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Comment by rmind | Hacker News Reader

Just a few points:

- The Budapest Memorandum was, unfortunately, not legally binding. Not justifying the lack of support from the West, but just pointing out an important aspect.

- North Atlantic Treaty is legally binding. Also, the Baltic States already host a small multi-national contingent of NATO troops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Enhanced_Forward_Presence

- It is also worth noting that the EU has mutual defence clause as per Article 42(7) of the Treaty on European Union. Nobody knows what legal or practical effect it would have though.

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Anything in international treaties is only as legally binding as the enforcement measures behind them. As a small country, no international treaties are ever legally binding. After all, what could the government-in-exile of Latvia do after a Russian invasion if the US president or UK PM decided after a focus group session that going to war with Russia over the Baltics is not a vote winner?

NATO troops being actively stationed in the Baltics is a little different. Ukraine doesn’t have anything that I’m aware of.

20K troops or thereabouts. No tanks, no planes, just some artillery.

That's irrelevant, their purpose is to act as a deterrent. By invading Russia would also directly attack American, British, German, Canadian etc. soldiers which not something their governments can just ignore. Anyway it's not the 1930's, considering the current political and economical environment there is absolutely no rational reason for Russia to invade the Baltic states (unlike eastern Ukraine or Crimea). What would they gain by doing that, 5 million people none of whom want to be a part of Russia and a shitload more sanctions (assuming if it does not escalate into a full-scale war with the west which is again something Russia has nothing to gain from).

Last I heard the Americans had left. Is there something I have missed?

True, currently Americans seems to be only stationed in Poland (while Germans are mainly in Lithuania, Canadians in Latvia and the UK in Estonia) but I don't see how that fundamentally changes anything.

I was just in Kaunas and ran into American soldiers -- or what I thought were American soldiers? We chatted and they implied this.

I know there are some Canadians stationed in that region.

I'm not really sure, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_Enhanced_Forward_Presence they don't have a permanent presence there, but I assume there should still be some fluctuating number of American soldiers in Lithuania due to some temporary reasons of the time.

Armored ground vehicles in a frontline role are largely worthless against a modern military; it’s too easy to take them out with drone-fired missiles or kamikaze drones.

NATO doesn’t need to position planes in the Baltics when they’re within range of its air bases in Germany (airbases should be well behind the front lines anyway).

People often have no appreciation of scale. Russia has more armor than NATO has Javelins and loitering munitions.

Most of which are pushing 50 years old. Russia has a lot of military assets, and has developed some advanced capabilities, but has not been able to field them in any meaningful quantity since the fall of the Soviet Union. The same story is true with their air superiority / denial capabilities. They have advanced weapons, but not enough of them to go toe-to-toe with NATO and the bulk of their military is obsolete Soviet-era hardware.

Most of NATO equipment is not exactly sparkling new either, am not sure what that proves. Does it not count if the battletank that runs you over is from 1980s?

Yes, but they run just fine. Russia can field massive amounts of heavy materials, far more than any other Western European country, and they have plenty of mobile launchers and other annoying hardware that can throw a spanner in the works for a fairly large surface area, and the number of airplanes they can field is quite impressive. It may not be the latest and the greatest, but it's not as if F35s are thick on the ground (or in the skies) in Europe either (less than 100 in total, most for training purposes).

I really would not see this put to the test, not only because of the potential outcome but because such an exchange has the potential to spiral out of control really fast.

Totally agree with the last part, and I think Russia is playing a dangerous game of chicken here that risks nuclear WW3 if it goes wrong.

And yet Finns, spectacularily outnumbered, held off Russian invasion anyway with machine guns and German drugs.

FSVO held off. All Finnish territory claimed by USSR at the beginning of the conflict was in the end annexed and remains so to this day.

Certainly kept more than half the country. Here's hoping Ukraine prevails as well.

Amen.

20K troops are people's sons and daughters. Those are real people with personal stories that can credibly threaten to move votes and enlistments.

Being the US politician responsible for using those sons and daughters as human shields is something that could backfire spectacularly. It's not a given that the US can dump soldiers into any conflict and then use their deaths as a tool for support. It's possible, and I suspect quite likely, that the politicians will bear the brunt of the damage from creating the situation where those sons and daughters were killed.

It's not just about votes. Modern wars can be endless as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Russia is not foolish enough to do a full scale invasion. They will just send in proxies. No nation wants to commit resources to such wars.

russia's economy is smaller than Italy's, Russia can't afford long wars. in 10 years Poland alone would be able to take on Russia.

People never realize how broke Russia really is because Russia plays such a good marketing game.

Some other people also never realise that "broke on paper" means nothing when you are an energy-independent state with arms and a nuclear capacity to protect its territory.

Russia's development and production costs for military hardware is also much smaller than any Western nation's. They get much more for their money in that respect.

They could publicly shame the US, UK, and France about abandoning an ally without putting up a fight. This humiliation would threaten

1. Those nations' ability to sell military hardware to the leaders of resource-rich nations.

2. Those nations' politicians ability to avoid a governing coalition between the radical far right and newly-angry moderate conservatives.

“Legally binding” makes me chuckle.

“Legally binding” makes sense within a system where a mechanism of enforcement exists. Once you rise above the state, nothing exists, at least on a permanent basis.

Ukraine is basically in a situation of “you don’t own what you cant defend through violence”.

The Ukraine will lose another chunk of territory. Western nations will “decry this violation of sovereignty” and the UN will condemn it, but Russia will own it.

People don’t like it, but in the end the US motto of “might makes right” is correct. If you cant defend it, it’s not yours.

That US war-motto doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the rest of the developed world. They haven't actually had any battles at home, except for the ones where they attack themselves. It's a relatively young country anyway, so it's hard to pin any value on any war-motto that's not about a far-from-home war (which is what they do have experience with).

The US motto is "E Pluribus Unum"

I thought they changed it to a religious one because they thought it sounded too much like communism or something like that?

Is simple. You conquer country. Appoint lawmakers who will say invasion is legal. No legal problems anymore.

People are jumping on your phrase "legally binding" for some reason, but I think they are missing the point.

The Budapest Memorandum has no enforcement mechanism.

It has no obligation on the part of the other signatories to defend Ukraine, other than the requirement to bring it up at the UN security council should Ukraine be threatened by nukes.

> The Budapest Memorandum was, unfortunately, not legally binding. Not justifying the lack of support from the West, but just pointing out an important aspect.

Yep, nobody will be sued when Ukraine will nuke RF in violation of Budapest memorandum. So what?

Since when does Ukraine have nukes? They gave it up for empty promises from the west, no?

They gave them up for empty promises from Russia and the West*. I like how you conveniently "forgot" that Russia signed that too.

"The memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers: the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents.

The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan."

Just a comment, while the west's lack of support here angers me to no end (Russia I don't blame because how could you trust Russia, especially at that moment when so much was changing) while Ukraine had nukes physically, the actual control capabilities were all in Russia and it would have cost Ukraine a lot (money they didn't have at the time) to convert/maintain them to something usable anyways. Not that this is an excuse, but the situation isn't as clear cut as 'they had nukes and could have used them for their own defense if only the west hadn't taken them away'

1. You can absolutely blame Russia. When the nukes were taken away, new launch facilities were dismembered, and TU-160s (Jet strategic bombers, very large ones, which are always a serious threat for people who don't know) were cut OR TRANSFERRED to Russia. Russia knew exactly what it was doing.

2. Hitting Moscow from across the border with a real late 80s ICBM isn't exactly complicated for a country like Ukraine. Especially in this day and age. You drastically overstate the role of centralized C&C here. I want to stress that Ukraine demilitarized MODERN facilities. These aren't 60s hold overs.

The West, of course, lied too. That doesn't absolve Russia however.

What security assurances are you talking about, specifically?

Is this some sort of weird hint that Russia is not violating anything? Or some weird hint that the US is not violating its commitment? "The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan."

I was wondering where you getting these quotes from, but I managed to find some of them in the Budapest Memorandum Wikipedia page. The provide a helpful list of the obligations as well:

1) Respect Belarusian, Kazakh and Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in the existing borders.[16]

2) Refrain from the threat or the use of force against Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

3) Refrain from using economic pressure on Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to influence their politics.

4) Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".

5) Refrain from the use of nuclear arms against Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

6) Consult with one another if questions arise regarding those commitments

I don't see any commitments being violated here on the part of "the West." Most of the list is about not attacking Ukraine, rather than some commitment to proactively come to their defense. Maybe we can quibble about the wording on 4) a bit... but I would imagine it only covers concrete nuclear threats.

I have to admit - I trusted sources saying the US promised to defend Ukraine as part of these agreements, which is nowhere in this list. Thanks for posting the actual wording.

Thanks, sorry for the initial comment which is in retrospect quite cryptic, haha.

I should be clear, this is the Wikipedia summary. The actual wording seems pretty similar (although it is a bit wordier).

> I like how you conveniently "forgot" that Russia signed that too

I'm a Pole living in the west and the perspective of Putin's greedy gaze turning so close to my motherland is quite terrifying. I think your conclusion that I somehow "conveniently" forgot about Russia being the culprit here is a bit too far fetched here.

Since when Ukraine forgot how to make nukes?

I don’t think Ukraine can get weapon grade plutonium

Ukraine has weapon-grade nuclear reactors, which produces weapon grade plutonium at scale.

And therein lies the rub: the EU would not be able to do much of anything without the rest of NATO to back them up. And in spite of Europe being dragged along in many American adventures in the middle east I wouldn't count on NATO sticking together either. Way too much 'realpolitik' going on to count on that for long term stability.

Russia has a military budget of 60bn, Germany and France spend 52bn each. Within the EU they are on home turf, with existing rail and road infrastructure. The EU isn't equipped to fight in Russia or to fight a nuclear war (even though France has nukes), but I don't see why the EU shouldn't be able to defend it's own territory in a conventional war.

Well, let's just hope that that will never be put to the test. As they say: Europe is the battlefield of the world, and Poland is the battlefield of Europe.

Russia is as unpredictable as they ever were at the moment and there is a fair chance of this leading to some kind of escalation in the near future.

RF is extremely predictable. Its behavior was well predicted two decades ago. If you are predicting «happy path» only, then anything that deviates from «happy path» will surprise you. Peace time job for military headquarters is to predict «unhappy path» and prepare for it. Russian tactic is well known among former USSR and Eastern Block countries, so it was easy to predict what they will do:

Will try to return post-soviet countries back to «USSR 2.0».

Will capture Belarus somewhat.

Will station army across Ukrainian border.

Will try to circumvent Kyiv, while distracting Ukrainian army at the South.

This is just fearmongering based on XIX century thinking. There is no expansion drive by default, however there are couple strategic "red lines", which, when crossed make Russia react aggressively.

1. Hostile military block on the borders (expansion of NATO or any moves that may be treated as towards the expansion or challenging the status quo, as in Ukraine with Crimea).

2. Status of Russian population and Russian language (Georgia in 2008, Ukraine - Donbass, Baltics - low intensity information war).

For the neighboring states they are the keys to their own security: addressing those fears of Russia by diplomatic means, those countries can bring more peace than arming themselves against the invasion.

Where does this obsession with the external come from. Russia has the largest national landmass yet still they look outwards despite the many improvements that they could make internally. It's bizarre to me.

They are not looking for expansion outwards. The only real expansion that has happened so far was Crimea, which was part of Russia before, has significant Russian population which at least once voted for independence, but more importantly it is vital for Russian defence on the south.

The Philippines was part of the US back in the day too. Itd also provide a convenient base for countering China. Should the US invade and annex it?

This is not the same. Imagine a different situation: in 1950 USA gives Florida to Mexico. In 2010s as a result of political transformation, Mexico wants to leave trade agreements with USA and join economic and military alliance led by China, opening possibility for Chinese military base in Miami. Would USA invade in this case?

Based on what we know from the history, yes, USA could do it, as they did in the Bay of Pigs. In fact, USA invaded with military forces in Latin America so many times that by now they should have lost any credibility in democratic world.

Should the US make the previously annexed Hawaii free and let it become The Hawaiian Kingdom again?

The goal of Great Russian Civilization is to protect and expand the Gorgeous and Mighty Russian Language.

The Russian Empire was known as «Jail of Nations», because they captured so many different nations across a huge area. To consolidate them, they are erasing their identity by forcing all of them to speak a single invented language, called Russian, which is based on Old Slavonic Church language, which is based on South Slavonic dialect as spoken near to Salonika (Greece) a thousand years ago. This is somewhat different from behavior of some other empires (Spanish Empire, Great Britain Empire, etc.), because the language was invented, so it was not native language for anyone, so nobody had an upper leg and nobody can be clearly blamed as invader.

Those, who switched to the new language, invented reasons about why Gorgeous and Mighty Russian language is superior to their laughable and weak native languages, so they have strong beliefs that they need to help those minor nations to escape the hell of speaking them and join the Great Russian Civilization.

Russia(now Ukraine) used Russian (now Ukrainian) language, which was a modernized version of Old Slavonic language, so they refused to accept archaic language. In 1912(?) Folk Assembly of All Russia (now Ukraine) declared rename of Russia (now Ukraine) to Ukraine to avoid confusion with Russian Empire or its language. (It's well hidden fact). Ten years after that, Great Ukrainization started, so millions of Russians (now Ukrainians) switched to Ukrainians, then Great Ukrainization aborted by Russians. 20 millions of Ukrainians were recorded as Russians again, 7 million adults (and 23 million children) were murdered by starvation in Holodomor.

Russian language, Russian culture, etc. are very new. For example, there are 0 (zero) folk songs in Russian language. Russians are studying history of Russia (now Ukraine) instead of history of their own nations. This makes them wonder why Russia now called Ukraine, and why their motherland is captured by Ukrainians. This makes them mad about Ukraine and Ukrainians. Nobody tells them real history, of course.

>Within the EU they are on home turf, with existing rail and road infrastructure

Baltic countries are better connected to Russia and Belarus via rail, road, electricity grid, etc than to the rest of the EU.

EU was reluctant to fund infrastructure projects to change that, e.g. the railway from Poland through all the three Baltic capitals

that's not true https://www.reuters.com/article/eu-baltic-energy-idUKL8N2GT2...

EU grants Baltic grids 720 mln euros to unplug from Russia

That's why I used the past tense. EU investment beefed up over the last few years. Rail Baltica is still underfinanced though [1].

And the main point stands. Baltic countries were part of USSR for 46 years from 1945 until 1991. EU had 30 years to fix the problem but it did not.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Baltica

Russian budgeted costs are far higher in 'cross border equalisation' terms than 60 billion - Russia probably get 2-3 times as much purchasing power. If Ukraine is attacked they will fight to the death - they know what life under Russia was like and the killings. In addition, almost all cross border shipments of all kinds to Russia will stop, as the USA/EU will go to maximum embargo state. China will supply stuff by rail, but it will only take a few flying bombs to cut so many bridges that it grinds to a halt. Trucks will not help - many large tracts are rail only. All the while China pretending to be a friend - but China wants Siberia for China. Russia can do far better with good trade with Europe than a Ukrainian land grab. An what if rumors are true and Ukraine secretly hid enough nukes to wipe out over 20 Russian cities by truck bombs.?

>`And what if rumors are true and Ukraine secretly hid enough nukes to wipe out over 20 Russian cities by truck bombs`

I don't think it is possible to keep such secret from Russia for 30 years. Ukrainian president deflected to Russia in 2014, and that means that any secret that he might've known is available to Russia.

true enough!

> If Ukraine is attacked they will fight to the death

They will not. They gave up Crimea almost without fight. Many people at Ukraine are russian speaking and many of them don't mind becoming a part of Russia, just like Criemea people. Just compare with Chechen war in 90's.

True, it was Russia before...

>but I don't see why the EU shouldn't be able to defend it's own territory in a conventional war.

Because money spent in an efficient and effective system has more power than money spent in an ineffective and bloated system. One example - Germany doesn't actually have enough helicopters operational to meet their needs, so they used civilian contractor helicopters in Afghanistan.

The structures are just so different that it's hard to make good comparisons. Germany can't keep its troops and equipment equipped or repaired _at home_, while Russian is capable of doing so thousands of miles from beyond its borders.

The German military in particular is "neither structurally capable nor equipped" to meet its defense obligations, according to the German parliamentary commissionor for the armed forces. Their helicopter readiness is something like 15%, they don't have the funding to keep their navy seaworthy, for most of 2018-20 they only had enough operational armaments to keep 4 of their eurofighter jets armed. They don't have enough body armor for all their troops, so they rotate it out to whichever battalion is active. Current bundeswehr projections are that they'll be able to equip all their troops in 2031.

It's gotten so bad that the German 2019 readiness report was kept secret, after the 2018 report was so bad.

Long story short, the German military is fundamentally incapable of meeting its basic defensive goals (defending the home territory of the nation), while Russia is a near peer competitor with the United States, and is capable of offensive force projection thousands of miles from it's home territory

Links for the quotes and numbers.

https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/wordpress/2019/01/31/g...

https://sofrep.com/amp/specialoperations/germanys-military-r...

https://www.strifeblog.org/2020/07/03/the-german-military-mu...

100% and I think in the case of an actual war, the most likely scenario is that EU member states basically scramble and act independently to defend themselves. The idea of a joint EU military response to Russian aggression is absolutely a fantasy. It's just too big and slow of an organization to do anything on the timescales needed to decisively win a war.

Neither Germany or France have a conscript army. So neither can field any big numbers and it also inflates the cost of the armed forces for the comparison.

You suddently jumped to conclusion that EU could not do much without NATO, but that's just your speculation.

- EU is basically the third largest economy in the World. Meanwhile, Russia is about similar size economy as Italy. The combined EU military spending and capability/equipment is well above Russia's. So, in terms of economic and military power, the EU certainly has means, but see below.

- Would EU have political might and unity? That is a big question. However, the situation with the Baltic States is not so simple: these countries are well integrated parts of the EU, including the membership in Eurozone, Schengen Area, financial and banking system (banks are mostly Scandinavian in the Baltics), etc. Any threats to them would have significant consequences e.g. to Euro as a currency.

- While some EU countries might be reluctant to do anything, there would be other EU countries which might take unilateral action as they might feel threatened too. In particular, Nordic countries and Poland (which, by the way, recently is getting very heavily armed).

> EU is basically the third largest economy in the World. Meanwhile, Russia is about similar size economy as Italy. The combined EU military spending and capability/equipment is well above Russia's. So, in terms of economic and military power, the EU certainly has means, but see below.

It is actually the second, but only just, and China will surpass it very soon. This doesn't detract from your point at all.

However what does detract from this point somewhat is that this neglects relative purchasing power. At purchasing power parity, Russia's military spending is actually higher than perhaps people realise.

Yes! And their defense industrial base is massive, not only are they just spending for internal use, but they also are making improvements constantly because they sell these weapons abroad (e.g. S-400's which piss of America to no end)

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/26/erdogan-turkey-coul...

This all comes with a time limit however. Because of the demographics of Russia, they will not be able to keep this military industrial base up for more than a couple of decades. It is really a case that Russia are currently at their strongest militarily (unless something drastic changes).

With this in mind, the west's strategy of economic pressure makes some more sense. The economic pressure will help this strength window last for less time, and perhaps even cause some internal issues that will distract away from foreign adventures.

The EU has downsized their military capability steadily over the last 40 years, so I wouldn't count out Russia based on spending alone, the size of the army that you can field, and how far afield you can support it is a pretty important factor and Russia is within that zone at the moment as good as unopposed. Russia has historically been able to hold their own surprisingly well when it came to Dollars spent versus Rubles spent. Bluntly: they would be able to use Belarus as a base and connect that to Kaliningrad in a very short time. They might not be able to hold it over the longer term but the damage would be done: it would require the EU to declare where their loyalty lies and if the interaction so far is any guide I would not want to bet on the outcome.

I'm pretty well connected to the Baltics and have spent a lot of time in that part of Europe, both in North Eastern Poland, Lithuania and Latvia (less so in Estonia though I've been there a couple of times I never spent a lot of consecutive time there). From what I gather there is some fierce nationalism there, and a pretty strong cultural identity, in spite (possibly because) of years of Russian efforts to destroy those. At the same time, and in spite of financial/cross border integration with the rest of Europe those countries are an island surrounded on their land borders by borderline hostiles with a tiny little bridge to the rest of Europe.

But you have a point about the Nordics and Poland who definitely would have a big stake in this. But for your average person from Madrid, Paris or Rome it likely would not be something they even realize is in play, they might not even know Kaliningrad exists and they might not know much about the Baltics and their history or present day role in Europe.

Just a note, while Baltic banks are well integrated into the EU (especially after the Danske bank scandal and others before it made integration with Russia politically toxic) the energy grid of the region is still very tied into Russia which is of a critical concern right now (see EU energy prices and issues with the harmonization across the union).

I will also have a very negative posture on the EU military spending/capability unfortunately after working for a Baltic government and being familiar at a high level at capabilities in the region and somewhat familiar of Germany/France. In the EU today now that Britain has left, France is the only real military power who has 1) the forces to deploy and 2) the will to do so. German forces are in a terrible state of disrepair and the new government does not seem like one to invest further (Ulrike Franke has a great writeup and is worth a twitter follow) and even the old gov is under fire for blocking military aid as they have supported nonlethal NATO equipping only to Ukraine, I would guess partially because they are addicted to Russian gas but there are some rumors that Merkel will join some Russia affiliated boards (gotta love a little government graft). Poland I am less clear about but I have never heard anything about them having a really solid air force and anti-air capabilities which is one of the most critical things Ukraine needs (at this point Ukrainian ground forces are actually pretty good and are well versed in how to fight; what they need is to be able to ward off incursions by sea and air).

https://www.airforcemag.com/ukraine-says-it-can-deter-a-russ... https://www.ft.com/content/1336c9be-f1c9-4545-9f85-3b07fcb74...

>the energy grid of the region is still very tied into Russia which is of a critical concern right now

This however makes the relationship somewhat symbiotic, as Russia also depends on EU money. I remember reading recently (somewhere?) that Russia had transitioned from a failed industrial state to a failed Petrostate sometime in the 90's since that's currently their biggest source of foreign currency.

Another point I'm surprised I don't see anybody making is the impact of drones on armoured assaults. The recent conflict (Tajikistan / Kyrgyzstan ?) showed that they could really devastate attacking armour, and last time Russia 'holidayed' in Ukraine it was their stronger armour that pushed the Ukrainians back. This could really tip the balance back to the defenders. Also, it's hard to deny you've invaded a country if 100 of your tanks are smouldering wrecks on the wrong side of a border.

The Baltic States have electricity links with Finland, Sweden (subsea cables) and Poland (with another cable link planned). They are scheduled to pretty much disconnect from the Russian/CIS electricity grid by 2025: https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/baltic-states-and-poland-sign...

I totally agree on German forces being deplorable. Regarding Poland:

- MIM-104 Patriot (air defense): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43574308

- JASSM-ER (cruise missiles): https://defence24.com/70-jassm-er-missiles-for-the-polish-f-...

- F-35 figher jets: https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/01/31/poland-...

- M142 HIMARS rocket launchers: https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2019/02/11/poland-...

- M1A2 Abrams SEPv3 tanks: https://www.defensenews.com/land/2021/07/14/polish-defence-m...

.. and there are plenty of smaller scale projects. Poland is arming to teeth.

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