Hacker News Reader

Comment by qwytw | Hacker News Reader

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).

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com