not sure what, it will take, but Ukraine might be better off in an Afghanistan like 20 year conflict that they win instead of becoming puppet state slowly over repeated attacks with peace agreements in the middle.
Give Ukraine part of Russia's nuclear arsenal. Ukraine gave its nukes to Russia back in the early 90's, in exchange for a pledge to respect its borders. Now Russia has violated that pledge, so Ukraine should get the nukes back in exchange.
Though that is an obvious nonstarter for obvious reasons.
Of course. Perhaps someone else, like the United States or France, could loan Ukraine some nukes in exchange for their right to compensation from the Russian arsenal...
... though that's also a nonstarter, for almost as obvious reasons.
They could do it secretly...like Israel which is not "officially" an atomic power, but obviously "unofficially" it's a different reality...
We didn't give the Israelis nukes. They're just smart and resourceful enough to build them on their own.
Even setting up the parameters of a referendum like that is rather complicated in the wake of a war like this. Some towns in the Ukrainian-controlled parts of Donbas simply don't exist anymore; should the separatists win because of self-determination if everyone who would have opposed them is already dead?
The same concerns apply to Crimea in a way, although it's farther in the past -- Crimea is so very Russian because the Soviets deported the Crimean Tatars in 1944 and settled Russians in their place. We shouldn't want ethnic cleansing to be a way to weaponize self-determination.
I don't have any solutions here, just pointing out problems upon problems.
No
"Ukraine is formally declared as neutral and not eligible for NATO as well as being a nuclear weapons free zone"
Ukraine pretty much did that in 1994, and the result was Russia invaded 20 years later.
NATO is absolutely no threat to Russia, UNLES Russia is planning on invading Ukraine.
So "joining NATO can not be allowed" is pretty much saying "Russia will eventually invade"
I've got a better deal:
Russia gets completely out of Ukraine, Ukraine gets to join NATO and EU, and the sanctions against Russia get ended
> Ukraine ceding them does nothing except take away Russia’s casus belli for future wars.
During the big state address teh casus belli was 'we will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.'
Why anyone thinks Vladimir Putin *needs* a casus belli is beyond me.
I mean he, like any invader, obviously does, because he needs at least some people and factions onside. That's why he has provided multiple. That's why no country ever doesn't. Wars that are openly about conquest, wealth etc. simply do not happen any more.
Right. And an important faction to have onside is the military itself, which will have morale problems very shortly if it doesn't believe in the cause.
I'm also trying to think, even when wars of conquest were common, how often they were ever presented purely as wars of conquest: "We want that land so we're going to take it." Maybe the Mongols did this?
As opposed to "I am the rightful ruler of this place, as is well-known according to all the best sources, not the imposter who currently holds sway here, and I'm merely reclaiming what has been robbed from me."
Or "[ENEMY NATION] has engaged in repeated abuses and injustices, and we have waged a war to rightfully punish them, and now to compensate us for our trouble (and perhaps to discourage it from ever happening again) we ask for nothing more than a few measly pieces of land. Or perhaps we'll subjugate them entirely, but purely as an act of self-defense."
Maybe read the Iliad.
Falls under my second casus belli: punitive expedition against a wife-stealing scoundrel and those harboring him.
Yeah, but there's a lot more flavor to it than that. You don't really get the sense that Homer thinks Paris was a scoundrel; Philip of Makedon seems to have named his famous son after him.
There was a (long) period of time when a successful war was very clearly an advantageous adventure. Take over some foreign land and tax them. You didn't need much to sell that.
Unfortunately (or I guess fortunately) that isn't true any more.
The Romans did basically this in Europe (less so in Asia and Africa since there were peer opponents there). "Veni, Vidi, Vici", and all.
Colonialists did this in parts of what became their empires (not everywhere - there were provocations of a sort for a lot of the wars, and obviously the Aztecs provided all sorts of moral imperatives - but parts).
I'm not that far into the history of Rome podcast, but thus far at least, most Roman conquest in Italy was rationalized as being in response to a threat posed to allied cities by the Etruscans or the Latins or Samnites, etc. I was surprised actually, given their reputation as ruthless conquerers, the pains Roman politicians took to convince themselves that they weren't the aggressors.
Yes. The same is true in Caesar's conquest of Gaul. In practice it was a very aggressive war and we're left with little doubt as to his true intentions, but he nonetheless waited for a casus belli in order to present it as essentially a series of defensive actions on behalf of allied Gallic tribes.
" We want that land so we're going to take it."
You don't have to go that far back: The Nazis in Germany did exactly that, they basically sayed: "We need more space to the east, to give to our settlers and feed our great homeland. The slavic hordes that live there now are anyway not using it properly."
It's true that Hitler wrote Mein Kampf and that the pursuit of Lebensraum was both a popular idea in Nazi circles and official Nazi policy in the form of Generalplan Ost, but it wasn't given as a reason for the war, on the occasion of either Fall Weiss or Barbarossa. Those speeches of Hitler's are available and well worth reading.
When it came to public consumption, I think the Nazis normally referenced Lebensraum obliquely, and almost never as a primary motive for the war. Aside from Mein Kampf itself, I'm not aware of any Nazi propaganda where something like Generalplan Ost was laid out for broad popular consumption as a laudable goal.
Even Hitler made one up: the Nazis were nominally "protecting ethnic Germans in Poland." Apparently literally no one thinks "because I feel like it" is an acceptable reason for war anymore.
Super duper quick note on the university that banned Dostoevsky: 1) it was a lecture series, not a class, 2) the official notice said it was postponed, not outright banned, 3) they've since reversed the decision.
"it was a lecture series, not a class"
so?
"the official notice said it was postponed, not outright banned"
we weren't killing the jews (yet), we're just checking public opinion by throwing them in ghettos
"they've since reversed the decision"
I hope the professor declines and holds it publicly instead.
I'd seen a lot of stuff around the internet about a university supposedly banning the books, which I didn't think captured the situation properly once I looked into it. If there's reason to be angry at something, it should be based on accurate information.
I think your lecture series/class criticism is fair. They are pretty similar. In my defense, I was pretty tired when I wrote this comment. :p
However, I think comparing me saying the series was postponed to rounding up Jewish people inflates the issue. There's a big difference what the Nazis did and not teaching a class on a writer because he was Russian. On the other hand, I can understand your line of thought that this could be a test before they move to larger things.
Obviously I'm being *massively* hyperbolic in order to show a point.
Corrections for factual accuracy should not be attacked. Helping everyone operate from the same facts is a public good.
Agreed but I think the comment should also take into account that a sort of 'testing of the waters' exists.
Saying a University "banned the study of Author X" implies that a decision was made with the *purpose* of *prohibiting* *all* study of X. If, in reality, a class about X was temporarily postponed, that does not require, nor even imply, any intent to limit the study of X- I had classes canceled/rescheduled simply because of scheduling conflicts, classes I was *required* to take to graduate- a postponment of a lecture series, class, whatever, does not imply that anyone in the University find the *content* of the class objectionable. So it's a huge difference between what happened and the claim that "studying Dostoevsky was banned"
Do you understand the difference?
Absolutely unnecessary comparison to the holocaust. You otherwise make reasonable points, but making a slippery slope argument does not require equating the holocaust to removing a single book from a single lecture series.
Yeah I'm being *massively* hyperbolic.
Related to the jingoism section: lots of western businesses have taken action against Russia beyond what government sanctions called for. So western unity against Russia has gone beyond "being very pro-Ukraine on Reddit"!
A lot of business transactions are based on mutual trust. Someone needs to either ship the goods or pay first. And when Russia starts doing the whole invasion thing, its far less likely that you'll be able to count on the Russian government guaranteeing contract provisions. So at the very least you need to account for the additional risk. And that's before you have to worry about the human cost of having business assets in Russia who might be harmed.
Also when your bank and the computer network it uses for wire transfers are placing economic sanctions against Russia and Russian companies in a way that changes day by day.
A lot of western military veterans have also traveled to Ukraine to fight in their International Legion.
Got to note that any company trying to fully exit Russia right now will have their properties seized through fast-track bankruptcy procedure; that's why many companies close their business venues but still pay salaries of their workers which avoids this particular outcome.
"Is it imprudent? It’s a risk, but at least it was taken in the defense of real principles, which is better than most of the imprudent things we do."
1. Sure the argument that this is in defence of real principles is better than normal, but on the other side of the ledger the risk of blowing up the world is much higher than normal. As has been pointed out now, when critics as diverse as Kissinger, Chomsky & Mearsheimer are all saying "this might blow up the world", it's probably genuinely dangerous. Prior to all this happening, there appeared to be something of an intellectual consensus around the idea that NATO expansion eastwards is dangerous -by intellectuals left, right and centre- *among everyone except the people who actually got to make the decision*.
To turn the rhetoric around, we had the option to say "too bad, too sad, but great power politics mean that Ukraine is Putin's toy". We've done much, much more ruthless things than that, and this one would have been for a brilliant cause- in the service of not blowing up the world, as opposed to many of the ruthless things we do, which are in the service of enriching very wealthy people.
2. Also, to mutilate a phrase from law "one who appeals to principles must have clean hands". The argument the west is justified in some kind of deontic sense is limited by the fact that, as best I can tell, the west funded and encouraged literal Nazis knowingly at several points during this process, including during the "Revolution of Dignity".
On the topic of the culture war elements in this new cold war, I really think we need to clamp down on this frame [Based Russia versus Woke West]- it's both ridiculous and dangerous. I discussed it a little here:
https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/dont-be-deceived-this-is-not-world?s=w
Mostly just to plant my flag in the ground as someone who really hates this framing.
Apparently even Trump now makes jokes at Russia's expense. You can't be based if you're too weak, and wokeism evidently hasn't yet caused the West to collapse. Would be interesting to see which anti-woke symbol would be adopted next.
> wokeism evidently hasn't yet caused the West to collapse
Yet.
https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/ gives a scathing rebuke-in-four-and-a-half-parts to the notion of decadence (which I think “wokeness” can be correctly read as) being the cause of economic and military collapse.
I don't think that "decadence" is a good model for the concern about "wokeness".
The historical model for "wokeness" is one in which a multi-ethnic society living at peace is gradually riven apart by hate-mongers from the less privileged group. That's a pattern which has been repeated quite a few times in history.
I think at least part of wokeness can be considered emotional decadence.
I would agree with that. In harder times we worry about getting enough food, or invading foreign armies, and don't have time to worry about even major systemic discrimination, let alone "microaggressions."
This is semantics.
I agree that if you look at it from the right angle wokeness is a kind of decadence. Why should that be relevant to the question "what effects will wokeness have on our economy and political institutions"?
What properties of decadence cause it to never precipitate societal collapse? Does wokeness have those properties? Does calling it "emotional decadence" interact with any of those properties?
I think a better model is the Cultural Revolution, in which the currently dominant faction of the elites weaponizes the masses with hate against other factions, thus consolidating their power by eliminating threats to it, but also resulting in atrocities by one faction of the masses against other factions.
Of course, at that level of abstraction, it merely sounds like warfare, and in the later stages the Cultural Revolution often was merely warfare; but there are other crucial similarities, like the demonization of privilege (converting envy from a mortal sin into a moral virtue and senseless suffering into the virtue of martyrs), the demonization of knowledge, symbolic mob violence (for example against statues), preference falsification spirals, mass censorship, and paranoia about treason taken to absurd heights.
This pattern is somewhat similar to underprivileged hatemongers exploiting ethnic fault lines, but not the same. I agree that it is completely unlike the martial decadence discussed in the Fremen Mirage.
https://www.gwern.net/reviews/Cultural-Revolution
Bret Devereaux is useful to read, but you must keep in mind the fact that he has an agenda, because he never forgets it for an instant (https://acoup.blog/2022/01/21/fireside-friday-january-21-2022-on-public-scholarship/).
I can, in fact, quote him *back at you* on this one. He never joins the dots *because that is not in his interest*, but try this on for size (italics replaced with asterisks):
>And we should note that nearly all of the blows which brought this system down were self-inflicted *by the Romans* who for their part never seem to have understood the marvelous thing they had created. The Crisis of the Third Century shattered the political unity of that market and disrupted the limited degree of public peace that created it. Rival emperors both before the crisis but increasingly in it also devalued the currency and extracted supplies directly in kind rather than in cash, leading to weakness in the currency system and a progressive *demonitization*(sic) of the economy. This free-fall was to a degree arrested in the fourth century by Diocletian and Constantine, but the top-heavy, bureaucratic administration they created was probably itself a drag on the economy; Diocletian’s currency meddling and price fixing were disasters and Constantine’s efforts to *actively reduce* labor mobility to aid in collecting taxes couldn’t have helped. That leads to the lower-but-still-elevated fourth century plateau: elevated by the continued existence of semi-unified market and the fact that at least the wars of rival emperors tended to be geographically limited and less destructive than the pre-Roman (or post-Roman) norm of endemic warfare. Finally, there is something to the notion that the state-run systems of extraction and redistribution – taxing the farmers in grain to be shipped to the soldiers – may have continued to encourage a degree of specialization and trade; the “crude but vigorous pump” *worked* to a degree to elevate living standards over the pre-modern agricultural norm.
>But that very cycle of usurpers and civil wars – and the decision of those rival emperors to (in Peter Brown’s phrasing, which I love), “bus in” ‘barbarian’ armies to fight each other – led to the slow but steady disintegration of that united political order, the shift to more and more endemic violence and the final collapse both of that semi-unified market and the “crude but vigorous pump” that had in part replaced it. Living standards thus declined back down to the pre-Roman Iron Age norm while at the same time the carrying capacity of the empire also declined down to that norm, leading to what must have been decades of brutal misery as food ran short, malnourished infants died before their time, cities shrank and the world grew poor.
[...]
>Instead, I think the stronger point here (and one Peter Brown – lest anyone think I think his work is without merit, which is far from the truth – and also many others make well) is that the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West – while it *was* a catastrophe for those people living at the time – was less a product of ‘hordes of barbarians’ coming over the frontier (who again, were mostly invited in by Roman leaders looking for advantage in their endless struggles with each other) and instead a product of actors *within* the political system, *within* the empire, tearing it apart out of the pursuit of their own interests, deceived by the assumption that something so old could never simply vanish…until it did. The consequences of their decisions and of their failure to recognize the fragility of the clockwork machine that suspended them above the poverty to come (and that it was already damaged) were great and terrible.
Source: https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/
"Getting so comfortable with the harvest you've reaped that you piss it away and burn the societal commons in labyrinthine internal power struggles" is not a completely-absurd notion of "decadence", and in many respects fits the objections to the "woke" paradigm much better. Using Scott posts as a handy example: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-in-an-enormous-planet-sized-nutshell/ (particularly the sections "The Other Chinese Room Experiment", "On Second Thought, Keep Your Tired And Poor To Yourself", and "Plays Well In Groups"), and https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/.
I'm not saying "don't read ACOUP". ACOUP covers a lot of ground interestingly and as far as I can tell Bret doesn't lie. But I read him with a careful eye and a critical mind, because he doesn't just write ACOUP to show off or to make money; he is - by his own admission - trying to manipulate public opinion.
Re your last para, that applies to everyone ever, doesn't it?
Everyone does manipulation occasionally, but usually subconsciously and/or in limited/predictable domains (nobody's especially trustworthy when taking the stand at his own murder trial, etc.). "I write my blog in a way explicitly calculated to be enjoyable and maximise public respect for me so I can more effectively promote my politics" is a step beyond "everyone does it"; most politicians and cult leaders go that far, but people read them with heightened scrutiny too.
It hasn't caused military collapse because non-woke straight white men have technologically advanced our military so far. If America's defense depended on something akin to Ukraine and only liberals were available, things would be very different.
I was annoyed at everyone interpreting Trump's saying that Putin is smart as implying that he approved of the invasion. Now I'm waiting for Trump to announce that actually he was wrong — on the evidence of how the invasion is going, Putin was not smart.
But I'm not holding my breath.
...the problem with this is that Trump uses "smart" as an equivalent term for "is doing something I agree with" and "dumb" for "doing something I disagree with."
Except he literally says that the invasion is bad almost immediately after calling putin smart, the ACTUAL problem is that this is either all that got reported, or it got reported correctly but trump critics only saw the headlines and reacted to it.
The “smart” part was clearly intended to be “got the better of Sleepy Joe Biden” not “the invasion was a good thing I approve of”.
"Apparently even Trump now makes jokes at Russia's expense. ". Apparent to whom? Trump made some comments which could be read as snark about Putin, but equally as snark about the weakness of the people he doesn't like in the West.
Applebaum, Frum, and others have long argued that the "blame it on NATO" idea is silly. NATO expansion eastward has been driven, from the start, by these countries asking for it in response to Russian bellicosity. I reject the notion that there was some kind of intellectual consensus here.
In any case, there is a very big difference between agreeing not to expand NATO eastward and agreeing that "Ukraine is Putin's toy." In fact, attempts to appease Putin have gone much the same way as attempts to appease Hitler: telling strongmen they can do as they like makes them feel empowered to do more. I would argue that what provoked Putin most was not NATO's eastward expansion, but rather the West's failure to punish Putin sufficiently in response to his actions in Georgia and Syria.
NATO expansion didn't actually pose much threat to Russia. NATO can launch nukes from subs in the ocean with or without countries in NATO, unlike during the cuban missile crisis (edit: sorry, they were invented in 1959, but I'm assuming — and open to being corrected — that they were not yet a major nuke carrier), and NATO had, at one time, 0 tanks in Europe. In Poland, they had a few hundred troops. It was not a major army amassing at Russia's borders. What Putin didn't like was Ukraine turning West economically and politically. The idea that it might theoretically one day join NATO is little more than a pretext.
Edit: epistemic status: political science PhD candidate, but really I am largely giving voice to Applebaum's objections here.
It's both, of course. Russia's neighbors (except Lukashenkostan) want to be in NATO, and the US wants to let them join. They're good as NATO members since they actually exceed the 2% GDP defense spending target: Ukraine is said to have spent over 4% of GDP on defense[1], Latvia 2.3%[2], Estonia 2.3%[3] and Lithuania 2.12%[4]. Gee I wonder why....
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=UA
[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/latvia/military-expenditure-percent-of-gdp-wb-data.html
[3] https://finabel.org/a-historical-record-estonias-2022-defence-budget-increases-to-2-3-of-the-gdp/
[4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/810481/ratio-of-military-expenditure-to-gross-domestic-product-gdp-lithuania/
Georgia was basically the same case as Ukraine: First a massive influx of money from the US and EU promoting 'democracy', than a 'revolution' backed by the US/EU than the wish to join NATO almost put in their mouth.
Have a look at the Documentary 'Ukraine on Fire' from Oliver Stone. If you look from this angle, I can fully understand that Putin is afraid of NATO and of being next. The West did nothing to counter this concerns apart of saying Putin would be paranoid and crazy and NATO is only for defense. This last claim would be much easier to believe if someone could wipe my memory of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. Who tells that NATO doesn't suddenly have to protect the Russians from Putin?
For me looking from outside seeing the US and NATO very selectively policing the World is very unsettling or even disgusting.
Err... US operations are not the same as NATO operations. Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded by the US and "partners", not NATO. I think Russia had more military operations in Syria than the US did. Not familiar with Libya.
A nice, safe, status-quo point of view, very sensible. Reminds me of any number of thoughtful "detente" essays I read in the 70s arguing a policy of indefinite accommodation.
But I personally find it a a little too Neville Chamberlain for my tastes, and I prefer Reagan's reformulation of the problem, id est, no we don't *have* to accept paying the Danegeld indefinitely. We can win, and they can lose, and that should be our priority goal.
The US and Europe combined easily have the economic might to drive Russia into ruin -- I'll note in passing that Germany alone has twice the GDP of Russia, and even Poland has 25% of it. And the Ukrainians want a lot more than mere honor at this point -- not with dead children lying on the road. They want to kick Putin's teeth in and see blood. I'm perfectly comfortable with helping them do that, and I think it can be done -- just as it was done in the 80s to the USSR -- without resorting to an exchange of ICBMs. But you do need to keep your eye on the ball, and you need to not start rationalizing horrible things as just some kind of existential tax bill that it's prudent to fork out indefinitely. It's OK as a temporary strategy, but as an end goal in itself -- nah.
I've answered that here: https://pontifex.substack.com/p/contra-hanania-on-russiaukraine
In short, because a west that includes Ukraine is bigger (and therefore stronger) than one that doesn't, and the West needs to be strong because otherwise China might end up ruling the world (and turning it into a big concentration camp).
Reagan's approach only worked because the USSR was on the brink of collapse at the time and couldn't call his bluff. Even then, it nearly led to a full-blown nuclear war on a number of occasions, as the Soviets struggled to tell "normal" levels of US bellicosity from pretexts for invasion/attach. Reagan basically Alzheimered his way into gambling with the entire planet, and only lucked out thanks to the prudence and carefulness of his enemy (as well as the bravery and stoicism of a few lower-downs like Petrov). That is not a model to emulate when the fate of millions of people is on the line.
Additionally; the approach that the US took to Russia after the collapse of the USSR (ie: treating it like a conquered enemy) was a huge part of why Putin got into power in the first place, and a big reason why there's a revanchist movement to "restore" a national pride that got bruised.
A strategy which treats another country as an eternal enemy creates an eternal enemy, which then creates the pretext for treating them as impossible to reason or compromise with. Your approach is a guarantee that, at some point, someone will push the button and end civilization.
Yeah none of that matches my memory at all, and (1) I lived through it as an adult, and (2) I paid very close attention, since the Cold War and the threat of nuclear fire dominated my childhood. Inasmuch as you have not adduced any specific detail to illustrate your assertions, I think a simple statement of 180 degree disagreement is sufficient response.
Your memory as a person who has lived in the US all your life? Or in a country in the West? Or in a third-world (in the original sense) country? As some sort of globe trotting ubermensch? Or as someone who spend part of their childhood in the USSR?
Because from your response I'm guessing the former, and that makes me think you're a goldfish disagreeing on life outside the bowl (full disclosure: we're all goldfish, our bowls are just different).
There are many more recent takes on the history of the Cold War and the Soviet Union that you could refer to if you wanted to try to get some of that perspective, almost none of which support a rah-rah version of Reagan singlehandedly winning it by being more aggressive and daring than the weak-kneed leaders who came before him.
In fact I have lived both in the United States and in my youth in a Warsaw Pact nation[1], which I mention just to confound your assumptions, even though I think it is entirely irrelevant to the point. I don't need to have personally been to the Moon to thoroughly understand the Apollo program.
--------------
[1] Too long ago to remember more than curse word or two in Russian, however.
That's fair enough - my assumptions are now confounded. In the spirit of reciprocation: I'm an ex-third-worlder, so my governing mode of analysis is "a pox on both your houses".
Ha ha fair enough, I don't blame you one bit.
But your memory isn’t exactly all of what happened. There were close calls, rarely advertised.
You'll note I said I paid close attention. I'm well aware of the close calls. That happens when you play for high stakes and for keeps. Nothing is without risk, but winning is winning.
Which would be a good reason not to play for high stages and for keeps. The fact that you accept the risk of mutual destruction as 'just what happens' as a consequence of your approach immediately disqualifies it from consideration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ
Russia is already having a really bad time. I understand that with a bit more pushing the envelope, we could change that to "horrendously bad time".
What percent risk of nuclear war do you think that would be worth?
0.0067% per year, compounded semiannually.
Allowing a return to the status quo ante could reduce the chance of the most imminent nuclear war without being the path that maximally reduces the risk of all future nuclear wars.
If we can perpetually make that arbitrage, then that is actually fine, just run from one crisis to the next. I can see the intuitive appeal of wanting to escape the local minimum though.
EDIT: I should have first stressed that I agree with you we should prioritize immediate paths to peace. It's a view that is both powerfully true and yet gets insufficient real estate.
Moscow seems to be iterating a similar strategy though, and I'm mostly exasperated at how we might best disrupt these cycles. If you see that exasperation and conclude that I am just not very nuclear risk avoidant, then I just want to very gently suggest that there might be a better way to model my views. (Also some people may just be highly nuclear risk tolerant, ok, probably so, maybe I'm protesting too much on that group's behalf.)
What happens if I *want* nuclear war?
Then I stare in shock and ask you why?
long on gold perhaps
I'm gonna say something that's turbo heretical as a liberal. What percent nuclear risk is worth to you, to push Russia so far that it *completely* collapses and we can just take their nukes away?
I would have previously said that leaving Russia with nukes was net safer, but Putin has done a lot to change this decision, and, I mean, Russia allowed Putin, so. That time that my country allowed a mass murderer, our country got split in two for forty years and we permanently gave up any right to build nuclear weapons. Putin is not Hitler, but with a finite chance of nuclear war times the population of the world, it is not difficult to beat the deaths of WW2.
I think a lot of the unity of the EU against Putin is that we were pretty comfortable for thirty years not having to worry about being nuked, and if we can fuck Putin up enough that he really really remembers to not try this again, we can hopefully go back to that. I think that's why I'm less worried about being nuked - not having to worry about being nuked is itself my red line.
Come. Military people are not stupid, even if they have a mindset that is foreign to you. They have generally and genuinely worked very hard to ensure that one head injury or one case of dementia -- or one mechanical failure -- can't cause disaster. As far as stewardship goes, all the militaries of the nuclear powers -- and I include the Russians as well as the Americans, French, and British -- have done a really superb job these past 75 years making sure there have been and can be no horrible accidents.
Given the major screw-ups we see elsewhere in our technological society -- everything from Bhopal to the lastest zero-day hack on Windows -- they really deserve major honor for this achievement, especially considering it stands in inherent tension with their mandate to be able to use nuclear weapons at a moment's notice, and the fact that civilians only pay intermiitent attention to the problem at all.
My apologies for assuming otherwise. And yes, individuals are fallible. That's why you build in checks and balances, right? You can build a very, very reliable system out of individual parts that have much lower levels of reliability.
Carl: I normally love what you write in the comments. I haven't super liked the Reaganite stuff in this thread. But this comment... hear hear! The militaries of the world deserve credit beyond credit for holding the reigns on nuclear war and doing a great job making it unlikely.
The problem is "it only takes one head injury or one case of dementia to change the whole game" is fully general. No matter how you structure the nuclear weapons policy, or the nuclear weapons considerations, or the nuclear weapons relationships, or the nuclear weapons control, at the extreme *it might only take one defector* to use the nuclear weapons.
Per what Carl said, given this fact, it's extremely laudable that someone has ensured no such defector for 75 years.
That seems very unlikely. The USSR collapsed in 91, and the structures of the military didn't completely collapse along with it; their strategic nuclear weapons didn't go away or become US possessions. Is there a good reason to think things would be different now?
The reality of the 1991 Russian military situation was that only a direct invasion by a powerful enemy (US or NATO or both) would be cause to use nuclear weapons. Because none of these countries wanted to invade Russia, it was a complete non-issue. Adding to that the inability of Russia to offensively use their military (and thereby hold nukes in reserve to deter other nuclear powers from interfering) and it made very little to no difference whether they had nukes or not.
With Putin being willing to use his military offensively, there is now reason to be concerned that they have nukes, which did not exist then.
Through various treaties and attrition, the Russian nuclear stockpile has come down considerably since 1991, from ~30,000 to ~4000 warheads. It's still quite a lot of megatonnage, of course.
Would it be possible to hack the codes and thus prevent a nuclear launch? I mean, the systems for launching the nukes have to be connected to the net somehow, right?...
In case that you are serious: no. (probably it is joke, but I encountered really weird takes on nukes...)
Almost certainly not. "The nuclear codes" are confirmation codes given to people so they know the orders are coming from someone authorized to give them, they aren't something that has to be input on the physical missiles/bombs before they can be used. (Think about it this way, if they had to be input on a piece of electronics, that safeguard could be bypassed by a sufficiently technically sophisticated attacker with plenty of time).
PALs are a thing actually. You don't just need plenty of time, you need plenty of warheads before you successfully disarm one. You also need plenty of technically sophisticated soldiers, because the ones who make the unsuccessful attempts all die in the process.
PALs? Not sure what you mean by that...?
Do we have any idea of what the current generation Russian PALS like? Or are they still using the old Soviet manually keyed systems?
Do you mean "successfully *arm* one"?
*Disarming* a nuke that you have in your possession is easy with or without the PAL; PALs are designed so they can't be removed without breaking the weapon, but if you want to disarm it then that's a success.
Systems like this are airgapped - that is, they're not connected to anything. This means that hacking them requires a physical connection.
Stuxnet, for instance (the US's cyberattack on Iranian enrichment centrifuges, which broke them by spinning them too fast) wasn't an Internet-based attack; a CIA agent physically went into their enrichment plants and stuck a USB key with the malware into the computers running the centrifuges.
If you have agents inside all enemy nuclear silos and all enemy ballistic-missile submarines, then certainly you can prevent your enemy from launching nuclear missiles (you barely even need the cyberattack at that point). However, "nuclear silo operator" and "nuclear submarine crew" are subject to the strictest background checks known - both because a hostile agent could degrade nuclear deterrence, but also because a couple of lunatics could start WWIII on their own (I say "a couple" because most nuclear launch systems require two people to operate).
From what I remember Stuxnet was smarter: it infected devices which were carried/used by people who were not CIA agents.
(that may be an outdated info - and maybe that was smokescreen to hide outright agents)
Yeah, Stuxnet infected every USB flash drive it could find that looked like it was going anywhere near Iran, in hopes that eventually someone would use the same flash drive to store his music playlist and the software patch for the microcontrollers that he had to download off his home internet because the boss was paranoid about airgapping everything.
It is emphatically not liberal to think your country is the one with the right to allow or disallow nuclear weapons. It is illiberal to the point that you should consider whether you have in general been a liberal *in principle* or just in service of some issues.
If that is illiberal than it is profoundly stupid to be a liberal. Let's risk annihilation for the sake of equality or something.
The point is not equality at all. The point is believing that that kind of superiority has blowback far in excess of whatever problems you think you're solving.
See also: classical liberals' problem with woke stuff. At a certain point it's throwing around so much out of touch power that it causes a generation of backlash.
We're in this mess in great part *because* the west acted like it had the right to control post Soviet Eastern Europe instead of inviting anything like equal partnership and genuinely beneficial support for Russia to become a healthy post Communist state.
> west acted like it had the right to control post Soviet Eastern Europe
It didn't. No Western nation pressured any former Soviet vassal to join the EU or NATO – quite the opposite, they all came of their own volition. Also, I must have missed the part where NATO urged Ukraine to join them, and Ukraine had to push back against their unwanted advances.
> instead of inviting anything like equal partnership and genuinely beneficial support for Russia to become a healthy post Communist state
But we did. Russia is/was an important trading partner to the EU, and to Germany in particular. The hope was always that this partnership would be so beneficial and dear to Russia that it would suppress its imperalistic ambitions, and look at where it got us.
>The point is not equality at all. The point is believing that that kind of superiority has blowback far in excess of whatever problems you think you're solving.
What blowback could possibly be worse than nuclear war, exactly?
>See also: classical liberals' problem with woke stuff. At a certain point it's throwing around so much out of touch power that it causes a generation of backlash.
Who are these non-nuclear powers making us deal with blowback that we can't handle it? None of what's happening in Russia is an example because Russia has nukes. Same with China. The two countries with pose us with the greatest problems are nuclear powers and have been for 60 years or more. Iran? Well, Iran with nukes is a hell of a lot scarier than Iran now. Countries are either managable now and would be unmanageable if/when they got nukes, or they're causing problems but already have nukes.
Again, what on earth is this blowback that's worse than a nuclear attack?
>We're in this mess in great part *because* the west acted like it had the right to control post Soviet Eastern Europe
What on EARTH are you talking about? We don't control anything. Eastern Europeans are in NATO....because they WANT to be in NATO, because they never want to live under oppressive Russian rule ever again.
We're in this mess because Putin is an irredentist, and he knew that NATO membership for neighboring states means he doesn't get to invade them or otherwise bully and intimidate them.
Like, how the HELL are you trying to defend liberalism while claiming that it is rightful to launch of bloody war of aggression to claim territory based on the idea that these countries....wanted to become liberal and be integrated with liberal Europe?
Hence, "heretical as a liberal".
Ja. I'm emphasizing how far away from liberalism that that feels to me. Less "heretical christian" and more "you might be a Satanist"
(Clarification: I do not mean your position is as bad as Christianity paints Satanism to be. Far from it. Just that it's much further down the line from orthodoxy than mere heresy)
It's possibly defensible? I think if I go full liberal, then the fact that Russia converted from a democracy to an illiberal autocracy with a captive media implies that this is the wish of (some fraction of) the Russian people, and if we are to hold that wish as valid, destroying Russia and taking its nukes may be a necessary part of the implementation of this wish. Something like "okay, Germany, you can have fascism and all the Hitler you want, we're just gonna make sure you don't build concentration camps and start invading Poland." It's, like all political debates, GPL vs BSD - do we behave liberally or do we maximize liberalism, even with illiberal means? To behave liberally is to say "well, Russia is invading Ukraine. That sucks. Nothing we can do about it though." To attempt to maximize liberalism is to invade Iraq to bring democracy - or, in this case, destroy Russia because Putin has WMDs. (Being nuked tends to be against people's values.) It certainly seems antithetical to liberalism-as-practiced, at least, but even a country-scale liberalism, like what Scott proposed here, has to deal with the fact that if the Russians can choose Putin, the Ukrainians ought to be able to choose Zelensky. One of them will inevitably have their preferences violated, and inaction is not obviously preferable.
My actual take is that the measures taken so far, supporting and arming Ukraine and cutting off all trade with Russia and isolating it, are far short of the line that Russia itself has crossed, and if in implementing these means we can get Russia to collapse, or at least destroy its ability to make war entirely - so much the better? Red lines are based on actions, not outcomes.
The Russians are no more acting offensively as a nuclear power than the US in Iraq. The US didn’t use nukes there. If Putin was cornered however, if armies marched on Russia then he would be happy to blow the world up.
Like a lot of Europeans (including in my country which is supposedly neutral) there’s a lot of gung ho people who won’t fight and who will never fight but want a world war. All you Germans can do is what exactly? No militarisation for decades and now “we” are going to take out Russia.
Putin iaht going anywhere. He would win a free election in Russia now.
Are you implying that the answer is "zero" ? How is that different from saying "Russia can have anything it wants (except maybe for New York and such)" ?
If we're talking about relative to the current situation, we might have a much higher risk budget than expected.
People keep talking about nuclear war as if it's Total War. US had _atomic artillery_ at some point. Very low yield, very small. Nukes can be used in tactical contexts, and right now that's by far the most likely scenario.
Putin's utility function is not to cause the greatest harm possible. That's a cartoon villain. The real function is pretty complex, but definitely correlated with "getting out of Ukraine a winner". If things go badly for him in a conventional war, one option he always has is using tactical nukes to flatten UA military in half a day, then come out and say that he did it to end the war fast and save civilian lives. After all, that's exactly what Americans used nukes for.
All done very civilized, calling the NATO counterparts a few hours before to warn them that it's going to be a very local use of nuclear weapons.
He may risk being a pariah, but he'll be a winning pariah. Again, complex utility function.
Having underestimated the Ukrainian resistance and the Western response, he might not want to go for the trifecta in assuming that a limited breaking of the 76 year nuclear taboo definitely won't escalate.
We already have people generally considered sober and responsible calling for NATO shooting at Russian planes. I'm guessing that's nothing to the breadth of both voters and leaders demanding to do *something* in response to Putin nuking Ukraine, both out of moral outrage and to deter that becoming the norm.
And then we have the question of whether whatever NATO decides is a proportionate response is seen by Putin as a new offense, rinse and repeat, till everyone climbs down or we do World War III.
I don't know that the Ukrainian forces present any good targets for tactical nukes. Generally you use those against massed armor, an airbase, missile installation, et cetera. Something big and slow moving. My impression is that the Ukrainians are using small-unit and ambush tactics, so not presenting very useful targets for battlefield nukes.
Strategic nuclear weapons are another story, of course. He could always nuke Kiev as sort of a "we really mean it" kind of thing. I don't actually think the US would open a general nuclear war in response, but on the other hand, it's hard to see Russia not being World Enemy #1 from that point on, for decades. Even the Chinese would back away, I think.
Yeah, that's exactly my point. Strategic weapons, no matter the target, are a cartoon villain reaction. And so far everything is consistent with the Russians really caring about collateral damage.
My point was just to avoid making the mistake of nuclear weapons = strategic weapons = very unlikely. This gives a 0.1% chance of them being used.
There is also tactical weapons, which are used in a very different scenario, which is also low probability but probably over 1%. That's what I mean by the risk being actually significantly higher than expected.
I think the argument misses a bigger picture.
If Russia will be allowed to conquer Ukraine on the basis that is too risky to escalate (due to nukes), the next step will be for every country that feels threatened by nuclear power (start with South Korea and Taiwan) and.... every country being governed by a potential or actual dictator (start with Turkey, Mjanma), will put a lot of effort into acquiring nuclear weapons. That will lead to proliferation, opening a Pandora Box that will increase the risk of nuclear war immensely. That is the crucial risk here.
My take on Iran has always been that of course they're trying to acquire nuclear weapons, as they'd have to be stupid not to. As things are going, that impression will only be reinforced.
I mean, yes, but that's been in motion for a long time already - see North Korea, Iran. The US's response to the first attack on Ukraine in 2014, the treatment of Gaddafi (who notably surrendered his WMDs some years prior - would the US have risked attacking him if he hadn't?), and various other events have shown promises to be worth very little, and threat of mass destruction to be a sure-fire defence.
So long as Putin's in power he's always going to be saying to the west "do what I want or nukes", which is the sort of thing that starts a nuclear exchange. It's also the sort of thing that would make mid-tier states decide they want nukes for their own security (countries such as Poland, Iran, Taiwan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc), and more nuclear-armed states means nuclear war is more likely.
So if we want to reduce the risk of nuclear war we also ought to want to remove Putin from power. This can best be done by economic and military pressure on Russia and making it known that anyone who removes him thereby gets automatic immunity to any war crimes trials that may happen.
Putin, if he stays in power, is likely to turn Russia into a larger version of North Korea, a regime that has survived 2 changes of leader. Thus, a Putinist Russia could easily survive Putin by decades, and all that time it will be making nuclear war more likely.
So I don't think that economic pressure on the Russian economy necessarily makes nuclear war more likely; if it gets rid of Putin (as it well might), it does the opposite.
We Putin is even more popular with Russians, so it doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere. Nor is Russia going to surrender its bombs. Nor will there ever be another pro western leader like Yeltsin. Last time that happened the place was looted.
Maybe there won't be another pro-Western leader in Russia. I think there probably will, you disagree.
But so long as Russia is run by Putin (or someone like him) the West is very likely to be united, determined and vigilant against him, with high defence spending, and serious economic sanctions against Russia.
Have You listened to any of his speeches? I heard quite some and before 2022 there was no hint in this direction. Can you show me any example prior to 2022?
Putin was even thinking about joining NATO in the beginning.
The main thing he clear about from the beginning is, that he is not ready to surrender and subordinate Russia to the USA. This i totally can understand. If this is an offense to you, you are the classical villain who is obsessed with ruling the world.
Well, it seems like a guy who doesn't even let his closest advisors get within 10 meters of him, because he's afraid of COVID and/or he's afraid for his physical safety, isn't someone who's likely to pull the nuclear trigger. Putin said he has put his nuclear forces on highest alert, but US Intelligence hasn't seen any sign of this. We're only at Defcon 4 right now. So, yes, I'd be in favor of pushing the envelop a little further.
This is somewhat my point of view as well.
I think Scott's formulation about lines in the sand is pretty much exactly right. And *given that*, the West should be able to unambiguously "win" this conflict, without crossing such lines. For example, even if Ukraine's government falls, setting up a government in exile and a persistent insurgency seems likely to result in a Russian retreat in some number of years, followed by a big PR victory. If, in the meantime, a bunch of nearby countries join NATO, and Russia's economy is in shambles, and they remain an international pariah... That'd count as a win, in my book. I.e., it would firmly establish to the world that the age of territorial expansion wars is over.
Maybe this increases the chance of nuclear war slightly, despite the lack of line-crossing. And maybe I'm being a bad rationalist by not multiplying that increased chance by the resulting human suffering and saying "nope, too high a price, let Russia keep their pride". But at an emotional level, it feels really important to send the message: territorial expansion wars are not tolerated in the modern age. If you try it, your country will suffer, and you will not get to keep your pride.
You can love Reagan or hate him, that's a separate issue; but we have several historical examples when "peace in our time" spectacularly failed to work. So, yes, appeasement is unlikely to work on Putin, either (although admittedly it can delay him a little).
From many quarters, there's such a strong assumption that he's going to make unlimited territory grabs. That's the old WW2 hangover talking, and hasn't proved demonstrably true of basically anyone since Hitler. In particular, Putin has a very open and well defined series of ideal territory objectives (basically the USSR minus the stans, and maybe small chunks of the Warsaw Pact), we have a very open and well defined Don't Fuck With It line (literally NATO), the intersection is the Baltics, probably off Putin's list in his own lifetime, or last priority, and there isn't *evidence* to think his goals will cross our line, or reason to think we gain anything by taking forward steps before it happens.
Chamberlain was right (delayed a war he couldn't win and that had no public support anyway, while rearming and preparing to win the actual war when it did come). Reagan was mostly wrong (USSR fell apart due to internal reasons that pretty much nothing to do with him).
I somewhat agree with the first, and completely disagree with the second.
Why would you care though? Why not see this as a conflict on the other side of the world of little relevance to the US. The USSR was a peer threat, Russia is - by your own argument - not. It’s not a military threat to Europe. It proves that everyday it can’t take Kyiv or fly it’s planes.
China will be a threat in the future. So even if you believe in American supremacy why would this regional conflict the US is not involved in, be something that you want not just to end but to outright win?. The Ukraine isn’t in NATO, and thus for someone in Texas this isn’t some kind of existential crisis at all, no more than 19C Russian imperialism was. I doubt if it was even noticed (although of course the British got very Jingoistic about it - literally - but they were an Empire).
I don't care about it THAT much -- I'm not planning on enlisting in the Ukrainian Foreign Legion -- and to some extent yes I do regard it as somebody else's problem. I'm deeply unimpressed that the Russians started a war they couldn't quickly win, and are resorting to huffing and puffing about their strategic nuclear weapons -- although the laughable performance of the VVS so far is making me wonder if any of those weapons actually still work right, and whether if Putin pushes The Big Red Button they wouldn't just go splort in the silos -- and I doubt I'm the only one wondering that, I bet the Chinese are wondering it also.
I'm also unimpressed that the Ukrainians managed to convey by their actions up to this point to the Russians that a war might work. It's not like they don't have a very long history with Russia, and the nature of Russia is some big mystery to them. Why they couldn't figure out some combination of accommodation and making themselves obviously militarily indigestible, and are now reduced to begging for rescue from strangers, I cannot fathom. Both countries strike me as suffering from incompetent leadership in the recent past.
That's why I would not favor outright war, or anything approaching it. A no-fly zone is a no-go option for me. But am I OK with using some economic power to beat the hell out of Putin for being an asshole and making the price of gas rise 20% on me, not to mention hurting a bunch of perfectly innocent little girls in Ukraine? Absolutely. I'm sorry that this will hurt Russian people, who are smart and reasonable folks so far as I can tell, but at some time or other they (the Russians) *do* need to get their shit together and realize they *can* be held responsible for what crazy Uncle Vlad does on the world stage, and is this the guy they really want leading them? Stop shrugging your shoulders and saying Shit Happens, go change things. Use the present Ukrainians as an inspiring example.
I'm not necessarily impressed with the future Chinese threat. They have some serious problems turning potential into actual, mostly that they're run by communists, who are kleptocratic morons and destroy everything they touch. I'm not sure even the ingenuity and workaholic habits of the Chinese everyman can compensate for that. My impression is that if the US is to fall to second behind the Chinese, it will only be because we (the US) cut our own throats by losing those aspects of liberty, clear-sightedness, and entrepreneurship that made us #1 in the first place. It could happen. When you look at all this bullshit about people's feelings and saddling the competent with the costs of making the incompetent more comfortable, one worries. But we'll see. Heretofore, as Churchill (I think) said, the Americans have always ended up doing the right thing, if only after trying every possible alternative first.
Three quick replies here. You gas has gone up because of sanctions. Food will also go up.
The Chinese communists are not your grand father’s communists. China is basically resurrecting Confucius.
American capitalists are not your grandfather’s capitalists either. Talking about Kleptocracy..
Sure, but Putin is the reason for the sanctions, so I blame him as the first mover here. I will definitely concede that the Biden Administration is praising God for Vladimir Putin, as providing the Democrats with a first-class squirrel on which to blame inflation this November, and that I also hold against Putin.
I am unconvinced by any argument that Socialism With A Human Face, or even a Confucian Face, works better than a straight-up dictatorship of the proletariat. The core of the problem isn't ideology, or wickedness, or power corrupting, but just insufficient information for *any* centralized authority to run an economy efficiently. You have to be an intellectual, or a Marxist ideologue, to not understand that by the year AD 2022.
Yes, I agree we (Americans) have a problem with our capitalists. I take this quite seriously, and if I have to vote for Trump 2024 to do something about it, I will grit my teeth and do so. I'm hopeful that greed and disgust with the aims of the currently dominant intellectual aristocracy might take that chalice away from me, but we'll see.
>Why [Ukraine] couldn't figure out some combination of accommodation and making themselves obviously militarily indigestible, and are now reduced to begging for rescue from strangers, I cannot fathom.
This costs money that Ukraine didn’t have and the West wouldn’t have provided.
Also Putin’s yes-men would still have not communicated the indigestibility to him. The state of the Russian army _on paper_ exceeded anything Ukraine could ever amass, and nobody wanted to be the one to admit most of the military budget had in fact been embezzled.
I'm too sleepy to write out better thoughts. I just want to say I find it utterly unbelievable that if Ukraine had announced "We promise not join NATO" Russia would have done anything different here, beyond tweaking language. And I'm surprised that this seems to be a semi consensus.
I'm wondering why the NATO excuse has any traction at all for Russia. It's my understanding (and if I'm wrong, fill me in), that the Soviet Union was one of the main reasons for NATO existing. Since the Soviet Union no longer exists, why should Putin be afraid of NATO, unless he has designs on NATO territory? Have any NATO members done or said anything that could remotely be interpreted as aggressive intentions towards post-Soviet Russia?
To be honest, I think it's an excuse by Russia. It's almost commendable how deceptive it is, that's how well the agitprop is done.
You see, that assurance, "NATO will not move one inch to the east" revolved around Germany before their reunification and when the Soviet Union actually existed. Western powers coaxed a cash strapped Soviet Union that East Germany would not have any US military bases (or any for that matter) on it when they pulled their military out of there. To this very day, you can look at a map and see that former East Germany still has no military bases on it.
Russia lied. It's not true the United States and NATO stabbed them in the back.
Ah, I see what you're saying. At the time the USSR and Warsaw Pact existed. They were already bordering NATO. There literally was no 'east' the quote can refer to except East Germany.
Pretty much everybody agrees that the verbal agreements were for NATO to not move east. And Germany is one country now, entirely in NATO.
That's not what I heard. (paywalled)
https://nebula.app/videos/tldrnewseu-is-putin-right-about-natos-eastward-expansion
But yeah, there was never a formal agreement against NATO expansion, and the idea that NATO must honor a verbal backroom "understanding" from 30 years ago is ... just a way to distract everyone from the fact that Ukraine wasn't about to join NATO anyway.
I do want to apologize, I didn't mean to misinform. After rereading in greater detail the New Yorker article on Russia's NATO assurance, it's a lot more nuanced than the way I depicted it. Apparently the assurances went beyond just Germany.
Still, I think the United States' actions contributed a VERY miniscule part towards the Ukraine invasion in contrast to Russia's hurt national pride, stoaked by their leaders, that played a much larger role. In my interpretation of the assurances offered, there was an implict understanding that it was dependent on the Soviet Union as an entity existing. Because it does not, the United States has no moral obligation (with the exception of realpoltik considerations) to abide by their assurances.
In the universe where the USSR falls, and the new Russia wasn't invading or Belarus-ify-ing neighboring countries, NATO would probably be considered obsolete, without a real purpose, yeah.
At least the countries in Eastern Europe would not be in such hurry to join while they still can.
If Putin is deposed, the west shouldn't make the same mistakes we made in 1991. Instead we should seek to turn Russia from being an enemy into being a friend -- a new Marshall Plan, and possible future membership of EU and NATO.
This would also have the advantage of making it extremely unlikely that China would try anything with Taiwan.
It would be nice to see Russia become a happier country. But the main obstacle to that is Russia itself.
The main reason for poverty (outside of Moscow and a few more big cities) is that most of the country's wealth is concentrated in hands of a few oligarchs; Putin being the first among them. Whatever financial help you would give to Russia, most of it would end up in Putin's pockets. And then Putin would blame you for not giving enough. Because Putin always blames someone else.
The main reason for unpopularity is that Russia just fucking can't give up on the idea of having colonies; and all countries around are well aware of it. Great Britain doesn't have colonies anymore. Neither does France. People complain about European Union, but when UK decides to leave, everyone is like "yeah, whatever, don't let the door hit you on your way out". But Russia must fight to keep Chechens in (what is the point? other than "because we can"), and occupy parts of the surrounding countries under the pretext of "some Russian speaking people live here, therefore it's ours". Why are so many countries next to Russia trying to join NATO, and the luckier ones already did? -- Did Canada also try so hard to be allowed to join Warsaw Pact? No, it didn't have a reason to do so. Somehow USA is okay with Canada just existing. How many countries that have a border with Russia can say the same thing?
(inb4 "but Americans also...", yeah, sure, true. But there are at least *some* countries that can coexist with USA peacefully. Can any of the former Warsaw Pact countries say the same about Russia?)
And why does Russia need to have *more* nukes than USA? After already having enough to destroy the entire planet, isn't it just a completely unnecessary burden on your economy to produce more?
All that I said above, is Russia's own fault. USA didn't tell Putin to put half of Russia's money into his own pockets. USA didn't tell Putin to spend the other half on building useless nukes. USA didn't tell Putin to keep fighting everyone around *unless* they join NATO.
I try to imagine a happier universe, where Russia is something like maybe France, only poorer. An ancient country basking in its former glory, but mostly ignored by everyone else; but also left in peace. Able to give up its former colonies; able to stop fighting its neighbors. Having a healthy economy where the corruption does not keep ruining the entire country. Having nukes, but never mentioning them, because there is no reason to. A reasonable level of democracy.
I would be happy to live in such universe. So would probably be most Russians. However, one guy in Russia would be really unhappy for that to happen, because it would mean that he can't have a personal empire anymore. Sadly, it is his opinion that decides what actually happens to Russia.
> The main reason for poverty (outside of Moscow and a few more big cities) is that most of the country's wealth is concentrated in hands of a few oligarchs
True. (Of course similar things could be said about the USA)
> Whatever financial help you would give to Russia, most of it would end up in Putin's pockets.
No. I'm imagining a scenario where Putin is dead or on trial at the ICC. He has no power.
>The main reason for unpopularity is that Russia just fucking can't give up on the idea of having colonies; and all countries around are well aware of it.
Putin might want colonies; but does the average Moscovite?
> Did Canada also try so hard to be allowed to join Warsaw Pact? No, it didn't have a reason to do so. Somehow USA is okay with Canada just existing. How many countries that have a border with Russia can say the same thing?
Exactly.
> one guy in Russia would be really unhappy for that to happen
That one guy needs a bullet in the head. Then things will be better.
>Putin might want colonies; but does the average Moscovite?
Absolutely. Being told all your life that you live in the greatest country ever, which used to be even greatester before “the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”, does that to you.
> I'm imagining a scenario where Putin is dead or on trial at the ICC.
Then, the next oligarch in the line.
Looking at Germany and Japan (after WW2) as success stories, it seems to me that an inevitable part of transition to a western democracy is... well, occupation... at least until you establish some democratic institutions and make them work; then you can leave.
Otherwise, the old institutions will create something similar to the old situation. The people who created the original problems, they still have they jobs, they know each other, they keep their habits.
But you cannot do the same thing to Russia. So, I don't see it optimistically. Whoever is the most powerful person in FSB will probably take over after Putin's death, accept some foreign help, do something democratic for a while... until one day it will seem certain that he would lose the next election, and then he will likely prioritize his political survival over the country's future.
Perhaps our only hope is that *all* people in FSB are incompetent, because Putin already eliminated all the competent ones, as potential threats to himself?
Besides inviting all those former Warsaw Pact members into the club? By not dissolving the second the USSR fell? Perhaps by not letting Russia into NATO (although accounts vary on how genuine that attempt was)? Or by meddling in what the Russians see as their own back yard by sponsoring the colour revolutions? Or by directly meddling in (the former) Yugoslavia?
If I was a Russian statesman, the situation after the fall of the USSR would seem a lot like doing something impossibly magnanimous (peacefully dissolving an empire built on the back of what you consider to be endless war by foreign powers) only to be isolated, punished, belittled and encircled by my 'former' opponents for decades in response. The period from the 1990s to the early 2000s was an unprecedented time in history to bring the traditional outside power of Europe into the fold, and instead the Western powers simply reverted to treating them like the Russian Empire instead of the Soviet one.
This is not, I should emphasise, to say that their position is the correct one or that other countries should have uncritically treated the Russians with kid gloves or something. Just that their own history and experiences coloured things in a way that makes their own logic and rhetoric seem impenetrable.
I do not dispute that Russian officials see, at least in their public pronouncements, dissolution of the Soviet Union as an act of impossible Russian magnanimity, but it is important to point out that that is not, in fact, why was Soviet Union dissolved. In the end of the 80s, USSR was totally bankrupt both financially and intellectually, and facing rebellions left and right.
Its dissolution was forced, not granted by the Russian government as some selfless gift to the world.
Oh absolutely - again, I'm not saying that what people think is the objective truth. Just that this is the sort of mindset and logic which then justifies all that follows in their own eyes.
Frankly, I think that this particular justification is mainly a piece of Russian propaganda, aimed at both Western audiences and domestic Russian audience, not something Putin truly believes. He was there, he knows what happened.
I agree with you re: US sponsoring color revolutions, though. That is what really terrifies Russian regime.
The Warsaw Pact members *wanted* to join NATO because they wanted to ensure that they would never be under the control of Moscow again. The Warsaw Pact wasn't voluntary in the first place.
No it wasn't, and I imagine that Poland et al were only too happy to remove themselves from the clutches of the evil empire (even if that meant effectively becoming a buffer state for Western NATO nations instead).
Exactly. Which just shows that US and Western European culture is superior to the one promoted by Russia, despite all talks of "Slavic Brotherhood" ...
The whole "pan-Slavism" idea is just an euphemism for being Russia's vassals. I haven't seen a single proponent of this idea saying that we should e.g. help Ukrainian refugees because they are fellow Slavs. It is always about how other Slavic nations should support and serve Russians.
(If I wanted to be a racist, technically, Ukrainians are more pure-blooded Slavs than Russians. Not that I care either way. I am just pointing out the obvious hypocrisy.)
I don't know...I thought the Czechs started it in the 19th century? Wasn't it during the Habsburg empire, when the Czechs felt subjugated, and thus Pan-Slavism evolved form that?
44 y. living in Russia, last time I heard a word about "Slavic Brotherhood" was 1999, Serbia high time. Its totally irrelevant to current political agendas and cultural narratives.
Yep, irrelevant in Russia. Meanwhile in Slovakia, Russian propaganda never stops talking about it. I guess, thanks for confirmation that this brotherhood is supposed to be completely one-sided.
As an example, in the recently compiled list of Russian propaganda sources in Slovakia, here are the ones with the keyword "Slavic" (or "brotherhood") --- "Televízia Slovan", "BRAT za BRATA", "Slovanské noviny", "Slavica – slovanský spolok", "Jednota Slovanov", "Tajné dejiny Slovienov - Slovanov a Arijcov, našich slávnych predkov", "Slovanské bratstvo", "Slovanská duše - Славянская душа", "Bratia Slovania", "Slovanské ženy - matky proti vojne", "Slovanska unia", "Somslovan .sk", "Sloviensko", "Большая Славия, Sláva Rodu Slovanskému", "Spoločnosť pre rozvoj slovanskej vzájomnosti", "Slovanský svet - Славянский мир - Slovenski svet - Słowiański świat".
Source: https://blog.gerulata.com/russian-propaganda-network-in-slovakia/
NATO were in a position to treat Russia vastly worse than they actually did. The fact that they didn't should be evidence to everyone that fears of NATO using ukraine to launch an invasion of Russia are totally absurd.
Well why was the US afraid of communism to the extent that it warred with other countries? Like the Cold War, this seems to be mainly about protecting and projecting opposing spheres of influence. They see the Western sphere as increasingly knocking on their door. And it does seem reasonable to wonder why we were knocking on their door so much in the first place (although of course it becomes more reasonable the more aggressive they get, in an apparent vicious cycle).
Er...because of what happened to Eastern Europe at the close of the Second World War? It may be cold ancient history these days, but in 1945 people were pretty dang outraged that after spilling oceans of blood to lift the Nazi boot off the neck of Poland, say, we just let the Soviet boot take its place -- to no great improvement. Not to mention the Berlin Crises of 1948 and 1961, Hungary 1956, the Prague Spring, and so on. It did not take a *great* deal of imagination to think that Western Europe -- at the very least the remainder of Germany -- was in quite serious jeopardy from Stalin's intentions circa 1950. It's certainly possible the Americans could have shrugged their shoulders anyway and said "hey, not my problem" -- but AFTER fighting all the way from Omaha Beach to Berlin? That would've been quite an about-face.
Is that how they teach history in Poland? "Войско польско Берлин брало, а радяньско помогало". Somehow it happened to be Soviet blood spilled the most to free the Eastern Europe from Nazis.
I'm not sure about the use of the word "free" here.
Iam sure you understand the phrase and context.
I suggest (1) that had more to do with a lack of equipment and Stalin's indifference to the suffering of his own people, and (2) it was certainly not for the purpose of liberating Eastern Europe, but of dismantling the German state. You have only to look at the ravagement of East Germany afterward. And shall we just mention Katyn? The Poles were (and are) under no illusions about the purpose of the Red Army when it swept from east to west across them. Nor were the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Romanians, et cetera.
OK, I agree with your major point.
Of course Eastern European countries should be thankful that the common Soviet man freed them from the Nazi's. But c'mon, you're saying Poles are distorting history by teaching that they also suffered tremendously under the Soviets? You do realize that literally all other Eastern European countries have these exact same grievances: Czechoslovakia, Baltics, Romania, Hungary, etc? You can be assured it's not some grand conspiracy by talking to practically any non-Russian Eastern European. The Soviets presided over immense poverty and authoritarianism in those countries. Poland used to be half the GDP per capita that Russia had in 1990, and now Poles make 50% more GDP per capita than Russians. This is really what Ukraine wants. To break free from this crazy 20th century KGB-Kleptocratic apparatus so that they can prosper economically like the rest of the world.
Oh, GDP per capita, my favorite matter. Lets have an example:
Belarus 2000 - 1200$ 2010 - 6033$ 2020 - 6434$
Ukraine 2000 - 658$ 2010 - 3078$ 2020 - 3724$
Doesn't look like Ukraine prospers.
on "authoritarianism"
You should read "Everything was forever, until it was no more : the last Soviet generation" by Yurchak, Alexei, because i believe you have very little idea what are you talking about.
The USSR first allied with the Nazis to conquer Poland, fought the Nazis only after the Nazis double crossed them and invaded. They stopped their military outside of Warsaw and waited until the Nazis had destroyed the Warsaw rising — and refused to allow airdrops of weapons to the Poles. They then massacred large number of Poles in Katyn forest.
Almost accurate, except that Katyń massacre (and other similar ones, like Miednoje where my great-grandfather was murdered) took part earlier. Though other similar massacres were happening also after war and during later parts of the war.
Resulting in a really weird situation of Nazi Germany discovering, publicizing and complaining about human rights violation.
(They reached and discovered massacre sites after invading their ally, USSR)
Bullshit. Warsaw uprising was half-baked hasty operation launched by government in exile, totally uncoordinated with Soviets, who have hard times breaking German resistance in Poland.
> Somehow it happened to be Soviet blood spilled the most to free the Eastern Europe from Nazis.
What happened? Incompetent leadership that started the entire thing by cooperating with Nazis to start the war to spread its murderous regime. And then ignored human costs through entire war.
And communist oppression was a bit better than nazi one, though still included genocide, mass murder and thorough oppression.
Also, red army looted, raped, oppressed and murdered through Poland, and communist regime installed itself so benefits from regime change (not going to call it "liberation") were not very high.
> s that how they teach history in Poland? "Войско польско Берлин брало, а радяньско помогало"
Fortunately, Russian is now longer mandatory. Google translate gives
> The Polish army took Berlin, and the Radians helped
what is really confusing so I am unable to comment on it.
Though I assure you that noone claims that Berlin was conquered primarily by Polish army.
I see that history lessons are no longer mandatory also.
"радянско" means Soviet, an old joke I hoped someone could understand.
Would you please bring the evidence of post-war "genocide" in Poland?
I occasionally say that, if you want to compare the Soviets to the Nazis, remember that there are still Germans in what used to be East Germany. The Soviets bled and died on an enormous scale to push back a revanchist Germany (that they themselves had a hand in propping up in the beginning, but that's another story), and presumably were not massively enthusiastic about simply repeating the feat a few decades later when the capitalist powers of the world had another go at stamping the worker's paradise out (for reference, see: Civil War, Russian). Hence the Warsaw Pact, buffer zones, a race to get the bomb, outrage over US missiles in Turkey, Cuban missile crisis et al. That they treated the places they rolled over to create these buffer zones like occupiers and conquerors is pretty historically par for the course (not that that excuses anything to our modern sensibilities). It was what the US did with its former enemies that was fantastically ahistorical, and a model that I'm ashamed to say very few (including the US itself) have followed since. It's something that would have helped the Russians themselves immensely in the 90s.
> if you want to compare the Soviets to the Nazis, remember that there are still Germans in what used to be East Germany
I am not sure what you meant by this. There are still Russians south from former Leningrad, so... I guess neither side was completely genocidal?
The Nazis were genocidal towards Russians. However they lost.
That's not a very convincing defense. The majority of previously German regions east of the Elbe is actually devoid of Germans precisely because the Soviets expelled or killed the Germans who remained there after the war, or exiled them to Kazhakstan.
Right, but we aren't talking about 1950. We are talking about today. The Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore, and no one is in jeopardy from Stalin's intentions.
So, again: why were we knocking on Russia's door so much?
Shouldn't you also ask the question: Why are people begging to get in to our door?
One of the funniest takes (which IIRC, forms the historical foundation that "Red Plenty" then historical fictions all over) is that a lot of concern about Communism was because it looked like it might actually work. Socialism, after all, seemed to have built rich, productive, peaceful societies in Europe. So what if the masses threw off their shackles, ate the rich, embraced being a global proletarian dictatorship, and were then even more rich and productive than capitalist nations? You kind of had to strangle the concept at the source, lest it spread and eventually play out in your own home. And damn if the post-soviet era hasn't been a relentless crusade to stamp out even the memory that the USSR accomplished anything other than hunger and gulags.
Of course, realistic hindsight still shows that the real USSR was more or less a polite fiction maintained by enormous waste and suffering - capable of impressive feats but increasingly tottering, creaky, dysfunctional and hypocritical as the years went on. But then, the above critics might content, that that's also looking very true of our present global, free-trade oligarcho-capitalist moment as well...
> Socialism, after all, seemed to have built rich, productive, peaceful societies in Europe.
Could you please provide a list of those former rich socialist countries in Europe?
Most Soviet republics like Ukraine, Russia, what was then Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, and so on, were poor compared to rich countries like the US and the prewar UK, but they were much richer materially during the height of the USSR (the 01950s to 01970s) than they had been pre-USSR, and also much richer than they would be for many years after the Soviet collapse. It's not that Communism is a good system; it's just not literally the worst system ever invented, usually. Both Tsarist autocracy via secret police and the utterly corrupt kleptocracy that replaced Communism in most countries were worse, both in terms of material scarcity and in terms of misery and oppression.
Some of these countries, like Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, still have not recovered to their pre-collapse state, and this war has likely ensured that they will not do so for decades.
I was under the impression Ukraine (and a few other SSRs) economically benefitted from being in the Soviet Union because they were essentially protected from outside competition (at the expense of the the rest of the USSR), rather than because communism worked for them. Also, I doubt that the Tsarist regime was worse than the Soviets. This commonly cited paper makes the case formally: https://www.nber.org/papers/w19425. I readily admit, it gets a bit technical and I'm not sure I understand all of it myself.
I interpreted that line as relying heavily on the "seemed" - regardless of reality, the Soviets were good at putting out propaganda *saying* that they were rich and productive and peaceful, and there were huge swathes of the West that believed them.
Fun fact. Eastern Europe did better under post war communism than western societies under neoliberalism. Dating neoliberalism to about 1980 and “doing better” to wages and not just GDP. However of course the post war solution in the West was even better.
I guess he means the Scandinavian countries, which according to many Americans, especially but not only on the left, are "Socialist" economies...
If you're genuinely comparing what happens under communism to what's happening in present day countries under capitalism, I have to conclude that you don't know what you're talking about. Please make some comparison grounded in facts to make your point
He’s talking economically. Can we compare growth in east Germany 1950-1970 (the peak) favourably to western capitalism? Yes. It trounces western economic growth right now.
But you can't compare the two at all. It's like trying to see if a teenager who started taking meth feels better than a 45 year old mid career professional.
> And damn if the post-soviet era hasn't been a relentless crusade to stamp out even the memory that the USSR accomplished anything other than hunger and gulags.
For example?
The thing is, the few technological successes the USSR could muster came at the expense of even basic personal conveniences (allegedly, they built their first toilet paper factory in 1968 – though I can't find a reliable source for this right now). Their early lead in the space race vanished after a couple of years, because they weren't able to spend the vast amount of resources needed to keep up with the US.
Praising the accomplishments of the USSR is a bit like praising North Korea for being able to develop probably-nuclear almost-ICBMs, while Germany seemingly hasn't been able to do so in the past 70 years.
Broadly, because all Communist (technically socialist, but we'll stick with the terminology sold to the rubes) governments inherently destroy people. The US is built on the idea of individual equality and self-determination, and this permeates the ethos of the nation. Communist governments can only exist by force in single-party states. The fear of the spread is that they would continue to use military power until they conquered the world.
Cynically, because US investors can't buy mining concessions, buy land to turn it into a banana plantation, or set up a McDonalds in a Communist country; Communism insists that the means of production be owned by "the people", which is to say, the state, and to this end expropriates foreign investors' holdings without compensation, as Germany and France have recently done with the yachts of Russian citizens.
More charitably, because leaders of not-yet-Communist countries, including the US and its allies, didn't want to end up like King Zog I or, especially, Louis XVI, Victoriano Huerta, and Tsar Nicholas; and elites in not-yet-Communist countries didn't want to end up like the Cuban exiles or the Russian kulaks.
Moreover, Communism, like Liberalism, is explicitly a worldwide movement; it proposes universally applicable remedies for universal ills, and explicitly urges international cooperation to put them in place. My Communist stepgrandmother in the US had posters of Trotsky and Zapata up in her house and traveled to other countries for political purposes, and it is of course well known that Soviet and Maoist groups sent extensive support to their comrades abroad, including in the US. The idea of a Communist revolution in the US seems absurd only in retrospect.
I've always felt that communist regime's paranoia brought the facade down ever time.
A capitalist equivalent of an apparatchik who lived in the USSR publicly evangelizing for capitalism and protesting the establishment, say also traveling to nearby communist-aligned countries and supporting clandestine efforts there against the communists, well that person would not be a free man/woman very long.
For some reason these workers' paradises were always terrified that the words of those who disagreed with them would ruin the paradise. Which makes no sense. If I'm living in heaven, why I am I afraid of someone telling me the grass is greener over here?
I was wondering this myself. A really profound answer is found in a document called the Long Telegram, which was written by a US foreign service guy named Kennan when the Cold War started. Read the whole thing, as it's short and goes into a ton of other stuff I never learned in school either:
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm
TL;DR Communism was always known to be a "red" herring (hahaha) for the paranoid imperialism of the Russian leadership, which goes back hundreds of years. Ie, Communist leaders knew on some level that their implementation of it was unworkable (or not True Communism, or however you want to argue it), but they used this as an excuse to continue to expand Russian borders.
When looked at in this slightly abstract way, what Russia is trying to do in Ukraine today makes sense, as does the thrust of Russian empire-building and imperial repression since Ivan the Terrible.
I like this way of looking at things because it creates a very powerful mental defense against the bad kind of Russian "whataboutism" of many kinds.
Kennan also critiques the US in several very constructive ways. Go ahead, read the whole thing, you'll see :)
Read or listen to John Merasheimer, he unwraps the "mistery" in the best possible way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U87J7I7Om_4
I think it's rational for Putin to be afraid of NATO. It does have a history of bombing dictators out of their homes and into rebels arms that did not pose an obvious threat. See Libya. But I also agree that is not the main reason for the war. They wanted Ukraine to be Belarus 2, and thought it would be simple
Yeah, I guess so. I mean, another reason might be the industrial capacity of Ukraine? But overall, it seems to be about protecting Russia's sphere of influence...
I watched that video of the Mearsheimer lecture that people posted elsewhere in this thread, and his argument, as I recall, is that NATO is a US ventriloquist dummy, and US foreign policy these days is driven by democracy promotion. Needless to say, if you're an autocrat like Putin, whose hold on power might be more tenuous than commonly believed, you have reason not to want western democracy-promotion pushing further eastward, because if Ukrainians get used to democratic elections, sooner or later average Russians are going to think that they're entitled to democratic elections, too, and you could wind up like Muammar Gaddafi or Hosni Mubarak.
With the Soviet Union gone, why was NATO still there?
The dysfunction of the Russian military has made the invasion look panicked and unplanned, which seems to indicate Russia was planning not to invade.
I come here with a simple request: If anyone can cast doubt that my assertions are wrong. In my world view, I view the United States as a flawed power, but never annexed (at least within recent memory) a country unlike what Russia has done to Ukraine. I'm a critic of the United States flouting international law, I think the Iraq and Afghanistan war as it currently transpired shouldn't have happened, that America should have gotten approval by the UN security council instead of running roughshod of them, but still believe the United States' motivations weren't primarily driven by imperial conquest or done out of material interests such as oil. (Instead I believe it was a result of foreign policy democracy promotion gone awry from neocons and converging interests by businesses/the military.)
Am I wrong? That Russia's invasion of Ukraine isn't comparable to the United States (still very wrong) invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan? And is Russia being punished unequivocally for something America themselves did?
> What is the difference between annexation, and invading, then installing a puppet government, then leaving? Morally there's almost no difference, that's for sure.
In all the wars I can remember the US doesn't install a puppet government, it makes a good-faith attempt to get a proper democracy up and running. That's the difference.
Probably the most obvious counter-example would be the US backing the coup against Diem in South Vietnam. Who wasn't exactly democratic, but he was much less of a puppet than the endless string of weaker military leaders who followed him.
But while I'm ordinarily prepared to spend all day criticizing the powers that rule the US, I'm not going to equate the US with Russia here. I do think there's an important moral difference, which is that:
1. The Iraq invasion was provoked (by Saddam's non-compliance on WMD inspections), which the world broadly acknowledged, even if it didn't agree with the solution.
and
2. The US put forth a strong effort to rally global support for its invasion.
I've listened to what Russians say about this war, and my biggest gripe is that even if everything they are saying is legitimate, that Ukraine basically terrorized the Donbas, Putin should have tried to justify his actions before the world. He should have gone before the UN. He should have issued an ultimatum. This seems like not just good moral sense, but good political sense. Instead he lied until the final moment and then invaded suddenly.
The introduction to the US Declaration of Independence contains the words "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation". And what I see here is that Putin, in his actions, did not show a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.
I think thread OP is thinking of the past 30 years and isn't thinking of things like deposing the Shah in Iran.
But maybe the past 30 years is a good place to start from since that's the end of the Cold War? I can get why Russia wouldn't want to start from that point in time, though.
A valid point, though the problem is I can't think of anyone else besides the US making a serious attempt to replace a sovereign government after the end of the Cold War, until perhaps now. But I guess that's the point.
I do think it makes sense to distinguish between helping bankroll a coup without troops present (a la Iran) and outright puppeting a country you have either invaded or been invited into (or in the case of the Warsaw Pact, "liberated" and never left). Which is to say, it's less objectionable to persuade someone by bribing him than by holding a gun to his head, and you have more control over the details in the latter situation.
Supporting coups exists along a spectrum, from doing all the legwork and paying all the bills, to just signaling to the coup plotters that you'll recognize them and send aid dollars their way if they succeed. From that point of view, there's little doubt the US contributed to Euromaidan somewhere along that spectrum. But that doesn't make invasion a proportionate response.
> anyone else besides the US making a serious attempt to replace a sovereign government after the end of the Cold War
Hussein in Kuwait.
"That means they literally force a country to have a president no one voted for."
Not true, of course. Iraq had parliamentary elections in 2005, less than two years after the US invasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Iraq
Afghanistan held elections three years after the US invasion in 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Afghanistan#Islamic_Republic_of_Afghanistan_(2003-2021)
But even if it were, this would merely be a continuation of the status quo: Saddam Hussein wasn't exactly in office thanks to free and fair elections, nor were the Taliban.
Why is something from centuries ago relevant? Are we to hold modern Russia accountable for all the horrors of the soviet union?
>That means they literally force a country to have a president no one voted for.
They didn't vote for the previous leader either. But the intention was precisely that they would be able to have stuff like elections at all after regime change had occurred. And pro-western puppets are a hell of a lot different than pro-Russian puppets. Being a pro-western "puppet" is mostly stuff like don't fund terrorists, don't commit genocide etc. Pro-russian puppets are basically ruling their country for the benefit of Russia, like using the country as a launch pad for a war of aggression aimed at annexing a neighbor.
In my view the US may be considered to be one of the less hateful and oppressive hegemonic powers in history, but that's also a really low bar to clear.
The US spent the 90s up until the present completely unconstrained in the exercise of power, or their ability to justify it to themselves, and it seems to have warped the view of people inside the country to a remarkable degree. Remember: in an era where it had effectively won the war to be the sole power on earth, the United States never drew down its arms or restrained its ambitions. Instead it indulged in wars of choice across the planet that it would have excoriated others for making.
For instance; it's fascinating to me that the justification for invading a country that had literally nothing to do with the ostensible casus belli of the time (Iraq) was then justified on the basis of "well Saddam was a bad dude and we brought democracy to the Middle East so the world should really be thanking us for the suffering of our veterans". That's frankly insane, and would rightly be considered so if anyone else did it. Can you imagine if China invaded Israel and justified it on the basis of "well they weren't communist, so the real tragedy is that so many of our precious sons died to bring them into the light of socialist revolution."
Can you imagine any other power killing something like 1-3% of the population of a randomly-chosen country (by their own count, not that of an unbiased third party or the country that they attacked) and then walking away thinking they did them a favour? And then having most of the important bits of the world shrug their shoulders and mumble a bit because that country is too big and important to even tell off about it? We see even an inkling of that in other nations (cough Uyghurs cough) and rightfully become furious at the injustice of it all.
So yeah, the Russian invasion of the Ukraine is absolutely comparable to that of the US invading Iraq, and in a just world the US would have been punished in some way for it (let alone been allowed to walk away and consider itself the victim).
But international politics isn't the study of a just world, it's a study of power and (mostly unintended) consequences. And right now the US (and the West in general) has the power to punish Russia for something that should absolutely be punished in a peaceful, liberal, rules-based international order (your views may vary on how important any of the aforegoing are). Let's just hope that that power is used carefully, as events like this have a habit of leading to new conflicts later down the line.
Part of the reason this mattered to me, is I wanted to think of Russian sanctions as unequivocally good. After reading what you wrote, I think I was mistaken in believing democracy as an unalloyed good, that the means to achieve it change its overall ethics.
Firstly, is democracy a 'perfect' or 'least flawed' form of government? I think debatable. China's government has always been 'undemocratic' and they've been able to lift more people out of poverty than any other government in the history of humanity (albeit having inflicted upon the population many horrors before they got their act together in the '80s). Secondly, was that the actual intention for the invasion of Iraq - to introduce democracy - because there are plenty of other nondemocratic states out there? Thirdly and most importantly, does it matter if the intention was good if the strategy and execution was so flawed, and the results so horrendous? You know the saying, hell is paved with good intentions.
"Democracy" is no single thing. At best, it's an abstraction that approximately maps onto "uniformly devolved power". There are countless number of ways to devolve power, but most people seem to assume that elections are the only legitimate mechanism for devolution and therefore that democracy *can* be reduced to a single thing: the presence of ("free" and "fair") elections. Only in this distorted and oversimplified framework can you even pose the question "is democracy [i.e., elections] the 'least flawed' form of government?"--for the same reason that you can't rank order the complex numbers, namely, because the problem has too many dimensions to fit on a number line.
Here's a better definition of democracy that dodges all this semantic quibbling: democracy is whatever happens when ALL the people inside some border are armed to the teeth (with weapons that exist in the Squared Regime of Lanchester's Laws, i.e., with guns). Because physical, violent power increases quadratically with coalition size within such a border, it is impossible for a majority to be stably exploited (although it remains possible for the majority to stably exploit some minority population). I am aware of no other "system" that can even match such a guarantee.
The success of the Chinese regime is unstable. They are still coasting on the magnanimity and wisdom of their Philosopher King, Deng Shou Ping (and Xi is no Deng).
And the invasion of Iraq did not even try to "introduce democracy", at least in the way I have defined democracy. So that entire line of questioning is ill-posed.
I do agree that China's government is very effective and possibly even efficient at accomplishing their goals, which for the moment align pretty well with those of Chinese citizens, but do they really deserve credit for lifting the masses out of poverty when they essentially emerged from agrarianism (some might call it self imposed agrarianism), fresh faced and flush with laborers, into a world starving for cheap labor and ready to utilize them? In other words, "communist" China bootstrapped its success from the largess of the already existing capitalists. Not that capitalizing on the situation isn't deserving of praise.
I think you can believe in democracy as an unalloyed good, but if so then the US has a fairly terrible track record on that front as well.
I personally think that sanctions are ironically much better at propping up autocratic regimes than toppling them, as the pressure centralises economic power and makes the public angry at an outside force "ruining" their country rather than getting them to see their leaders as the problem.
On the other hand; if you want to topple a regime, the best way (traditionally, anyway) is to find the discontented elite wannabes that are sitting just under the upmost rungs of power and start feeding them resources. Unfortunately, this too tends to result in... well... unintended consequences.
Really, the best play for the West if they want to hurt the Russians (for some reason) would be to keep doing what they're doing now: feeding intel, money and arms into Ukraine and making financial life hard for Russian elites. Even better, they should be fast-tracking ways to wean themselves off of Russian gas.
Nuclear power might be a good way to — particularly for Germany — to extricate themselves from Russian oil dependency.
And yeah, sanctions don't have the most sterling track records (they have a tendency to fail).
Ultimately I just don't want to see Russia undermine the ideals of international law, to embolden other countries to follow suit. As bad as the United States actions were, it'd be even more catastrophic to see a cresendo effect occur and invading countries is normalized.
Thankfully, I think the strong condemnation the world over might have forestalled that possibility. (At least I hope so.) Still I wish we were in a better position to criticize and practiced what we preached.
I'm very concerned about all this.
If it's any consolation, the moment of uni-polar madness seems to be fading, and the US is again closer to being a first power among equals. I just wish that it could have gotten there on the back of a peaceful overseeing of world trade, and a well-earned transition away from a permanent war footing, instead of the role it did historically take.
Goodness knows that it did less in the way of imperial horror than Europe did in it's time - but again, that's a bar so low that it's scraping the bottom of the sea floor.
I think its worth noting, for all the wrongs of US hegemony, I would expect CCP hegemony to be much worse for the world.
Well...imagine if Germany actually had nuclear weapons. Maybe the German foreign policy would be quite a bit more assertive then...on the other hand, France isn't that assertive either...
> I think you can believe in democracy as an unalloyed good, but if so then the US has a fairly terrible track record on that front as well
I don't think that's fair. In the time that the US has existed, the world has gone from three-ish democracies to about a hundred, and the US played a role in pushing a lot of those down that pathway in one way or another.
I agree that sanctions historically are a poor means of toppling autocratic regimes. However, the aim here does not appear to be "overthrow Putin" but "make it increasingly difficult to continue the war effort in Ukraine"
I dont know that we have a lot of models for how well sanctions work for that purpose.
Given the Russian army has clearly underperformed relative to expectations and has suffered from logistical issues, it may turn out sanctions will indeed hinder its operational efficiency.
Like, in theory, Putin could raly and mobilize even more military force against Ukraine. When your economic system is barely functioing, that kind f mobilization and force projection may become much more difficult.
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/how-are-the-big-sanctions-hurting?s=r
Democracy is an unalloyed good the way a hammer is. It may be the best tool for the job, but the goal is rarely to use a hammer, it's to get the *job done*.
A democratic republic was set up in the US, not because of its inherent Goodness, but as a way to ensure liberty. And much as was warned of in-advance, the people would rather vote for Bread and Circuses than maintain liberty.
That wasn't actually the reason we went to war with Iraq in the 2000s, which was, more properly considered, something like "Iraq was violating the terms of the cease-fire we had negotiated through the UN, and France, which was buying oil at under-market-prices in violation of UN trade agreements from Iraq, was using its security veto to prevent the UN from enforcing any stricter international responses against Iraq for violating the ceasefire".
Well, certainly it is much better to be a neighbour country of the US than of Russia (and probably China)…I mean, Canada didn't join the Iraq War, but the US didn't invade Canada or anything...
> Remember: in an era where it had effectively won the war to be the sole power on earth, the United States never drew down its arms or restrained its ambitions. Instead it indulged in wars of choice across the planet that it would have excoriated others for making
Okay, and in a time of such power that they could have annexed virtually any sq metre of earth that they wanted, they didn't. Would ANY meaningful non-western power have done the same
>"well Saddam was a bad dude and we brought democracy to the Middle East so the world should really be thanking us for the suffering of our veterans"
That wasn't the justification at all. Are you really this ignorant or are you being dishonest?
I think this is a mistaken line of thinking.
First of all, we need to stop using past wrongs (especially wrongs between unrelated parties) to in any way, shape , or form, attempt to diminish the wrongs of the present.
If you want to haul Bush Jr to the Hague you can hold that position and still universally denounce Putin and his war.
In fact, to hold that position and not want to do everything possible to stop Putin seems incredibly hypocritical.
An honest compare and contrast of Iraq II vs Ukraine can be had, but only after the starting point of unequivocal condemnation and demand for cessation of all violence today in Ukraine.
Not within living memory, no, but the US annexed a big chunk of Mexico in 1848, Hawaii in 1898, the Phillipines in 1899, and the creation of the Canal Zone in 1903 was pretty shady from a pure respect of sovereignty point of view.
But I suspect from Putin's point of view, the direct comparison would be to the American Civil War: Eleven states seceded by all appearances fair and square from the Union, and unmistakably strongly and sincerely (given e.g. the 11,000 boys in gray who fed the carrion birds at Shiloh) wished to form an independent country, and yet the (remaining) United States did not let them -- indeed, invaded their newborn country, burned its buildings to the ground, and slaughtered several hundred thousand very sincere enthusiasts for Confederate independence.
What would President Lincoln have thought if the Powers of Europe in 1861 had decided that he was being a rat bastard for not allowing the South to peacefully leave? If the Royal Navy, for example, had imposed a "no sail" zone off the coast of the southern States to nix any Union blockade of Southern ports? I would guess that's how Putin sees it, because he seems to genuinely feel like Ukraine is inherently part of a Union as "indissoluble" as the North decided our Union was in 1861.
I'm actually not sure how much anyone outside of the US thinks about the US Civil War. Where I come from it's seen as this weird American obsession (in much the same way that we have our own weird historical obsessions), but nobody uses it as a point of reference for anything.
Has Putin mentioned historical parallels there? I'd be genuinely interested in if/how the Russians incorporate the US Civil War into their own understanding of history.
No, US Civil War is for nerds only, many Russians don't even heard of it.
How many people nowadays remember/know that the US actually deployed troops to support the "white" Russians during the Russian civil war between the whites and the Bolsheviks?
Not many. I daresay many Americans don't even learn there *was* a Russian Civil War, or that the Bolsheviks did not *begin* the Revolution. Russia just kind of jumps from Tsarist to Communist in October of 1917 without any kind of important transitional events.
I mean...unless you were a big fan of "Doctor Zhivago" (either the book or the justifiably famous David Lean film).
Really? That's...odd. I don't think you can understand the United States without understanding the Civil War. It would be like trying to understand France without understanding the French Revolution, or Germany without understanding the Thirty Years War. It's a pivotal moment, where we switch from Jeffersonian agrarian republic to superpower-in-waiting.
It's also the most important exception to the American principle of self-determination: we're all for it, except...under some circumstances, and that "except" has been a major challenge for anyone else trying to understand American foreign policy since 1890 or so. If the Germans had understood it better at Paris Peace Conference in 1919, or Ho Chi Minh had understood it better after Dien Bien Phu, history might've been at least a bit different. Oddly enough, I get the feeling that the Taiwanese understand it very well, and have been very skilled at keeping on the right side of it.
I have no idea if Putin has mentioned any such historical parallel. I'd be a little surprised, reaching all the way back to 19th century history to make arguments is sort of a nerdy thing to do, and isn't his self-image more cowboy than nerd?
Nobody understands the United States, or France, or Germany. Hell, I don't understand the block I live on; half the people that live on it are people I wouldn't even recognize, much less be able to tell you what their marital conflicts are.
Somehow US isn't a symbolic center of Russian Thought Empire. You might be surprised but there is no such thing as American Revolution in Russian school curriculum, only American Struggle for Independence.
Note- Actually, South Carolina seceded. It wasn't until Federal troops refused to abandon Fort Sumter, which lead to direct combat between the South Carolina Militia and the US armed forces, that the other states seceeded. Granted those states didnt recognize the election of Lincoln, but they didnt all secede simultaneously- it was the action at Fort Sumter which showed them the US would not acknowledge the right of succession which lead to them actually seceeding.
Are you implying that Ukraine is a part of Russia?
Ukraine has never been a part of Russia.
Ukraine was a republic within the USSR, and Russia together with Ukraine voted to dissolve that Union.
This is not an accurate comparison.
this was listed in my activity as a direct response to my comment which it doesnt seem to be
> never annexed (at least within recent memory) a country
Iraq and Afghanistan technically may not be annexations, but I do not really see a point in such distinctions.
> And is Russia being punished unequivocally for something America themselves did?
Even if it is - so what? It is nice to start somewhere and keep raising our standards.
Slavery is not officially allowed anywhere (or at least everyone pretends that it is not slavery), would be nice to do the same with invasions that are blatant power grabs.
that "pretends" distinction seems moot at times, i.e. the uighurs for example, who everyone realizes are being used as an industrial slave labor force- those that havent been outright killed
You are making assumptions: USA invaded Iraq clearly for its oil, and because Saddam Hussein threatened to sell its oil in euros, which undermines the firm grip USA has in the petrodollar system.
What USA did is worse, Hussein allowed inspectors to check that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so he gave absolutely no excuse for USA to invade, and they did it anyway. Zelenskyy didn't give anything to Russia, so he gave all the excuses.
I personally only got about 100 bbl or so, so I feel totally ripped off. Plus the stuff is a real pain to store, and I worry about the fire hazard a little.
Yes, that's true. Certainly in its "neighbourhood", the US did not...I mean, even Cuba has not been annexed by the US, though I am sure if the US had overthrown the regime in the 90s there, the Russians or Chinese would not have intervened.
We shoulda just kept it after the Spanish American War!
Why bother? All the Cubans we want have already moved to Florida.
That's actually the US secret, honestly. We just get all the best people from elsewhere to move here and become Americans, and then we don't need to annex anything.
Cheaper cigars and beachfront property. More widely available Cuban cuisine. Godfather Part II has a somewhat more realistic ending. The benefits are innumerable, really.
Good point. Although maybe now we can just ask Elon Musk to buy it and donate it to the University of Florida as a sociological study area.
I like the concept, but I'm a little uncomfortable with such a large and generous gift to an SEC caliber school. Big Ten or ACC, at least, please.
Doesn't Cuban cuisine have a rather bad reputation? Not sure if that would be such a good selling point...:D
Yes. So why are that many Americans against immigration, even high-skilled immigration? I mean, it's less than in many other countries, but still...
I mean, any 2 things can be compared, but I'd argue more justification for US v. Iraq and US v. Afghanistan than there is for RU v. Ukraine (though to be clear, Afghanistan is the only one I'd argue was actually justified - my issue with that one is execution, not the decision to go in).
If you're looking for more on US imperial history, I'd recommend "How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States." I'd still say that as great powers go we rate better than most in terms of conquests from a historic perspective, but we also do have our skeletons (the West, Puerto Rico, the Phillipines, Cuba, etc). It's also true that by the time we really hit great power status, the *methods* of global dominance had changed a lot, so its hard (and... kinda pointless?) to try to apples-to-apples our "sins" with those of others.
This war is much more personal for me. Not personally involved but people all around me who have lost property in Ukraine, who are trying to get out their relatives from war zones etc.
I understand Scott's concern about WW3 but he also doesn't realize how the world has changed since then. Russia is not the same as the USSR (speaking about favours). Ukraine is as much a former USSR than Russia. This war is really not about NATO but about racism (this should be the correct term) at the highest level. Putin simply hates Ukrainians for introducing impurities to his Russian world.
I don't think that Putin needs to save a face. I read Russians on vk.com, some of them people who are my good acquaintances I have known for years are now completely brainwashed by accepting everything that Putin tells them. They will not dishonour him even if loses the war. It may only increase their conviction that the west and not Putin is evil.
I'm not sure what change you think is relevant. Russia still has nukes; a war between Russia and NATO could escalate into nuclear war.
Putin talks about race to his base and about NATO expansionism to the rest of the world; I don't know if one is the reality and the other is propaganda, or if they both contribute to his worldview.
NATO is a defensive treaty. Its not credible that NATO expansion threatens Russia. Unless Russia's goals are to expand and incorporate territories around them.
Nato claims they are a defensive treaty. You must be either naive or stupid to take them at face value.
Are you suggesting a conspiracy underlying NATO that means that when one country chooses to attack, all countries must attack? If a true conspiracy was underfoot - why announce any sort of alliance at all?
It doesn't work this way. NATO is existential threat to Russia, and this is how it works since first wave of extention. Read or listen to John Mearsheimer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U87J7I7Om_4
I don't see how anyone could think NATO is an existential threat to Russia. Nobody is the least bit interested in actually invading Russia.
Do Russians honestly think that the West is champing at the bit to invade their cold dreary wasteland? I think we'd all much rather go back to ignoring the fact that it exists, like Mongolia or Kazakhstan.
Well, they better hurry up then. NATO was formed in 1949. That's 73 years and counting of being an existential "threat" without ever a single soldier setting foot on Russian soil, nor a bullet being fired eastward. What in heck are they *waiting* for, do you suppose?
So… I listened to the video you posted here, and the thing it is totally devoid of is any explanation of *why* expansion of NATO is “an existential threat to Russia.” He just quotes that the Russians have been *saying* that they view NATO as an existential threat and taking that assertion at face value. And I don’t think that assertion holds up to scrutiny.
Let’s take a parallel hypothetical – a mutual defense alliance between China and Mexico where each agrees to defend the other if attacked. Hell, let's even say that China starts providing non-nuclear arms to Mexico and training its military in their use.
Is the US global position made less secure by that? Absolutely.
Would the US object to such an arrangement? Of course. Economic sanctions probably already in the mail.
But is the *very existence* of the United States in danger because of that arrangement? That sounds more like a bellicose diplomatic hyperbole. I mean, I'm sure we'd *say* it, but I don't believe it one bit as an accurate threat appraisal.
And does the mere threat of such an alliance justify invading Mexico to annex parts of it, create satellite states, and/or initiate a regime change at gun point? Come on now.
It seems like (a) great powers want spheres of influence and are wont to hyperbolize the "threat" to themselves in order to recast aggressive responses to people in that sphere of influence behaving in ways contrary to the great powers' interest, and (b) certain people are just taking the Russian exaggeration on expansion of NATO as an "existential threat" at face value - which is useful for Russia but doesn't seem to me to be accurate to the actual threat level.
I mean, what number would you really put the delta on the chances of Russia *ceasing to exist* between (a) a fact pattern where Ukraine is in NATO, and (b) a fact pattern where Ukraine is not in NATO?
What do you think the change would be in the actual percent chance that NATO countries would invade Russia, risking a nuclear holocaust, through a NATO-member Ukraine?
I'm sure that delta is nonzero, but I'd hardly even call it measurable. If Russian doesn't want countries to join NATO, maybe it should stop making its neighbors feel threatened enough to want to join NATO.
It's only existential because that's the narrative the Russian regime wants to believe in...if Russia agreed to get rid of its Nukes, then NATO would not have to be so belligerent towards Russia...
Less of this, please.
Tell that to Yugoslavia.
1. "Threat" refers to capability, not intent, and NATO's capabilities are considerable.
2. Contextually, it matters less what NATO's real intentions are, vs what Putin and/or other Russian leadership believe they are, or might be. If the Cold War was still going strong and somehow Mexico joined the Warsaw Pact, would it be unreasonable for the US to get nervous even if it was "only a defensive alliance"?
3. Even assuming a defense-only treaty, that still leaves the possibility of an (even accidental) conflict unexpectedly escalating from a single member state to all of NATO. Isn't that sort of thing how World War I started?
If you accept that 3 point framework, though, it can justify pretty much any act of aggression, in response to pretty much any interstate cooperation not involving you.
“Threat refers to capability, and US/Canada/Mexico capabilities are considerable”
“Contextually, it matters less what their real intensions are, vs what the CCCP believes them to be”
“Even assuming an economic-only treaty, that still leaves open the possibility of an (even accidental) conflict unexpectedly escalating from a single member state to pull in all 3 nations given their aligned interests”
“And that’s why the US/Canada/Mexico should have known better then to form NAFTA. The Chinese invasion of Tijuana really should have been expected.”
It’s basically the worst interpretation of “stand your ground” laws, only applied to state actors with standing armies and atomic arsenals. The international community can and should expect it’s members to react *proportionally* to the *reasonable* perception of the threats they face, not just take vague invocations of grave danger at face value. And when nations overreact I think it’s cause for their peers to reprimand and sanction them, not to buy into some gaslighting “you made me do this” view of the universe the aggressor may spout.
And I think part of applying that analysis to the Ukraine situation is asking the reasonable question “just how threatened, actually, is Russia if Ukraine were to join NATO? What are the actual odds that NATO attacks Russia, and how much do they increase if Ukraine joins?”
It seems to me that if you consider that question, the answers fall somewhere between zero and exceedingly little. I mean, what are the odds that the US or another NATO member would *want* dance with nuclear fire by attacking Russia? And then even if they did what are the odds that other members of the alliance would want to go along with it? And with the US nuclear capabilities being what they are, how much incrementally worse does Ukraine make things?
I think if you consider how small all those numbers are, it makes it clear that this isn't about Russia defending itself against any kind of existential threat posed by NATO or Ukraine in NATO. Russia doesn't have to go along with that analysis, but it doesn't mean we have to just agree that they're acting reasonably here or that "NATO made them do it."
Thank you. The people saying "lol it's only defensive therefore your argument is invalid" were being way too trite, but you put in the work to show it.
It is absolutely credible that Putin (and many other Russians) believe that NATO expansion threatens Russia. And if the ICBMs start flying, "but the people who launched them were *objectively wrong about facts*!" is not going to matter one bit. If you want to convince people with ICBMs not to launch them, you have to address their perceptions, not some underlying reality they mistakenly disbelieve.
I dare call it "NPC problem". Westerners tend to believe they are the only Player Characters on Earth, while others are Non Player Characters, driven by underlying game rules.
I know where are you coming and I totally agree with you on the possible dangers. I also think that NATO instead of providing no-fly zone, tries to provide tools for Ukrainians to eliminate Russian air superiority.
The issue I see here is that no one can see Ukraine clearly winning and it will lead to prolonged resistance which will cause more and more destruction and deaths both civilian and military. We see that accepting Russian terms as satisfactory outcome.
Unfortunately it is not so. Ukraine is a very poor and failed post-Soviet country that has not been able to make much progress over many years. Remaining neutral as it is will only make its situation worse. Will make it even more vulnerable to further Russian provocations. From Russia's point of view Belarus is a neutral country and they want to see Ukraine in the same status. The war from Ukraine's point of view is exactly about not becoming like Belarus. Putin asking them to remain neutral actually means for Ukraine to capitulate. I don't believe they will ever agree to this and entertaining this idea actually means boosting Putin.
We need to prove Putin wrong. Cut off the gas to Europe if necessary economically. It will be terrible but at least it won't be a kinetic war because Putin himself threatened to do the same (or rather intimidated or called the west bluff).
I am afraid that there is a limit on discomfort that Americans and Western Europeans are willing to endure for Ukraine, and it is much much lower than "going to war with Russia". If there are sufficiently severe economic disruptions, calls will grow to throw Ukraine under the bus and agree with Belarus-like solution.
So I agree with Scott - best course for action for Ukrainian leadership seems to me to pursue similar status as Austria (imho better analogy than oft cited Finland and definitely not Belarus). No foreign troops on their territory, internationally guaranteed neutrality, not in NATO, but in EU.
US already announced that they will stop buying oil from Russia (it was a single digit percentage anyway). For the EU it is harder but nevertheless there are plans to greatly reduce its dependence on Russia's gas. (e.g., https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/08/energy/gas-russia-europe/index.html, Germany entertains the idea to keep old nuclear power stations operative etc.)
Many said that the west will never cut off Russia from SWIFT and they did. Not fully because of necessity to buy gas but with less dependence on Russian gas, even full ban is not out of cards later.
Ukraine cannot be Austria because Austria is already in Europe – culturally, geographically, economically. Ukraine needs to develop first.
In fact, key Russian institutions like Sberbank are still in SWIFT, although perhaps they will be cut off later.
But my main point is that if sanctions will prove visibly economically disruptive for the West, it will be difficult to sustain them after the initial shock will wear off. And prices of gasoline in EU right know are spiking, although there is no EU oil embargo (yet?), very visible reminder of the costs of sanctions policy to voters.
Re Austria, it was granted neutrality in 1955. I think that it was still quite poor country at that time, somewhat like Ukraine now. But I have not looked at any statistics, so perhaps that is wrong.
If the war does not end soon, the shock will be long lasting. For Eastern Europe Ukraine is not some country on the other side of the globe, it is right there with Ukrainian refugees arriving and constant reminder that it could be us.
The only difficult country is Germany. We will see what happens but Germany politicians supporting Russia is a disgrace.
> No foreign troops on their territory, internationally guaranteed neutrality, not in NATO, but in EU.
That matches my total-amateur thoughts. Basic goal is that Ukraine is safe from future Russian invasion (EU is also a defensive pact) but can't support NATO action against Russia. Russia can save face by claiming this is all they really wanted anyway.
So the line in the sand you're implying is "Russia cannot attack a NATO member". What about the rest? Putin has showed he's willing to conquer basically anything he deems conquerable, so we'll just do the same (and we gave him no reason to believe otherwise) when he'll invade Moldavia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan? And after all that, he or his successor, aggrandized by all his successes, won't he be reinforced in his belief that NATO is easily scared by nuclear threat, and so try his hand at some ex-russian possession?
You're left hoping Russia will lose or decline enough in the meantime.
Even if you think nuclear war is such a big concern that suppresses everything else, the only right question isn't just asking what is p(nuclear war | NATO in Ukraine), but comparing it to p(nuclear war | NOT NATO in Ukraine), and at least to me it's not obvious at all how the calculation resolves.
Russia cannot attack a NATO member, without going to war with NATO. Russia cannot attack anyone *else*, without NATO (or at least the US) providing arms and intelligence to whoever they are attacking. And vice versa, mostly. These rules have been long established and understood, and we can be reasonably confident that Russia isn't planning to go to war with NATO just because NATO sends arms to Ukraine.
And, yes, predictably he'll go to war with Moldova, Georgia, etc, etc, if he thinks it to his advantage. If we want to stop that, we need to either invite those countries to join NATO, or we need to convince Russia that it can at best win bloody expensive pyrrhic victories against countries that are being armed by NATO. The Ukrainians seem quite willing to help us out with Plan B.
Agree with everything. Just wanted to note a couple of things.
If Russia attacks a (non-nuclear) NATO member, some members may defect, but basically the only important thing is that US doesn't, to which I give very low probability.
In this invasion Russia miscalculated badly the level of resistance Ukrainians would oppose, so they invested accordingly a relatively weak force. They may adapt. It may look counter-intuitive, but your reasoning (with which I agree) implies that the worse Ukraine loses, the better a direct intervention becomes.
Ukraine is a much harder bone to chew then other countries Russia may decide to invade.
Utter, weirdiest nonsence I've ever heard.
Less of this please. This comment has 0 communicative content. its just sneering
Ok, you absolutely right. NoPie's comment is a blunt lie the doesn't correspond to any part of reality.
Less of this too. Please.
If you think its a lie, quote the parts you disagree with and provide counter evidence. Don't just assert another user is a liar. I don't know if NoPie is correct or not, but sneering and name calling makes me think you don't have any facts or data to bring to the table.
OK, lo and behold, here comes the nonsence:
>>This war is really not about NATO but about racism (this should be the correct term) at the highest level. Putin simply hates Ukrainians for introducing impurities to his Russian world.
You know, this is a kind of "Jews kill Christian infants to make matzo" nonsence, so inconsievable that I can't even think for the counter-argument, except "No, Putin doesn't hate Ukrainians at all"
If you're going to persist in sneering at him, I'm not sure why you're doing it as a reply to me.
I'm letting you know I would prefer you have a conversation with him instead of just assuming everyone agrees with you. I'm not sure if there is a racism component in the Russian invasion, and would have been interested in seeing it refuted with evidence instead of scoffing. If you can't think of a counter argument, I would have preferred you let me forgotten about you rather than continue to reply with the thing I'd like to see less of.
Look. I reported your comment for moderation, which is my responsibility as a community member. I probably won't reply to you further unless your future comments add more value than they have so far.
***MODERATION*** This comment received a light warning.
Ok, how about this:
Russian armies will leave Ukraine, but Putin will tell his subjects that he actually won the war, and the rest of the world promises not to contradict him publicly. Everyone wins!
Racism? Loose usage conquers new heights.
In fact, it is the UN usage and most precise to describe generally when one group of people hate another group for some trivial difference, such as skin colour or ethnicity.
Also, this is my first time being here! I admit sometimes I lurk around here on occasion
A good tactical summary and analysis of the first few days of the invasion, and the assumptions Russia seemed to have. I'm linking to 24 minutes in when Michael Kofman begins speaking:
https://youtu.be/zXEvbVoDiU0?list=TLPQMDgwMzIwMjL94cIjiDzQsQ&t=1475
Thankyou, just what I was looking for.
Some thoughts:
1- Ukraine signed an agreement with Russia, USA and (I think) UK back in the day that says in exchange for indefinite respect to their borders and sovereignty they give up their nukes that carried over from USSR. Back then they were like 3rd biggest nuclear power. Russia’s not honoring that and West’s not defending that by not putting boots on the ground shows to all middle powers that are anxious about their sovereignty to Just Go For Nukes. It shows how correct it is for Iran and North Korea to try to obtain nukes and it shows it’s their rightful right. Also if some other countries like South Korea, Australia, Turkey, Poland should obtain them as well. Basically if you can afford it and there’s a real threat to your sovereignty nukes are the most cost effective way of protecting yourself since when you’re the one with nukes everybody suddenly starts to walk on eggshells around you.
2- The peace proposal Russia made (if I’m not mistaken) includes the demilitarization of Ukraine which means they’ll just annex it altogether in a couple of years. That’s unacceptable.
3- Russia will not and cannot counter a if you fly we’ll shoot down zone with strategic nukes because it’s a losing game for them. West isn’t afraid of that but using it as an excuse so they don’t fight against a real Air Force. West hasn’t once fought against a serious country with a serious Air Force since WW2. I’m not saying they’re afraid of losing because they’ll handily win. I’m saying they’re afraid of seemingly being invincible. This airplane shot down 100 without getting shot down once, and this other one 200 with getting shot down only twice or whatever. Well it was against Serbia and Iraq and Yemen and Syria and whatnot. West is afraid of tarnishing their invincible reputation. Turkey is the only NATO country to have fired a shot in anger against a Russian airplane. I would’ve liked to see USA to have a go at it but the risk of some expensive programs losing some face is more important to them than showing to everyone going non-nuclear / not going nuclear is a viable thing to do. One doesn’t need to base squadrons in Ukraine to achieve this, range from bases in Poland etc is enough. Shoot BVR missiles from afar. Fly AWACS planes on NATO soil they’ll see far enough to give radar support. Do other stuff that me as a civilian cannot think of. But it’s all risking the reputation of very expensive programs that made a lot of people Very Important so they cannot do it. Turkey is the only NATO member have fired a shot in anger against a Russian airplane. I would’ve liked to see USA to have a go at it but the risk of some expensive programs losing some face is more important to them than showing to everyone going non-nuclear / not going nuclear is a viable thing to do. One doesn’t need to base squadrons in Ukraine to achieve this, range from bases in Poland etc is enough. Shoot BVR missiles from afar. Fly AWACS planes on NATO soil they’ll see far enough to give radar support. Do other stuff that me as a civilian cannot think of. But it’s all risking the reputation of very expensive programs that made a lot of people Very Important so they cannot do it.
Unless I am mistaken you have left out part of the story on the Ukraine Russia deal. In particular, Ukraine made a bunch of additional promises in that deal which they have arguably not honoured. My understanding is that they promised to steer clear of NATO. Thus Russia will argue their promise not to invade is void.
The promise Ukraine made was to ratify START and join the NPT, and give up their nuclear weapons, which they did. The text of the Budapest Memorandum is available here:
https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/Part/volume-3007-I-52241.pdf (PDF)
For what it's worth, Wikipedia asserts that Putin's point of view is that in view of the 2014 Maidan Revolution, the "Ukraine" of the Budapent Memorandum ceased to exist, and a brand new "Ukraine" was born -- one with which Russia had signed no agreements.
Okay, I stand very much corrected, my memory must have been faulty. I had thought Putin's pretexts here were a little stronger than that, but this does seem pretty close to a straight forward breach of the agreement with only a paper thin defence.
I might know the agreement wrongly, or misunderstand recent developments but Ukraine didn’t apply or get invited to NATO to void that, a Finland-like arrangement should’ve worked but Putin/Russian-Collective-Unconscious sees Russia as the patron of all East Slavs if not all Slavs.
So your numbering system is... esoteric and redundant, and makes it hard to comment on your points. Regardless:
1-1 and 2-1: The US already taught the world this lesson via Libya and North Korea. I don't think that proving the rule by glassing most of Europe and big chunks of North America is going to un-teach them.
1-2 and 2-2: Agreed, but that's bargaining for you. Presumably it's intended to get watered down to "Ukraine can have an army so long as it's not a strategic threat and no NATO/UN boots touch the ground".
1-3 and 2-3: NATO is already doing the AWACS trick, which is part of the reason that the Ukrainians have been doing as well as they have. They're already bending the rules as far as it is possible to bend them without just saying "fuck it" and putting aircraft or SAMs up. Which, again, the Russians can only respond to by trying to spike NATO assets or bomb NATO bases. This is a paved path to "limited", "tactical" thermonuclear war.
Possible quibble (hard to quickly find definitive clarification): I doubt the Russian tactical nukes are fusion based, so they'd be "merely" nuclear, not thermonuclear.
"Boosted nuclear fission war" just doesn't have the same ring to it...
They're very likely fusion-boosted. You get a lot more bang for the mass, which is pretty important for a small warhead. Plus by dialing in how much D/T gas you inject, you can alter the yield in the field, which is quite handy -- although I do not know if the Russians are interested in such frills.
From memory the Soviets put about as much work into miniaturising boosted fission devices as the US did, and has a similarly gnarly arsenal of nuclear surprises in that regard (including backpack nukes, dial-a-yield bombs, nuclear artillery, tactical rockets and so on). Russia, like the US, also has a doctrine which allows for "limited" tactical nuclear warfare - although goodness knows if they've trained for it recently.
Oh my god I’m sorry I wrote the comment in between sleeps and edited on my phone so I must’ve copied double or so. I think I corrected it now.
1- There still needs to be a line in the sand to make a case to countries that are nuclear or want to go nuclear. Or they should stop getting angry to Iran, NK or hypothetical others that want to be sure they’re not the next Ukraine or Libya.
2- I agree if Russia agrees but I feel like they just offered something unacceptable so they go on with invasion but claim they sued for peace and west is the aggressor.
3- that’s a good thing if we’re already doing that but I’m not sure if that’ll be enough. My point was, even if there’s no escalation and NATO manages a no fly zone, albeit with an expected amount of lost aircraft USAF/NATO/Military-Industrial-Complex will consider itself lost. The air of invincibility of the material and the organization will be irreversibly lost. I believe this is why USA/NATO decides against a no fly zone rather than risk of escalation.
1 - Again, too late. The Iraqis getting smart-bombed even as they protested the ridiculous yellow-cake allegations should have been a warning. The Iranians still getting bombed every now and then (and their generals getting droned) was incentive. And Gaddafi getting sat on a bayonet was proof. The US let this cat out of the bag, and trying to slap Russia over broken promises to Ukraine won't put it back in. If I was in charge of a country, I would at least be looking at my options for setting up a 5-year run to nuclear capability almost regardless of my relationship with the rest of the world.
2- That's definitely part of it. The unfulfillable ultimatum has a long and proud history of allowing cads to start wars (especially world wars).
3 - I disagree, in as much as "our equipment = the best" didn't prevent the US (and about 100 other countries) from selling all their best stuff to the Saudis, who then piss it away on failing to bomb their neighbour into submission.
On another note, I think that AWACs shenanigans and information sharing from NATO intelligence assets do highlight just how awful the Russians and Chinese are as allies. I mean, if NATO can do all of this for the Ukrainians, then why hell can't Iran get advance warning and untouchable radar support the next time Israel decides to zap one of their facilities or conduct a pre-emptive decapitation strike?
The Russians and Chinese have proven themselves to be the worst, most transactional sort of countries to deal with, and as a result I think a lot of other nations are souring on them as strategic partners even where their interests would otherwise align.
1- You have a point there, and the last sentence is exactly my sentiments. Maybe even less than 5 years, more like Japan "being one screwdriver's turn" from the bomb.
3- I partly agree, I think nobody in their right minds look at Saudis and say oh those F15s are crap, they say Saudi Air Force as an organization is crap. Israeli Air Force or USAF has that air of invincibility to them.
About the other note, I agree. My great-grandmother who had to flee from Crimea from Russians a century or so ago used to say in Tatar "Game of Rus is egregious, if they fart that lances your skull". Transactional to deal with and ruthless.
> Russia’s not honoring that and West’s not defending that by not putting boots on the ground shows to all middle powers that are anxious about their sovereignty to Just Go For Nukes.
While I agree with the indirect consequences, there is a caveat here that people keep getting wrong about this. The Budapest Memorandum was about respecting Ukraine's sovereignty and not invading/annexing it, which the west followed and Russia did not. The west was never agreeing to put its own troops to defend Ukraine from whatever threat like a NATO agreement would, it was about not invading it.
My point was about the indirect consequences, the agreement doesn't put any responsibility on West to protect Ukraine, but not doing so gives a wrong message to future countries that could've signed a similar agreement.
Re: 1. You are referring to the Budapest Memorandum, which, among other things, included provisions that the US would not sanction Ukraine or Byelorus after they gave up the nuclear weapons on their territory.
The US had long claimed the memorandum to be non-binding whent hey wanted to sanction Byelorus.
There's the principle of proportional reaction or something, Russia could've sanctioned Ukraine all they wanted but they instead started an invasion it's not comparable. Being a nuclear country or not isn't a factor in getting sanctioned but it's a factor in getting invaded.
I didn't say that the invasion was justified, just that the US deemed that Budapest Memorandum non-binding.
There's a really good Vox piece on Zelenskyy's narrativomancy, so to speak, of the sort discussed in the second-to-last link:
https://www.vox.com/world/22955262/zelenskyy-videos-ukraine-russia-war
It's one of the things fascinating me about this. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say the fact Zelenskyy knows how to handle Narrative is why his country is not currently Belarus 2.
You might add to your definition of 'Pax Americana': Print a few billion dollars as an indirect tax on all Americans; Resettle the victims to Arkansas.
I'm really shocked that you are still promoting Anatoly Karlin on this blog. He has consistently shown that he believes Russian state media which for one, is denying that there is clearly a war going on, alongside a bunch of other easily verifiable lies. I think that as a popular blogger, you have a little bit more of an obligation than saying that something may be Russian propaganda, but it is funny nonetheless. Is there anything really funny about what Russia is doing in Ukraine? I would hope not, based on my judgement of your character from reading the blog. I really think you should not promote him in the future.
On his blog, he also actively supports rhetoric that the war is the West's fault and that "All the blood is on their hands." NATO is a defensive treaty. Russia's claims that Ukraine joining would result in a security threat for them is not credible. I'm not for active censorship - but there is also a point where a source becomes untrustworthy, and the responsible thing to do is to not promote that source. I think Anatoly has crossed that line.
I don't believe that giving us a Russian Nationalist's pointy of view counts as "promoting". I want to know what the enemy is thinking.
Is the tweet linked important in any way to "understanding how the enemy is thinking"? Does it identify key thought processes that authority figures on the other side may be having that help us outmaneuver them (or hopefully beat them)? I don't see how this tweet does that. And in the previous post Anatoly was promoted as getting a "B-" in predictions. That may lead to people to believe - "hey, this guy is kinda smart, I wonder what else he has to say." More generally, when I say "promoting" - I also mean signal boosting. Which just a neutral mention is enough to do that.
And share their funny propaganda memes?
Also, I don't believe Karlin believes Russian state media. It would be mere ignorance. Much worse: I believe he is an opportunist who chooses which Russian TV media claims are useful to propagate.
True, its hard to read his true intentions. He tweeted that he believed the Russian claims of casualties (which is transparently ridiculously since they admitted no casualties the first few days). I think that he is a source/analyst that should be given no consideration (despite how he put predictions in % form)
Maybe we should ask the New York Times to come out against Slate Star Codex oh sorry Astral Codex Ten dangerously platforming Anatoly Karlin
I recall the free speech maximalist defense fielded during the NYT debacle was like this: to debate possibly uncouth opinions that might have some truth in them, one must be able the present the opposing view and engage with people who defend such opinions.
Which is all fine and reasonable.
So (1) where exactly is this debate about Karlin's views found on this blog? (2) And why won't we then debate Karlin's views? I observe only one party willing to present arguments about Karlin's opinion and just pushback against presenting such arguments: "giving us a Russian Nationalist's pointy of view" (Jack Wlson), " New York Times to come out against Slate Star Codex" (you).
This isn't about (de)platforming Karlin. His platforms for speech seem to be mainly Twitter and Substack. Note that I am not advocating that he be removed from either of those. That is what deplatforming would be, and in general I am not a fan of it. (probably only in favor when it would present a clear and present danger etc etc. Usual free speech stuff). But just because I agree its important for everyone has the ability to shout their thoughts into the internet, does not mean that it is important for everyone to engage.
Would the opinion be the same if the source was a notable anti-vaxxer that predicted some aspect of corona, was given a B- and then their anti-vaxxer meme was shared with the same disclaimer: "probably anti-vaxxer propaganda, but funny anyway"?
I would not be upset if Scott was talking about Anatoly with some sort of criticism. But in fact, he is getting mentioned with neutral-positive sentiment. First as a credible predictor, and second as a funny guy.
But perhaps the above is not relevant to your comment. My main point is that this is not about (de)platforming, which has to do with removing or providing platforms on which opinions can be shared. Not mentioning someone is not deplatforming them. And mentioning someone is not platforming them.
It's funny that on nearly every article Scott posts there are these commenters who claim to be shocked when Scott laughs at something the NYT set says is Not Funny or cites a source the NYT set says is Not Credible or condemns the latest cancellation campaign. I can't think of any other blog where this is the case. Many have commenters who disagree with the blogger, but they don't do this "OMG I'm shocked you don't share my worldview" thing.
What is the NYT set? Do you mean people that read the New York Times? I don't often read it, but I'm thinking you are implying something culturally. What that is, I'm not sure because you also seem to throw in terms like "Not Funny" and "Not Credible" that are also undefined - but I assume they have a meaning to you.
I plenty of times have read something that Scott writes that I don't agree with. We certainly don't have the same exact worldview, but I find good insights in his writing reliably - which is why I read it.
I find this particular instance to cause me to question whether or not Scott and I would disagree on something more fundamental. Or if the source is not being vetted as heavily as I would believe. If you are going to disagree with me, then fine. But if you want to discuss it you can address what I actually said, rather than some attempt to lump me in with a "NYT set" (which I can't really argue against because its a term you made up). You suggest that you can interpolate all of my other views (such as being in favor of cancellation campaigns) and therefore condemn me on that. In fact, I don't agree with many cancellations that have occurred, and am not trying to cancel anyone here.
I am not part of a hivemind. And I don't appreciate you ignoring my argument in this specific case in favor of insinuating that. If you actually don't value honest freedom of discussion and disagreement then why engage at all?
I did ignore your argument in favor of addressing a larger mystery. To your point:
1. I thought it was funny.
2. Defensive alliances have a way of turning into offensive alliances.
3. Karlin doesn't always repeat the Kremlin line, as in his claim the negotiations are a 'charade:' https://twitter.com/akarlin0/status/1499521806893568002
As to whether the West should sanction Russia, I'm undecided. I strongly suspect that come the 2022 elections all the realistic candidates I'll have the chance to vote for will be saying the same thing.
Sigh - this response isn't really worth my time but here we go:
1) The argument is not about whether it is funny or not, and if you think it is, then you have rather missed my main point.
2) Fantastic analysis here, really excellent. You really go above and beyond to contribute to the discussion here.
3) I never claimed that he repeats the Kremlin lines in all cases.
I have no interest in continuing a discussion with someone who isn't sure whether bombing civilians and committing war crimes is worth sanctioning a country for in order to show disapproval.
So do we get Trump in 2024 as the peacemaker since he is the one who most speaks Putin's language?
God forbid. This calls for nerves of steel, and regardless of any other qualities unfortunately Trump is a bit of a flake, can't keep his eye on the ball for very long before he spots a squirrel. Must be all that reality TV, you only need to focus for a maximum of 13 minutes between commercial breaks.
I have no idea who to recommend, though, I might have said Mitt Romney, who at least is intelligent, has a clear-eyed view, and steady nerves, but the man *cannot* connect with people to save his life, and that's a sine qua non. Nobody else on the American political stage seems to have very much bottom when it comes to war 'n' peace. We could hire Bibi Netanyahu as a consultant, maybe.
John Kerry, perhaps. Similar issues to Romney, but can probably connect to the people who matter. International diplomacy isn't the same as winning a presidential election.
Ugh no. Kerry has a pleasant enough demeanor, and endless patience, but he's stupid. I mean, genuinely low IQ. I remember him well when he embarassed Massachusetts by replacing the actually pretty darn smart Paul Tsongas. God knows where he'd be now without the Heinz money -- I'd give 2:1 odds Teresa runs that house anyway.
Trust me, you don't want Bibi. Guy's an empty fearmonger, basically an actually smart version of Trump - but just as much of a nerveless flake at the end of the day. I'd take Bennet as a strictly better version of him, and Benet's already on this (to whatever degree of good it might do, which I suspect isn't much since I don't see Putin backing down for anything).
Well, he's getting old. I'm mostly thinking of the 80s and 90s Bibi. He may be losing his edge now. Don't we all, alas.
I don't know...maybe Schroeder wouldn't be so bad after all...he has Putin's ear, and was a chancellor of Germany...of course, it would be better if the German Media had not declared him Persona non Grata...or what about Berlusconi? Similar to Schroeder, he was quite close to Putin, but doesn't seem as tainted...?
Given how friendly he is with Putin, and bow much everyone hates Putin, I would have thought his chances were scuppered.
>Given how friendly he is with Putin
So, not that friendly?
History didn't start two weeks ago.
"December 2011: Trump praised Putin's "intelligence" and "no-nonsense way" in his book "Time to Get Tough."
"Putin has big plans for Russia. He wants to edge out its neighbors so that Russia can dominate oil supplies to all of Europe," Trump said. "I respect Putin and Russians but cannot believe our leader (Obama) allows them to get away with so much...Hats off to the Russians.""
Note how the only hint of condemnation of Russia, and it is a hint, is secondary to condemning the democrats.
Something very similar happenned in the 23 Feb interview
"by the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened."
You have to infer condemnation of the invasion from the self-praise.
He's using this as an opportunity to bash the democrats. Not because he's freindly with Putin, but because it serves his interests to blame his actions on [Trump's] political opponents. The political opportunism explains it perfectly, no conspiracy between Trump and Putin is explanatorily necessary.
>You have to infer condemnation of the invasion from the self-praise.
Now you're simply lying
“The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling,” he told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, on Saturday night. “It’s an outrage and an atrocity that should never have been allowed to occur.
"As far as I understand it, the offer is: Ukraine declares neutrality, and recognizes Crimea as Russian and Donetsk/Luhansk as independent. Russia gives up and goes home."
I don't think this is the Russia's current demand, unless it has changed.
More importantly, it certainly was not the extent of Russia's demands before invasion. Their initial demands of Ukraine included ban of some offensive weapons (I don't recall the details, not sure if they ever provided them) and full implementation of Minsk II (a bit tall order when the Russian backed separatists were not eager to hold the ceasefire, and the Minsk II is extremely unfavorable to Ukraine). Before the invasion, as Putin amassed troops on the border, Putin escalated his demands. The final round included complete demilitarization, complete denazification (whatever Putin means by it -- common interpretation is "purge of Ukrainian leadership"), stop an alleged genocide in Donetsk (very difficult to implement, because Western observers have not witnessed any), and bunch of other demands from EU and NATO.
You have to read between lines. They demand neutrality from Ukraine which in practice means to keep it subjugated under Russia. That's really all what Russia wants but it is not what Ukrainians want. They clearly see that their only chance of development is becoming the EU member. The process will demand dealing with corruption, reorganization of their institutions. For Scott not seeing this and doubting that they can become the EU member country is frustrating.
>More importantly, it certainly was not the extent of Russia's demands before invasion.
Ha, come on. Demilitarization is MORE of a demand than the thing you quoted, because it basically means Ukraine is permanently as Russia's mercy.
Something I've not seen mentioned enough is that this is also a war for long term Russian influence. Putin wins = directly subordinated or annexed Ukraine, but also a more solid grip on Belarus, likely regime change in Moldova, extra influence in Romanian politics, and continued mingling in European politics.
Putin loses - their politics will turn internal for a while, and they'll have to reorient efforts to keep the Russian Federation in one piece, work hard not to lose client states and work hard to destabilize Ukraine and sabotage its entering EU. Not much resources left for stuff beyond that, which means Europe gets a decade of peace from Russian interference. Plus a better integrated Ukraine as a bonus.
This being a sliding scale, of course. And the peace terms are what puts the pointer on the scale.
I think this is more true of the PR and economic wars than the war for territory, and that these are only tangentially linked (with the first two looking very good for the West, and the last still up in the air). I don't think that whether or not Ukraine eg recognizes Russia's right to Crimea will have much effect on the influence war, given how badly the PR and economic wars are going for them.
I'll admit I don't have first hand knowledge here, it's just something which "everybody knows" in the countries in the region: Russia also plays on a field which is none of PR, economic or territorial. Let's call it "people in their pocket". The modern and vastly expanded version of a criminal organization. That's the kind of limited resources I'm talking about.
As an example, there were political changes in the past half year in Romania which made no sense whatsoever (the president abruptly supported a wide coalition that included the party he loudly vilified for years), but now make a lot of sense if you consider them part of cleaning house in preparation for nearby war with Russia. The deal was likely some form of: you get to be part of the government and control easy-to-steal funds, but you park or exclude the people known to be under Moscow's influence.
A point:
You listed "Georgia" in the list of the "next time"places that people want to invade, but won't because of the pax americana's enforcement actions against Russia "this time".
...except that Russia already invaded Georgia in 2008, and got exactly what they wanted from that action. Georgia had been actively courting western powers and pushing for NATO membership. Russia ensured that in response it It lost territory, lost lives, and received a warning that if it didn't stop trying to join NATO the next thing it lost would be its existence as an independent state. Georgia got the message, and so did NATO members. While they have continued economic and military cooperation on a more limited scale the talk of actively pursuing membership dropped. Of course, now that Ukraine has demonstrated to Georgia that they're in danger anyway, they are asking for EU and NATO membership again because they believe they have nothing to lose.
Either way, it seems odd to put a country that in fact DID get attacked on your list of countries that are protected. Even odder when you consider that it was the Russian success (from their perspective) in Georgia that led to them planning and executing the grab of Crimea and backing separatist movements in Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine.
Perhaps "this time" the response will be strong enough to deter a "next time". But this will be the third time in the past 15 years, so I am not particularly hopeful unless sanctions extend rather longer and are more severe than I expect. If Russia IS deterred, I think it will be by the bloody nose they get from the Ukrainians being far more willing to fight than they had counted on, and the weaknesses revealed in their military, not by the western response.
It's not clear to me that "providing fighter aircraft", as long as they're piloted by Ukrainian pilots, is the same sort of escalation or proxy war norm violation as the others described. As far as I know the North Koreans and North Vietnamese flew Soviet-supplied planes.
(In Korea there were even Soviet pilots, though they at least made a vague attempt to keep that fact a secret at the time.)
So supplying Ukraine with Polish MiGs (if it can be negotiated) seems as cricket as other arms supplies. Not risk free, but not in the same class as shooting down Russians ourselves.
The zone gets a little grayer if some officially Ukrainian pilots turn out to be volunteers from NATO countries, or if the donations go from planes Ukrainians could plausibly be flying with existing experience to, say, their suddenly being able to handle F-16s.
(I'm not sure where providing that sort of training falls if the war lasts long enough. There were certainly opponents in our 20th century proxy wars who'd studied in Moscow.)
The question of how to get the planes from Poland into Ukraine is an interesting one, though. If they fly them over and then transfer ownership then it means you've got Polish fighters entering the war zone, which is an escalation. But if you transfer ownership and then fly them over then you've got Ukranian fighters operating out of Poland, which is an escalation.
I think it was this sort of logic which led to a weird arrangement in WW2 prior to US joining the war; American planes were manufactured, flown to the Canadian border, landed, pushed across the border, then transferred to the RAF and flown to Britain.
You fly them to Romania and load them onto a barge, tow it out into the Black Sea, then have helicopters evacuate the entire crew from an outbreak of COVID, since they weren't wearing masks, the dummies. Moments later a squadron of Ukrainian pilots enjoying one final boat ride before returning from leave stumble across the abandoned barge and *steal* it, the ratfinks. Very regrettable. An award of $50,000 is solemnly posted for information leading to their arrest.
Soviet-aligned powers presumably got their MiGs without similar issues proving insurmountable, though I don't know enough details to know if it presented a problem requiring a comparable fig leaf.
While we haven't had to dust it off for a while, there probably is an unavoidable element of brinksmanship. But supplying weapons across borders is such a time-honored element of superpower proxy wars that it's hard to see it being impossible to find a way to work it.
I think at the time there was no AWACS and no satellite imaging, so you could move fighter jets around without it being super obvious.
Do the same thing they did with the Ukrainian plane which landed abroad: strip it of weapons and then fly it back to Ukraine where it can be rearmed. An unarmed plane can't be launching attacks.
Ferry flights of military aircraft are generally not considered a belligerent attack. Though I have heard of cases where the airplanes were towed across an international border just to be extra-safe. If we have to do that, there seem to be some flat grassy areas of the Polish-Ukrainian border, and the MiG-29 has grass-field capability. Also some highways that would make useful runways, but they're probably clogged with refugees.
Yep, on moral grounds Putin is just his usual lying hypocritical weasel self. Plenty of Americans pilots died in the sights of Soviet aircraft. But this isn't really a moral issue, the line is kind of measured by how hysterical the party drawing it seems to be getting. The Americans were never going to consider Soviet hardware in Vietnam an existential threat, because losing in Vietnam was just never that big a deal, LBJ's fever dreams notwithstanding (and with due acknowledgement of the shamefully supreme price paid by 58,220 souls for nothing much). But it *looks* like for Putin having NATO planes over Ukraine *is* that big a deal, something he sees as existential, and that's how the line is negotiated, more or less. I dunno why it *is* that big a deal -- the comparison to the Cuban Missile Crisis is inapt, it's not any easier to fly a nuclear-capable F-16 to Moscow from Kiev than it is from Warsaw -- but that seems to be how he sees it.
I guess we'll find out how he responds to it, for MiGs if not F-16s.
https://www.gov.pl/web/diplomacy/statement-of-the-minister-of-foreign-affairs-of-the-republic-of-poland-in-connection-with-the-statement-by-the-us-secretary-of-state-on-providing-airplanes-to-ukraine
oo, interesting wrinkle: Poland gives them to USA, not to Ukraine. I wonder how exactly they will be flown into Ukraine.
This has an obvious potential to escalate, though I like idea of Russia having smaller air force and overall it seems worth doing.
Ha ha that's smart. And it totally serves that idiot Blinken right for his embarrassing babble about the hypothetical transfer of fighters from Poland to the Ukraine. How I wish we (meaning the United States) had a less incompetent Secretary of State. But I salute the Poles for an excellent piece of diplomatic judo there.
Until I saw the US response, it honestly didn't occur to me that the Poles hadn't coordinated with us before making that announcement.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-surprised-polands-decision-give-it-fighter-jets-ukraine-2022-03-08/
Well, yeah, it's surprisingly harsh for the Poles. But we (the US) totally deserved it, after failing to coordinate *with them* before the initial idiotic speculation by Blinken.
Seriously, if we had a President who was on top of things, Blinken's ass would be grass for that. It's a major fuckup, and extremely easy to avoid. I don't know what his (Blinken's) problem is, his history certainly doesn't suggest idiocy. Maybe he had a stroke or something.
Does anyone know how long it would take to train Ukrainians to fly F-16s (or other modern aircraft), if they were doing it in a hurry?
It's worth noting that most Presidential candidates (including Clinton as well as most of the Republicans apart from Trump and Paul) in 2016 supported enforcing a No Fly Zone against Russian planes in Syria, which would have been just as dumb an idea then as it is now: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/19/us/elections/presidential-candidates-on-syria-no-fly-zone.html
Agree.
When did you change your mind?
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/10/01/he-kept-us-out-of-war/
That was a sensible thing since the official Syrian government wanted the Russian air force and not the Western ones. Here the official Ukrainian government doesn’t wants the Russian Air Force. It’s the complete opposite.
I'm on board with almost all of this so don't have much to add. Except this part struck me -
"Russia has miscalculated, they know they’ve miscalculated, and the best ending for everyone is for them to leave in a way that sort of preserves what’s left of their honor"
One of the glaring features of this fiasco for me is the fact that Vladimir Putin is responsible for it. The miscalculation wasn't by 'Russia' or the Russian people, it was by a single individual, however common it is to anthropomorphise a country or a government or a people.
My point is more general than saying let's blame that very bad man Mr Putin. It is to observe that when one individual gains ultimate power, it's always a very real possibility that he'll be driven mad by it (if he wasn't already) and enormous catastrophes will ensue.
Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao etc etc. None of them could have caused the deaths and destruction that they did if they hadn't achieved megalomaniac power.
I could be wrong of course. The Swiss could have one of their periodic referendums and vote to start bombing Lichtenstein. But I think the odds are against it.
There are many lessons here that Scott has ably described. But for me the most instructive is the picture of Putin at one end of a table with the nearest other human being 40 feet away. That's the problem right there. Not even Putin the individual, just the structure that permits, if not encourages, all that follows. Power has the very real potential to poison.
I think Tolkein wrote a longish book making just this point.
Obviously tangential, but the demonym for Chechnya is "Chechen", not "Chechnyan"
"Other times it was almost incomprehensible: we’ll debate what happened with Iraq II forever."
It's not incomprehensible if you stick to realpolitik instead of rhetoric.
1) Iraq I was because it was in pretty much nobody's interest to to let Saddam Hussein control the less-expensive-to-extract half of the world's proven oil reserves. Whether Kuwait was inside or outside Iraq really wasn't a matter of intense interest to the US or anybody else; rather, the US and pretty much everybody else wanted an outcome where Hussein could not use military force to control the oil of the whole Arabian Peninsula.
2) In the end, the ground phase of Desert Storm was a failure, because Saddam Hussein and his regime survived (against the expectations of the Bush I administration that it would be shattered by a civil war), complete with the chance to rebuild his military to threaten the Arabian Peninsula again. The US had to, in practice, indefinitely extend Desert Shield and the air phase of Desert Storm (garrisoning Saudi Arabia and enforcing the no-fly zones) to indefinitely contain Hussein.
3) Containing Hussein became untenable because the US presence in Saudi Arabia provoked an escalating series of terrorist attacks by Arab Muslims who saw it as a desecration. The Khobar Towers, the US embassies in Africa, and the USS Cole culminated in 9/11. Remaining in Saudi Arabia would continue to provoke similar attacks, because plenty of Arab Muslims agreed with Osama bin Laden about that desecration enough to do something about it. A US withdrawal from Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, would end the ongoing offense.
4) But simply pulling out would end the containment. The logical move for the US accordingly seemed to be to repeat the Desert Storm ground invasion, and this time not stop until the Hussein regime was indisputably destroyed. WMD programs and democracy were advanced as excuses in public for the same reason Iraq being an aggressor was advanced to justify the first invasion of Iraq; because US and world public opinion won't tolerate a simple explanation of "The invasion is in our interest, so we're launching one".
(4a - The huge difference in international support between Iraq I and Iraq II is that many countries that saw it in their interest to not let Hussein dominate the Arabian Peninsula didn't have any particular interest in taking domestic PR hits in the interest of easing US efforts to resolve its Saudi garrison difficulty by invading Iraq.)
5) The US invaded Iraq, disbanded the Iraqi government and army, and went ahead and declared "Mission Accomplished". Unfortunately, it couldn't immediately go home (leaving just a few advisors in Baghdad), because Hussein himself managed to hide in a spider hole. There was an ongoing risk that if the US withdrew, he'd manage to wind up on top again, and the whole problem would start over.
6) Between when the US wanted to withdraw and when Saddam Hussein would up in custody (December), the civil war that was an entirely expected result of shattering the Hussein regime (even desired, since it would put off the date a stable regime in Iraq could threaten the Arabian Peninsula) broke out. With fighting going on before US troops left, there was no way compatible with American public opinion to simply declare victory and go home, like would have happened Hussein been killed in the same fight his sons died in. This public opinion is why the major Democratic candidates for President talked about a Pottery Barn rule.
7) Every hour the US was in Iraq from the point of Hussein's capture onward, including Obama sending troops back in after he withdrew them, accordingly was the US administration of the day trying to figure out how to leave without the American people perceiving it as a defeat and punishing the party of whomever was President.
Very well put. I hadn't been able to make the connection why Iraq was related to 9/11 response. Sure, I understand (but don't condone) lashing out after you've been attacked like that, but why at Iraq when they didn't have anything to do with it?
If someone else could find anything wrong with this I'd be much obliged. It seems to make sense from the hidden geopolitical perspective, and only barely more justified to me. (still doesn't warrant an invasion, even when you couldn't foresee the chaos and death that would ensue, that we know of now)
Counterpoint: after 9/11, Bush wanted to "end Islamic Terrorism". Part of the way you do that is by showing that you are a superior force. Part of the way you do that is be showing people that there is an alternative to that way of life, and part of the way you do that is militarily crushing them.
All of these points suggest an Iraq invasion.
In this hypothetical world, Saddam is toppled and the US sets up a democratic Iraqi government. This stops the (indirect) support for Palestinian terrorists and the substantially-wrong but honestly-believed nuclear program. It also serves as a shining city on a hill model of what a modern democratic Arab/Islamic state can look like. And the limited military action required, both against Saddam as well as possible terrorists flocking to kill Americans, occurs on about the best-possible terrain for the US military to operate. Oh, and Iraq has significant oil, meaning that the newly-formed non-corrupt government would be able to generate sufficient hard cash to pay for the resources it would need to build new institutions.
Instead, you got what you got.
We should have just carpet-bombed them.
In the end, it all worked out, albeit very messily and expensively. Islamic terrorism has been (touch wood) basically defeated.
The "flypaper strategy" worked. Young dumb Muslims with an interest in jihad wound up flocking to shoot at American tanks in Mosul rather than shopping malls in Omaha. When they killed people they mostly just killed other Muslims.
At this point the terrorist recruitment pipeline has dried up, because it's no longer possible to convince a dumb young potential jihadi that one more terrorist attack will actually achieve anything.
Are you sure this is still the case after our withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the embarrassing speed with which the Taliban took over?
This is totally wrong and totally immoral. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and yet you are supporting a fly paper strategy, that is that the Iraqis should deal with the consequences of mass terrorism so you don’t.
This is a incredible cruel and inhumane logic. And it is far from the reality how people work.
1) Being able to build up a working civil society after a invasion is a illusion. What civil society needs most is trust and people feeling save. A population traumatized by a war is basically the opposite.
2) Even if you have this illusion, contaminating the territory with depleted uranium projectiles and bombing cities is not a good basis for founding a new state, especially without the real plan to clean up the mess afterwards.
3) Imagine you are a young Muslim, thinking that the US is desecrating your holy lands and threatening your brothers in faith. Than you see this power invading another Muslim country for no reason. Dos this hold you from joining a terrorist group, because they are a enemy too strong? Or does this show you that the preachers of terror are right, that this power is pure evil and has to be fought with all means even if this means sacrificing your live?
4) Even if it worked, is an invasion that definitely kills many thousand people worth it to prevent a few potential terrorist attacks? If you think this, you are a racist that doesn't count all lives equal.
5) had 'carpet-bombing' them made anything better?
To bring this to a personal level people usually understand better:
Imaging i think you are are thread to my friends but I'm tired of being on guard to protect them and they are being annoyed of me guarding them. So decide to beat you up to solve this problem. What you're just saying is, i should have shot you right away because you still don't like me and didn't turn into the nice guy i wished you to be.
>4) Even if it worked, is an invasion that definitely kills many thousand people worth it to prevent a few potential terrorist attacks? If you think this, you are a racist that doesn't count all lives equal.
Oh give me a break. This literally describes the overwhelming majority of people on earth other than white liberals. If you don't see this, then you're probably a liberal who is high on their own supply.
I'm not even defending it, but acting like valuing one's countrymen over foreigners is some kind of abberation points to an incredible level of obliviousness.
I know that most people would value the own countrymen over foreigners. This is human as you would protect your family over the lives of others. I don't want to judge anybody about thinking so in the small scale or at the kitchen table.
But this is different:
- this is not about some almost equal numbers, but the invasion killed 10000 to 30000. Any military official should be able to estimate this especially as there was a the same scenario before with similar numbers.
- This decision was taken by political and military experts. They shout know what they are doing and keep a cool head, not act by vague feelings.
- This is the West that always fights for human rights, freedom and democracy. They should do better than what you expect from 'human nature'
- This discussion is on a forum of rational people seriosly talking about altruism. Reading here somebody saying "We should have just carpet-bombed them." Just blew my mind. I had expected this from some right wing military fan, but not here.
He probably isn't serious about carpet-bombing, but juxtaposing the hopeful projections against the bleak reality that unfolded, wryly implying the outcome to have been so bad that "we [might as well have] just carpet-bombed them" because the amount of damage and suffering caused wouldn't have been worse, while having the advantage of speed.
> 4a - The huge difference in international support between Iraq I and Iraq II is that many countries that saw it in their interest to not let Hussein dominate the Arabian Peninsula didn't have any particular interest in taking domestic PR hits in the interest of easing US efforts to resolve its Saudi garrison difficulty by invading Iraq.
There was no huge difference. Iraq War 2 had more coalition partners who contributed a larger share of the total deployed soldiers than 1. What there was was a highly publicized campaign of opposition by france (who was sanction busting) and germany (whose chancellor was on the take from russia) that in the end accomplished relatively little.
https://www.rfi.fr/en/20181121-14-french-companies-back-trial-oil-food-scandal
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/dec/13/russia.germany
Most of the world’s population was opposed to the war. Only the French and German governments represented this in Europe.
that and an empty sack is worth the sack...
I'm confused as to why Iraq posed such a threat. Was it really any stronger than Saudi Arabia or Iran or Syria or Israel or Pakistan? Or was it just more militarized?
Iraq was definitely not stronger than Iran, Saddam tried and lost even with massive support from the west (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War)
Perhaps the west knew how dangerous he is because they built him up and armed him, or perhaps they knew that they would face mo relevant resistance and can show off tow great their military is. I don't know, but i just can't think of any legit reason to invade any country far away, that is not even remotely threatening you.
I'm not a foreign affairs maven, so take this with a grain of salt. But I don't think Iraq was less of a threat than Iran. On the contrary, I suspect that if Iraq's military had been stronger, if it had *actually* had nuclear weapons that could have hit the United States, say, that the US would have been more cautious to act, not less.
I think you should check out Hanania's "Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy".
https://www.econlib.org/hanania-highlights-i/
Tanner Greer of Scholar's Stage has been going through other books written by insiders about the invasion.
As for WMDs, the CIA really believed they were there:
https://twitter.com/gcochran99/status/1493023439942144000
When making a reasonably short comment on a complex issue, there's a lot of need for simplification for both rhetorical and practical reasons. The pure-realpolitik perspective I used above is never the full truth about anything in public affairs, but used as a model for analysis it can illuminate things that would otherwise remain obscure (while, of course, obscuring other things).
Public choice theory is also a model. The argument in that link is that it is more explanatory and makes fewer errors in the same amount of space.
There's no department of realpolitik, and the US doesn't know what it wants. There are analysts and diplomats and military officers and politicians who all specialize in different things related to threat or democratization or human rights or economics and each tug in slightly different directions.
Economic analysts are generally not kleptocratic or zero sum. Military analysts are not expansionists or intolerant of any slight. Democracy advocates know that imposing it through force is a contradiction and lowers its chance of success.
Everyone looking for the cause is going to be disappointed, because there are eighteen ways to avoid intervention and if you are being invaded you have somehow created a very interdisciplinary posse of enemies across the foreign policy establishment.
If you want to reduce the system to a single thing--you should not--it was that Saddam was effectively lobbying the international community to end sanctions while still being a total psychopath. Gulf II was much more about the failure of the policy toolkit in the 90s than anything that happened later, and the best evidence for this is the bipartisan political support for regime change taking root well before the year 2000, well before the NIE.
I'm not really sure about this. The US still has lots of military deployed in the Middle East and yet not in Iraq, instead it was shifted to Kuwait (army), Bahrain (navy), and, most significantly, Qatar (air force), with approximately 10,000 troops in each country. This shift from Saudi Arabia to Qatar started happening in the late 90s after Qatar paid a billion dollars to construct a major new air base to tempt the Americans there. The move was completed shortly after the invasion of Iraq.
Therefore I believe the primary consideration was cost savings (Qatar subsidises the base to this day) while avoiding provoking attacks was only secondary. (Side note: Trump based some troops in Saudi Arabia, albeit only a few air defence units; Biden has since recalled them.)
The real (primary) reason for invading Iraq? I think it's still fairly close to what you put forward: they wanted to make Iraq a friendly country where they could centrally locate US military forces to more effectively control and react to the security situation of the Mid East.
The problem was they drank their own kool-aid and thought toppling a brutal dictator and instituting democracy would actually achieve this. Since then they have learnt their lesson and now primarily base troops in friendly dictatorships (in the Mid East theatre).
I'm not sure I follow 4a. If Saddam was not a threat to SA then why do you need garrison positions? If he was, why didn't you get the old coalition back together?
The implication I read from the post is "he was, but the French and Germans defected in order to free-ride on the US dealing with Hussein, and they had greater room to do this compared to Gulf War 1 because the US was already committed to Desert Shield and was the one suffering reprisals".
(Not saying I necessarily believe this, but that's what I read from that post.)
Would love to read your analysis of US troops stationed in the EU and what happens when EU-nato is forced to increase spending on defense and perhaps provide the room for the US to leave.
For those of us who live through it this is absolutely right.
Let's stipulate, for the sake of discussion, that this is an accurate description of the realpolitik factors that went into the second invasion of Iraq.
The description simply presupposes that it was a proper goal for the U.S. to determine control of the the world's proven oil reserves and to undertake the large-scale invasion of a foreign country to enforce that determination.
I mean "proper" here in a strategic sense, not a moral one. In other words, even if we bracket morality and stick to realpolitik, the above account fails to show that the second invasion of Iraq actually "made sense" in serving U.S. interests.
I think you bring up some very interesting points regarding the prosecution of the conflict in Iraq II and the importance of Hussein avoiding capture / death in the initial phases. I have long subscribed to the theory that the Saudi basing issue was a critical contributor to the decision to invade. However, I think that your thesis could be strengthened through consideration / incorporation of a few points:
1. You seem to attribute the decision to end the ongoing no fly zones / address Saudi basing issues to a US strategy to mitigate risks of future terrorist attacks. Have you considered what role the Saudi government played in that decision? I think there is a reasonably strong case to be made that after 9/11, the Saudi's saw that basing Operation Desert Shield in SA along with the optics of helping enforce sanctions against a fellow Arab nation were becoming untenable for them politically. I think it is reasonably likely that, post 9/11, the Saudi's essentially told the US that their support for desert shield was ending, and that, rather than US assessment of the risk of terrorist attacks was the precipitating factor.
2. Logistically, it would have been difficult to maintain the northern no fly zone without access to Saudi bases and most other nations in the region would have been hesitant to host US forces maintaining the northern NFZ for reasons analogous to the Saudi's.
3. The northern NFZ was put in place due to protect the Kurds after the US tried to foment the Civil War you alluded to and then left them out to dry. If the northern no fly zone collapses, Hussein slaughters the Kurds and Bush II is stained with the same (or worse) betrayal of the Kurds that his father was.
4. Bin Laden's stated goal for his terror attacks was to get the US out of Saudi. If the US withdraws from SA(even if it is at the behest of the Saudi government and they try and reconfigure the NFZ from some other bases), then OBL declares victory and the US has major reputational issues on multiple fronts (Kurd betrayal, Hussein wins / US looks like a weak horse, US susceptible to terror demands). The US could not be seen to "give in" to the demands of terrorists and let an Arab strong man outlast them. Apropos of your points about the importance of Hussein avoiding capture, if OBL is captured / killed early on in Afghanistan, then the calculus for the US and Saudi Arabia are likely quite different with regards to Iraq.
Thanks for the thought provoking comment.
As a non American I have to question the idea that Afghanistan was understandable. Granted I formed this opinion at the ages of about 10-14 but my impression was that the connection between the people who did 9/11 and Afghanistan was fairly tennuous, and that America's invasion looked a lot like a bully punching someone who happned to be there when were angry.
Or kill them all themselves and send us the heads as proof. That would've worked for me, and would've saved on the cost of guards, transport, food for the prisoners, et cetera.
Nah, the invasion was pretty justified. America demanded from Taliban to give up Al-Qaeda, Taliban said no. However, staying there for 20 years for quarter-hearted "nation-building" was pure hubris, terrible for pretty much everyone. Just a pure retaliatory "shock and awe" response would've ended up being much more humane, and made America's point clearer too.
This is easy to say with the benefit of hindsight.
At the time we genuinely thought that we could go in (to both Iraq and Afghanistan), take out the existing (terrible) government, hold an election, have someone sensible elected, and that would be that. It worked in Germany, it worked in Japan. But for various reasons it didn't work in Afghanistan. (It seems to have eventually worked okay for now in Iraq, but it took a lot more work than expected.)
I'm not sure that intelligence and those who had access to it really thought that, but such a package was surely easier to sell to the electorate. Also, ISIS was about as direct a consequence of Iraq II as consequences get, and glossing over it as "eventually okay" seems a bit much.
As for Germany and Japan, my impression is that America fully committed there, mainly due to Cold War considerations. If it had extended anything close to a similar committment to Russia after the collapse of USSR, the word would've likely looked much different today. But of course, with the Evil Empire defeated, the history was over, and who gives a fuck about the losers.
The US tried to help mold Russia into its own image in the 1990s, but it turned out so poorly that it was indistinguishable from sabotage.
Last I studied this topic, the consensus on economic development aid is that it barely ever helps, but an exception probably exists for the Marshall Plan, when you have human capital and institutions in place and the issue is just that your infrastructure and capital goods have been destroyed. But this was not the situation in 1990s Russia: the biggest problem was with precisely those human factors, and throwing money at it wouldn't make the problem go away.
Are you saying that the Russians were even more irredeemable than literal Nazis?
This is not about morality, it's about economic organization. The German economy was doing fine except for the part where the factories got bombed, and providing the means to build new factories put the economy well on the path to recovery. The Soviet economy was a basket case due to failures of central planning and corruption, and providing new factories to mismanage and embezzle didn't help at all.
I don't think you need the benefit of post-2001 hindsight to know that was a risky proposition. The decision was made not to occupy Iraq proper during Desert Storm in 1991 because wiser men could foresee that the benefits of occupation didn't exceed the costs.
And Afghanistan very much didn't start, and wasn't presented to the public, as a nation-building project, and on that basis it had extremely broad support. We thought we could just go into Afghanistan, destroy Al Qaeda and kill/capture Bin Laden, more or less hand the country to the Northern Alliance (which at least had the nucleus of a functioning government and army), and get out. Remember that it wasn't a large-scale invasion like Iraq -- the build-up was very quick, the US provided air power but it had fewer troops on the ground than those defending Kabul Airport in the last days of the 2021 withdrawal.
Iraq was very different, it was always about nation-building, entirely disposing of Saddam's regime and invoking a total revolution in Iraqi society. There were no local allies on the ground to speak of. It was a very large invasion, the build-up took a long time, while that was happening the whole matter was debated extensively within the US and internationally, with lots of dissent, some of it ill-informed, but some of it making the exact same points that had been made at the time of Desert Storm about why it was a bad idea.
I also remember the decision to leave Hussein in place, because it would've "fractured the coalition." I'm not sure that was really accurate, but it was the argument.
There was also the promise offered to the rebels inside to support them, which led to them being wiped out when they believed us.
My memory is the US wanted to signal that it would be supportive of a palace coup that cleanly replaced Saddam with a regular Arab despot (back to my point on coups), but it was too subtle and the Kurds and Shiites thought it meant the US would provide them with material support for an armed revolution.
The fact is, at least some people who were responsible for it just didn't want it to work, because a perpetual war was simply more beneficial to them. Perhaps it started with a few bad apples, but by the end of the 20 year debacle, pretty much everyone in positions of power in Afghanistan, local government and occupying forces alike, was either irredeemably corrupt or frustrated to the point of having given up trying to fix anything. Iraq at least had oil wells worth defending, demanding some sort of actual order on the ground, Afghanistan's economy was essentially designed around the continued existence of Taliban and the money that could be funneled to "fight" them.
I don’t think it’s justified when Al Qaeda is something you created yourself
This is sort of like Putin saying "Ukraine is collaborating and supporting Nazis [Azov Battalion etc] therefore we have a right to invade"
You are probably thinking of Iraq, which never had any discernable connection to 9/11 aside from cheering it. The connection to Afghanistan from 9/11 was crystal clear: the Taliban had given sanctuary to al-Qaeda after they were ejected from Saudi Arabia and Sudan. After 9/11 the US asked the Taliban to extradite Osama bin Laden, and they refused.
Of course, hanging around for another 20 years trying to build a modern nation in Afghanistan was, to be as charitable as possible, exceedingly misguided.
I’m definitely not thinking of Iraq, I’m remembering arguments like “Osama is Saudi not an Afghan” which obviously doesn’t seem too persuasive now, but I’m trying to talk about how people view American military adventures rather than whether they were justified. Certainly I can say that New Zealand teenagers of my acquaintance tended to take a fairly dim view of invading Afghanistan from the outset.
I can’t really remember which war my memories of the media environment refer to, but they lean towards America being seen as crazy though I definitely could be thinking of Iraq there.
Oh, well, teenagers. You know what Churchill said, if you're not a wild-eyed liberal when young, eager to take down The Man, then you have no heart.
Well presumably he thought 30 was "young." He did live to be 90. Come to think of it, *I* kind of thing of age 30 as youngish, at least.
I used not, but I do now.
The original of that line, "if you are not an X before you are twenty, you have no heart, if you are an X after you are thirty, you have no head," with a number of variants, apparently originated in France in the 19th century, with X, I think, Republican.
Good lines in the U.K. get attributed to Churchill, in the U.S., if not obviously impossible, to Lincoln.
Yeah I know, but to explain why it *isn't* actually Churchill where it starts requires a tedious amount of footnoting and I just decided to punt. Normally on the Internet you can count on someone coming along to "well actually" for you if it turns out to be important :)
Osama was a Saudi citizen by birth, but one who wanted to bring down both the Saudi and American governments(*) and had been chased out of Saudi Arabia for his troubles.
If someone finds out that e.g. Edward Snowden has been running an international terrorist conspiracy against Canada and Australia the past few years, I'd hope the Canucks and Aussies wouldn't think it appropriate to bomb the United States. That's about what we're talking about here.
* Not clear that bringing down the American government was a terminal goal, but lethally inconveniencing it was at least a critical instrumental goal on the way to getting rid of the House of Saud.
The connections between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda were deep and extensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Refuge_in_Afghanistan
For Ukraine to formally accept that Crimea and the Eastern region that Russia controlled pre-war are no longer part of Ukraine isn't a concession in name only. It's a massive concession, for reasons connected to the importance of rules that you discuss elsewhere.
If Ukraine formally accepts that they're gone, it's much more likely that they won't ever be part of Ukraine again. That's bad for Ukraine, but it's also bad for everyone, because it means that Russia has arguably succeeded in getting what it wants by invading a peaceful neighbour.
The decision on what peace terms to accept is one for Ukraine to make. They're not part of NATO, we're not going to fight alongside them. But we shouldn't be encouraging them to accept terms that strengthen Putin and make it more likely that something like this happens again.
two points:
1. Would you please elaborate how "that's bad for Ukraine"?
2. Lets imagine you are right, then why Ukrainians shelled and bombed this particular part of Donbass for eight years? Ukraine is peaceful for neighbors but not for its own citizens, who's only crime is being hostages to separatists?
2. Why did Russia shell and bomb Chechnya twice?
The answer to your question is that there is a militant faction that took up arms in defiance of their government, to secede. In the liberal rules based order, we rightly acknowledge that matters of sovereignty and where we draw the lines of polity need to be handled diplomatically and peacefully, because redrawing borders is one of the hottest beds of burgeoning conflict and destruction there is. Some people in Donetsk and Luhansk didn't do this, they simply got weapons and were egged on by Russia (for their own geopolitical goals) to cease being under the Ukrainian government. Ukraine is trying have sovereignty over their entire land. The same thing would happen if US states tried to secede, as we saw in the American Civil War.
Actually Russia have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khasavyurt_Accord when the first Chechen war went hairy. After the second one Chechens loose Chechia but got entire Russia. Now they are the most privileged region enjoying de-facto autonomy and gazillions of federal money.
> and gazillions of federal money.
Yes I'm sure you have a sensible and well-reasoned view here
It's actually worse than that. The war in Donbass was started by Igor Strelkov/Girkin (a Russian, from Russia, i.e. not from Donbass) and his 40-strong squad. He was also the head of DNR's military from April to August 2014. He's also quoted as saying "If our squad did not cross the border, at the end all would have been finished as in Kharkiv or Odessa. Practically, the flywheel of war which lasts until now was launched by our squad." The "Prime minister" of DNR for the same time period was Alexander Borodai, a friend of Strelkov, and also a Russian, from Russia. That war was not started by locals.
Agree, but strekovs just pushed a body that was already falling. There was none of his kind in Kharkov when the first blood were spilled around cityhall and lenin's monument.
I'm not sure what you mean. "The body" didn't fail in any other Ukrainian city. He himself said that the unrest would have died out if it wasn't for his squad. "The body" wasn't feeling particularly well, sure. But there's no evidence that it would have failed on its own if it wasn't for Strelkov/Borodai and the military support from Russia that they brought.
Strelkov is self-important jerk, he likes to brag about, but he wasn't the one and only successful warlord in Donbass.
> because it means that Russia has arguably succeeded in getting what it wants by invading a peaceful neighbour.
But, that *is* what happened. I don't like it one bit, but Russia has it already.
Maybe we could've stopped this in 2014, but we didn't.
That might be true if they simply agree to cede the territory, but I think not if they agree to accept the results of a neutrally conducted referendum. Putin can't expect to win such a referendum in most of the places he might want to annex.
He can win a lot of those referenda if a large part of the population flees when he seizes the territory a few years before the referendum. In Crimea I don't think this was a big factor, but in Donetsk and Luhansk it seems to have been.
re: 3 3: A strong response right now isn’t just about Ukraine, it’s also about the next time.
"This is about Taiwan, Georgia, Iran, and all the other places that great powers want to invade but don’t."
Taiwan is under the protection of the US. The Ukraine never was. Georgia is too complicated for me to grasp quickly, but I'm unsure if Russia actually wants more than what they already have with South Ossetia? And as far as I understand, the threat to Iran would come from the United States itself? Did that not happen, because Russia threatened nuclear war? Pretty sure, this was just a lack of will on the American part. If the US wants to invade a country in the Middle East, they do it. Don't see why that would change either.
re 4: International norms may be annoying, but they’re all that stands between US and nuclear war, so we had better respect them
"No sane person thinks it’s worth risking nuclear war just to protect something as minor as the Aleutian Islands. But then the US gives Russia the Aleutians, and next year they ask for all of Alaska. And even Alaska isn’t really worth risking nuclear war over, so you give it to them, and then the next year…"
That's US territory. National Souvereignity is not an international norm. It's what a nation will always defend or it'll cease to exist. Maybe the Aleutian Islands could be traded away, but if Alaska is worth going to war for. This nebuluous concept of "international norms" is absolutely not "all what stands between us and nuclear war". That's just stupid. It is explicit defense treaties like NATO, that keep the peace. Or more implicit ones like the US has with Taiwan. And generally the threat of MAD. So far, I have not seen a convincing "it's about the next time"-argument.
Nor how protecting the Ukraine or sanctioning Russia is even of strategic benefit to the West.
Can someone make better arguments please or strengthen them?
Taiwan isn't under the protection of the US (see: Strategic Ambiguity). Russia has de facto control of Georgia.
It would be a significant escalation for Putin to attack a NATO country (probably, with their large Russian minorities, one of the Baltic States). But it was a series of significant escalations for him to invade part of Georgia, and then part of Ukraine, and then Ukraine. He seems increasingly unhinged. It isn't necessarily the case that the US would launch a nuclear war to protect the Baltic States, and Putin knows that. NATO isn't magic. Would Trump be prepared to use nuclear weapons if Putin annexed a small part of Lithuania? It seems unlikely. But possible. That uncertainty is a very dangerous thing in the context of nuclear war.
If Putin were to succeed in Ukraine, the chances of him annexing Russian speaking regions of the Baltic States would increase. That would increase the chances of nuclear war. Whether by more than they are increased by Western countries supplying the Ukrainian army, I don't know.
What's interesting is that when it comes to the possibility of fighting Russia, the US throws its hands up and says "nope, couldn't possibly risk all-out war between two nuclear superpowers, strict proxy war here".
But when it comes to Taiwan, the US says "yep, we totally _might_ intervene there".
Why the inconsistency? Firstly, fighting a proxy war over Taiwan is probably impossible because Taiwan is an island; the war will be fought and won with very large and very obvious warships and fighter jets, not with surreptitiously smuggled RPGs. Secondly, China is a nuclear power but not a very big nuclear power compared to Russia, with a couple of hundred nukes compared to five thousand.
Of course at this point, the Chinese will be noting this inconsistency and saying "well shit, how quickly can we build another five thousand nukes?"
China does have MIRVs, so they could actually destroy most major US metropolitan areas. Pretty sure, they have deterrent enough. An invasion of Taiwan would have fighting on the island and it could potentially be a very long slog.
China doesn't have enough MIRVs to destroy most major US metropolitan areas, and their strategic forces are somewhat vulnerable to counterforce attack. Their deterrence is adequate to protect against an unprovoked US attack, and probably adequate to protect against the US saying "leave Taiwan alone or we'll nuke you", but it's marginal at best for anything beyond that.
They can't count on rattling the nuclear saber to prevent the US from offering a conventional defense of Taiwan, because it's too likely that we would either call that bluff or raise them a preemptive counterforce attack against their strategic nuclear forces.
They started building 350 to 400 silos for the DF-41 in 2021. Each one can carry 6 to 10 warheads?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-41#Silo-based_versions
I guess, you could make the assumption that a US preemptive strike against their capabilities might be a viable option. At first glance for me though, you'd have to stack a lot optimistic assumptions to make this worthwhile. But I admit, I don't know too much about the topic or have a good overview of who has which kilo- and megatonnage available where and what each weapon can and cannot do. I will update from your presumed expertise against my underinformed intuition.
Out of curiosity:
How would you actually nuke a lot China's capability at once, without scaring Russia into firing theirs, thinking they're targeted? Call ahead and saying "trust me, bro", when they detect missile launches? Use stealth bombers to take out for every silo at once? Do you assume that it's possible to sink their submarines, before they can launch or do you just eat those shots (which would probably mean losing Washington, New York and [insert lots of important US cities])?
Meh. China hasn't even finished building those silos yet, they've only started, and it will be some time before they are ready. Even when they are, 400 silos aren't especially difficult to take out. Two or three 300kt warheads each, given modern CEP, and you're all set. It could readly be done by SLBMs alone and leave plenty of firepower in reserve.
So far as I know, the Chinese do not yet have intercontinental capacity on the few strategic subs they do have. And besides that, the USN is very *very* good at knowing where enemy ballistic subs are all the time, so I would expect they will never get a chance to fire one anyway before being sunk.
So yeah if the US *wanted* to do a first strike on China, it would work just fine. Be a rather miserable world afterward, though.
A Chinese silo carrying 6 to 10 warheads is only good for blowing great big craters in Inner Mongolia or wherever. They'd need actual missiles to destroy American cities with those warheads, and they don't have nor will they soon have 350-400 DF-41 missiles.
The number of missile silos the Chinese have, is not determined by the number of missiles China has. It is determined by the number of missiles the *US* has. Which is more than 350-400, but not by so comfortable a margin that we could easily destroy 400 Chinese silos to be sure of getting the ones that have Chinese missiles.
Well for one thing Taiwan is much more important economically. Taiwan is #8 in trade volume with the US at $115 billion, only a bit behind the UK (#7) and well ahead of the rest of the Eurozone excepting Germany (#5).
Taiwan is the single most important geostrategic location in the world because of its control on microelectronics. Far more important than Saudi Arabia.
I suspect Xi knows this but no other head of state does, not even Tsai. There's probably a nascent insurgency or two somewhere in the world that also knows it.
That said, while it's plausible none of these entities can take it (except Tsai, of course) any one of them can annihilate TSMC's fabs, thus denying them to their competition.
I think the Taiwanese are perfectly aware. If they weren't, the Covid supply-chain crisis must have by now.
I'm convinced Morris Chang (founder and former CEO of TSMC) is a Taiwanese patriot and TSMC's willful failure to diversify by building significant factories outside Taiwan (a small island vulnerable to earthquakes and typhoons, not just geopolitical risk) is motivated by the desire to make Taiwan too strategic to be abandoned by the US the way Afghanistan was.
I'd agree with its economic importance. I also think there's the fact that Taiwan has been in the US orbit for a long time now, dating back to a period before China had nuclear weapons, and the US has matched China's saber-rattling on it before, repeatedly sending the US Navy to the Taiwan Strait as far back as 1950. And there's also the fact Taiwan hasn't been part of a unified China since 1895.
Meanwhile, back when the US and USSR initially came to an understanding regarding MAD, Ukraine was joined to Russia, and this fact ended within living memory, with a tacit understanding that Ukraine belonged to Russia's "sphere of influence", without really ever hammering out what precisely that means.
From 01911 until 01979 the US formally recognized the ROC government as "China", and it held China's permanent seat in the UN Security Council until 01971; this despite the fact that the ROC government has exercised effective control over only Taiwan since 01949. Withdrawing diplomatic recognition from Taiwan (ROC) and extending it to PRC in 01979 is a significant diference in US-Taiwan relations between 01950 and today.
Yeah we called that one right. That, "strategic ambiguity," ANZUS and being best buddies with Korea and Japan have kept the peace in the Pacific for a very long time. For a bunch of ignorant roundeyes, we've done pretty well.
Sorry, OT question: why leading zeros in years?
Not an expert on Georgia, but they are currently speeding up their EU application. That does not sound like "under de facto control of Russia" to me. Unless you mean "South Ossetia" specifically. Then sure, but whatever.
Ok, the Baltic states. Estonia has a Russian population of 5%. Not sure there is a meaningful cluster of them. I'll need a map... and a microscope. Latvia and Lithuania are at 25% Russians. Are they unhappy Russians, that want to secede and are they clustered? I don't really know. But whereas the Ukraine is a corrupt kleptocracy with weak institutions, those three countries are richer, better developed and EU members. So I doubt, there is a secessionist core of collaborators.
Ukraine is huge and Ukrainians can already understand Russian. Russian and Ukrainian are pretty similar. The Baltic languages are not, so they could not easily be integrated into a larger Russia. Ukraine is a pretty compelling target for Russia. It has an area four times and a population eight times of all the Baltic states combined. That population is culturally much more Russian. And whether even they can be as beautifully integrated as Putin imagines, is entirely doubtful.
All the Baltic states are part of NATO and the EU. I agree, that NATO isn't magic. But it's not "America's little precious darlings" either. The United Kingdom alone is perfectly capable of destroying every major Russian population center. France also has nuclear weapons. Not to mention that every member has some conventional army they could send. Unclear to me, why this would have to go nuclear immediately. US presidents might be all kinds of crazy, but I think you underestimate them, if you assume they'd panic-press shiny red buttons.
If the Russian model stands, all neighboring states with a Russian population need to forcibly evict that Russian population, or it will always be grounds for the Russian government to invade and annex.
Not addressing the bulk of the comments, but a quick note: Ukraine proved that smaller countries _can_ fight a defensive war against a larger opponent. They haven't proven they can win, but it may be enough. Until now if you weren't under somebody's protection you were considered a soft target, and there's little point in increasing defense's share of GDP other than meet treaty quotas.
But apparently it's significantly easier to fight a defensive war if well prepared, which means now it's different, now countries will start building their defense strategies To Win, and not to check a box in a list or to distribute some pork. This is a big change, and can make the world look differently.
I think we thought that small countries were pushovers because we've seen so many US wars in countries that were not only small but also decades behind in military technology and centuries behind in military doctrine.
Russia and Ukraine are basically peers, they're armed with largely the same weapons and seem to have a similar level of discipline and sophistication.
What occurs to me is that if you can actually get your military to fight, you can accomplish a lot. It seems that in a country like Iraq, the vast conscript army only offered token resistance at best, with only a few elite sections of it like the Republican Guard putting up a real fight.
Meanwhile it seems the bulk of Ukraine's military is fighting, and even though it's outgunned, it's not really outnumbered within its borders: its nominal strength was 245,000 active duty at the start of this.
Under the current state of affairs, modern armies are much smaller than those in the mid-20th century. So if you can actually get people to fight, it's not that difficult to outnumber an attacker within your own borders, even if their population is 5x yours, or more.
I think the Sino-Vietnamese War is probably also an interesting illustration, though both sides claimed victory. But it was at least a bloody and costly affair for China, despite its population outnumbering Vietnam's by almost 20x at that time.
> Russia and Ukraine are basically peers, they're armed with largely the same weapons
1) Russia has nukes
2) as far as air force dominating Ukrainian one (though performance here is so far an amusing shitshow, hopefully it will remain this way)
3) very significant dominance in artillery
4) better tanks
Overall Russia has clear advantage, though at least part of it existed only on paper. In communist Poland it was typical for army to have many "inventory units"[1], for example vehicles unable to drive or completely broken machine guns that were kept to boost reported inventory. I guess that tradition remains.
[1] "wyposażenie na sztukę" = "equipment for piece"
Agree with your list, and also find it interesting that Russia is holding back most of its advantages: no nukes, only a tiny part of its air force, much less artillery than expected. And tanks can be countered by modern RPGs.
Are they trying to lose?
There is a theory that air force part is raging incompetence.
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defence-systems/russian-air-force-actually-incapable-complex-air-operations is one of better takes on that (beware my incompetence here)
For stronger takes that may be wishful thinking is that large part of reported air force is not actually existing.
Certainly they seems to be running out of guided ammunition.
All of these military advantages can be leveraged only with a substantial collateral damage. So far, it looks like the ratio of Ukrainian civillian to military casualties in this conflict is remarkably low. According to the UN, there were under 500 civillian deaths so far (as of 8th of March), and at least 1500 Ukrainian military. For comparison, when NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999, it took pride in "amazingly light" civilian casualties of 1500 vs under 1000 Serbian military casualties. On UN estimates, 69% of killed in Israel Gaza incursion in 2014 were civilians (52% on Israeli estimates.)
Of course, it does not mean that the concern for civilian casualties is what limits the use of bombers and artillery, but it is consistent with the stated goals.
True. Sometimes, when it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it really is a duck. Even if it's an enemy duck. They probably just avoid casualties.
Russia and Ukraine are playing in the same league. Russia's (on paper) equipment and power are significantly stronger than Ukraine's, but it's a matter of degrees. The US advantage in military technology compared to Iraq or Afghanistan is functionally a difference in kind. It's not just a matter of US tanks having thicker armor or US planes being faster.
The technology gap is vast enough that US can do things entirely impossible for Iraq to do. By comparison, other than Nukes, Russia's advantage is just that their machines are incrementally better at the same tasks. That's what it means to be technology peers in this respect.
Russia and the Ukraine have basically the same tanks, T-64s and T-72s including the ones where incremental upgrades were called "T-80", "T-84", and "T-90" to make it seem like they had something really new. I'm not seeing anything that would suggest the Russian variants are significantly better than the Ukrainian ones.
As for artillery, my sources say that as of 2019, Russia had 4,340 pieces of >100mm, compared to 1,770 for Ukraine, not counting warehoused reserves on both sides. A 2.5:1 advantage might count as "significant dominance", but the Russians can't afford to put their *entire* army into Ukraine.
They certainly weren't peers when Russia took Crimea in 02014.
> I don’t know what the visa situation is like now and it might be terrible.
It was terrible before COVID (e.g. if you're invited to a conference, you have to fly across the whole country to a single consulate that maybe has a chance of giving you a visa within less than a year), then there were admittedly mutual vaccine-related problems, now it's just impossible (e.g. many Green Card lottery winners from more than a year ago still can't get their visas). Maybe one could go to a USA consulate in a neighbouring country (Poland? Georgia?) and ask for a visa there, except, well, not right now.
My colleagues had submitted abstracts to a US conference. They now estimate their chances of getting a visa as <1%.
If your purpose is to flee Russia, you don't need to go to the USA...
The "Stability-Instability Paradox": the notion that mutual vulnerability ("MAD") at the strategic nuclear level can actually make conflict more likely at lower rungs of the escalation ladder. Twitter Thread:
Haven’t tweet much on Ukraine crisis for multiple reasons. But developments in the last 24 hours are heartbreaking and a preview of great brutality I fear is coming. A few observations here on the nuclear & conventional dimensions. 1/
Putin’s pointed, not-veiled nuclear threats are really remarkable, signaling a willingness to turn to the country’s arsenal if the West interferes with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. /2
This is about the clearest evidence I have ever seen for the Stability-Instability Paradox: the notion that mutual vulnerability ("MAD") at the strategic nuclear level can actually make conflict more likely at lower rungs of the escalation ladder. /3
Deterrence theorists associated with the Nuclear Revolution often dismiss this idea, arguing that nuclear stalemate means both sides will avoid crises and conflicts out of the fear they could escalate. The result should be peace, stability, and less military competition. /4
Yet Putin’s behavior suggests that revisionist actors are not so inhibited and may instead use their strategic nuclear forces as a shield behind which they can pursue conventional aggression, knowing their nuclear threats may deter outside intervention. /5
Now of course, Ukraine is not a member of NATO, nor a U.S. treaty ally. But then neither is Taiwan. So if you think nuclear stalemate is going to keep the peace in the Strait, you would need to do some hard thinking about why it hasn’t kept the peace in Eastern Europe. /6
China, in fact, is developing the same types of forces that Putin references in his remarks: not only a survivable second-strike capability, but also theater nuclear forces suited for limited strikes for coercive escalation. Not a coincidence.
More broadly, as a student of military operations and foreign policy, it’s hard for me to see the Russian end game here either operationally or strategically, for reasons @jeffaedmonds and @KofmanMichael and others have identified.
Yes, at a tactical level Russia can steamroll Ukrainian regular forces, though I expect Ukraine can make this more costly than Russia has anticipated. Urban warfare is unkind to invaders, even strong ones. 8/ https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/1595.pdf
But beyond that, what is military endgame? Regime change and then puppet government? Difficulties of indefinitely occupying a nation of 41 million should be apparent after Soviet experiences with Warsaw Pact & Afghanistan, among others @dmedelstein
Russian invasion likely to provoke higher European defense spending, tighter NATO, deployment of NATO forces east, hostility with West. Ukraine was not headed for NATO membership any time soon, so a destabilizing invasion wasn’t necessary to forestall that perceived danger. 10/
At the strategic level, Russian invasion gives off big Schlieffen Plan energy. It is like committing suicide for fear of death, bringing about the very problems it is supposed to solve, and generating new ones like risks of inadvertent escalation. 11/11
https://twitter.com/ProfTalmadge/status/1496837475901362180
I just watched some videos on russia subreddit and one video about Russian police arresting unruly protesters caught my eye. The commentary was that if western protesters had been so aggressive they would have been already shot by police. It's obviously propaganda because they wouldn't but I remember seeing police dealing with Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa and it is clear that Canadian police is much more professional and capable than Russian one. It is just a pity that its potential is used to support completely irrelevant and even harmful vaccine mandates. If all this energy was used for real issues we could have world peace in no time.
But it also means that we clearly overestimate Russia's military capabilities. Maybe the truth is that they are indeed as bad as they look like due to corruption and self-deceit?
*That* is the $50,000 question here. I can't even imagine the ways things will subtly (or maybe not so subtly) shift in the coming decades if the Russians have their asses totally handed to them militarily by the Ukrainians. *Everybody* up and down their border, from the Poles to the Romanians and the Kazakhs out east, is going to frown and say hmmm and start thinking.
reminds me about old joke "year 2045, situation remains calm on China-Poland border"
I wonder if anyone in Poland or Lithuania is drawing up plans to "liberate" Kaliningrad?
Come on, there MUST be Germany. after all.
Over the last few days I've been helping some of my friends to leave Russia. Fleeing to the US is a no-go, I don't know how to even begin there. Much more realistic is moving to Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and other neutral Asian countries that don't require visa from Russian citizens. You can settle there for a couple of months while applying a digital nomad visa to some European country.
A very important part of the process is opening a bank account outside of Russia. Reportedly you can easily do it at least in Georgia and Kazakhstan. I heard that in Georgia you need to sign a paper stating that you don't support the Russian invasion. This theoretically makes you criminally liable back in Russia under the recent laws, but it's unlikely that Georgia will share these declarations with Russia, so you are probably fine.
Once you have a bank account outside of Russia, you can still transfer some of your money from Russian bank accounts, as long as your bank is not disconnected from SWIFT. This transfer is limited to 5000 USD though. (You can also cross the borders with up to 10k in cash.) Visa & Mastercard are about to stop working tomorrow, so don't rely on them. You can probably use a UnionPay card if you have one.
I've used this list of digital nomad accepting countries: https://nomadgirl.co/countries-with-digital-nomad-visas/. Based on it, the easiest countries to immigrate to are Czech Republic and Portugal. Czech Republic requires a proof of ~6000 EUR in assets, Protugal requires a proof of ~700 EUR of stable income or ~17000 EUR in assets. It goes without saying, but you'll need to double-check the actual requirements in the official sources for any particular country that you want to move to.
If you are still in Russia, try getting apostille on your birth and marriage certificates and get a memo that you don't have criminal record. These documents are impossible to get outside of Russia and are required for getting long term visas or residence permits in many countries.
If you have questions or need any help (tickets, booking a place to stay etc.), reach out to me on Telegram at @eterevsky or email at oleg@eterevsky.com. Feel free to also reach out if you are a Ukrainian fleeing to Europe (the logistics there is completely different obviously).
Brain-drain might be the single most effective strategy long-term to nip future Russian aggression in the bud. Germany has stated it needs 400,000 workers to make up for soon to retire ones, it's a Western country with a high standard of living and relatively cheap real estate, specially in the East.
Here is an English page of the Czech Ministry of Interior on long-term visas (be aware that there is currently a lot of anti-Russian xenophobia in Czechia): https://www.mvcr.cz/mvcren/article/a-visa-for-a-stay-of-over-90-days-long-term.aspx?q=Y2hudW09MQ%3d%3d
More details about immigrating to Czech Republic: https://citizenremote.com/visas/czech-republic/. Apparently you'll need to separately apply for a trade license and a long-term business visa.
Yes. Also other paperwork. I am not clear on details, but Russians should have competitive advantage, since our foreigners related bureaucracy is pretty Soviet in character.
Is India a reasonable alternative? I have the sense that programmers might be able to make a better living in India than in Georgia or Kazakhstan, and Russians might be subject to less racism in India than in China.
Are there countries where Bitcoin is a plausible alternative to SWIFT, Visa, and Mastercard?
India is definitely an option. I heard it's relatively easy to get a business visa there. At least one of my friends is considering doing this.
A lot of IT work nowadays is remote, so the actual place you will be staying is not that important. Georgia and Kazakhstan make sense at least as the first stops because Russian citizens don't need any kind of visa for a long-term stay. Also if your spouse or parent is moving with you and doesn't speak good English, they are easier since everyone speaks Russian.
I wouldn't consider China. It requires a visa for entry and you need to speak Chinese.
The problem with crypto is buying it in Russia. I don't know of any crypto exchanges located in Russia, so as a first step of buying bitcoins, you'll need to transfer money to an exchange outside of Russia, which makes it pointless.
Thank you! I hope your friends are doing well. Last night's forex shutdown is going to be an extra barrier.
On the peace deal Russia has offered: I think there's a good chance it's NOT just 'give up Crimea/Donetsk/Luhansk and don't join EU/Nato'. It also included 'Zelensky remains president, but Russia chooses a prime minister'.
https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500812687009267712
Could be something the Russians will negotiate on, and maybe walk back from as time goes on, but I think if this is true it changes the flavour of the deal considerably. Russia isn't asking to slink away with a few bits of land; they want to permanently and powerfully influence Ukrainian politics so they can continue with their project of turning it back into a satellite state. It seems way less reasonable for Ukraine to agree to that.
I think it's pretty silly for those of us who aren't actually part of any negotiations to opine on what hypothetical deals the Ukranians should or should not be willing to make, especially given that Putin is known to be a bad-faith negotiator.
That's the major problem - where are the collaborators come from? I personally dont see the possibilities to buy out or coherse ukrainian bureaucracy into collaboration. There are some pro-Russian poilitcal figures in exile, but in the corrupt and toxic sludge of Ukrainian deep state just swallows them without a trace.
I’ve read some comments about Putin’s “long term strategy.” He’ll turn 70 in a few months. What would you say if you heard someone 70 talking about their long term career goals?
With a median life expectancy of 73 for men in Russia presumably Putin knows a lot of men his age who are already dead. How do folks think that plays into his planning and decision making?
Trump - 75 y.o.
Biden - 79 y.o.
I think this plays into the concept of "legacy". Which is absolutely something that ambitious men regularly turn to in their old age. What is he bequeathing to those who come after him? How will he be remembered, by Russians, in a few decades' time?
Elaborate what Russians. Russians are not the hivemind, and Putin is multivalent/
Presumably whatever Russians Putin imagines as remembering him a few decades hence.
Right. My point is when Putin thinks about legacy, I don't think he cares one whit how he is remembered by the rest of the world -- only how he is remembered by the majority of Russians.
I don't read Putin's mind, i can only guess, judging his words and actions he enjoys the thought of being remembered a strong leader who led the nation through the perilous waters into a safe haven of "energy superpower"
That's the life expectancy at birth. I don't know where to find actuarial tables for Russia but in the US https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html male life expectancy at birth is 76 years but male life expectancy at age 70 is 15 more years, not 6. That's because at age 70 27% of men are already dead, pulling down the average, but if you're 70 and not dead yet, you're not one of them. Your chance of dying by 76 is only 16% if you're already 70, but 38% if you've just been born a boy.
(Relevant caveat in this case that these numbers are computed from current death rates, but how long you actually live will be determined by future death rates. If Putin launches a global thermonuclear war you can expect life expectancy to drop precipitously, especially in Russia, the US, and its allies. Inversely, if you live long enough to start backing up your connectome regularly, you might live millions or trillions of years. These figures do not take the probability of such events into account.)
My point was more that when you’re 70 a significant portion of your age cohort is already dead. That tends to focus the mind on how little useful time you have left.
Agreed.
What's your source for 73 years for men? That seems really high. Wikipedia has it at 68.2 in 2020, which seems more likely. (The same article says life expectancy for men at 60 is 16.8.)
Take alcohol, smoking, random crime, traffic accidents, and really bad healthcare out of equation, and he can expect to live a lot longer than the median, unless he is already sick with something very bad.
In any case, whatever we think about planning and decision making of someone who just started a bloody war against a non-aggressive country of 44 million is likely to have nothing to do with reality.
73 is for the average Russian man: poor, drinks lot of alcohol, got a hefty chance of using drugs, smoking and god knows what else.
As far as I remember, Putin barely drinks, don't smoke, exercise a lot, and is rather well off (not to mention being head of state, so it's not just him having a good doctor, but the state apparatus that tries to monitor him).
Count on him to live to 90 or to die violently.
Maybe he's into Transhumanism? So who knows, maybe he has his scientists working on life-extending tech already?...
Clinically immortal Putin..hm, when do they say God-Emperor of Mankind was born?
The Russian troops don't seem really all that into martial valor, at least not yet. Phrased more positively, they appear to be relatively humane and un-bloodthirsty. Further, the Russian domestic media strategy appears to be to spin Mr. Putin's war to the Russian public as a nearly bloodless "special military operation," showing little of the type of exciting combat footage we've seen from the Ukrainian side.
In general, Russians other than Putin don't seem all that interested in an old fashioned ground war in Europe. Perhaps human beings really are getting less warlike, as Steven Pinker suggested a decade ago?
Russian domestic media mostly showing Ukrainian artillery hiding in the residential area, or Ukrainian trooper hiding live grenade in a playground, or thousands of AKs distributed among random civilians, or para-Nazi militias shooting at cars with refugees.
But not much Call of Duty-style tank on tank action?
The Russian people don't seem very bellicose (at present). This seems mostly like Putin's whim and Russians are uneasy that his luck might have finally run out.
Well, I haven't seen any, but I only have a few minutes to watch TV at work, official
- read all - channels are mostly airing unspeakable horrors "Ukro-Nazis" doing to their own fellow citizens (they really do, I have reports from people in East Ukraine I know second-hand).
You made a really good guess - at least I'am feeling this way. Putinism has a long history of shitting owns pants.
Even if Putin thinks he has enough WMDs to not fear another Nuremberg, and even if Russia stops recognizing all international laws, preparing and waging aggressive wars is still explicitly banned by the Russia's own criminal code. (Which is why everyone expected the war, if it was to happen, to begin with a staged attack by the Ukrainians. Still not sure why it didn't happen.)
Ad donations, I suggest to consider giving money to People in Need, Czech humanitarian NGO with considerable experience in war situations (they were in Chechnya, Syria and similar places). Their english page for help to Ukraine is here: https://www.peopleinneed.net/people-in-need-continues-support-ukraine-8586gp.
The intro omits the single deadliest war, the one everyone forgets: the Second Congo War of 1998–2003, which killed 40,000 people *a month* for a total of 5.4 million if you include the victims of starvation and disease. I am as guilty as anyone, I consider myself well-informed on world affairs but while aware of the free-for-all conflict, I was oblivious to the scale of the carnage. Of course, those were black lives and it's now well-established those do not matter, even less than brown lives.
Oof. Yeah, that war was pretty horrific, and so is the indifference to it.
So far this war has been going on for 12 days (?) and has killed about 25000 people, working out to 63000 people per month. Hopefully the rate will slow down rather than accelerating.
"Carnage" is misleading. There were 350,000 violent deaths in the war. The 5 million comes from deaths of starvation and disease caused by the chaos.
“ Russia has miscalculated, they know they’ve miscalculated”
If metaculus is any guide, Russia is not the only one who miscalculated (see the odds of Russia taking Kyiv by April plummet). In fact, we don’t know for sure what Putin was thinking, so we may be projecting our own failure on him.
The take away is just to remember that “no plan survives contact with the enemy”. We should have similar concerns as far as our ability to even enforce a no fly zone.
One thing came to my mind when you wrote "to call its bluff": Americans play poker, but russians play chess.
I don't know that I agree with "EU has previously allowed members to join its economic community without joining the EU proper, and this would probably provide most of the relevant benefits to Ukraine without angering Russia." Having skimmed Putin's big essay on Ukraine, I think that having Ukraine tie its economy to the EU rather than Russia would be something he would very much have a beef with.
Yes, but it takes away his argument about a military threat.
I guess the question is how much each is an excuse versus how much each is a reason. My sense is that the military threat is mostly an excuse and partially a reason while the economic integration is a more important reason but not something that can be used as an excuse.
Likely. The Ukrainian revolution (which angered Putin into invading parts of Ukraine in 2014) started when, in 2013, Yanukovich decided not to sign the EU Association Agreement (not EU membership proper).
Agree with much of this, especially regarding the no-fly-zone nonsense. Couple things which came to mind:
1) ‘liberal redditors getting mad on Twitter’ feels like an uncharitable illustration which downplays the remarkable display of unity and (dare I say) strength by liberal democracies.
2) I am not sure this conflict supports the concept of meaningfully superior ‘martial’ cultures. Russia seems to take pride in their macho outlook, but we may find out that boring nerdy planning and accountable power structures are more decisive war-winners than selecting Invincible Macho VdVs and right-clicking Kiev.
The people I know who fought in wars seem to emphasize the importance of initiative, leadership, coordination and intelligence, and they tend to get annoyed at the notion of inherently (genetically or culturally) superior soldiers. This is far outside my own expertise, admittedly.
Yes. Mood affiliation once again...I mean, the neo-reactionaries are funny...they want accelerationism, but also "traditional masculinity" and "traditional values"...maybe they don't go together so well?
It seems to me, with the change in military technology towards cyberwarfare and UAVs, the "nerds" will do better than the "jocks" in terms of being militarily successful...
>"This is what it looks like when a civilization that’s got strong and well-functioning norms against aggressive wars encounters one and launches an immune response."
I'm sorry what? The Iraq invasion, the Afghan invasion, the Libyan bombing and the Yugoslav bombing would seem to indicate otherwise. Not to mention the fact that countries have been financing the Saudi war machine and Israeli war machine for decades. I'm sorry Scott but you need to step outside your neoliberal foreign policy bubble.
Scott, I'd change the skimpy clothing example to something like 'holing up in your apartment all the time' vs getting pick pocketed?
That way you avoid any culture war distractions?
> In this spirit, I hope they encourage Ukraine to consider Russia’s recent peace offer.
> As far as I understand it, the offer is: Ukraine declares neutrality, and recognizes Crimea as Russian and Donetsk/Luhansk as independent. Russia gives up and goes home.
The problem is that Russia has negative credibility.
In case of signing that Russia would renege on it and break it. Either they would never leave or attack again within 10 years. I would give 85% probability to that.
And at this point, sadly, "Russia promises to not invade" and similar should not be treated as serious in long term, and encouraging others to treat it seriously is a bad idea.
I am willing to bet money on that, as long as it is not requiring use of cryptocurrencies. I can also bet funny Manifold points, I got some from that broken Trump market.
I am also expecting that this relatively reasonably proposal is not what they proposed: I expect that they demanded at least one of following:
(1) purge of Ukrainian leadership
(2) installing their puppet(s) as rulers
(3) destruction of Ukrainian military
(4) stopping improvements to Ukrainian military
(5) forcing Ukrainian government to lie about what happened
Overall, I expect that Ukraine considered it but it was as fucked up and unreasonable as their previous public offers.
If anyone declares interest I can create Manifold markets for that (though I expect resolving that as N/A as Ukraine government is not dumb enough to fall for that, and Russia government would not offer such terms anyway)
Someone else created https://manifold.markets/ArieArie/if-ukraine-accepts-the-peace-deal-r already "If Ukraine accepts the peace deal Russia offers, will Russia keep it for at least 30 years?"
Putin is oft compared to Hitler, but there is a better analogy:
But Gandalf said: ‘This is much to demand for the delivery of one servant: that your Master should receive in exchange what he must else fight many a war to gain! Or has the field of Gondor destroyed his hope in war, so that he falls to haggling? And if indeed we rated this prisoner so high, what surety have we that Sauron, the Base Master of Treachery, will keep his part? Where is this prisoner? Let him be brought forth and yielded to us, and then we will consider these demands.
It seemed then to Gandalf, intent, watching him as a man engaged in fencing with a deadly foe, that for the taking of a breath the Messenger was at a loss; yet swiftly he laughed again.
‘Do not bandy words in your insolence with the Mouth of Sauron!’ he cried. ‘Surety you crave! Sauron gives none. If you sue for his clemency you must first do his bidding. These are his terms. Take them or leave them!
(from Tolkien, "The Return of the King", chapter 10, "The Black Gate Opens".
(1) If I understand Fukuyama's position correctly, he was not saying that there would be no more wars. He was saying that the dominant ideology of 'liberal democracy + capitalism with a safety net' would never again face another ideology that could compete with it on a global scale. Once this ideology converts everyone, then there won't be any more wars. The 'Dictator Book Club' is a more effective argument against Fukuyama than this war.
(2) I agree that nuclear war is a much bigger issue than conventional war in Ukraine. But I'm surprised that you didn't address the question of whether you think that Ukraine can continue to hold out and whether the sanctions help then with this.
(3) A no fly zone would probably also requires destroying Russia air defenses so we can fly our planes there. Russia's surface-to-air capabilities are mostly located in Russia. The problem isn't just that we would be shooting down Russian aircraft (like Turkey has done once in Syria): we would also be shooting targets located on Russian soil.
(4) I have a different take on Russia's peace offer. They do seem to want all of the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. So it sounds to me like: please abandon your strong defensive positions in eastern Ukraine (which have mostly held so far), and give us a few months to fix our logistical problems.
(5) If you want to help victims of war in the most effective way possible, you should probably focus on the wars that nobody cares about instead of the wars that everybody cares about.
(3) is a great point that I have only seen a few people make. It drives me crazy that people are acting like we can declare a no-fly zone like Michael Scott declares bankruptcy (to borrow a phrase from Michael Kofman). You can say "we're not declaring war, we're just declaring a no-fly zone!" all you want, but if your policy predictably involves blowing up Russian soldiers on Russian territory...well, that's closer to a mustard seed than a fig leaf.
My real concern is that if we did that, and Putin kept it conventional, the Russian air force would lose badly and in relatively short order. So that creates an enormous incentive to escalate, e.g. "if you start enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, I'm going to start dropping tactical nukes on NATO airbases within X # kilometers of the border." If he's not going to give up, that would be a totally rational move to make.
I was surprised to see Scott not mention your item #3.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts, Scott, on the odds of nuclear war (or just the odds of nuclear deployment) in the next couple months
“Fine, you can invade if the country is literally the Nazis, committing the literal Holocaust” - and then Putin says Ukraine is run by Nazis and genociding its people.
I have no good solution to this problem...
Why not just litigate the cases as they come up, and accept that there will be hard cases, and gradually work to push your failures out another std deviation?
I mean this in all good faith - this is indeed a very real problem. Also, this is genuinely one naive solution to this problem. Roll up our sleeves and just try. Is the flaw in the naive solution that, we are just really bad at this sort of thing, and adversaries are too good at finding loopholes to try to confront them? If this works 99.9% of the time, but is occasionally exploited, is it still that bad of a solution?
I think that's what "no good solution" means.
That was a surprising response! My model of your views here was off, sorry.
I thought you were saying solutions with some small error rate are not good solutions, that only perfect solutions are good solutions. But in hindsight that doesn't sound like you at all...
Maybe you're saying every case is a hard case, and per Quine or Gettier, we're always just one revelation away from realizing Zelenskyy is a secret Nazi, and after that, still just one revelation away from realizing we were lied to by the last piece of evidence, and he's actually the most anti-Nazi person among us all, iterated to radical skepticism?
That feels like a very poor model of you too. I'm very much publicly failing here in the hopes my error will be transparent and easily corrected.
To strawman Scott, I would say:
It's hard to perfectly define a weed, but that ontological quirk has not posed much of an issue during my actual gardening.
One can believe truth is a much harder problem than most people realize, acknowledge we will face edge cases, but then shrug and pick up your trowel.
(The alternative is to not pick up your trowel we have found this is not a dominant gardening strategy.)
That would be fun. But you are not strawman Scott!
Maybe this is ivermectin again, and the point is that hard cases dominate. (Do they? Or is availability heuristic pranking those of us who most like thinking about hard problems? Is this answerable, "ratio of cases that are hard," because what would even go in the denominator...)
I'll think more about your views here. I'd love any clarification, but you have a billion comments here, I already imposed, so I'll ruminate.
Thank you for your time.
Just from curiosity, which parts seem chauvinist? It even included naive proposal to treat Russian promises as worth something!
Manichean nonsense is filled throughout the article.
Banning this account for a week for unproductive criticism; after reading this I don't even know what you think I got wrong.
With reference to the "Bright Line" argument: Would it be useful to set up a prediction market for determining whether an invasion is "good" or not? Perhaps all countries in the UN could vote on whether the majority would vote "Yes" for annexation or "No". Unless there is universal consensus/collusion, the best strategy would be to vote for the "morally good" option, which humans are pretty good at figuring out unless they are motivated by personal gain.
“I hope they encourage Ukraine to consider Russia’s recent peace offer.”
Last time Western countries encouraged Czechoslovakia to accept a similar offer it did not work so well. What is the reason to think this time would be different?
An even will quickly make up for everybody, Putin will be pleased to take the Russian part of Ukraine as his failed blitzkrieg isn’t something to brag about. Transnistria & Gagauzia (yes, these are autonomous regions in Moldova) could get recognised by Russia while Moldova join the EU as it has strengthened ties with the west in the last years.
Nato would gain the western part of Ukraine and might draw new borders pushing further east.
https://antarctica.substack.com/p/ukraine-war-predictions-day-10?s=w
You have to bring evidence there was a plan of blitzkrieg in the first place.
Oh fine, Blitzspecialmilitaryoperation
At least some people argue it wasn't a plan of blitzkrieg because Putin thought that Ukraine could be taken without any serious resistance, and that that explains the early failures. When that didn't happen it turned into an attempted blitzkrieg without the needed logistic resources.
1. If Putin is irrational to the point of starting a nuclear war, and we don't want a nuclear war, we have to give him anything he asks by whatever pretext he gives. The details about NATO, Iraq, history etc are irrelevant, they could as easily have been aliens and spirits. And we're doomed anyway.
2. Putin could also be some sort of rational. What sort?
From what we know, he's not a religious fanatic, not an addict or esoteric fan.
He is a long-time KGB officer, and their modus operandi is well-known since
1930s, when they've given up the global permanent revolution and exploited the
same framework again and again.
The framework is:
- find a relatively weak/unstable/isolated democratic country
- create some underground spy network
- create a list of talking points to polarize/split the public and push those through diplomacy and local media
- if the convenient dictator wins, use him in your favor
- if not:
- do a false flag operation
- invade
- if it goes ok, install a puppet government
- if it fails, annex some territory, put it in gray zone and use to destabilize the rest of the country
- if this also fails, incorporate gray zone into your territory
Since then it was exploited in Finland, Bessarabia, Baltic countries, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, Georgia, etc.
And we can see that's exactly what happens here and we're being the public fed Putin's talking points, no?
Only if (we believe that) Putin is irrational to the point of starting a nuclear war over any little thing he might be denied, do we have to give him anything he asks. We don't believe he is that irrational, only that he might be irrational to start a nuclear war over a few particularly important issues.
So no, we don't have to give him anything he asks, which seems to undermine your logic here. But we should probably lean towards accepting his demands on the e.g. "hey please don't invade or bomb Russia" front, and similarly "don't send your armies into battle against my armies",
Perhaps I am being nitpicky, but there is one thing I would like to point out: NATO didn't ''expand''. It admitted Central European countries which seeked protection, because they correctly predicted that Russia would try to reestabilish it's sphere of influence over them once it regains strength to do so. We wanted to join Western institutions, we wanted it badly. For instance: only about 2% of Poles want Poland to leave NATO(poll from 2019).
Former Eastern European satellites with democratic histories flocked to NATO. The Central Asian republics run like autocracies joined CSTO to preserve their autocracies, as shown in Kazakhstan. The odd one out is Mongolia, which is both Asian and democratic despite being in a bad neighborhood squeezed between Russia and China (and with much of their historic territory annexed by China which is waging cultural genocide against Mongols there).
> Everyone can sanction Russia as much as they want, and it can win anyway.
Lol, no. It's already losing because of logistics, it's going to lose because of logistics harder, and at some point you end up with a 1984-esque war economy where your citizens have nothing because the resources go to a war that won't be resolved.
If they take Kiev they'll get killed by a regular army coordinated from Lviv. If they take Lviv they'll get killed by guerillas and IEDs.
I don't even know if there is a "next time". The current situation has a realistic chance of causing a regime change in Russia, at which point the sanctions would be lifted. The West is close to using every metaphorical nuclear option and leaving just the literal one.
Will you bet money on any of these statements?
I estimate "Ukraine will be occupied by Russia and everyone will get over it by next year" (to a similar extent everyone was over Chechnya) as ~20% likely, at most, so yes. The degree of the occupation failing and/or everyone not getting over it, is up for debate.
Regime change, what next? Demilitarizaion, giving up nukes, splitting into large amount of states where the largest state is 2-3 times smaller than Ukraine?
To be fair "regime change" probably means "another oligarch seizes power", but as long as he's reasonable in negotiations I suppose it'll work.
“in ‘62, it was the Russians who agreed to back down to prevent nuclear war. We owe them one, so this time it’s on us.”
In 1956 and 1968, when the Hungarian and Czech governments attempted to get some measure of independence from the USSR, the latter responded with full scale military invasion and arresting or executing local political leaders. The western countries decided not to interfere in the Soviet sphere of influence.
In 1962, the situation was reverse - Castro decided to ally with the USSR and turned Cuba into a communist dictatorship. The US and USSR compromised by letting Castro stay and in return for withdrawing the soviet missiles from Cuba the US withdrew its missile form Turkey and Italy.
Is “Russians who agreed to back down” a fair description of what happened?
It is not, no. It was a fair exchange. Khruschev specifically decided to base missiles in Cuba because of the Jupiter decision, and so in *fact* Khruschev got pretty much what he wanted, with the Kennedy Administration agreeing to remove the Jupiters and Khruschev agreeing to go no further with Cuba. I doubt K was thrilled about trusting the Cubans anyway.
What Khruschev *didn't* understand was the tremendous PR spin that would be put on it, that would make Kennedy out into some kind of hero who stared down the Soviets. (It probably helped the myth along that Kennedy got himself martyred the next year, instead of living to be covered in mud by Vietnam.) My impression is that even the Soviets themselves kind of bought the PR and this helped bring him down at home.
> Ukraine declares neutrality, and recognizes Crimea as Russian and Donetsk/Luhansk as independent. Russia gives up and goes home.
Putin wants to _demilitarize_ Ukraine. How do you think further negotiations with a bully who declared he's out for your blood will go, once you handed him your weapons? Ceding anything to Putin at this point is being terrible at game theory, even if it's a trivial thing.
Also, everyone, especially Ukrainians, knows Ukraine is a corrupt shithole because it's an ex-USSR republic. This is what being in Russia's orbit does to countries, this is not a matter of opinion, this is settled. They correctly reason that their only chance for a modern country is joining the Western bloc - that's what Soviet satellite states did and it worked magnificently. "Keep Ukraine neutral" is code for "keep Ukraine like Belarus with an extra dose of military vulnerability".
As usual, I agree with most all of this.
I rarely comment, but in this instance I MUST, because THIS quote left my jaw on the floor:
"Also, the last time this happened, in ‘62, it was the Russians who agreed to back down to prevent nuclear war. We owe them one, so this time it’s on us."
This leads me to ask, in all sincerity, "WHAT, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the F***???"
I can't even see the context into which this statement is hooked. It looks like a throwaway comment, but one possessed of the most staggering blitheness, which is not at all your usual MO, Scott.
This seems to be a reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis).
My impression was the Cuban Missile Crisis ended when the Russians agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba to prevent nuclear war; am I getting something wrong?
Yeah, you're forgetting that the Kennedy Administration agreed to remove the Jupiter IRBMs from Turkey in exchange. Since that removal was pretty much Khruschev's entire goal in threatening to build missile sites in Cuba in the first place, a better overall assessment is that it was an equal exchange, with nobody doing anybody favors.
"NATO has shown no signs of being willing to accept Ukraine as a member anyway"
This is an incredibly inaccurate statement.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm
NATO agreed in 2008 that Ukraine "WILL become members of NATO" (emphasis mine). This is about as explicit a contradiction of the claim that NATO has no signs of interest in Ukraine joining as possible. They have continued to reaffirm this and still say it on their website
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_49212.htm
The goal of joining NATO is enshrined in the Ukrainian constitution.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/15/explainer-nato-and-the-ukraine-russia-crisis
Biden reassured Zelenskiy 3 months ago, when he already knew invasion was an increasing probability, that the right to join NATO remained "in Ukraine's hands".
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-president-zelenskiy-holding-talks-with-biden-adviser-says-2021-12-09/
It is more than clear that the US and UK both wanted Ukraine in NATO even if other NATO members might have taken some persuading. NATO and Ukraine have both *explicitly* reaffirmed, over and over again, their desire to join together. The fact that there are obstacles does not mean that there is no serious chance it could have happened, or that there are "no" signs of willingness. Quite the opposite.
The most serious of the obstacles you allude to are Ukraine's border disputes in Crimea and Donbas. There was never any serious possibility of resolving these issues, so NATO is only willing to accept Ukraine as a member under conditions which cannot be fulfilled. It's accurate to say they've shown no signs of being willing to accept Ukraine.
Bizarre to constantly reaffirm your intention to do something that you know you will not actually ever accomplish. What would be the point of that?