Ukraine

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

This has been a great back and forth and thank you both for it.

Indeed. This is discussion™.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by fragment

BTW I'm of the opinion that Russia would have acted on an intent to dominate the former Soviet (and Empire) countries no matter what NATO did, and that protestations that Russia is just legitimately responding to a threat from NATO expansion is a smokescreen. I get this opinion from consistent Russian actions over ~25 years and what their own propagandists say. Of course I am far from expert on this, but it seems like a reasonable position.

Definitely. There may be some extent to which Putin and his cronies genuinely believe Nato is a threat, but if Nato had scaled down or disbanded, it would have been something else. The EU. America on its own.

Also, now that I've quoted you, you are a noted expert in the field.

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by fragment

BTW thanks for this exchange, vm.

Thanks to you, too! I've thought long and hard about whether and how to respond to your last response, and have decided that I want to address a couple points but I'm increasingly uncomfortable because the whole thing is just awful from every angle and debating the merits of this or that without having any skin in the game just feels gross. But with that being said...

Originally Posted by fragment

But can I take it that you're replacing "Ukraine can't beat Russia" with "Ukraine can only beat Russia with an unacceptably high cost"?

BTW I'm pretty sure the Ukrainian goal is "make the invasion & occupation so hard for Russia they accept a negotiated peace as soon as possible that doesn't completely annihilate Ukrainian sovereignty", which is a different sort of goal with different likely outcomes.

I don't know what it means to "beat Russia with an unacceptably high cost". I would think that having an unacceptably high cost is by definition *not* "beating Russia". I would agree that Ukraine's goal is what you say it is, but that seems like a strategy guaranteed to cost a lot more lives than a strategy that puts more emphasis on negotiation.

Originally Posted by fragment

And not supplying arms is, at least in principle, making a decision about a certain outcome in the war. I mean, that's part of your argument, isn't it? That US/NATO decisions can influence the war? It's a bit glib to say one can influence the outcome but then draw distinctions between when the reasoning about who gets to make decisions is applicable.

My opinion is that US/NATO has for decades used Ukraine as a pawn in a proxy war against Russia, and that it is incredibly naive to believe that suddenly their primary motivation for funneling arms into the country is to protect Ukrainian lives and/or sovereignty. I think the US/NATO would rather see Ukraine burned to the ground and the population wiped out than to see it remain neutral.

Originally Posted by fragment

You critique US dominance, but you're implicitly promoting it every time you make US decision-making central to your analysis.

US economic and military dominance is just a fact about the world. I don't like it, but I think *not* making it central to my analysis would just be dumb.

Originally Posted by fragment

BTW I'm of the opinion that Russia would have acted on an intent to dominate the former Soviet (and Empire) countries no matter what NATO did, and that protestations that Russia is just legitimately responding to a threat from NATO expansion is a smokescreen. I get this opinion from consistent Russian actions over ~25 years and what their own propagandists say. Of course I am far from expert on this, but it seems like a reasonable position.

This just doesn't make sense to me. The US and NATO began backtracking on promises not to expand NATO more than 25 yrs ago, so whatever actions you're referring to all took place in the context of NATO expansion.

Originally Posted by fragment

I'm curious what happens when you throw Serbia, Somalia, Indonesia (re: East Timor), Venezuela and North Korea into this mix, as other countries the US has sabre-rattled at in varying situations with varying results.

I don't understand what you mean by this. As far as I know the US has employed propaganda, covert and overt intervention in all of those places and the media ignored or lied about what was happening when it was happening. What is this supposed to show?

By the way here are a few sources of things I've read/listened to in the past week that offer some support for what I'm saying, but maybe not a lot. At any rate I think they are all important voices.

Mearsheimer et al

John Mearsheimer on War in Ukraine with Katrina...

Chris Hedges and Cornel West

The Chris Hedges Report with Dr. Cornel West -...

Daniel Bessner (discussion of his piece Ending Primacy to End U.S. Wars.

Union Boom; High-Rise Libs; MTG �� Gaetz;...

[fragment]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

Thanks to you, too! I've thought long and hard about whether and how to respond to your last response, and have decided that I want to address a couple points but I'm increasingly uncomfortable because the whole thing is just awful from every angle and debating the merits of this or that without having any skin in the game just feels gross.

Fair enough, I'm happy to leave it there for now if you like.

[erimir]

Fragment said a lot of the things I would say, but...

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

There are no good solutions in this situation, obviously. It's diplomacy or WWIII assuming (as I am) that sanctions will prove as ineffective as they have in literally every other instance (except inasmuch as the goal is to cause mass suffering amongst the Russian population).

This is a false dichotomy.

Not only are those not the only two choices, but the various options are not even mutually exclusive choices. And there isn't really anything to back up the idea that any form of fighting back inevitably means WW3 or nuclear exchanges. Do you feel that if Iraqis or Afghans fought back too hard, they would've been risking nuclear war?

If Ukraine doesn't get weapons and can't fight back, why would Russia agree to diplomacy and negotiation if they can simply conquer Ukraine and get everything they want? Annexing Ukraine altogether is not something I would put past Putin - and if Ukraine were to be as desperately seeking a diplomatic solution as you suggest they should (surrendering, basically), it would likely only embolden Putin to try to annex as much as he could.

Wouldn't it also make sense to say that Ukraine getting help fighting back is more likely to bring Russia to the table than a scenario in which Ukraine is a pushover. Diplomacy will work better if Putin views it as in his interest to negotiate. If Putin doesn't see any advantage in negotiating, why would he?

And given Russia's behavior in Bucha and across Ukraine, Putin's statements that it was a mistake for Ukraine to be allowed independence, and other evidence that the Russian regime doesn't view Ukrainian nationhood, identity, culture and language as valid at all (suggesting intent that at least borders on genocidal), I think you have at least some work to do to argue that the bloodier option is fighting back.

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

I'm not sure what you mean by "the action space of other countries", but I think the idea that the US is supplying arms to Ukraine out of a concern for the welfare of Ukrainians is a bit of fantasy.

Are there countries besides Ukraine that you think are sincerely acting out of concern for the welfare of Ukrainians?

Do you think that everyone saying that Ukraine laying down their arms is doing so out of sincere concern, while everyone who thinks they should fight back is just using them?

Regardless, sure, the US has ulterior motives, although I don't think public opinion in the US is motivated purely by realpolitik. Plenty of Americans who "stand with Ukraine" do so out of sincere concern, I think. But that doesn't preclude the US supplying arms from being good for Ukraine.

Ukraine wants it, the US wants to do it, maybe their motivations aren't completely the same, but the US's motivations aren't more important than the Ukrainians in determining whether it's good for Ukraine.

There's more to evaluate than just whether the US is being sincerely altruistic enough.

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

I get that it seems uncharitable to suggest that anyone is "chomping at the bit for nuclear war", but I don't know how else to interpret some of these comments.

I mean, it seems uncharitable to suggest you think Ukrainians should roll over, surrender and allow Russia to annex or dominate them, let their kleptocrat oligarchs loot the country and so on.

And if sanctions are generally ineffective (which seems to be true) and diplomacy is dismissed as implausible, then what more can US/NATO do but declare war on Russia?

Why do you keep assuming that the US/NATO's goal is to declare war on Russia, even though many of them have been clear that they do not want to do that?

This just seems to be a slippery slope argument. If you help Ukraine now, then if the situation for Ukraine deteriorates, you will inevitably declare war rather than let Ukraine lose. But they do have the option to simply not declare war if that is something they want to avoid.

I get the sentiment and I also wish there were some way to stop the suffering, but I'm sure 9/10 Ukrainians would say NATO should endeavor to wipe Russia off the map if that will stop the invasion, consequences be damned.

fragment already asked here, but this is a bit of a wtf for me. Where the hell do you get that from?

But no, I wasn't suggesting that there was any way back from where we are, just trying to make the point that any analysis of what Putin might do in the future that doesn't include an analysis of what the US/NATO has done to get us to this point is likely going to come up short. We can't keep acting like everything Putin does and has done occurs in a vacuum. Everyone in the government and media who acts like Russia's actions in the past decade have come out of nowhere is clueless or dishonest, and frankly shouldn't be trusted to opine on how to move forward.

"Come out of nowhere" is one thing, I don't think anyone is saying that. "Is a rational response to NATO based purely on instincts of self-preservation and national security" is another thing.

I don't think this shows much engagement with what I was saying before about 1. Putin's interests and Russia's interests not being the same thing, and they shouldn't be conflated (however tempting it is to do so given that "Russia" often refers to the regime, rather than the nation) and 2. that I don't think a case can be made that the US/NATO have any plans to invade Russia, and so an argument based on Russia rationally being afraid of that doesn't seem very persuasive to me.

If you want to argue that Putin and/or Russia are paranoid and are irrationally afraid of a NATO invasion, that's one thing. But I think Putin is more concerned with restoring the glory of the Russian Empire than he is afraid that NATO was going to invade.

FWIW I believe we are well on our way to war with Russia, as indicated by the White House now framing the Russian invasion as 'genocide'.

Here's the first question I would ask about whether Russian actions should be framed as genocide: Are they based on an intent to destroy the Ukrainians as a people? What do you think of Russia's actions? Certainly Putin and Russian media denying the legitimacy of Ukrainian nationhood, culture, language, etc. suggests some desire or intent towards cultural genocide at least. I would not be surprised if the plan had been to murder Ukrainian cultural elites after their victory, for example.

A question that would come after that is: What would the reaction be to describing their actions as genocidal?

And a question that would come up later still is: Does describing them as genocidal commit us to going to war with Russia? The answer to that is no, as was pointed out with China and the Uyghurs.

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

I do not believe the Ukrainian people can defeat the Russian military forces regardless of how many weapons they have

Russia has withdrawn from Kiev and the northern part of Ukraine, it doesn't seem to me that the situation for them is hopeless.

among Americans there is already way more enthusiasm to save Ukrainians than there ever was concern about Muslims in China.

tbh, the Uyghurs seem pretty fucked in general. Even the governments of Muslim countries don't seem to give much of a fuck.

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

Surely you will acknowledge that there are *some* limits to what the West should do despite what the "people on the ground" in Ukraine want? What if the Ukrainians decide that what needs to happen is a nuclear strike on Moscow? Are we then morally obligated to do it because that's what they have decided they need?

You claim to be concerned with how bloody the war is, so presumably a concern for Ukrainian casualties.

You're saying that even though they want to fight, knowing that it will cost Ukrainian lives, we should not help them, because they'll lose anyway, so it would be better that they lost faster. They want to put their lives on the line, and you just know that they shouldn't.

The US should not help them fight better, should not help them defend themselves.

That's not quite the same situation as asking for a nuclear strike on Moscow. That's asking for the US to attack, to actively take the lives of other people, primarily civilians. We can very easily say yes to one and no to the other.

Do you really think that saying yes to anti-tank weapons to Ukraine means that by the same logic we should be willing to nuke Moscow?

I think in this and every case, the whole point of using dumbed down propaganda to get support of the public is so the US ruling class can do what they already want to do to maintain economic and military supremacy in the world. So when every single media outlet and government press release is talking like we have no choice but to fuel a war (see Vietnam, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) then I suspect very strongly that war was the plan all along.

You know, Putin had a very easy way to thwart this plan: he could've just not invaded.

In fact, Putin is the one with the most agency here. Yet you talk like this was all US machinations, but I would say it was Putin who had a plan for war all along.

Also this is again very US-centric because other countries are involved here. It is not the US acting alone and unilaterally. Do you think that opinion in other countries is all manipulated along the same lines, solely for the sake of US supremacy?

[davidm]

It seems to me, from the best information that I have found, is that the sanctions are mainly hurting the Russian people, not Putin or the oligarchs. Sure, they might be biting a bit, but not so much that they would notice.

Indications are, perversely, that the Russian people are rallying around Putin.

Diplomacy seems useless, and World War III is out of the question. So events must run their course.

When we talk about the West’s responsibility for the current situation, we have to go back to two things: the “shock therapy” imposed on the former Soviet states after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was an immediate conversion to cowboy capitalism conceived and backed by the Austrian school of economics and the libertarian/Ayn Randist hacks, and NATO expansion.

What if we had done things differently?

What if we had supported Russia, and worked with it, on a gradual conversion to a social safety net-style capitalism, such as is found in Scandinavian countries, and declined to expand NATO eastward? What would the world look like today?

We have no way of knowing. Unfortunately we have no way to study counterfactual histories, because they are, well, counterfactual.

But we can peer into deep, actual history. And when we do we find, right from the start, a top-down, strongman, authoritarian-style rule of Russia, be it czars, or Soviet chairmen, or the current “president.”

Over the centuries there have been some efforts at bottom-up rule. All ended badly. The most recent was Yeltsin. He started the 90s as a democratizing force and ended it as yet another stone-faced despot at the top of the Kremlin food chain, prosecuting a vicious war against Chechnya and finally yielding control to a man whom he knew was a KGB criminal.

It’s curious how around some issues, the so-called “far right” and the “far left” go around the bend, circle back and meet up in agreement. One of the issues that frequently unite that Pat Buchanan “far right” and the Noam Chomsky “far left” is the idea that the U.S. a (largely failed) imperialist superpower and that its imperial aspirations need to be reined in. And specifically, this meeting of the minds homes in on the supposed mistake in expanding NATO east after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We clearly blew it in trying to “help” post-Soviet Russia “Westernize” under shock therapy, which plunged vast numbers of Russians into penury and no doubt alienated them forever from Western cowboy capitalism. What about NATO expansion?

George Kennan, one of the architects of the post-World War II order including NATO, warned against such expansion in the 1990s, saying that our beef had always been with the Soviet government and never the Russian people. More generally, those on the “far left” have always as a matter of principle inveighed against U.S. imperialism and armaments sales — the sales of the “merchants of death,” as Chris Hedges calls them.

What if we hand’t expanded NATO? The idea here is that the U.S. gave explicit assurances to Gorbachev that if he were to let Eastern Europe slip out from behind the Iron Curtain, then we would not expand NATO eastward. And this seems to be true from all the information I have been able to glean. And we reneged on that promise. So you can construct, as Pat Buchanan on the right does and others on the left, that NATO expansion has backed Putin into a corner and forced his hand to attack Ukraine.

The problem is you can construct an equally plausible counterfactual narrative (impossible to check, as noted above) that goes like this: Russia has always been a top-down authoritarian empire without any real democratic tradition. Russia had always throughout its history attacked and subjugated, or tried to attack and subjugate, its neighbors. Why should post-Soviet Russia be any different from Soviet Russia or pre-Soviet Russia?

It’s said that when a man shows you who he is, believe him. Putin has shown us who he is: he has said that Ukraine has no authentic historical or national existence outside of Russia (a blatant factual inaccuracy — Kyiv Rus long predated even the existence of Moscow). He has said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geo-political disaster of the 20th century. He has long spoken of reviving the glories of Imperial Russia.

And what were those supposed glories? The Soviet Union, prior to its collapse, had absorbed into its empire Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states. But the pre-Soviet Russian empire had gone much further: in addition to all those states, the czars had absorbed Poland and Finland and Moldova into its empire. So when Putin rants about the glories of old, it’s reasonable to suppose that his ambitions to restore the glory of Mother Russia include reacquiring not just Ukraine but also Belarus, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland and Poland.

Will he be able to do any of that? No. The only salutary thing about this horrible unjust war is that Russia’s military has been exposed as utterly incompetent. There is no way he is ever going to take on NATO.

But this goes back to NATO expansion. Suppose the West had NOT expanded NATO eastward? In this counterfactual, plausible narrative, Putin or someone like Putin comes along determined to restore the old Russian empire. Now he sees that there is no NATO umbrella to worry about — Ukraine, in this counterfactual history, is not part of Nato, but neither are the Baltic states or Poland or the rest.

This is to say that the prevailing narrative that Putin attacked Ukraine because he was afraid of NATO expansion might plausibly be a total red herring, a pretext for attacking, like the pretext that Ukraine is supposedly led by drug-addicted Nazis. What we can now argue is that in the real world, NATO at Russia’s doorstep is preventing Putin from attacking those NATO member member nations — which is precisely the point of Nato on conventional thinking.

[Crumb]

Not to interrupt the ongoing conversation that I have not fully read yet. But I just wanted to share this video.

Who's Winning the War for Ukraine? - YouTube

[Ari]

I agree with a lot of what David said.

While tallying points at the end of the game, the west isn’t blameless, but in the middle of everything, it was Ukraine that sought out the west after Russia’s failed attempt at a political coup, and Russia that has pushed this to a bloody war. It wasn’t even the west that prevented their political takeover but the Ukrainian people. Compared to the many western driven coups, this one seems quite organic.

From what I’ve seen, the Ukrainian people would kinda like to be their own thing, and any westernization is as much a result of not wanting to become a Russian satellite state than any love for the west.

[beyelzu]

On the subject of sanctions, I found these two articles informative.

The Biden Official Who Pierced Putin’s “Sanction-Proof” Economy | The New Yorker

The American sanctions on Russia’s economy, explained - Vox


From the New Yorker piece

Among the American delegation in the room was a figure who surely flew below the radar of Russian intelligence: a forty-six-year-old North Carolinian named Daleep Singh, who had recently been appointed as Biden’s deputy national-security adviser for international economics. Singh, who spent part of his early career at Goldman Sachs, had made his name as a market technician, having joined the markets room in the Obama Treasury Department, and then spent part of the Trump years as the vice-president for markets at the New York Fed. Singh had watched, with some skepticism, the growing esteem in which Russia was held on Wall Street, which hinged on the idea of its economic foresight. “I grew up in financial markets. I often hear from people in financial markets,” Singh told me last week. “And one of the myths I felt like they held—and it was kind of perpetrated by the Russian government—was that it had built an economic fortress around its economy, and that it was due to years and years of genius planning by Putin himself.”

Singh started thinking seriously about potential sanctions on Russia in early November, when U.S. intelligence assessments began to warn of a likely invasion of Ukraine. “We put our heads together and figured out where do we have strengths and where do our strengths intersect with Russian vulnerability—where is there an asymmetry,” Singh told me. One area was Russia’s access to Western technologies, such as microchips and software. Another potential vulnerability was the dependence of Russian banks on capital from overseas. Each of these moves exploited certain American advantages, but they did nothing to undermine the reserves Putin had built to make the Russian economy “sanction-proof.” So Singh turned to another point of asymmetry: the currency trade. “It’s true that the global economy has gotten increasingly multipolar over time—you could see that just as a percentage of world G.D.P.,” Singh said. But, when it came to the currency in which countries bought and sold things, saved money, and borrowed money, the dollar’s share was between sixty and eighty per cent. In the world of global finance, Singh said, “the dollar is still the operating system.”

From the Vox piece

An influential 2019 academic paper written by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman argued that decades of economic globalization, far from weakening the power of sanctions, has actually made them an even stronger tool because “some countries—most prominently the U.S.—are able to cut businesses or even entire countries out of these global networks, with profound economic consequences.”

Presciently, they wrote when their paper was released that “proper participation in the world economy requires access to global networks such as the dollar clearing system and the SWIFT financial network. We live in an interdependent world, but one where the dependencies are asymmetric.”

Fwiw, it’s not lost on me that regular Russians suffer from sanctions, but it’s better than war.

Also I think oligarchs suffer as well, not materially. They aren’t going to miss meals, but the bullshit numbers they pursue will be smaller. They won’t be able to live it’s the same ease that they did before sanctions.

Like sure many keep their super yachts, but they would rather be in the Med than the Black Sea.

I don’t say this to make light, but simply to express that they will notice and they won’t like it.

We can’t afford open warfare.

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by erimir

Do you feel that if Iraqis or Afghans fought back too hard, they would've been risking nuclear war?

I never said that "fighting back too hard" was the issue, but the West's material involvement in the conflict. But this is an absurd analogy anyway because the context is completely different. If Iraq and Afghanistan were on the US border and Russia had a far more powerful military than the US and they were funneling weapons and air support into Iraq and Afghanistan would they be risking a nuclear war with the US? I would say yes, that would be a risk. An even clearer risk because unlike Russia, the US has demonstrated a willingness to use nuclear weapons.

Originally Posted by erimir

There's more to evaluate than just whether the US is being sincerely altruistic enough.

That is an obviously simplistic rendering of my concerns, I don't expect any State to be motivated by altruism. I'm just not impressed by the "Putin-bad, US/NATO good" quality of discourse dominant in the liberal press right now.

Originally Posted by erimir

I mean, it seems uncharitable to suggest you think Ukrainians should roll over, surrender and allow Russia to annex or dominate them, let their kleptocrat oligarchs loot the country and so on.

But of course that won't stop you from implying exactly that.

Originally Posted by erimir

Why do you keep assuming that the US/NATO's goal is to declare war on Russia, even though many of them have been clear that they do not want to do that?

That's a fair point. I keep forgetting that governments (especially ours!) never lie about their intentions.

Originally Posted by erimir

fragment already asked here, but this is a bit of a wtf for me. Where the hell do you get that from?

I admit I don't have any current polling data to support my claim that somoeone whose home and family are being firebombed and murdered would want it stopped by any means necessary. I retract that wild claim.

Originally Posted by erimir

If you want to argue that Putin and/or Russia are paranoid and are irrationally afraid of a NATO invasion, that's one thing. But I think Putin is more concerned with restoring the glory of the Russian Empire than he is afraid that NATO was going to invade.

The US has demonstrated a willingness to use military intervention to secure its interests around the globe for its entire history, and NATO has been expanding eastward since the collapse of the Soviet Union despite promises not to do so, but according to you it is "paranoid and irrational" for Putin to fear a NATO invasion. I don't know how anyone could believe that unless they have fully internalized the narrative that the US/NATO are inherently morally good and righteous.

Originally Posted by erimir

Here's the first question I would ask about whether Russian actions should be framed as genocide:

I did not deny (or even question) whether what Russia is doing in Ukraine might be accurately described as genocide. I was just pointing out that whether the current administration calls it genocide has policy implications, and one of them is that we have a requirement to intervene. I think I posted this earlier but if not this is what I was referring to: Biden called Russia’s war in Ukraine ‘genocide.’ Here’s why that matters.

Originally Posted by erimir

You claim to be concerned with how bloody the war is, so presumably a concern for Ukrainian casualties.

Don't be silly, of course I don't care about Ukrainian casualties. That's why I have been arguing that we should do everything we can to make sure as many Ukrainians die as possible and that Putin is a fine and upstanding citizen. Thank you for bringing honesty and charity back to this debate!

Originally Posted by erimir

Also this is again very US-centric because other countries are involved here. It is not the US acting alone and unilaterally. Do you think that opinion in other countries is all manipulated along the same lines, solely for the sake of US supremacy?

Yes, yes, yes. The US is just one tiny voice among many economic and military superpowers that have vast influence over the decisions other countries make, and there is no way the US would ever withhold money or arms from (or god forbid turn against) a country that didn't go along with what it wants. That point has already been made and my ignorance thus revealed. I stand corrected again.

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

The US has demonstrated a willingness to use military intervention to secure its interests around the globe for its entire history, and NATO has been expanding eastward since the collapse of the Soviet Union despite promises not to do so, but according to you it is "paranoid and irrational" for Putin to fear a NATO invasion. I don't know how anyone could believe that unless they have fully internalized the narrative that the US/NATO are inherently morally good and righteous.

I'm mildly fascinated by this kind of take insofar as it completely obliterates the agency of NATO member states and ignores their capacity to act in their own interests. I mean, is it really that hard to imagine why, say, Poland or Czechia or Latvia or Lithuania or Estonia might want to join NATO? Is there any evidence whatosever that these governments were coerced into joining NATO? Why did the Visegrad group exist? Why did the Vilnius Group exist? Do Finland and Sweden have any rational reason to consider joining NATO now? Are they expected to look at Georgia and just give Russia another mulligan? Ukraine? Russia is a kleptocratic failed state, propped up by energy exports alone, seeking political legitimacy in absurd imperial irredentist delusions. NATO (not being kleptocratic failed states, for one thing) is powerfully deterrent. Morality doesn't enter into it. It is entirely rational for Russia's border states to seek security inside of NATO. The alternative is basically Belarus or any of the various unrecognized shitholes Russia has propped up (Abkhazia, Transnistria, South Ossetia, etc.): another kelptocratic failed state. The idea that NATO expansion is inherently aggressive is basically predicated on Cold War notions of bipolarity and spheres of influence that haven't been relevant for decades. I don't know what would give Russia the right to dictate the foreign policy of its neighbors, and have an effective veto over the policy choices of its former colonies, no matter how pathetically the Kremlin mews about NATO expansion.

For all of its sanctimony and hypocrisy, I think most of Europe understands that Europe itself is fundamentally unstable, and has spent its post-war existence trying to build supranational institutions to manage that instability and insecurity when it threatens the continent. The EU is one, NATO is another. No matter how much the European left and the European right and Putin whine about it, US defense commitments are a core component of European stability. It's a massive US subsidy that is entirely worth it, because it's very likely that without it, Europe would simply resume tearing itself apart as historically did every few decades. That would be very expensive and inconvenient for all (except perhaps for Russia, which has historically benefited from a shattered Europe).

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by ChuckF

NATO (not being kleptocratic failed states, for one thing) is powerfully deterrent.

Despite the best pathetic efforts of Drumpf and Bozo and their ilk

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

A kind of Russian war analytics. Far-right former colonel Kvachkov explains to international war criminal Igor Girkin what he believes is the main problem of Russian army - too many jews pic.twitter.com/XNbQliMxk7

— Kirill Martynov (@kmartynov) April 23, 2022

[ChuckF]

Historically that’s a pretty evergreen root cause analysis for most problems in Russia.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by ChuckF

I'm mildly fascinated by this kind of take insofar as it completely obliterates the agency of NATO member states and ignores their capacity to act in their own interests. I mean, is it really that hard to imagine why, say, Poland or Czechia or Latvia or Lithuania or Estonia might want to join NATO? Is there any evidence whatosever that these governments were coerced into joining NATO? Why did the Visegrad group exist? Why did the Vilnius Group exist? Do Finland and Sweden have any rational reason to consider joining NATO now? Are they expected to look at Georgia and just give Russia another mulligan? Ukraine? Russia is a kleptocratic failed state, propped up by energy exports alone, seeking political legitimacy in absurd imperial irredentist delusions. NATO (not being kleptocratic failed states, for one thing) is powerfully deterrent. Morality doesn't enter into it. It is entirely rational for Russia's border states to seek security inside of NATO. The alternative is basically Belarus or any of the various unrecognized shitholes Russia has propped up (Abkhazia, Transnistria, South Ossetia, etc.): another kelptocratic failed state. The idea that NATO expansion is inherently aggressive is basically predicated on Cold War notions of bipolarity and spheres of influence that haven't been relevant for decades. I don't know what would give Russia the right to dictate the foreign policy of its neighbors, and have an effective veto over the policy choices of its former colonies, no matter how pathetically the Kremlin mews about NATO expansion.

For all of its sanctimony and hypocrisy, I think most of Europe understands that Europe itself is fundamentally unstable, and has spent its post-war existence trying to build supranational institutions to manage that instability and insecurity when it threatens the continent. The EU is one, NATO is another. No matter how much the European left and the European right and Putin whine about it, US defense commitments are a core component of European stability. It's a massive US subsidy that is entirely worth it, because it's very likely that without it, Europe would simply resume tearing itself apart as historically did every few decades. That would be very expensive and inconvenient for all (except perhaps for Russia, which has historically benefited from a shattered Europe).

Certainly, the inveigning against the expansion of NATO eastward seems to carry with it the almost implict notion that a U.S.-led NATO overran those countries, and forcibly incorporated them into their alliance, the way that Putin is trying (and failing) to overrun and incorporate Ukraine into Russia.

I’m sure that those who criticize NATO expansion understand that it was all voluntary, but failing to stress this point almost seems to put the NATO expansion on a moral equivalence with Putin currently trying to expand Russia westward, where there is no equivalency at all.

[mickthinks]

A British dude called Angus Roxburgh echoes many of the points that vm has been making here: Further arming Ukraine will only destroy it. The west must act to end this war now | Angus Roxburgh | The Guardian


I think Roxburgh is wrong, and may even be wrong-headed, but the case he makes does demand a response, and not just of the knee-jerk kind.

From the link

Western leaders are disinclined to parley with a butcher such as Putin. But they did it with Serbia’s Slobodan Milošević, only months after the massacre at Srebrenica, and the result was the Dayton agreement that put an end to the war in Bosnia in 1995.

[fragment]

Dayton famously stopped Serbian nationalists like Milosevic from aggressive action against non-Serbian populations in areas they considered to be rightfully Serbian.

[fragment]

Also, there was an arms embargo for the Bosnian war. Yes there were covert pipelines but to consider the Srebrenica massacre as part of an object lesson is a bit hideous when Bosnians were crippled in their ability to defend themselves due to the very kinds of international positions that Roxburgh is advocating.

[mickthinks]

I'd not heard of The Wagner Group until just a moment ago. They seem important and relevant to this thread, so I am wondering why you've all been keeping them a secret from me.

From the link

... a de facto private army of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

[erimir]

They mostly come up in response to Russian propaganda about Ukraine being controlled by Nazis. But that hasn't been a big topic of discussion here.

In relation to Roxburgh, I haven't seen much about Ukraine or Western leaders being unwilling to negotiate with Putin. I don't get the impression that Putin is begging for negotiations and being denied.

In general, I would expect NATO/the Western countries to defer to Ukraine regarding negotiations at this point, which seems fair. The war has only lasted a couple months so far. Roxburgh doesn't really seem to discuss what Ukraine wants here and whether they are open to negotiations, or attempting to engage in them. If the war is not resolved six months or a year from now, there would be a stronger case for NATO forcing Ukraine to the table, but right now it seems premature.

But even then, like I said, I don't get the impression that the primary barrier to negotiations is Ukraine and NATO, rather than Putin. But maybe I'm wrong, in which case I would be interested in seeing information about that.

There are also a couple howlers in there:

In two months, the area under Russian control – originally just the breakaway parts of Donbas – has grown to perhaps five times the size.

The Russians have been losing ground for the past month, but this portrays it as if the course of the war has been Russia advancing ever farther.

If Russia’s aim was to exterminate the Ukrainian nation, then the west’s approach is helping to do just that.

If Russia's aim is to exterminate the Ukrainian nation, then it seems that if Ukraine surrendered, they would continue doing just that!

The only case I can see is that it enables Russia to portray its campaign of extermination as regular military engagement, whereas if Ukraine surrendered and then Russia proceeded carrying out a plan of extermination there would be no way to spin it as anything but genocide.

Maybe he means to say that this is resulting in more destruction than Russia's actual aims. But he already argued in favor of that point earlier with much clearer wording that doesn't sound like saying that genocide is made easier by the vigorous resistance of the targeted population.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

From a police protocol of the Russians arrested by militiamen outside the Kremlin ����:
"...the detainees were holding invisible posters with anti-government slogans." pic.twitter.com/B9hyUbeFj8

— Mikhail Khodorkovsky (English) (@mbk_center) April 29, 2022

[JoeP]

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Originally Posted by JoeP

 

F116A9D6-82A2-479D-BBEB-10415AEE1287.jpeg

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by ChuckF

No matter how much the European left and the European right and Putin whine about it, US defense commitments are a core component of European stability. It's a massive US subsidy that is entirely worth it, because it's very likely that without it, Europe would simply resume tearing itself apart as historically did every few decades. That would be very expensive and inconvenient for all (except perhaps for Russia, which has historically benefited from a shattered Europe).

I find this confusing. It seems as if you're saying that my claim that Europe is influenced (if not coerced) by US strategic interests robs them of their agency, but claiming that they would inevitably implode if not for US support doesn't? Especially since it seems less controversial to suggest that US global military and economic primacy and escalating hostility toward Russian, China, Iran, North Korea, etc. post-WWII would have a coercive effect than to suggest that Europe couldn't exist without the US propping them up.

Anyway I of course had to look up Visegrad and Vilnius because my two months of research into the political history of the region has failed to give me a comprehensive understanding of the topic, but thanks for bringing them up. I suppose Visegrad came about for exactly the reason you imply: that they were afraid of Russia trying to revive the USSR. But I would still think they were influenced by the fact that the US was keeping Russia at arms length and talking about wanting to expand NATO even then. Vilnius being in 2000 it seems even easier to believe that they were influenced by the consistent and growing unfriendliness between the US and Russia.

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

I find this confusing. It seems as if you're saying that my claim that Europe is influenced (if not coerced) by US strategic interests robs them of their agency, but claiming that they would inevitably implode if not for US support doesn't?

Well, I'll clarify: distinguish NATO member states from Europe, and political and economic interests from strategic interests. NATO member states have individual strategic interests. Europe is a political construct that has been essentially an effort by national actors to manage political instability on the continent by building supranational institutions to keep national strategic interests more or less aligned. The EU does that politically, the EEA does it economically, and NATO does that militarily. Common security interests support stability to advance common economic interests. It's pretty obvious why the same parties who complain about the EU are so often the same parties who complain about NATO and gladhand with benevolent/benign Putin.

Especially since it seems less controversial to suggest that US global military and economic primacy and escalating hostility toward Russian, China, Iran, North Korea, etc. post-WWII would have a coercive effect than to suggest that Europe couldn't exist without the US propping them up.

Is that actually controversial? Like does Europe dispute that the European order would not exist without massive US subsidy and security guarantees? That is sort of an axiom of post-war order. Goofy Euro-whining about the big bad US is a convenient way to harvest leftist votes domestically, but actual security policy is pretty consistently oriented towards NATO integration and cooperation.

Anyway I of course had to look up Visegrad and Vilnius because my two months of research into the political history of the region has failed to give me a comprehensive understanding of the topic, but thanks for bringing them up. I suppose Visegrad came about for exactly the reason you imply: that they were afraid of Russia trying to revive the USSR. But I would still think they were influenced by the fact that the US was keeping Russia at arms length and talking about wanting to expand NATO even then. Vilnius being in 2000 it seems even easier to believe that they were influenced by the consistent and growing unfriendliness between the US and Russia.

Could be! Or, it could be purely rational calculation. The Vilnius group is basically divisible into two: the Baltics and the Balkans (plus Slovakia, which was already on the glide path from V4).

The Baltics are still pretty sensitive about that time that Moscow invaded and occupied them for five decades. The second Battle of Grozny happened in late 1999-early 2000, which may have been a signal that 2000 would be a good moment to re-evaluate post-Soviet policies of neutrality (keeping in mind that the last Russian troops didn't leave the Baltics until 1994ish). And the Balkans are the source of 20th century European security risks. By 2000, Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia had just managed to obtain reasonable political stability after the disintegration of Yugoslavia and three major regional conflicts.

But perhaps more saliently, like I said before, security creates an opportunity for meaningful economic growth, and that growth was clearly in the transatlantic alliance and not in Russia (Russia's GDP in 2000 was only a little larger than Belgium's). So let's remember that in 2000, this region had observed (and to some extent been affected by contagion unleashed by) the 1998 ruble crisis. In brief, Russia defaulted on its public debt, rapidly devalued the ruble, and triggered banking crises in most of the former Soviet Union that was still economically integrated with Moscow.

What are the obvious conclusions? First, that security is a precondition for economic growth. Second, that NATO membership provides security and access to European institutions that invite investment and growth. And third, that Russia may be disintegrating from the periphery (Chechnya, Dagestan) and is entirely reliant on global energy prices to maintain its currency and the economic order within its near abroad (this is still true!) It's an easy question: would you rather be Poland or Belarus? Was there really any need need to engage in the second- and third-order analyses of the state of friendliness between Russia and the United States, much less higher order speculative fiction about Iran, etc.?