Comment by scottLobster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scottLobster | Hacker News Reader

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The question is less about NATO deployments and more the will of NATO leadership to go to war with Russia over its more minor members.

I hate to say it but the Afghanistan withdrawal really showed what happens when Americans stop giving a shit, and they probably don't give that much of a shit about Latvia. Who's going to step into that gap for NATO? Poland recently ran a military exercise simulating a war with Russia that was, in the words of one of the Generals managing it, "worse than 1939". In the simulation the Polish forces held out for less than a week.

Meanwhile attempts for an ex-US EU military organization are little more than vague proposals, in part because the EU started out as a peace project and, frankly, much of Europe isn't used to seriously worrying about its military security (the most notable exceptions being France, the UK, Sweden and Finland, perhaps Greece but they have other issues). Some NATO members ran out of bombs during the freaking Libya campaign. They've been under the US umbrella for more than a generation, in some cases 2 or 3 generations.

Honestly I'm not sure Europe can fight these days. It certainly doesn't want to (and after the 20th century who can blame them?). Sure almost every European nation (Poland included) has some badass special forces. Too bad those won't be enough if Russia decides to act with impunity.

> hate to say it but the Afghanistan withdrawal really showed what happens when Americans stop giving a shit

America as a country never really gave a shit about Afghanistan. Nobody was standing in a ration line or anything. The military was at war, and that should actually give you confidence because if America can sustain a 20-year war in Afghanistan which turned out to be completely pointless while also fighting a war in Iraq which they also do not care about imagine if the U.S. did care. Unless you were in the military or knew someone who was if you turned off the news there was absolutely 0 evidence that the United States was at war in Afghanistan or Iraq or even both.

And I'll also say pulling out of Afghanistan was 100% the right call. We spent 20 years there and it collapsed in like a week when we left. That should be all the evidence you need that it was time to get out. It was a money and attention pit and we gained nothing for it strategically. (Not commenting here on the atrocities committed by the Taliban)

And Americans will start standing in a ration line to kick Russia out of Estonia? Or Ukraine?

I agree that getting out of Afghanistan was the right call, it was the horribly mismanaged manner of our leaving that I'm pointing out. We left our own citizens and allies in the country behind almost overnight, with the senior leadership rationalizing that the Afghan national army was going to actually fight, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Our leaders just stuck their fingers in their ears and pulled the plug.

I don't see how Eastern Europe ranks any higher in the minds of said leaders, outside of the remnants of the retiring Cold War generation and the dwindling number who still believe in NATO.

> And Americans will start standing in a ration line to kick Russia out of Estonia? Or Ukraine?

Oh yea I doubt it, but if the military goes to war and people start dying who knows how the public will react. If Russia, idk, bombs a US base in Germany that's a totally different ballgame (hence why small contingents of US forces will be deployed to various locations).

> We left our own citizens and allies in the country behind almost overnight, with the senior leadership rationalizing that the Afghan national army was going to actually fight, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Eh I think people are overreacting to this. We don't know all of the details and I think people probably got lulled into a false sense of security that America would never leave Afghanistan so when you actually do it they're like wait what? When you have Democrats and Republicans criticizing you, you probably did the right thing. Also war is messy. Frankly this could have gone better but could have went much worse.

> I don't see how Eastern Europe ranks any higher in the minds of said leaders, outside of the remnants of the retiring Cold War generation and the dwindling number who still believe in NATO.

Oh yea I think NATO is already gone and nobody told France who is probably the only remaining EU country with any fight left in it. The EU just wouldn't commit to US interests hard enough (China/Russia) so the US has pivoted and it took the EU by surprise, but France prefered to throw its lot in with the EU and Germany instead of the US and UK. With that being said, an invasion of select EU countries won't be tolerated by the US and allies either, so there's a limit to what Russia could invade.

On the US side it's the US, Australia, UK, Canada, Japan, and a few others but I'd say that's the core alliance for the US now. South Korea is committed but I don't know how they'll react to various scenarios. New Zealand is trying to keep the US and co. at arms-length.

>If Russia, idk, bombs a US base in Germany that's a totally different ballgame (hence why small contingents of US forces will be deployed to various locations)

Since Iran launched a ballistic missile attack at US bases in Iraq[0], and pretty much nothing happened in response, I wouldn't jump to conclusions about US response to attacks on our bases.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Martyr_Soleimani

Not a single US soldier was killed as a result of that strike which was in retaliation for the US bombing one of Iran's generals on Iraqi soil. The US decided not to escalate because what's the point? If Iran had killed US forces it would have been a different story. And attacks on US forces in Iraq are different from attacks on US forces in Europe, particularly in NATO countries and even more so in the countries most considered allies (Germany, etc.).

USA would do well to also withdraw from NATO. Let Europe pay for it's own defense. Stop meddling.

What rational reason would Russia have to invade the Baltic States (or even for example Poland)? Even in best case scenario if the west does not directly intervene, they would get an additional few million people almost all of whom absolutely don't want to live in Russia and whom Russia could barely afford to police and a lot of additional economic sanctions. Also we're totally ignoring the internal political fallout (whatever their political views but I'm pretty sure most Russia would not support risking a full-scale war with the west).

Wars usually seem rational to the people starting them. Conceivably attainable goals for short- or medium- term political purposes. But war has a way of escalating, dragging the participants along to a fate none of them really control.

As a hypothetical -- Russia does invade Ukraine and the Western forces offer substantial but indirect military support. Russia strikes at a supporting NATO military installation just metres over the border in a NATO country, on the assumption that NATO will not respond to that as an Article 5 attack on their territory. But they assume wrong.

Consider how the Japanese assumed the Americans would be amenable to sue for peace after Pearl Harbor at some point. They had a mental model where it was risky, yes, but rational. But they deeply misunderstood their enemy. History is full of this pattern.

Japan was already fighting a massive war in China, after the US oil embargo Japan basically had no choice (besides a completely changing their geopolitical goals) they had to invade Indonesia and other oil rich European colonies in the pacific which would likely result in a war with the US, so yes, they choose relatively rational option of attacking first hoping if not to knock out US out of the Pacific but at least to significantly weaken their presence there. They might have underestimated the industrial capacity of the US, but they hardly had any other options if they wanted to continue their imperialistic expansion.

I don't see how is that relevant in the case of Russia though, they have little to gain and a lot to loose from any war with NATO or invasion of any NATO countries and so far Putin or anyone did not indicate in anyway that they think otherwise.

> if they wanted to continue their imperialistic expansion

Always the first misstep.

They already have and the rest of the world just turned away, look at Crimea.

Crimea is in no way comparable to the Baltic States. It has a Russian speaking majority, while the referendum they staged there was likely falsified to an extent, most of the people living there did not really support the Ukrainian state and weren't particularly opposed to it Crimea being a part of Russia. In 2014 Ukraine was basically a failed state, economically and politically. At the time the average income in Russia was several times as large as in Ukraine (they are almost even now).

Geopolitically it made sense for the US and the West to largely ignore it. Due to their military presence there no one could argue that it wasn't Russia sphere of influence anyway. It was a small price to pay for ensuring that the the rest of Ukraine would shift it's alignment from Russia to EU/NATO (not having a Russian fleet stationed in one of your ports would likely make this move easier).

None of this in any way applies to the Baltic States.

Border security (same reason the Soviets held onto their gains), paranoia, and Putin needing an external enemy to galvanize his power. Plus they've taken the Crimea and effectively a large chunk of Ukraine with little effective pushback. They may believe that Europe and US lack the will for harsh punishments, particularly with Germany (among others) reliant on Russian natural gas. There are also a lot of ethnic Russians in the former Warsaw pact nations who might welcome a closer relationship.

I can't speak to the will of the Russian people, but anti-western propaganda has been common there for well over a decade. If it's even been marginally effective they may be more geared up for conflict than people expect.

Would you ask what rational reason China has to invade Taiwan?

Has China invaded Taiwan yet?

From a more cynical, pragmatic "realpolitik" perspective one can view Russian actions in Ukraine as largely defensive. From the collapse of the Soviet Union Ukraine largely functioned as a semi-protectorate of Russia, even before 2014 Russian probably had significantly more troops stationed in Crimea than Ukrainians themselves since their black sea fleet is stationed there. After the events of 2014 Russia saw that long-term they are likely going to loose Ukraine anyway and basically decided to cut their losses and at least maintain the control of Crimea. It's not like Russia actually wants to fully annex the regions in eastern Ukraine their currently fighting over, they just want a semi permanent conflict which would destabilize Ukraine politically and to ensure that the Ukraine could never join NATO (and likely the EU), since NATO accepting Ukraine would be basically equivalent to them declaring war on Russia..

No, but they want to. Reclaiming Taiwan is linked to the CCP maintaining its power. If the US wasn't around they would have taken it back by now.

What you say about the Russian actions in Ukraine is true, the question is would they prefer full annexation if they knew NATO wouldn't intervene? I'd say they probably would. If the goal is security, not many things more secure than saying "this is our territory now", it would also enable a lot of direct control instead of relying on manipulated chaos that can always blow up in your face.

I'd say that claiming that they want to "Reclaim" Taiwan is linked to CCP maintaining its power. I'm pretty sure that they don't really want to militarily conquer it even if they were certain it would not result in a full scale war with the US. Any such invasion, assuming Taiwan resists, would result huge damage to the Chinese and the global economies and likely result in China completely losing western markets (at least long-term). They would much rather continue increasing Taiwan's economic reliance on China and eventually peacefully take it over (even without necessarily full integrating it into their state). Any saber rattling it basically to deter foreign government's from recognizing Taiwan in any way which would strengthen the independence movement there and decrease it's reliance on China.

>prefer full annexation if they knew NATO wouldn't intervene

You mean of the entire Ukraine? Because it would cost them more than it's worth. No Russian actions since 1991 have so far indicated that they actually want to conquer any foreign area not inhabited by a Russian speaking majority or whose population would be likely to actively resist such occupation.

They don't want a conflict on their border. The west wants a conflict.

Stirring up ethnic border wars is a cheap way of sapping the strength of regional powers. The British Empire honed it to a fine art.

The rational reason to invade East Ukraine was to up the stakes and make everyone forget about annexation of Crimean peninsula. And it mostly worked, unfortunately

I can see a valid reason for Ukrainian annexation - just for its agricultural output alone. Russia is possibly having a food problem.

The reason is more territory. That is Russian never-ending external politics position, that's been followed through several centuries so far.

Russia largely doesn't care about people as much as about territory.

Why? Is Russia some sentient hive-mind?

To rebuild the empire. They are not bothered with what the people they conquer think.

> I hate to say it but the Afghanistan withdrawal really showed what happens when Americans stop giving a shit, and they probably don't give that much of a shit about Latvia.

The US is facing severe internal crises. It's weakening the country's ability to conduct a consistent foreign policy.

(I'm deliberately not saying what the crises are, because there is pitched disagreement about that. The point is that no matter what, infighting is hampering foreign policy.)

And when the cause of that internal crisis is the rise of far-right populism (either actively funded or at least tacitly supported by Putin), then it really doesn't take much effort to put two and two together. There are no mysteries here, only evil working in plain sight.

That is one perspective. As an exercise, could you articulate a sympathetic reading of a different perspective, to the extent that someone who holds that perspective would approve of your rendering? Think of it as following Sun Tzu's advice to know your adversary.

Again, the point in this context is that no matter what the crises are, the foreign influence of the US is in decline because of severe domestic distractions.

> foreign influence of the US is in decline because of severe domestic distractions

I agree that much of the domestic chaos is a distraction, and that the U.S. should be focusing on longer term existential issues that affect the whole world, but I wish more people realized how much of the distraction and chaos is intentional.

It's difficult to keep your eyes on the road when someone just tossed a beehive into the car.

> the U.S. should be focusing on longer term existential issues that affect the whole world

Should it? Many US citizens believe that the country is at risk of betraying its fundamental values and becoming something they cannot countenance. Resolving our differences will be hard.

Foreign instigators are poking an existing wound. They may be aggravating the injury, but they didn't create it.

There's no question that the long term interests of the US would be served by staying vigorously engaged in foreign affairs, including in the Ukraine. But does the US have the capability to do so when it is so riven, internally?

Or maybe the internal distractions are war being waged on a different battlefield. Sun Tzu talked of fighting wars politically before actually fighting...

Someone is drinking the koolaid.

One side is having Open calls to remove the police. Let men take over woman’s sports. Decriminalize theft. Oh and attempting to bring back segregation. Disagree with any of that and you get labeled a far right lunatic.

That is one perspective. Are you up for the same challenge I asked of another poster?

> As an exercise, could you articulate a sympathetic reading of a different perspective, to the extent that someone who holds that perspective would approve of your rendering? Think of it as following Sun Tzu's advice to know your adversary.

> The question is less about NATO deployments and more the will of NATO leadership to go to war with Russia over its more minor members

This is the point of putting NATO troops in the country: if Chad from Nebraska and Juan from Madrid get shot by Boris it’ll significantly alter public/political opinion much more than if Igor gets shot by Boris.

They put these troops in the Baltics so that the Russians would end up shooting kids from a wide range of influential NATO partners.

And the Russians just need to surround/pin down those troops with minimal casualties while they secure the rest of their objectives. We're talking battalions, not divisions. Their practical ability to fight an invasion is limited.

We didn't re-invade Afghanistan because some US soldiers were killed during the withdrawal.

> We didn't re-invade Afghanistan because some US soldiers were killed during the withdrawal.

And the failure to do that was very explicitly the basis of massive domestic criticism of the Administration; it took executive commitment to weather popular opposition to maintain the withdrawal policy.

So, while the facts you recite are accurate, they don't actually support the argument about political support you are making.

”The question is less about NATO deployments and more the will of NATO leadership to go to war with Russia over its more minor members.”

Not acting on this would completely destroy NATO and also permanently destroy US credibility on the world politics and in terms of military power. Realistically speaking NATO and US could not afford not to go to a war or at least armed conflict with Russia.

Like I said, you're assuming the US gives a shit. The Cold War ended a while ago, the last Cold War generation is aging into retirement. Europe/Russia is now a secondary concern in the US next to China. NATO blowing up would destroy American diplomatic credibility, but we've already kinda done that in multiple ways over the last few years, and our military is still more than potent enough to look after our interests.

Granted Russia is still seen as an adversary, but if Russia manages to quickly steamroll the Balkans/Poland/Ukraine and then challenges NATO to do something about it, I'm not sure there's the stomach for a bloody, protracted invasion of the continent to reclaim the lost members.

There's also a large swath of the US that sees NATO as a waste of US time/money, with members that largely don't pull their weight and are just mooching off the US, hell that was part of Trump's platform. And Secretary Gates under Obama complained, more diplomatically, about the same thing.

There's a substantial chance that a Russian invasion of any part of Europe would be seen as a "European problem" by a large chunk of Americans. None of this is to say I support that position, but that's where we're at IMO. America is largely turning inward for the first time since WWII, the question is whether Europe will figure that out before Putin does.

USA will have to give a shit for one reason: the war against Baltics or Poland is the war against whole Europe. Germany will not stay away and observe, as will not do France or Italy. EU is the largest trade partner of USA, the biggest market for its exports etc. Regardless of the strategic games in the Pacific, USA cannot afford to lose it or to allow it to be devastated by a big war.

I am all for international trade. But can we let the European countries grow up and provide their own defense? USA can't really afford another decade of aggressive military meddling. Deficits are running away from any plausibly realistic plan to balance spending and tax receipts, so we are economically killing our future.

Grow up? US used NATO article 5 to get European NATO partners to join US wars in the middle east. The soldiers went there and died in US conflicts to help you with your ”war on terror”.

How about pay your fucking debt and keep Russia at bay.

How does MAD and France/UK nuclear arsenal fits into this ? It is my impression Russia (and maybe the EU but since I live in the EU I suppose we are the goodies) is waging an attrition small skirmishes war (don't really know what the end game is though).

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